AC Ginetta GT4 @ Bridgehampton - Sunday 21st January 2024

[stigs2cousin]

Same **** happened again, complete PC restart solved the problem partially.
Nice, race is about to start and I´m royally pissed.

Slow deep breath, don´t hurt anyone.....

Thanks Rasmus,

From what I glimpsed during the race "Final Image" was the only chart with a number larger 0,XX namely 5,xx to 6.xx- but I also had no performance isues this time, 130FPS on average, CPU and GPU on the same level.

WTF??

 

[eN1xes]

awesome race alot of good battle's on my side only a weird moment with a blue flag i dont know who was he was trying to fight me a lap behind overall enjoyable race. Congratz Jason for the win fast as always , Johnny for p3 . a special thanks to Allan , Carsten , Hank for the battle door to door is generally hard to go like that without crashing but with you guys was so great,and sorry if i forgot to mention someone . thank you Brian for hosting this as always .

 

[H_Belane]

That was a hell of a ride on this track! Relaxation looks different.

Great race with a great finish. Like last time Robert. This last corner.
It was a lot of fun this evening.

 

[Douglas Aird]

Typical race for me, I must learn my lessons.

Got a good start, avoided early trouble and got up to p8 by end of lap 1. Got a good run on Carsten on the main straight but then made my first mistake. I pulled to the right and got a slight overlap but wasn't ahead. Arrived at the right hand kink on the right, should have backed out but instead touched Carsten. I went into the sand and ended dead last. Apologies Carsten, fortunately I don't think I seriously hurt your race.

Once back on track I got it together and eventually caught the back of the pack. Instead of fighting I decided to pit where I made my second mistake. Missed my pitbox by a fraction then missed it again reversing back. Lost a lot of time doing that dance.

The rest of the race was good, made up places due to retirements but also on pace and lack of big errors. P12 in the end but almost caught Pat for p11.

Thanks, Brian, for organising and to everyone who raced.

 

[johnny85ac]

guys, again a great race with lots of fast people on track. congrats to you, jason and fulvio, you did very fast laps, folks! Did a PP in quali and still was far off your pace, jason. Completely messed up my start, felt behind to 5th, I think, but was able to fight back.
Fulvio, sadly for me you pitted right when you catched up to me, so I missed this battle you had with the other guys you got me while I pitted later. again. same with you, jason. again.
see you soon!

 

[stigs2cousin]

I came, saw, was prepared and once again got my ass handed to me

Damn, I´m just too slow

On the +side:
I actually had several laps in the vicinity of Fulvio, he came on a lot less rapid than usual, I actually could hold him of for a lap untill my favorate **** up corner, the glorious "Light Bulb"
And he needed some laps to disapear into the sunset, that´s progress

In fact there was exactly one offroad adventure ( never in the history of Motor Racing has a pit exit been ****ed up worse than mine., for details see replay )

That of course is the only reason Richard could catch me in the end.
That and his cheater setup with negative wing and turbo boost.

(clearly kidding man, nicely done )

 

[Kek700]

Simple race for me, all decided in the first corner, then got it backed up a few laps later, both not my fault. So went in for a pit stop, no box, thought I had not set the thing up properly. Only to find some idiot had put my pit box at the start of the pits.
So one down to me, two to fate, time to throw the towel in. So that’s what I did.
Usually Bridgehampton is good to me, so somewhere I must have upset the racing gods..

 

[RasmusP]

Thanks Rasmus,

From what I glimpsed during the race "Final Image" was the only chart with a number larger 0,XX namely 5,xx to 6.xx- but I also had no performance isues this time, 130FPS on average, CPU and GPU on the same level.

WTF??

Glad to hear that the fps were okay!
Final Image always is the biggest one, we'd need to unfold the deeper layers to find out what's going on.
Maybe some part of CSP went nuts.

My screenshot was alone on the skidpad track, so obviously very low load. Final Imagine being around 5 ms is normal.
If it happens again and not in a race, please unfold it completely and take Screenshots.

 

[stigs2cousin]

Only to find some idiot had put my pit box at the start of the pits.

