What hardware do i realy need?

This. And I even use PP effects at ultra.

 

Easiest thing is to open the taskmanager on the second screen or use some third party software like MSI Afterburner to watch CPU and GPU utilization while playing (also tried a web telemtry app 1 year ago, get a huge impact to CPU utilization but also not to the top). Or watch the ingame render stats app, red CPU line should be nearly flat, when you got high jumps there is something wrong.

But in my opinion you got a decent rig to play AC on a single full HD screen. Question is what you want to achieve, like I said before stable 60fps should be easy possible with:

• smoke low
• reflection quality low
• reflections very low

If you want to get > 100 FPS try disabling post processing.

 

How about rendering frequency? The lowest option on that tab that has "static", and some other higher options? I believe "static" is the least taxing, as it's not a true reflection (but still looks pretty good). If you set rendering freq anything higher than static, cars start to render true reflections of their surroundings, like buildings, other cars etc. which is more demanding. I have render freq always at "static", anything higher (true reflections) kills my framerate.

In general what I've noticed to be heavy on system: smoke, shadows, reflections. From post processing at least glares and depth of field. I don't think DOF is needed, game looks fine without it. IMHO anti aliasing and and anisotropic filtering matter the most in nice visuals, they should maybe be last the thing to reduce.

 

Interesting. That might be the only setting I left untouched when optimizing my system recently. Will check it out later. I have it set to medium or high right now because low (or whatever the option above static is called) is very distracting...like a slide show on your car. So for me it's either at least medium or static.
I agree with you that it's likely to be very performance-hungry.

 

I believe that "Static" gives you this "fake" sky and horizon, that is reflected on all cars / all situations. It doesn't reflect anything really, but looks pretty convincing. You rarely have time to notice it's fake, because of high speed etc..

At least this is my perception of how it works, might be wrong though. But I get the best framerates on static. For people who race on bonnet cam, might look bad because then reflections are really close and it becomes more obvious. But I race 100% from cockpit view, so in other cars it's not very noticeable.

 

Sorry the setting names weren't in my mind ^^

• reflection quality low
  
• reflections very low => this is the rendering frequence

So i've get both settings one click above the lowest value, looks a little bit better than the lowest (especially in outer cam), but still something my 980 can handle in triple full HD.

 

It's interesting to note that I have reflections set to HIGH on my PC, with Rendering Frequency (I think) set to MEDIUM, smoke effects on MEDIUM, and Shadow Quality on HIGH. I have Post processing effects switched off, but the other settings are all at MAXIMUM. This is what you can achieve with a 2GB GTX 770 GPU, a nicely (factory) overclocked i5 CPU, 16GB DDR3-1600 RAM, a single widescreen monitor.....and the Mogget X-Factor

 

Did a test, disabled the other GTX 770 (2GB) from Nvidia Control Panel and ran AC with single screen 1920 x 1080, no SLI. Did a fresh reinstall of AC today so no mods. Was able to run Spa with full grid, lot of different cars, with no dips under 60, and pretty high graphics settings, most of stuff maxed out.

Triple screen is however very different story, for that I need to enable SLI and drop a lot of said details, and still can't use full grid, if there is a lot of different car models.

 

To my own surprise: not all that much. Like 150 MB VRAM usage and ~10 % GPU usage compared to single Full HD.
But I'm starting to get the impression that CPU is very important for AC. Average GPU vs. CPU usage is 70 % vs. 85 % on my system with my settings. When I try and increase GFX settings, it's usually the CPU that hits the limiter.

 

Ah, confirmation at last

 

12:30 ingame time? My servers run 16:30 for nicer lighting, most demanding are the extremes like 18:30 (like in the Monza video I posted yesterday).

With my old 670 I needed to reduce more settings to reach 60fps stable with triples. Your CPU is just getting old

 

Don't knock the i5 2500k! One of the best CPUs ever!!

 

Hmm. Maybe it's not VRAM then. But have to say in Project Cars I also have to drop a lot of details to get smooth triple screen experience. With single screen can use very high settings in that game too, for triples have to strip a lot of it down. Don't know what's the actual bottleneck.

Edit: Think my in-game time was 12:00. Also had to edit the framerates in my initial post out, I think I made some kind of mistake there, because retried it and it didn't go that high. Maybe those were PP off + render freq Static readings. Anyway, 770 2GB is enough for single screen racing in AC, unless you need to have extremely high graphics.

Edit 2: Christopher, yep obviously triples are more demanding, 3x more pixels to draw, but it's not 33% of framerate either, it's something in between. My dream rig would have enough power to run AC on triple screen, everything maxed, with any kind of grid. Getting 4GB top tier card now would maybe a step towards it, putting 2 of those later in SLI should finally do the job.

 

Three screens surely means that the GPU has to shift three times as many pixels as a single screen. Why wouldn't that seriously affect framerates? Or is a card like the 980GTX having a bit of a nap with single screen systems whilst it waits for info from the CPU?

 

Yeah it's a good one for sure but even running at 4.0 GHz it struggles. BTW what temps would you consider safe for it? Mine runs at ~65 deg maximum right now in AC, most of the time even below 60. For a long, long time I was running it with a cooler that had come loose unnoticed. I checked and saw temps just below 90 under load and pretty much always above 70 even in idle
So should I push a bit further with the clock until I hit, say, 70 under load?

 

I am no expert with overclocking (mine was done by the system builder), but I don't think that you really want it to go higher than about 70C. I think that mine is at around 70-72C under load @ 4.6Ghz with my CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO cooler. My previous PC had an i5 2500k CPU overclocked to 4.3Ghz, and that never exceeded 68C under load with the Thermaltake Frio cooler that I had (this was a veritable tower block of a cooler, and had double fans).

 

Yes, yes it is VRAM...also I could clearly track down lack of VRAM as the reason for micro(!)stutter.
@Christopher Low: I have no clue why but just take my word: It isn't like three times the stress for the GPU, not even close. I learned it from @Jaye, you learn it from me.

 

Still thinking a custom top model of a GTX 980 TI will do this job without the need of going to SLI (60fps stable). But I should stop dreaming ^^ If someone will come around and gives me 500 bucks for my 980 I could become weak

 

Ok, after reading through this thread it's my turn for a question

There has been lots of talk about 770's; however I am looking at buying a 970 ( I am aware of the 3.5GB + 0.5GB issues) and a BenQ 24", 1080p, 144Hz moniter.

So I'd appreciate if soemone with a 970 could tell me what kind of settings they would need to get a stable 120FPS for most of the time in AC with for example;

12:00 with clear weather, 24 different cars @ Monza

Thanks in advance

 

@burrito
can't help with the 120 FPS, but because of VRAM there shouldn't be a problem. Also on big tracks like Nordschleife with full 24 mixed GT3 grid max. VRAM usage was 3.3 GB. Never seen more for AC, maybe with some very idiotic custom skins (each > 100 MB big), but this is the skin makers fault then using too high settings.