FPS Boosting.

i implore anyone who does any kind of testing in regards to fps to be extremely thorough not only when it comes to details regarding settings of your game and car but also by running the tests over and over and taking the average results - as coming in this thread saying "my testing showed this and that" is borderline speculating and provides nothing of substance

The issue is that people don't care enough about it to do 1000s of runs to get a proper average at every FPS, but do care enough to bitch about shit when they just need to learn throttle control and proper racing lines.

I would qualify this by adding that there may be little/no difference between a 144hz deathstar fps rig and a fast 60fps, such as Smitty's. It is however possible to significantly retard your speed, by using in-game vsync as the fps-limiter, this results in about 2-3% slower laptimes on curb/overdrive centric super tracks. This is consistent and reproducable on my PC at least, and easily noticeable in-game for even a bush-league driver as myself. I can't possibly know if my experience apply universally, but it seems absolutely certain that fps in itself is not a fool-proof single metric, whereas in the past it was a good indication. I think we still have fast systems and slow systems, and fps is not sufficient to tell them apart. It may seem as if the difference internally between the fast systems is now close to insignificant.

No video unfortunately. I have described the difference; how fps limitation was achieved, the (dramatic) results on lap-time and cpu-usage.
Can I assume you have done similar tests and found a different result?

You can absolutely do testing, there are different options on how to configure your framerate and graphics settings, and they might give a different result for you. Testing solo helps keep track, driver and car consistent. However, your findings not apply to others, and it will likely be somewhat inconclusive. Which is also a valid test result.

In my case, with in-game vsync vs. rivatuner, the difference is massive so it was easy to verify after stumbling upon it, but it is not clear whether or not this applies to others, ie. on a pc capable of high fps, does the fps-limit method matter? I think unlocked fps is still a tiny bit faster, but cannot be sure. I can certainly document the vsync vs. rivatuner a bit if someone has a different experience.

Just a bit off topic, but is Rivatuner safe to use?

I use Overwolf all the time, but many options of RivaTuner have a warning about anti-cheat systems.