Game Boosters and Trainz - Do They Work?

For a time now, I've been using Razer Cortex (formerly known as Razer Game Booster) with most, if not all of my games, including Trainz. Supposedly they help free up system resources by killing all processes that aren't necessary to gameplay or system operation, supposedly causing an increase in game and system performance, and also requiring administrator permission upon every single system boot. The big question here is, do these tools actually work as intended, let alone work at all?

I noticed, every time I start Trainz, or any game configured in Cortex, a small popup appears in the bottom-right corner of my screen, showing three bars: RAM Freed, Processes stopped, and total boost percentage. This usually causes a pause of 5-15 seconds (depending on how long it takes to "free" the resources). The problem I see, there's the possibility that these utilities are nothing but pure bloatware that clog up your system even more. Do these boosters actually free system resources like they say, or are they just gimmicks? Or worse, do they actually hurt game performance?

Do any of you guys use game boosters? If so, what are your opinions on them?

Matt

I used to have one of those, and I believe it stops allot of proceses, and basically disconnects your Ethernet cable, or turns off your WIFI, which disconnects your Network connection from the internet

I always go offline when running Trainz anyway, and manually turn off my antivirus, and all PC, Java ... etc ... updates, using Task Manager (when you restart your PC they turn back on)

Unfortunately not, well little better than you can do more successfully for yourself. Run the likes of CCleaner (there is a portable edition so you don't even have to install it) to clean the machine up and disable or remove any programs unnecessarily running in the background. Go into Windows setting in particular those of Windows 10 and other than anti-virus and firewall disable practically everything Windows enables by default. Keep Windows up to date plus and video drivers you may update manually but never be the first to do so with video drivers to often they can be faulty so give it a few days to let others discover any shortfalls. Ideally don't use the same machine for games and multimedia, all those extra media files slows down disk access and the time it takes the anti-virus to scan your machine. Keep the desktop clear of icons and widgets, both use GPU resources even when hidden by your games. In Windows 10 consider using Windows Games Mode, if you don't already have it it is about to be rolled out, handy for recording screen shots and video of your games as well. Peter

epa said:

For a time now, I've been using Razer Cortex (formerly known as Razer Game Booster) with most, if not all of my games, including Trainz. Supposedly they help free up system resources by killing all processes that aren't necessary to gameplay or system operation, supposedly causing an increase in game and system performance, and also requiring administrator permission upon every single system boot. The big question here is, do these tools actually work as intended, let alone work at all?

I noticed, every time I start Trainz, or any game configured in Cortex, a small popup appears in the bottom-right corner of my screen, showing three bars: RAM Freed, Processes stopped, and total boost percentage. This usually causes a pause of 5-15 seconds (depending on how long it takes to "free" the resources). The problem I see, there's the possibility that these utilities are nothing but pure bloatware that clog up your system even more. Do these boosters actually free system resources like they say, or are they just gimmicks? Or worse, do they actually hurt game performance?

Do any of you guys use game boosters? If so, what are your opinions on them?

Matt

Click to expand...

They do nothing those boosters. A waste of time, money & effort and yes all they are is bloatware. If you want a program that will kill any not needed startup programs, get this.....AutoRuns...
Here is the link https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

I've used it for years to kill off unwanted processes...works perfectly and best of all...doesn't cost a cent

Unless you have a particularly old and slow system then I see no real advantage in using so called "game boosters". I once followed the advice I found in a PC magazine on boosting system performance (turning off or disabling certain background tasks and system resources that you would never need during gaming, such as the print driver, etc). It did marginally boost performance but then, after finishing gaming, I had to manually turn them back on again and reboot the computer. After a while I found it easier to simply not bother.

I find that Windows 10 is far better optimised for activities such as gaming than any previous versions of Windows and, combined with a more up to date 64 bit system, there should not be a need for such "boosters".

gawpo50 said:

snip ~ get this.....AutoRuns...
Here is the link https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

I've used it for years to kill off unwanted processes...works perfectly and best of all...doesn't cost a cent

Click to expand...

