A snowball's chance in hell?

[deneban]

I have a Clevo D900T (aka Alienware m7700) 3.63 ghz P4, 4 gb ram, XP SP3, with an ATI X800 mobility GPU. I pass all the TS12 introductory tests with flying colors, but I freeze up in driver and even in railyard. Before the freeze up, I just see black ground with blowing trees in driver. Is there any tweak to the settings I can use to make this work? (or do I have a snowball's chance in hell?). I also have an NVidia GEforce 6800 at my disposal also.

 

[lewisner]

" 4 mb ram"

Surely you mean 4 GB?

 

[sniper297]

From everything I've heard about ATI, it likes DirectX better than OpenGL, so check your display settings and try DX if it's running in OpenGL. Also ATI cards have something called Alchemy which causes problems with certain games, turning that off might help if it's on.

 

[deneban]

The snowball melted in hell!

I also have an NVidia GEforce 6800 at my disposal also.

Turns out the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra works flawlessly, but a little sluggish. There was no way I could get the ATI X800 to work no matter how I tweaked it.

 

[sniper297]

Well, who could have predicted it would melt?

Looking at this;

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ati,802.html

It appears that the 6800 and ATI X800 are similar cards from a similar era. I originally had TS2010 running on an ATI X550, swapped it out for a Nvidia 8500GT, some improvement but the biggest problem is a 2.8ghz CPU that can barely keep up.

 

[deneban]

The ATI X800 is not only giving me trouble with TS12, but also now full screen Flash videos blue screen the machine against its driver. Its going onto my back-up machine.

Although X800 and GeForce 6800 are the same age, the NVidia driver is more resilient to modern coding.

The 2.8 GHz is still nothing to sneeze at, what was the TS2010 minimum Ghz?

 

[SHANKS]

The cover of 2010 is says the mini is 3.4 GHz

 

[sniper297]

Yeah, both TS2010 and TS12 say 3.4ghz "or equivalent" without specifying exactly what they consider the equivalent of a 3.4ghz Pentium D single core. Recommended specs for both are "core 2 duo" without specifying any kind of clock speed. There are conflicting opinions all over google on what the speed comparison should be between a single core and dual core, and mine is six years old and says dual core but not "core 2 duo" which I assume is a later model chip. Taking the minimum guesstimation, my 2.8ghz dual core Pentium D should be about equal in performance to a 3.4ghz single core Pentium D, if that's true then it just meets the minimum specs.

 

[deneban]

So if your at an equivalent of 3.4 ghz Pentium single with an Nvidia 8500GT, you should be sitting pretty per the specs.

 

[sniper297]

Standing ugly

Actually no, all the built in routes run like a pregnant dachshund on my system even with the vis and quality sliders all the way down. Whatever tweaking I do I'm lucky to break 20FPS on most TS2010 and TS12 built in routes, the recommended specs probably shoulda been the minimum.

 

[deneban]

How about un-checking the FS option and running on the desktop?

 

[sniper297]

Huh? What FS option, run what on desktop?

 

[deneban]

In TS12, if you uncheck the FS "fullscreen" toggle switch (in the options dialog box assessable from the initial desktop window), then when you run the simulator, Auran's Jet window will open on the desktop rather than make a dedicated screen. Not sure how 2010 works, it might be in the TrainzOptions.txt configuration file like it was in TRS2004 (the TrainzOptions.txt file has a "-fullscreen" or "-windowed" line item).

Not sure if this will make things chug better or worse or the same for you, but its worth a shot. I use it when I want to access other programs while using the simulator.

 

[djt]

Also ATI cards have something called Alchemy which causes problems with certain games, turning that off might help if it's on.

Alchemy is a program created by Creative Labs that allows for multi-channel audio in older games running on Windows 7 and Vista; it has nothing to do with ATI.

There are conflicting opinions all over google on what the speed comparison should be between a single core and dual core, and mine is six years old and says dual core but not "core 2 duo" which I assume is a later model chip. Taking the minimum guesstimation, my 2.8ghz dual core Pentium D should be about equal in performance to a 3.4ghz single core Pentium D, if that's true then it just meets the minimum specs.

The performance of your 2.8GHz Pentium D compared to a single core 3.4GHz is dependent on just how much the application can utilize the second core. If the application does not have true multi-core utilization then obviously higher clock speed on the same architecture is going to perform better.


By the way the Pentium D was still based on Intel’s old “NetBurst” microarchitecture which is entirely different from the much more efficient architecture of the Core 2.

 

[fran1]

Sniper,
In the options menu on the start screen, look at the display settings, you'll see a FS option, untick it.

 

[sniper297]

BTW IDK WYM - OIC

Okay, FS = "Full Screen", got it now. I've run full screen and windowed, OpenGl and DirectX, 1024x768, 1280x1024, and everything between, framerates on default routes byte the bits whatever I do. Simply a matter of the hardware not having enough muscle to bulldoze thru it.

 

[deneban]

I don't know sniper its sounds like you do have enough muscle to play well @ 15 to 20 FPS, check for background tasks in the task manager.