Can your graphics card really make you faster?

[Dan Allen]

Heeey youuu guuuuys!

So I was reading an article about racing wheels and how they affect driving over an Xbox controller and KB, and I think it's pretty apparent that you're more likely to be faster with a FFB wheel, I mean come on, that's just common sense, but there was something else that was interesting in the article, here's what I saw (I've abridged it slightly, but basically, it's about FPS and triple monitors)

You look at your FPS, adding those two extra monitors gave you a hit and you were getting 100 FPS but now it's 40FPS. That must be it! Off to your local hardware retailer you go.

With your shiney new top line card, you may be $500 poorer but now you're going to be 2.0s faster. For sure! You plug it in your PC and fire up your favourite sim. 60 minutes later your 0.2s faster. dammit! You've seen some funky cockpits getting around. Surely all the pro's use those. You know they're sponsored by some of the top hardware venders so obviously they are!

Does your graphics card really have an impact on lap times? I'm running an NVIDIA GeForce 660 which came with my computer as standard.

Has anyone out there changed GPU's and noticed a difference in lap times with better FPS? If so, what were those differences?

If you want to see the full article, it's here - http://www.raggedracing.com/2014/2/3/will-more-expensive-gear-make-me-a-faster-sim-racer

 

[Yapci]

More expensive gear gives you more inmmersion so it could help your laptimes. If you dont practice or arent born an alien it maybe wont be better in terms of time but it would be in terms of Joy.

Have seen fast guys with g27 and stock pedalset Sitting in an office chair. And the opposite With greatest gear.

Graphics are important for brake distance, inmersion and constant framerate...But physics are going to be the same!

 

[Azfalt Raser]

I didn't find a difference in my laptimes between 40fps and > 100 fps in wide screen gaming in recent testing (trying to determine whether to upgrade now or wait for the next generation of cards).

I did find it was much harder at around 28-30fps though - at the playable/not playable line.

So yes, from my experience, a gpu can make a difference - up to the "acceptable fps range" - After that, it's all eye candy.

I use a pair 6970s (I think a 6970 is comparable to a GTX 570?).
In crossfire, I get better than acceptable fps. Unfortunately, not all my sims are crossfire compatible.

Maybe someone else has a different opinion.

 

[Emery]

90 fps is where rF2 begins to shine. Not sure why, but a few of us experienced racers have tested capping framerates and we notice better laptimes as your fps improves from 60 to about 90. Above 90 fps, we didn't experience any laptime improvement. Note that this sort of laptime improvement is small and it takes consistent racers to measure it in a statistically meaningful way.

Shouldn't have anything to do with the FFB as that's locked at 333 Hz or 400 Hz or whatever rF2 physics run at. My speculation is that we're reacting to visuals on the half-frame.

 

[Flying Kefran]

I think it should be seen the other way: low or unstable framerate can make you slower so having a GPU that avoids this will have benefits.

The article was mocking the fact that one can expect gaining 2 seconds per lap with better hardware. They mentionned an hypothetical 0.2s as a neglectable and disappointing end result... but of course for us it is not... hence the misunderstanding.