Will there be an Nvidia driver for PCARS?

[Myles Prower]

I've been experimenting with the settings since launch running tests and Nvidias special Multi Frame AA (or MFAA) which is supposed to increase performance has no or a negative effect. Does anyone know if there will be a driver which would improve this and maybe boost performance as it isn't too great right now.

 

[FuriousDemon]

The best AA option I found for my is DS2X in game. The best performance/quality ratio BY FAR on my PC (mixed in with High SMAA, but that has almost no performance impact)

 

[Ameer67]

Nvidia needing the driver update? I think AMD is REALLY in need of one.

 

[FuriousDemon]

Nvidia needing the driver update? I think AMD is REALLY in need of one.

Ian Bell said that they are working with AMD to help get them their drivers sorted out.

 

[Myles Prower]

Nvidia needing the driver update? I think AMD is REALLY in need of one.

They both could use one, MFAA should be the same as MSAA but with half the performance drop

 

[20832]

I don't think that pCARS has a large enough player base to really create an incentive on AMD's or nVidia's part to push out drivers for the launch of pCARS and the game, as of right now (at least on my 960), work perfectly fine.

So, I guess it's just the standard waiting game on a new driver, which will hopefully provide some performance-increasing features! 👍

 

[Myles Prower]

GRID AutoSport had a lot of Nvidia driver support and with the adverts plastered around the track and on some cars I hope they will invest in PCARS

 

[Ameer67]

GRID AutoSport had a lot of Nvidia driver support and with the adverts plastered around the track and on some cars I hope they will invest in PCARS

Heck, GRID Autosport plays well even on DX9 cards.

 

[Myles Prower]

I'm running high texture quality with medium everything else and msaa on an i5 GTX970, its keeps above 60 with any conditions and large grids. But I thought I could run it higher on a 970

 

[NLxAROSA]

The current driver is already optimized quite a bit, but there is in fact a new one under way. Not sure when it will be released, there are more games coming out shortly, so I guess they'll hold on to release it at the same time.

Also note that MFAA doesn't quite have the promised effect in a lot of games, judging from the benchmarks. In PCARS, DS2X combined with SMAA is a great one. If you have a Maxwell card, DSR + SMAA is also great. I use 1.78x DSR (1440p) + SMAA on Ultra.

@Myles Prower : with large grids, CPU also comes into play. And it varies also per track, some are heavier than others. Personally, I optimized for the average case rather than the worst. I think you can raise settings a lot (everything high and some stuff ultra) in most cases with your i5 and GTX970. 👍

 

[20832]

Heck, GRID Autosport plays well even on DX9 cards.

That's because basically all Codemasters games are incredibly well optimized!

 

[sesselpupser]

I'm not sure what my settings are but the performance isn't that bad, it actually runs better than Dirt Rally for me - that is when I'm in a forest in the rain in the latter. Then again I remember the performance not being so great last time I tried the pre-release build and I overclocked my CPU by over 30% (an i5 2500K from the stock 3.3 to 4.5GHz) so maybe it's quite CPU-intensive?

Nvidia won't release a driver specifically for Project CARS as they did with GTA V simply because GTA V was a huge release, they may wait for another big game like The Witcher 3 before they push a driver update which will contain optimisations for other stuff that came out between GTA V and that. Basically, yes, there will be a driver update with Project CARS fixes, but I can't imagine it's very urgent.

 

[Lawndart]

There is a lot of nvidia branding in pcars so they have some type of formal relationship. That being said, a driver specific to pcars is likely to be bundled with other game updates. Nvidia is trying to get away from single product drivers unless it's a top 5 game. Win 10 with new DX will allow developers to have more control over drivers again like it used to be years ago.

Nvidia is very supportive of developers and this is a leading advantage they have over amd. They try and help developers to engineer their graphics support around existing drivers but often how a dev team approaches their render requires more bias on certain features requiring more bias to a certain feature of the hardware.

This is also is why amd and nvidia support is so vastly different, video cards now days are as different as consoles. But this will reunify somewhat with the next DX version.

What still surprises me though is that both ps4 and xbone use amd chips so you would think the logical thing to do is bias to amd...

 

[Myles Prower]

Then again I remember the performance not being so great last time I tried the pre-release build and I overclocked my CPU by over 30% (an i5 2500K from the stock 3.3 to 4.5GHz) so maybe it's quite CPU-intensive?

My thoughts exactly, the fps when hot lapping compared to during race suggests its CPU intensive, recommended specs do suggest an i7

 

[Roostaboosta]

I use the GeForce optimised game settings for Project Cars and it seems fine, plus I use DSR x2 with 15% smoothing. Looking good! GTX 970 and I7.

 

[20832]

My thoughts exactly, the fps when hot lapping compared to during race suggests its CPU intensive, recommended specs do suggest an i7

I've yet to experience any performance hit when either driving alone or in a race. Are you're drivers up to date? Meaning, do you have 350.12? Maybe try to use GeForce Experience and let it optimize your game to suit your hardware, that could (potentially) expose certain bottlenecks.

What's your general setup? Maybe it's not the GPU, but rather the CPU or the lack of RAM for example.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Full grids are definitely CPU-intensive. My FPS went up a lot with full LeMans grids when I switched from i5-4460 to i7-4790k.

 

[chzsln485]

Heck, GRID Autosport plays well even on DX9 cards.

I have a relatively terrible laptop for gaming, thankfully it does have a proper GFX card at least. However, on low/medium GRID Autosport actually runs at a consistent 60fps!

Full grids are definitely CPU-intensive. My FPS went up a lot with full LeMans grids when I switched from i5-4460 to i7-4790k.

If this is true, I wonder if you could help with a question. I have an Intel i7-2600 from 2011. Is there any merit at all in upgrading this for PCARS/future games? Full grids don't seem to have a huge impact on FPS, but when weather effects kick in, it does drop somewhat. How future-proof are older i7s generally?

 

[NLxAROSA]

I think they're quite alright actually. It's a first world problem mostly. If you have the cash to spend by all means do it (I did), but it's really not necessary unless you are really annoyed by missing a few frames. Would probably require a new motherboard as well for you I guess (=even more expensive)?

 

[chzsln485]

I think they're quite alright actually. It's a first world problem mostly. If you have the cash to spend by all means do it (I did), but it's really not necessary unless you are really annoyed by missing a few frames. Would probably require a new motherboard as well for you I guess (=even more expensive)?

Probably not worth it, then. I think the main bottleneck for me is RAM, really, (only 6GB against a recommended 8GB). Thanks for the help though. 👍