Terrible Fraps performance

[SMTP]

My system is in my sig. I tried recording to a separate HD, half size, frame rates, changing CPU core affinity etc. I also tried some alternatives, the only one that sort of worked was Xfire's recorder.

I'm obviously not on a crappy PC. When I try to record anything in Fraps, regardless of my starting FPS it drops down to 20 as soon as I start recording. Surely I should get better performance than that. I also tried recording with virtualdub which doesn't really work. I get recorded audio but no video any time it's in fullscreen 3d and couldn't figure it out. I used this guide:

http://www.genadmission.com/vdubguide.html

After that didn't work, I tried running as admin, compatibility and all the standard stuff. I can't believe this is so difficult on a rocking PC.

[ebug122]

Which version of FRAPS do you have and have you tried just recording the video without sound?

[tinymouse2]

The fps drop will be due to your hard drive write times. When I had 1 WD 500GB hard drive my fps in games like l4d would drop to about 40 from a solid 60. With another one and after my write times were up to 160 or so the fps stayed solid at 60. After un-vsyncing I found that there was very little difference when I had fraps on than when it was off (about 3-4 fps).

Do you have a friend you can borrow either 2 HDDs for raid0 or an SSD? Could just be a slow hard drive :(

[Niku-Sama]

yea try recording to a drive that the game isnt running off of. got a old IDE laying arround? should do the trick?

[SMTP]

yea try recording to a drive that the game isnt running off of. got a old IDE laying arround? should do the trick?

Yeah I mentioned that in my first post. That helped on my old Core2 which actually did much better than this system for some reason :screwy: They're both SATA 7200 drives. Fraps version is the latest 2.9.99 from the website. I'm wondering if this is just an issue with Win 7.

[SteveLord]

Maybe. I remember it DOES drop a little, but should still be playable. I've also always had a Raptor drive to write to.

Xfire can do this too. Not sure how good it is in comparison.

[Mr.Guvernment]

fraps does drop, even when i set it to not cap at a FPS on it, it still drops to 60, my monitors refresh rate, and i have it write to a separate drive, it is just how fraps works it seems.

[SMTP]

Hmm, just noticed something that may be part of the problem. The second HD I threw in is SATA 150 and not SATA 300. I know I've got another SATA 300 lying around in my office so I'll try that.

[SteveLord]

Hmm, just noticed something that may be part of the problem. The second HD I threw in is SATA 150 and not SATA 300. I know I've got another SATA 300 lying around in my office so I'll try that.

That shouldn't really make a difference. I'm leaning toward the separate drive issue as well.

[SMTP]

The recording is already set to a second drive, the SATA 150 drive and my FPS still nosedives. There was no difference at all when recording to my primary or second drive, the FPS was exactly the same. Maybe switching the secondary 150 drive for a 300 I have will help.

[CyberDemonLord]

Try another recorder - PlayClaw. It's very fast, especially on multicore systems.
http://www.playclaw.com

[Mr.Guvernment]

SATA150 vs 300 has nothing to do with it.

your HD cant hit 150MB anyways let alone 300, unless you got an intel SSD...

[moocow]

Your FPS is going to drop no matter what. Have you noticed it running fine for awhile then dropping after awhile? I generally have that problem and just use the /record feature in whatever game I need to record in.

[SMTP]

Try another recorder - PlayClaw. It's very fast, especially on multicore systems.
http://www.playclaw.com

I gave this a try, and wow. Much better than Fraps. I'll probably buy it later. Incidentally, the SATA300 drive I had lying around actually did make a noticeable difference. I still had a massive FPS drop and choppy output video though. With PlayClaw I still get around 60fps in everything but Crysis. In Crysis my FPS drops more than half to 30 but it's still playable.

[Cuiiey]

you can choose how much fps you want the vid to be recorded at and then your recording fps will be minused from your gaming fps :)