Why is Frap laggy?

[Corpse_Render]

For some reason when I record with fraps I get constant frame drops on 60 FPS. It happens even when I lock the frame rate. I think my computer is pretty good:

16 GB DDR3 RAM 1600MHZ

i7 2600k @ 3.4GHZ

GTX 660 TI 2GB

I don't have specs on my HDD but it's from 2010. If anyone knows the cause it would be really helpful

 

[Invictus321]

Video recording with fraps is a huge resource hog, I think this is pretty normal

 

[Maciek Fulton]

For some reason when I record with fraps I get constant frame drops on 60 FPS. It happens even when I lock the frame rate. I think my computer is pretty good:

16 GB DDR3 RAM 1600MHZ

i7 2600k @ 3.4GHZ

GTX 660 TI 2GB

I don't have specs on my HDD but it's from 2010. If anyone knows the cause it would be really helpful

Use shadowplay, it runs records and encodes off the gpu, fraps can only use your cpu.

 

[blockhead78]

For some reason when I record with fraps I get constant frame drops on 60 FPS. It happens even when I lock the frame rate. I think my computer is pretty good:

16 GB DDR3 RAM 1600MHZ

i7 2600k @ 3.4GHZ

GTX 660 TI 2GB

I don't have specs on my HDD but it's from 2010. If anyone knows the cause it would be really helpful

Use shadowplay, it runs records and encodes off the gpu, fraps can only use your cpu.

This ^ times a million

Yes, you don't get the max quality that fraps captures, but shadowplay still records really good quality and hardly makes a dent in framerate.

for example, in Bioshock Infinite fraps would drop my frames from 100+ down to around 40 and stay there

with shadowplay it never dropped below 100 on average

 

[RobiePAX]

Fraps is very demanding software, but also has very annoying way it's coded. Unlike other capture software such as Dxtory, OBS, Bandicam, ShadowPlay, the Fraps works differently it doesn't have a flexible framerate. Instead it works on the idea of "framerate multiplier checkpoints". It creates these "checkpoints" depending on what is target framerate and will record only at the highest possible checkpoint, if it can't keep up then it will jump down to the previous checkpoint.

So to put it in example:
If your Fraps target framerate is 30 fps, then these checkpoints will be created: 30 fps, 60 fps, 90 fps, 120 fps, 150 fps, etc. If your in-game framerate is 80 fps then Fraps will lock it to 60 fps because that's the highest checkpoint it can reach. If for some reason your framerate will drop even to 58 fps then Fraps will lock it to even earlier checkpoint which is 30 fps until you will regain stable 60 fps performance.

These "checkpoints" depend on what is your target framerate. If your target is 60 fps then your checkpoints are going to be 60 fps, 120 fps, 180 fps, etc. And anything lower than 60 fps will be creating dropped frames. This "multiplier" coding is the reason why I abandoned Fraps and switched to Dxtory.

 

[Maciek Fulton]

Fraps is very demanding software, but also has very annoying way it's coded. Unlike other capture software such as Dxtory, OBS, Bandicam, ShadowPlay, the Fraps works differently it doesn't have a flexible framerate. Instead it works on the idea of "framerate multiplier checkpoints". It creates these "checkpoints" depending on what is target framerate and will record only at the highest possible checkpoint, if it can't keep up then it will jump down to the previous checkpoint.

So to put it in example:
If your Fraps target framerate is 30 fps, then these checkpoints will be created: 30 fps, 60 fps, 90 fps, 120 fps, 150 fps, etc. If your in-game framerate is 80 fps then Fraps will lock it to 60 fps because that's the highest checkpoint it can reach. If for some reason your framerate will drop even to 58 fps then Fraps will lock it to even earlier checkpoint which is 30 fps until you will regain stable 60 fps performance.

These "checkpoints" depend on what is your target framerate. If your target is 60 fps then your checkpoints are going to be 60 fps, 120 fps, 180 fps, etc. And anything lower than 60 fps will be creating dropped frames. This "multiplier" coding is the reason why I abandoned Fraps and switched to Dxtory.

My favorite is Action, http://mirillis.com/en/products/action.html that works great if you don't have shadowplay or run an AMD card

 

[RobiePAX]

My favorite is Action, http://mirillis.com/en/products/action.html that works great if you don't have shadowplay or run an AMD card

I haven't tried Action yet to assess whenever or not is it better than Dxtory. It's nice and all that it "works" but you need good evaluation of cons and pros in comparison to other rivals.