Had that happen on the practice server.
Very easy to over shoot (or go slowly into the pits and get a competitor up your gearbox)

BTW, I ordered Crew Chief to check my Pit Box anew for every event.
In turn he ordered me to drive into the pits and memorize the stall myself.

Tonight I had the lollypop man in the black race suit directly in front of the Marshall tower

 

[robthesquare]

That was truly an awful race. I just didn't get on with the track at all. After a ton of laps, I finally managed to get some (middle of the pack) pace, only to spend the race making silly mistakes. Apologies to Colin and Steve - I thought I could fit down the inside, but my abilities didn't match my ambition.

Congrats to the podium. Thanks to Brian for organizing. On to the next one.

 

[Partick Eaton]

Decent race for me. I didn't have great pace, but managed stay on track from start to finish. Great track, but not much room for error. Well done winners and thanks Brian for organizing.

 

[Interslice]

This is wild! Apparently you had some massive fragmentation?
The issue is that the "needle" needs to jump around too much instead of actually reading/writing, if the disk becomes too fragmented. A full defrag should usually help.

Yep. I only have an optimise button. Runs weekly and it was saying fully optimised. It was also partioned into 2Tb and 1Tb. Not sure if that was a factor. Is there a fuller de-frag somewhere?

SSDs have a similar issue, although not related to fragmentation at all. SSDs don't care for files being all over the place, but they have "Multi Level Cells":
View attachment 723331

What Are Multi-Layer SSDs-SLC, MLC, TLC, QLC, and PLC?- An explanation… – t-Blog

tekmart.co.za

Modern SSDs either have TripleLevelCells or QuadLevelCells.

The more levels, the slower the access. To be fast, the controller writes everything in SLC-style until the write-process stops. Then the controller moves all the written data into TLC or QLC style.
If you don't have enough empty space left, the controller needs to write the data in MLC, TLC or even QLC style, which is a lot slower.
So you usually see "SLC Cache" or "DRAM Cache" in SSD specifications. And that's also why bigger SSDs are often faster than smaller ones. They simply have more "cache", if they aren't full.

Important to know:
HDDs will slow down both for writes AND reads, since the "needle" has to jump around.
SSDs will only slow down for writes, since they lose the SLC cache. Reads will always be the same speed.

And for SSD shopping:
Buy TLC, if possible with DRAM/DDR cache and check the "IOPS", not the standard transfer rate. I've never seen the transfer rate when copying files. It's not about PCI-e 3.0 or 4.0 or 5.0, it's about the SSD controller managing small files.
Another thing to notice: TBW (max writes before cells might die) is a lot higher, the fewer levels the cells have.
It's not really an issue anymore, but if I only pay 5€ more for 1.5x the lifetime, I'll happily pay the 5€. Doesn't matter if it's 20 vs 30 years

Is there a particular 1Tb SSS you would recommend?

Was looking at this NVme. Not sure if that ticks your boxes!?

https://www.caseking.de/en/samsung-980-pro-series-nvme-ssd-pcie-4.0-m.2-typ-2280-1-tb-ssss-175.html

 

[Interslice]

Sorry for retiring, decided to put the kettle on for Ernie!
Got a decent start. Not familiar with the track so was just using Bouke as a leader. Was going well until a slight touch with a car re-entering meant I spun on the grass. It was hard to judge the verges at times. Were they sticky, slippy or normal! Not an easy track from that point of view.
Spun twice more on the same lap, into the trees :/ and a spin on the last corner had me stuck behind the pit entry so decided best to retire at that point, rather than try and re-enter just in front of P1
Look forward to racing here again, now I know what's involved!
Thanks to all for racing and congrats to the podium! See you for the BTCC next week

 

[RasmusP]

Yep. I only have an optimise button. Runs weekly and it was saying fully optimised. It was also partioned into 2Tb and 1Tb. Not sure if that was a factor. Is there a fuller de-frag somewhere?

Not really, there's just the "Analyse" Button (maybe you get more info when checking "Advanced View"?) and the "Optimise" Button.
I only have SSDs, so I can't click on the Analyse button..
But you should be able to see how fragmentated the drive is, even though it can't be optimise any further.


