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FRAPing at 1080p

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Rooble91

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My friend is about to build a computer and one of his main objectives is to FRAP WoW videos at 1080p. Right now he is set on getting a 6970 2GB version, but at the same time he doesn't want to spend so much on a card if it is not totally necessary.

So my questions is: How much more beneficial is a 6970 2GB over, say a, 6950 for FRAPing.
 
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I don't think GPU horsepower plays a huge role in FRAPS performance. For WoW, in particular, I think a 6950 would be more than adequate. The money saved is probably better spent on a beefy CPU, fast RAM, and a good SSD.

In the past, I think FRAPS was limited heavily by I/O speed, so an SSD might be crucial.
 
Fraps is all about the hard disk, I recommend using FRAPS on a 2nd drive (not partition). Output to an entirely different drive that's not in use by anything while recording. At most you'll get like a 5-10 FPS hit.

Upgrading from a 6950 to a 6970 isn't worth it. If anything Xfire the 6950 for awesome performance boost. WOW runs at 70+ FPS even in BG's or crowded cities (+60 players).
 
Good to know. Right now he is looking at getting a i5-2400, 8GB Patriot, and a Samsung F3 1TB. So say he has $100 now from going from the 6970 to a 6950, what would be the best way to spend that?
 
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I think I remember reading it's best to have 3 different hdd's, one for windows, one for the game, and one to record videos on. I'm not sure how true that is though.
 
hajalie24 said:
I think I remember reading it's best to have 3 different hdd's, one for windows, one for the game, and one to record videos on. I'm not sure how true that is though.
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a separate one for windows and the game is unnecessary, but a separate one for fraps is very helpful
 
two samsung F3s in raid 0 for FRAPS and have the games on another drive and it will work great.
 
i found frapsing to a separate HD was the best for me if you have everything else covered.
 
That's what he is leaning towards right now since he doesn't need a single 1TB drive. Probably going to with two smaller drives instead.
 
i use 4 640GB drives in riad 0 for hd capture and fraps works nice.
 
Check out MSI Afterburner -- it's free and has a 3d video capture function that performs WAY better than FRAPS in 32-bit DX10 mode, almost zero performance hit. I can record Crysis Wars at 1080p60 to a 5400RPM 3TB HDD with no slowdown at all. Only problem is no 64-bit mode, and DX9 mode seems to have a big performance hit, not sure why.
 
I use FRAPS on a striped partition (just 2 WD 1.5TB Caviar Green HDDs) and there is no slowdown with video that I can tell.
 
If your friend is seriously going to record at native resolution at a high frames per second... keep in mind that the files are going to be LARGE when selecting your harddrive. Typically people fraps at half resolution at 30-40 fps...WOW doesn't really need high FPS, it's not a twitch game. The earlier comment about '5-10 fps hit' doesn't really make sense since recording is at a set fps.
 
Ive made several 1080p fraps videos of late, mostly terraria boss encounters with my girlfriend and I can tell you a SSD is crucial. It's less about video processing and more about data writing speed. Evil eye boss encounter took about 12.5 gig or 2 1/2 4gig video files. You can of course shrink that down in the edit phase to a lot less. The whole point of fraps is to capture silky smooth footage at the highest possible rez. Not an expert but that is my 2 cents on the matter if that is of any help.
 
I'd spend that $100 on an SSD if I were him. If he doesn't play anything other than WoW (or anything more demanding than WoW), I wouldn't get a 6950, I'd get a 6850 or 6870, save even more money for a bigger SSD. If he's going to be making a lot of videos, he most certainly will need 1TB, especially at that resolution with files being very large.

With a 6850 you should save another $100 or so, and I'd put that saved $200 into an i7-2600k, or if he never wants to overclock, get the cheaper one, and the other $100 into an SSD.

Use the SSD for Windows, WoW, Fraps, and his video/audio editing software, and after recording and making the full video, he should transfer the file to his 1TB drive, so he has space on his SSD to make his next video.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233188 - this SSD should work great. I'd even recommend bumping up the budget a bit to allow for a larger SSD, but that's up to him.

If you can't bump the budget, then I'd say go for a 6850/6870, the i5-2400, and a 128GB+ SSD (whatever you can afford at that point).
 
i recorded this video with fraps at 1080p using two 750gb samsung f1s in raid 0 on esata.

rig is in sig


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foJUcdtFVvo"]‪Dirt 3 Gymkhana Heat, L.A. Coliseum, Memorial Park‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]
 
An SSD will be plenty fast for recording FRAPS. If he is just going to play wow even a 6950 is overkill. I'd get a GTX460 1GB and walk away like a champ!
 
The problem with a SSD is the sheer size of the raw video files. It's ok if you record then delete it as soon as you're done with it... but I personally store hundreds of gb of video files at a time. The size grows enormously with resolution and frames per second. I don't think a SSD is necessary at all whatsoever. I've even recorded on 5400 RPM drives. In my experience, the speed is pretty black and white - it's either fast enough or it's not and can't handle it.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
The problem with a SSD is the sheer size of the raw video files. It's ok if you record then delete it as soon as you're done with it... but I personally store hundreds of gb of video files at a time. The size grows enormously with resolution and frames per second. I don't think a SSD is necessary at all whatsoever. I've even recorded on 5400 RPM drives. In my experience, the speed is pretty black and white - it's either fast enough or it's not and can't handle it.
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that's what the 1TB drive is for.

When I recorded fraps videos, I saved them to the SSD while playing. Then once I was finished I moved the files to a big mechanical drive.
 
jebo_4jc said:
that's what the 1TB drive is for.

