Recent reviews by [CoFR]October

Glitchy, broken software on my computer. Starts, runs for 20 seconds, closes with "vr.exe has stopped working". Yes, I tried it as administrator. Yes, my drivers are up to date. Maybe it doesn't like my triple monitor setup?

I bought CPUCores specifically as an attempt to improve FPS in ARMA3, arguably the most demanding game on the market. While I haven't done any technical benchmarking yet I do think this software improved my systems ability to handle this particular game. I saw a gain of one or two FPS on the high end but most notably was a gain of 2-4 fps on low end. In other words my lowest FPS were better with this software than without it.

The developers are very active in the community forum and seem to care about further improving the software and responding to their customer's questions and feature requests. Hopefully the next iteration of the software will do even more to help me wring as many FPS out of my system (on ARMA3, in particular) as possible.

My system: AMD FX4100 OC'd 4.415 Ghz water cooled, 16 GB DDR3 1866, Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2, XFX R9 390 DD

My review, 2015 EDITION:

$20+ for a game that's 10 years old??!? OK, a bit of a disclaimer:

IF you are looking for modern graphical "eye candy", of course look elsewhere (Assetto Corsa, Project Cars, etc.) No, rFactor doesn't look that great by today's standards.

IF you are looking for hundreds of different cars and tracks, YES, rfactor can give that to you, mostly for free! rFactor is possibly the greatest racing sim for *modders* of all time. There are literally thousands of custom tracks, cars, skins, and extra goodies out there for this game and most of them won't cost you a penny... just a little time and trouble to find them and install them correctly. "Out of the box" rFactor doesn't offer a whole lot. The Lienz Festival of Speed is good fun and the other content, what there is of it, is pretty decent, but really this sim is about what you do AFTER you buy and install it. That's where the real value lies! Before buying this game I recommend just searching google for "rfactor" and see what you come up with.

Some sites in particular cater to this sim, such as www.rfactorcentral.com
Others, like www.nogripracing.com also have a ton of downloadable content for it.
And if you want to do an all in one package, check out http://www.bockbierbude.de/ Just make a free account, install their python app and point it towards your rfactor install. The app will download a huge variety of cars, skins, and tracks, while you wait, and updating them is just a couple of clicks away.

Also while not all cars/mods support it I highly recommend installing a plugin called "Realfeel". This will give the compatible cars force feed back (assuming you are using a wheel!) that is still top notch, even by today's standards, and arguably much better than some much newer sims and racing games.

So is the $20+ price a good value? If you are willing to do a bit of work, downloading and installing stuff, it is STILL TODAY the best value in sim racing out there! I'm not sure any other sim is capable of fielding 100+ cars at once in a full blown ADAC/VLN challenge! ;)

As a long time sim racer I've always been skeptical about new entries that try to sugar coat a poor sim with tons of eye candy. AC was no different, in the early beta. It looked great but the physics were lacking, force feed back was just a suggestion, etc. This official version, while still not perfect (where are the pit strategies?) is by far and away the most impressive sim I've driven since I first bought rFactor, almost a decade ago! I HIGHLY recommend the "dream pack" too... easily the most realistic version of "The Green Hell" out there, next to actually going and doing the real thing, and not just visually either! There are bumps and cracks in this track that I never knew were there before... curbs of varying violence, jumps that will make your stomach drop. Definitely keeping on my harddrive and looking forward to the future of this one!

Continuing a fine tradition ARMA III brings realism in combat to the greatest level. Maps that are miles across with dynamic weather and day/night cycles (you can even navigate by the stars!), the best ballistics in the shooter gaming world, and every type of vehicle you can think of from tanks and helicopters to jet aircraft and small submarines, PLUS a powerful mission editor and decent AI gives you an unparalleled amount of content and replayability for your hard earned dollars!