Formula 1 2010: Extremely unoptimized or what?

[Marty502]

My rig is pretty much ancient, but it can hold it's own in many modern games.

Crysis runs pretty smoothly, sailing around 20 FPS (which isn't bad with the CryEngine 2) at 1680x1050 (native LCD res) with carefully selected settings, like lower physics but high shaders.
It looked and performed just fantastic for a budget GPU with a first-gen dual core.

Dragon Age? No problem, I can even throw 4xAA with high details. Great visuals and smooth enough.

DIRT 2 is a bit choppy, but enjoyable and since I'm hitting the CPU wall so hard, 2xAA at my native res keeps the same frame rate.

GTA 4 was playable with settings down to the floor. Not that it looked much better when cranked, but still.

Formula 1 2010 however... it's ridiculous.

I swear it gives exactly the SAME FPS at 1024x768 low details, than at 1680x1050 high details with 2xAA and pretty textures, awesome shader effects and everything. Averaging 12 FPS on most circuits, fully unplayable.

Is my CPU really that inadequate or the game's just a pig? Haven't bothered with any newer games since I'm not gaming much anymore, so I don't know how bad it is.

I'm not expecting blazing performance of course, back in 2008 this rig already was old and I'm aware of such things as quad cores and 4 Ghz CPUs, but come on.

 

[sandorski]

Probably is CPU.

 

[SickBeast]

I noticed a healthy boost in games when going from a CPU very similar to that up to a Phenom II X4 at 3.8ghz. Once I added a GTX 460 it became a massive improvement.

That CPU is old to the point that you're going to need to replace it in order to enjoy modern games. Bulldozer is coming out soon, so it might make sense to wait for it.

 

[Soccerman06]

I like my cars making left handed turns tyvm.

 

[Marty502]

I noticed a healthy boost in games when going from a CPU very similar to that up to a Phenom II X4 at 3.8ghz. Once I added a GTX 460 it became a massive improvement.

That CPU is old to the point that you're going to need to replace it in order to enjoy modern games. Bulldozer is coming out soon, so it might make sense to wait for it.

Yeah, but I'm not upgrading anytime soon to be honest, this rig can still do everything minus hardcore gaming. I think it's got at least 2 years on itself for me.
I might consider an SSD when they get cheaper, and that's about it.

I just wanted to see if it's a matter of a poor porting from a console, or if this CPU is really out of it's depth.

Right now I'm downloading the demo of Dragon Age 2. We'll see how that goes...

 

[RavenSEAL]

Dude, you need a complete overhaul. It's not the game, it's your rig.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I sympathize with you about the CPU. I have an E4500 at stock 2.2gh and I am running into CPU bottlenecks too. I have slowly upgraded my GPU as I found good sale prices(HD2600, HD4650, 9800GT) but dont really want to try to upgrade the CPU as older Core 2duo or quad cpus are quite expensive, and I am also somewhat reluctant to mess with the CPU.

What is most frustrating, is that the CPU requirements seem to keep creeping up while the graphics do not really improve. For instance, COD4 only required a single core
P4, while Black Ops required a core 2 E6600, and the graphics still sucked, and I got terrible performance with my CPU.

The worst part is that there are various graphical settings that you can lower to compensate for a weak GPU, but not much you can do about a game that requires more CPU performance.

 

[happy medium]

For instance, COD4 only required a single core
P4, while Black Ops required a core 2 E6600

Yea I actually played the whole COD4 game with my pent 4 @ 3.2 and a overclocked 7800gs AGP card.

 

[P4man]

Your cpu actually exceeds not only the minimum but also the recommended system requirements (although your videocard falls far short of recommended). The CPU may be old, but for games that dont use >2 threads like F1, it should be adequate. Id look in to the DRM as a potential cause of your issues. Perhaps try a no cd patch.

 

[Skurge]

Your cpu actually exceeds not only the minimum but also the recommended system requirements (although your videocard falls far short of recommended). The CPU may be old, but for games that dont use >2 threads like F1, it should be adequate. Id look in to the DRM as a potential cause of your issues. Perhaps try a no cd patch.