When I recorded fraps videos, I saved them to the SSD while playing. Then once I was finished I moved the files to a big mechanical drive.
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Right, but I can easily store over 100 gb from just one session. Gotta be super annoying to keep having to move during the middle of sessions. That's just my personal recording habit though. If you record for 10 minutes then don't record again for a while, then it's ok.
 
How much "maintainence" is required with an SSD drive? My friend is not the most computer smart person I've met and he tends to just DL/install games all over the place.I, myself, don't know a lot about SSD but I'm afraid he would manage to fill it up without realizing it.

As for the video card, how would a 6870 be instead? He will be playing WoW the most, but he does play some other games like HoN, BFBC2, SC2, and I'd imagine Diablo III when it comes out.
 
Rooble91 said:
How much "maintainence" is required with an SSD drive? My friend is not the most computer smart person I've met and he tends to just DL/install games all over the place.I, myself, don't know a lot about SSD but I'm afraid he would manage to fill it up without realizing it.

As for the video card, how would a 6870 be instead? He will be playing WoW the most, but he does play some other games like HoN, BFBC2, SC2, and I'd imagine Diablo III when it comes out.
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6870 is a good call IMO.

An SSD requires no maintenance as long as running the SATA ports in AHCI mode is enabled in the BIOS, which it should be by default on a P67 mobo.

If I were you, I would install windows onto a big mechanical drive. That way, when he installs stuff, it will install by default to the C drive. Then set aside the SSD for the D: drive, and point FRAPS to save movies to D:

Either that, or like some others have suggested, set up a dual 1TB Raid 0 array and be done with it.
 
jebo_4jc said:
I don't think GPU horsepower plays a huge role in FRAPS performance. For WoW, in particular, I think a 6950 would be more than adequate. The money saved is probably better spent on a beefy CPU, fast RAM, and a good SSD.

In the past, I think FRAPS was limited heavily by I/O speed, so an SSD might be crucial.
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It depends on the game , for WoW? Not unless you are raiding and there is a lot going on. For more demanding games it can impact performance drastically.

When i capture games with Fraps I tend to lose like 30 fps? Or so depending on the game. But I would recommend that if your capturing game play a lot to use a big HD and not an SSD. I mean the storage requirements are massive for 1080p Fraps captures.
 
A lot of fraps is done without a codec for the best footage and takes up a serious chunk of space if your recording 30 - 45 minute raids and dungeons. If it helps Every minute is going to be roughly 3 GB.
 
FRAPS doesn't give a flying shit about your GPU. And it doesn't need an SSD (in fact that would be a horrible waste). All you need is a multicore (preferrably quad core) CPU and a reasonably fast HDD that you can dedicate soley to let FRAPS write video to. (this means DON'T use your OS drive and DON'T use a drive that has a Windows swap file on it) Simple, eh?

REPEAT since some people just don't get it. GPU has absolutely no impact on FRAPS performance - if you are seeing framerate drops it's because of the combination of your vsync settings and the framerate settings in FRAPS. Ala if you set FRAPS to record at 30fps... guess what? Your framerate is going to drop to 30fps while you're recording - and possibly lower depending on GPU triple buffering settings.
 
I guess I will give a little update then; My friends budget got kinda tight so he went a XFX 6870, a Samsung F3 1TB, and a WD Blue 160gb. He's only doing WoW Arena battle's so the videos shouldn't be too long and he plans to move all video files to the Samsung after recording so he doesn't max capacity out.
 
You'll need a quad core at a minimum and that HDD looks fine for 1080p30 and below. You will most likely need to RAID-0 if you want 60 fps caps.
 
Blue Falcon said:
FRAPS doesn't give a flying shit about your GPU. And it doesn't need an SSD (in fact that would be a horrible waste). All you need is a multicore (preferrably quad core) CPU and a reasonably fast HDD that you can dedicate soley to let FRAPS write video to. (this means DON'T use your OS drive and DON'T use a drive that has a Windows swap file on it) Simple, eh?

REPEAT since some people just don't get it. GPU has absolutely no impact on FRAPS performance - if you are seeing framerate drops it's because of the combination of your vsync settings and the framerate settings in FRAPS. Ala if you set FRAPS to record at 30fps... guess what? Your framerate is going to drop to 30fps while you're recording - and possibly lower depending on GPU triple buffering settings.
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thank you, I came in here to say the same.

fraps will tax your CPU, not really anything else.
 
rUmX said:
You'll need a quad core at a minimum and that HDD looks fine for 1080p30 and below. You will most likely need to RAID-0 if you want 60 fps caps.
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2 VR 600's or 300's in raid 0 will do 60FPS easy its what i had in my system doing 1920x1200@ 60fps until BFBC2 kicked my systems ass since my phenom II 940 can't fraps and run the game at the same time.. :(
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
2 VR 600's or 300's in raid 0 will do 60FPS easy its what i had in my system doing 1920x1200@ 60fps until BFBC2 kicked my systems ass since my phenom II 940 can't fraps and run the game at the same time.. :(
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I really recommend a striped raid setup of some kind if anyone wants to do any kind of serious 1080p60 recording. My old 5x RAID-5 1.5TB WD Greens easily handled 1600p60 recording. I know it's insane, but I like to have VHQ originals of any clips I make. The videos get re-encoded to 800p HD before getting uploading to YouTube/Megaupload etc.

If you want to check out some drunk guys playing Street Fighter, go ahead :).
 
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