When you restart your PC, do the killed programs automatically come back ?

I just want them shut off temporarily ... until a PC restart

Couldn't you answer this question for yourself by simply measuring a performance index (e.g. frame rate) while running the simulator with and without the game booster?

cascaderailroad said:

When you restart your PC, do the killed programs automatically come back ?

I just want them shut off temporarily ... until a PC restart

Click to expand...

This program kill the process completely...it does not re-start

I'll concur here. They don't do much if anything at all including the famous Game Booster from I/O Bit.

What I have found useful is excluding the antivirus/antimalware programs from scanning the Trainz exe and data folders and excluding the various file types, chump, tga, cdp, gs, gsl, and gse from being scanned.

More recently I disabled NVidia's G-Force Experience, which loads up Shadow Play, and a whole bunch of background tasks so you can share your gaming experience over the web. With that disabled, my Trainzing experience increased as it reduced the stuttering and pausing tremendously. Oh, yeah, the G-Force "gaming experience" was there alright!

Now if you're not using an NVidia product, there's a similar gaming experience interface for AMD cards. I'm not familiar the inner workings, but going by what my bro told me, it was crap too as it does pretty much the same thing.

The only caveat with disabling these two particular services is now you are responsible for updating your video drivers manually, though that might not be such a bad idea anyway as the drivers can vary in quality. The only problem is you have to remember to reinstall these programs when you install your driver.

Thanks for the insight, guys. I will uninstall Cortex when I get my main PC up and running again.

Matt

I ran some tests a while ago manually disabling everything in sight then running Trainz. Strangely enough the frame rate went down which was not expected.

If you have the time to tinker turn one thing off at a time and measure the result. Some will have more of an impact than others.

Another approach is to have a separate account for running Trainz, that way very few things get added to the background tasks. However with a quad core hyperthreading processor TANE I'm quite sure doesn't need 8 cores so from a practical point of view so what if one is tied up with background tasks.

With a single core processor and TRS2004 things were different.

Cheerio John

I can't speak for any current boosters, but the best thing you can do is disable anti-virus, firewalls, and your internet connection entirely, even if only temporarily while playing. Generally, stopping the Search Index service will help a bit, too. I'd remove any Intel Management Engine services right from the first installation of Windows, if you have them (UNS.EXE and LMS.EXE) or disable them as services. Also do that for any OEM services (Dell, HP, etc.) as that's just bloat.

As for any other process, meh, you'd have to look in the performance tab of Task Manager to get a gauge as to whether or not they're worth disabling. Maybe I forgot to mention one or two, but, apart from the above, I'd not recommend disabling anything permanently, and obviously, you may need your internet and related services when not gaming. Personally, I have 6 other machines for that, so consider repurposing an old machine for that, if you have one to spare.

JCitron said:

More recently I disabled NVidia's G-Force Experience, which loads up Shadow Play, and a whole bunch of background tasks so you can share your gaming experience over the web. With that disabled, my Trainzing experience increased as it reduced the stuttering and pausing tremendously. Oh, yeah, the G-Force "gaming experience" was there alright!

Click to expand...

How do I do that John?

ccowan2126 said:

How do I do that John?

Click to expand...

I uninstalled it completely via the Windows control panel.

The drivers remain and everything runs faster. You need to manually check for drivers, there happens to be a version that came out last week it so happens, and be careful not to do a full install because you'll end up putting in the GFE again. Outside of that it works great.

Thanks, John. I'll give that a try to see what happens.

Does the AMD Crimson (or whatever it's called) have any adverse effect on gameplay? I've heard good and bad about it.

Matt

If you have proprietary bloatware installed (programs that are preloaded on the PC at purchase) and are running Windows10 the easiest way to increase performance is to back up the driver install files and your trainz stuff and anything else you want to keep, then tell Windows to do a recovery (through windows update) - this removes everything so you then have a barebones windows install. Reinstall any programs you need for your computer, or just Trainz. and everything runs much better. Works particularly well on an Asus system.
cheers
Graeme