Gary,

I think anytime you can improve frame rates with a better/faster vid card and CPU, you are money head. Right now is a tough time to find good deals on any computer and the wait time can be a little longer.

Ultimately, in my opinion, you'll have to bite the bullet and go Win10. I hate the OS, can't stand the constant updates, and despise increasingly harder and longer methods to customize the OS so it does what I want it too. Every update seems to break your sound settings and the new Edge is like bloatware and to me is a P.U.P. and more like jumping off the edge of cliff since you can't delete it or alter it.

BUT...Win10 has become a necessary evil  like Steam.

For rFactor, 4 gigs of memory is a minimum. 8 would be better and with increasing car counts maybe more. With rF2, which at some point will be as much a part of the schedule as Heat and rF1, your gonna need that and more.

I don't think I'd run any of our games anymore with onboard vid.

I'd steer clear of a laptop unless you buy a dedicated gaming laptop, ( you can't beat any of the Razer products), and you're not gonna get one of those that's worth the plastic it's built with for less than $600. PC all the way.

Wire EVERYTHING. Even your headset and mouse, (sorry Rob-I know you like the wireless stuff, but I've seen it fail too many times on race night when the batteries die).

Look at your ISP and their speeds UP and down.

Danny just built a new one based off an iBuyPower that was selling for about $1200. He spent just under $600. It's more than capable of running rFactor full tilt, (shadows, shadow blur, 18 AI cars everything turned up to full), and he's nailing 3-400 FPS. We've not tested it online but that's coming on Sunday and I have no reason to believe it will be any worse.

You can save some money on the case, like Danny did, and do some minor modifications for better cooling, (good, quiet, 140mm, quality fans are less than $30 on Amazon), you don't need any RGB lights on fans or the chassis.

You do need a solid power supply so you don't bottle neck the components-probably 450 WATT minimum. Put in some RAM from a reputable company, go with an SSD hard drive, make sure you keep it clean and cool, avoid adding a ton of software that you don't need or doesn't pertain to racing, use your race rig as your race rig and not your daily web surfing and word processing, don't skimp on the CPU, GPU, and remember you always get what you pay for.

In the end-Yes a newer system should help your frame rates, which in turn should help your draw distance, make the games seem more smooth, and make for a better experience including lap times.

Here's a couple of links to make sure you know what the minimum specs are as well as recommended specs for our games, some basic gaming tips that could help the system you have now, and a good vid on some different builds that range from $300 to $2000:

https://suprs.net/site/about/faq/#computerspecsfaq

https://suprs.net/site/rulesleague-info/.....RacingTips

https://lytetechnology.com/shop/

Here's some more info Gary-https://www.tomshardware.com/best-picks/.....lds-gaming