Howdy y’all 🤠 I wanted to take a few minutes to share my most recent PC sim racing experience. Like many of you, I’ve been playing racing games forever - arcade or sim, doesn’t matter - I just love racing and cars in general! For the most part though, I have only ever played on consoles and rarely on PC. A lot of my time has been invested into the Gran Turismo series over the years and I have always used the typical Logitech and Thrustmaster wheels attached to a table with an office chair.
GT7 changed that for me though and I decided to build a dedicated rig. Went with an 80/20 / Fanatec stuff setup and have been thoroughly enjoying it over the past several months.
Recently though I made the mistake of binge watching Barry Rowland's Sim Racing Garage channel on YouTube and made an impulse decision to buy a new set of pedals.
One small problem though - the new pedals I bought don’t work with consoles without using extra bits of gear that I didn’t feel like messing with. Rather than do what most people would do and return the pedals, I started researching PC sim racing and this is where the adventure begins. I bought a pretty nice gaming laptop a few years back with a not-so-ancient RTX 2070 graphics chip and decided to give it a try. I started with Assetto Corsa from Steam.
Right out of the gate, I was not impressed. The graphics were definitely not as good as GT7 and the frame rate seemed choppy especially in the turns, to the point that it felt unplayable. I also had trouble getting the FFB to work properly and needed a firmware update with the Fanatec wheelbase to resolve that problem. What did I get myself into? I spent several hours researching and playing with settings and once I got everything situated, my opinion quickly changed - I haven’t touched GT7 since. During the Black Friday deals, I also purchased Assetto Corsa Competizione and Automobilista 2 to help keep it interesting. Up until yesterday though, I was still struggling with a little bit of choppiness in the turns in all 3 games so I started researching FPS and refresh rates. I had my laptop hooked up to the same display as my PS5, a 65” OLED TV, but was only capable of outputting 4k @ 60Hz. My laptop however, based on the stats within AC, was showing over 100 FPS. I purchased a 34” ultra wide monitor last year that I use for work and decided to hook it up to the laptop using an HDMI cable. I set the display to 3440x1440 @ 100Hz and gave the games another go. Holy 🐮 what a difference - no more choppiness in the turns and everything just seems much smoother! Wondering if there is any more juice to be squeezed out, I checked my monitor specs and realized it’s capable of 144Hz but I could only set it to 100Hz if using HDMI - to get the full 144Hz requires a USB-C to DisplayPort cable.
Bought that and am now running at the full 144Hz and I can’t tell you enough how much more fun this is compared to GT7. No idea if I’m actually faster but it sure feels like it 🏎️ Driving just feels so much smoother and I am able to hit the apexes far easier compared to before.
Seriously though, the PC sim racing experience has really shed a new light on how fun this hobby is. Just last week I received my Simucube 2 Pro base…
…in anticipation of receiving my limited edition GSI x Simucube Formula Elite Pro wheel.
Justifying these recent purchases was not difficult. From time-to-time I lose interest as I devote my time to my other hobbies but I always get sucked back in to this one. In this case, I am very thankful I decided to pursue the PC route because it has really rekindled this old flame I call sim racing 😍
GT7 changed that for me though and I decided to build a dedicated rig. Went with an 80/20 / Fanatec stuff setup and have been thoroughly enjoying it over the past several months.
Recently though I made the mistake of binge watching Barry Rowland's Sim Racing Garage channel on YouTube and made an impulse decision to buy a new set of pedals.
One small problem though - the new pedals I bought don’t work with consoles without using extra bits of gear that I didn’t feel like messing with. Rather than do what most people would do and return the pedals, I started researching PC sim racing and this is where the adventure begins. I bought a pretty nice gaming laptop a few years back with a not-so-ancient RTX 2070 graphics chip and decided to give it a try. I started with Assetto Corsa from Steam.
Right out of the gate, I was not impressed. The graphics were definitely not as good as GT7 and the frame rate seemed choppy especially in the turns, to the point that it felt unplayable. I also had trouble getting the FFB to work properly and needed a firmware update with the Fanatec wheelbase to resolve that problem. What did I get myself into? I spent several hours researching and playing with settings and once I got everything situated, my opinion quickly changed - I haven’t touched GT7 since. During the Black Friday deals, I also purchased Assetto Corsa Competizione and Automobilista 2 to help keep it interesting. Up until yesterday though, I was still struggling with a little bit of choppiness in the turns in all 3 games so I started researching FPS and refresh rates. I had my laptop hooked up to the same display as my PS5, a 65” OLED TV, but was only capable of outputting 4k @ 60Hz. My laptop however, based on the stats within AC, was showing over 100 FPS. I purchased a 34” ultra wide monitor last year that I use for work and decided to hook it up to the laptop using an HDMI cable. I set the display to 3440x1440 @ 100Hz and gave the games another go. Holy 🐮 what a difference - no more choppiness in the turns and everything just seems much smoother! Wondering if there is any more juice to be squeezed out, I checked my monitor specs and realized it’s capable of 144Hz but I could only set it to 100Hz if using HDMI - to get the full 144Hz requires a USB-C to DisplayPort cable.
Bought that and am now running at the full 144Hz and I can’t tell you enough how much more fun this is compared to GT7. No idea if I’m actually faster but it sure feels like it 🏎️ Driving just feels so much smoother and I am able to hit the apexes far easier compared to before.
Seriously though, the PC sim racing experience has really shed a new light on how fun this hobby is. Just last week I received my Simucube 2 Pro base…
…in anticipation of receiving my limited edition GSI x Simucube Formula Elite Pro wheel.
Justifying these recent purchases was not difficult. From time-to-time I lose interest as I devote my time to my other hobbies but I always get sucked back in to this one. In this case, I am very thankful I decided to pursue the PC route because it has really rekindled this old flame I call sim racing 😍
