GPxPatch PO Hit

Just lately I noticed my GP4 performance has been really suffering. I run 1280x1024 at 30fps with most things turned up high, and could always keep the PO around or well below 100 in the past. The PC is an Nforce 2 machine with an overclocked 2.5GHz 32 bit Athlon and an FX5900 XT GFX. Recently, though (and I don't quite know when this started), I've been getting POs of 140-150 at the start of races at Barcelona and Imola, among others. After some head scratching, I realized that if I run the GP4 executable without GPxPatch, the PO on the start line is back down to 90 again. What's GPxPatch doing to hog so much CPU time? I can't seriously live without GPxPatch!

try on the gpxpatch forum, ive had no problems myself but ive heard other say that certain versions cause slo down.
why not disable all gpxpatch extensions, leave the skip into or something ticked.
then run gp4 thru gpxpatch.
the enable things one at a time to see which one is causing the problem.

try to disable the gpxsound option.Maybe it will work

Thanks both... I went away and tried disabling certain extensions since I started the topic, but nothing seemed to make any difference. It's quite strange, and really frustrating, since certain tracks are virtually unplayable. Turning down detail and stuff doesn't even help. The only way to reduce the PO from 130 to 90 on the start line of Barcelona (and I've tested this several times) is to eliminate GPxPatch from the equation altogether. Then the game is completely smooth. Something's sapping a colossal amount of CPU resources.

@Caelen: I'll have a look on the gpxpatch forum. Gotta find a solution to this...

AFAIK, the new GPxSAT theme does cause a bit of a PO hit. As does the ATL panel.

I found that the new GPxPatch 3d sound gives a big PO hit, maybe that?

Strange: I turned everything off in GPxPatch and still the PO hit was there until I ran GP4 directly. I can see a complete reinstallation is on the cards, although what I hope to achieve by that I'm not sure. I noticed there's often a lengthy pause just before a track loading screen kicks in as well.

Ah, great, I'm happy then, because I couldn't believe new GPxSAT could cause a PO hit :-P.

Why don't you try exporting, then running GP4 directly?

[Website]

Sounds interesting Ferrari_Fuhrer, but I don't quite know what you mean. Can you explain?

Well, you know the GPxInfo tab? Well, at the bottom, there is a box that you can tick, that says 'export' next to it. Tick it, and it exports the panel to gp4.exe , and then you can run GP4 directly without opening GPx Patch. You can export the timings as well.

[Website]

Thanks Ferrari_Fuhrer; I was completely unaware that you could do that. I'll give it a try tonight.

I see what this does now; I really don't want to lose the rest of GPxPatch's functionality, though. This has me completely beat. I've tried shutting down all other background programs, turning off all the GPxPatch extensions (even trying different versions), and the result is the same: with GPxPatch, PO 130-140 on the Barcelona start line. Without GPxPatch, PO 90-100.