Depends a bit on your video card some work better in directx some in opengl. What is your card? operating system? cpu?
Look for threads about trainzoptions.txt, if possible take the main memory upto 2.5 gigs or more, 2.5 gigs is the most that Trainz / XP can make use of and if you're up there then it seems disabling background programs will probably slow the system down not speed it up. Vista needs more memory than 1.5 gigs by the way.
Do you have tho latest drivers for motherboard, and video card? This can make a big difference.
Shadows some machines run faster with them off others it makes not much difference.
Cheerio John
John, gidday mate....
I agree, updating to the latest drivers for his M/B, video card, sound card/chipset, etc, could/should help. If he is going to do that he might as well see if there is a BOIS update for his motherboard. (Also he could go onto the
Microsoft updates site and download & install XP SP3).
If he let's
Microsoft updates check his system for possible updates, he might find there's several hardware/firmware drivers/software updates that he can also download & install off the Microsoft site.
John, in the 17 years that I have been repairing PC's, I haven't come across one
unnecessary program that's loading up at startup/running in the background that has slowed the PC down if it doesn't load at startup/running in the background. NOT ONE..
The key word here is;
"UNNECESSARILY" loading up at startup. some eg's; MSN, Adobe, Office10\aso.exe, nero, logitech\quickcam10, etc, etc.
(70 - 85% of it doesn't need to be loading up at "startup"
). (THEY ALL TAKE UP MEMORY).....
Some you have too/should leave loading at startup; eg; NvCpl, ctfmon, your A/V, FIREWALL, anti-spyware, etc.
Anyone with alittle bit of advance knowledge can also go into
'SERVICES' and untick several things in there to stop them
starting up/running in the background.
Well, theoretically XP can use/utilize
up to 4 gigs of RAM in XP 32 bit, although only 3.2 gigs (approx) will show up in
System Properties. XP 64 bit theoretically can use/utilize
up to 8 gigs. (depending on the version of Vista, Vista will recognise 8 gigs/all the RAM you have installed).
Any increase in RAM will help.... (so if he can afford to increase his total RAM up to 3 to 4 gigs, then that's what I would recommend.
That way he can decrease the size of his paging file, so his system will utilize more of his actual RAM, rather than having to go to the paging file on his HDD. .
Sousing from
actual RAM is quicker than sousing from
a paging file on the HDD..... (Put in simplistic terms).
I also agree with you, that if you have a high spec machine and your running a small to medium size route, that's not to detailed, having
"shadows on" doesn't seem to make much of a difference. (in performance).
I have a high end PC and if I'm running a very large detailed route with lots of trains, having "
shadows on" makes a surprising difference..... (degrades performance).
I personally don't know of anyone running TRAINZ with a
512 meg video card that's running Trainz in DirectX (in XP). I'm sure there's probably some out there. Who knows, maybe a lot !!!!!
Over the last 6-9 months I've experimented with several different video cards (running TRAINZ in XP) and I've personally found OpenGL seems to work best with all of them..... Particularly the latest video cards that have 512 mgs to 1 gig of DDR3 RAM on the card. (In alot of cases, the main features of those cards are that they support DIRECT 10, Shader Model 4.0 & OpenGL 2.1). Future proofing yourself a bit better !!! (I've settled on Gigabytes Geforce 9800 GX2).
I'm sure there's a lot in the community that are still running older 128 - 256 meg cards, & that in some cases, maybe in a lot of cases, working as good or better in DirectX.
Cheers mate, Mac.