Nope, That game scales with up to 8 cores. A 4ghz Phenom X2 struggles to break 40fps. Its very hard on the CPU. The water effects on the track are done by CPU IIRC.

 

[P4man]

Ive seen F1 2010 benches where a 6 core AMD gets pummeled by quad core, I kind of doubt it scales to 8.

Anyway, some people report that changing the audio driver from Rapture to software fixes performance issues on dual cores. Worth trying.

 

[Skurge]

Ive seen F1 2010 benches where a 6 core AMD gets pummeled by quad core, I kind of doubt it scales to 8.

Anyway, some people report that changing the audio driver from Rapture to software fixes performance issues on dual cores. Worth trying.

If that QUAD core is an i7/i5, its expected as it has much higher IPC.

When an 3.3ghz is faster than a 3.7ghz x4 in F1 2010, but slower in every other game. I would say otherwise.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i5-2500-2400-2300_7.html#sect0

The rapture thing might help as it uses the CPU to emulate hardware sound.

 

[P4man]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i3-2100-phenom-ii-x6-1075t,2859-6.html

Ill have to assume thats a glitch though, with core counts that arent a power of two, affecting both the 6 and 3 core results.

Anyway, since I saw recommended specs stipulated a C2D or a dual core A64 5200+, his cpu should be able to achieve playable framerates at low settings, and since quad core isnt even being recommended, I have my doubt about the game's threading ability. More so looking at the Core i3 results above.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i3-2100-phenom-ii-x6-1075t,2859-6.html

Anyway, since I saw recommended specs stipulated a C2D or a dual core A64 5200+, his cpu should be able to achieve playable framerates at low settings, and since quad core isnt even being recommended, I have my doubt about the game's threading ability. More so looking at the Core i3 results above.

Did you miss the sentence below the graph?

Apparently, this game is much more dependent on a capable CPU

The lowest CPU on that chart is a 45nm K10 3.3GHz AMD tricore, which is substantially faster than a 90 nm K8 2.4GHz CPU

 

[P4man]

You may also have noticed the settings used and compare those to the OP.

Yes, his CPU is slower, but not 4x slower than a 3.1 GHz Athlon II, its essentially the same core (and what on earth does process node have to do with anything?).

Moreover, the charts seem to indicate that 2 or 4 cores seems to make no difference at all (3 or 6 likely being an anomaly). Add to that the official minimum and recommended requirements are below his CPU, and its clear to me the OP should be able to play the game at far more than 12 FPS on his ultra low settings.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

You may also have noticed the settings used and compare those to the OP.

Yes, his CPU is slower, but not 4x slower than a 3.1 GHz Athlon II, its essentially the same core (and what on earth does process node have to do with anything?).

Hadn't noticed the OP update... it originally said roughly 1680x1050 with high shaders.

Something odd is certainly going on...

SAME FPS at 1024x768 low details, than at 1680x1050 high details with 2xAA and pretty textures... Averaging 12 FPS

Getting the same FPS at 1024x768 low as 1680x1050 high suggests that the bottleneck isn't the GPU...

Best bet would be to make sure all the video drivers have been wiped and reinstall the current ones...

Try driver sweeper (it's free IIRC)
http://phyxion.net/

Could be a glitch somewhere.

The other thing to do would be to return the X2 to stock and benchmark, then play with the speeds again, benchmarking as you go. From what I recall you should be able to get more than 2.4GHz out of them (check some overclocking guides for the X2 - Linky

The node was just out of completeness

Moreover, the charts seem to indicate that 2 or 4 cores seems to make no difference at all (3 or 6 likely being an anomaly). Add to that the official minimum and recommended requirements are below his CPU, and its clear to me the OP should be able to play the game at far more than 12 FPS on his ultra low settings.

Other reviews have found the game to respond to core count... and that graph shows a decent change in minimum FPS going from an i3 to an i5 at the same clocks.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/screenshots/original/2010/09/F1-2010-CPUs.png

All that said the X2 3800+ likely offers around half the performance of the Athlon II X3 455 (even potentially discounting the extra core - it's 37.5% down on clockspeed) - and if it lags the single digit FPS will nuke the averages...