The 2TB+1TB splitting shouldn't have any impact, since the drive controller will sort everything as good as it can. I'm not sure but afaik HDDs are faster "on the outside" of the disk, since the speed is higher.
So they start writing at the edge of the disk, meaning the data on the far right in this screenshot should be accessed the slowest.
But honestly I don't really know...
You could test if the oldest files on the first partition get copied quicker to your ssd, than the newest files on the second partition:
Left to right should go from faster to slower for HDDs.

Is there a particular 1Tb SSS you would recommend?

Was looking at this NVme. Not sure if that ticks your boxes!?
https://www.caseking.de/en/samsung-980-pro-series-nvme-ssd-pcie-4.0-m.2-typ-2280-1-tb-ssss-175.html

Not really, basically any TLC drive from a known brand is okay.
The 980 pro had some bugs in its firmware, but that shouldn't be any issue. Just plug the drive in, do a firmware update first and it should be perfectly fine:

Samsung Issues Fix for Dying 980 Pro SSDs

Download the firmware fix ASAP if your 980 Pro is affected

www.tomshardware.com

Your link shows 1 TB for over 100€ for me. That's a lot of money thrown out of the window for basically nothing.
You can get totally fine 2 TB nvme drives for that!

About general recommendations, I love Geizhals for a quick comparison. Skintflint seems to be the UK version of it. Just select for at least 1 TB, TLC, M.2 pci-e and then sort for "Price per unit", which means you get the most TB for your money:

Hard Drives & SSDs Solid State Drives (SSD) with Manufacturer: ADATA/Apacer/Corsair/Crucial/KIOXIA/Lexar/Samsung/SanDisk/Seagate/Western Digital, capacity (decimal/SI) from 1TB, capacity (decimal/SI) up to 2TB, Interface: M.2 (PCIe), Flash memory-Typ

compare prices and read user reviews for Hard Drives & SSDs Solid State Drives (SSD) with Manufacturer: ADATA/Apacer/Corsair/Crucial/KIOXIA/Lexar/Samsung/SanDisk/Seagate/Western Digital, capacity (decimal/SI) from 1TB, capacity (decimal/SI) up to 2TB, Interface: M.2 (PCIe), Flash memory-Type...

skinflint.co.uk

On the left, click on the 2-arrow-symbol to add a product to your comparison list. You can select 12 products, then hit "compare now".
I would probably buy 2 TB , they have a better price per TB, better speeds etc. SSDs are getting slightly more expensive right now and you'll probably need more storage before the drive dies or the prices go down significantly.

product comparison Lexar NM620 2TB, M.2 2280/M-Key/PCIe 3.0 x4 (LNM620X002T-RNNNG), KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 SSD 1TB, M.2 2280/M-Key/PCIe 3.1a x4 (LRC20Z001TG8), KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 SSD 2TB, M.2 2280/M-Key/PCIe 3.1a x4 (LRC20Z002TG8), Western Digital WD

product comparison for Lexar NM620 2TB, M.2 2280/M-Key/PCIe 3.0 x4 (LNM620X002T-RNNNG), KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 SSD 1TB, M.2 2280/M-Key/PCIe 3.1a x4 (LRC20Z001TG8), KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 SSD 2TB, M.2 2280/M-Key/PCIe 3.1a x4 (LRC20Z002TG8), Western Digital WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD 2TB, M.2 2280/M-Key/PCIe...

skinflint.co.uk

I grabbed a WD Black 850X 2TB in 2022 for a great price (180€) and when compared to the 980 pro:
- 2x read/write speeds
- 2x IOPS speeds
- same TBW
- WD has DDR4 cache
- both 5 years warranty
- WD: 69£ ; 980 pro: 75£


But I don't feel any of that speed.. Windows behaves just the same as with my Crucial MX500 SATA drive. It's only nice when testing some settings/mods with Witcher 3 or AC and copying lots of tiny files for a backup.
But how often do you do that? I did it 6x in 2 years


I would simply buy one of the Lexar or Kioxia G2 drives. SSDs are basically indestructible and they are all fast enough.

 

[Interslice]

Thanks Rasmus! I'll have a scan about for a good value 2TB