Performance of vdrift (how to increase?)

[reece146]

I've been doing a LOT of testing of car configurations on the 'Ring. It's a blast but it takes along time to get around the track so comparing lap times is a slow process.

I started using LeMans (yawn) because it is roughly half the time around the track (~5min vs ~10 min).

But, I'm seeing the frame rate noticably drop and the screen is even choppy at times.

How I'm running:

- Mac OS X 10.4.8
- Dual G5 @ 2.0 GHz
- 1.5 GB RAM
- 1600x1000 res at 32bpp
- windowed, full texture and viewing distance.

If I go full screen it helps a little bit. I could dump the resolution down but if I did that then it wouldn't be "like being there".

What can I do to increase frame rates in the visually interesting parts of the track? Buying a new Mac is easily a few years away still.

- new display card? I have a 128 MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro currently. The newer Mac friendly ATI NVIDIA stuff must be much faster? Is the frame rate fully GL bound? There's the X800 XT and FX5200 in a semi reasonable price range for Macs. X1800 and FX7300 is shipping in the new ones but not AGP.

- More RAM? vdrift appears to take 184MB of real ram, 460MB of virtual ram... which seems to be a lot.

- Mac specific compile options? I wanna start compiling SVN anyway.

- something else?

Any insights appreciated.