Building a computer for TC (Noob alert!)

jaleel · Aug 22, 2007

As buggy as Vista is, not to mention expensive, I don't know why in the world I see so many people recommending it!? Stay away from Vista or Me II, as it's also known, till they get it working properly.

There is no benefit versus XP with Vista unless you really want the eye candy which again you can get in XP. Also XP runs games faster and crashes far less than Vista.

Now to each his own but I would stay as far away from Vista as possible it's a hit and miss situation for everyone. For some it works good and for others it's a total disaster! With in the last few months I've converted 5 computers from Vista to XP because of software issues and hardware issues even with stuff that's suppose to work with Vista.

Vista is not a good buy right now no matter what hardware you are using with it.

Having said that look into Dell for your LCDs they has some nice ones at a fairly good price too! I'll reply back once I look around for stuff.

Lo_Poly · Aug 22, 2007

jaleel said:
As buggy as Vista is, not to mention expensive, I don't know why in the world I see so many people recommending it!? Stay away from Vista or Me II, as it's also known, till they get it working properly.

There is no benefit versus XP with Vista unless you really want the eye candy which again you can get in XP. Also XP runs games faster and crashes far less than Vista.

Now to each his own but I would stay as far away from Vista as possible it's a hit and miss situation for everyone. For some it works good and for others it's a total disaster! With in the last few months I've converted 5 computers from Vista to XP because of software issues and hardware issues even with stuff that's suppose to work with Vista.

Vista is not a good buy right now no matter what hardware you are using with it.

Having said that look into Dell for your LCDs they has some nice ones at a fairly good price too! I'll reply back once I look around for stuff.

Did you even read what I posted? And I don't like dell at all.

jaleel · Aug 22, 2007

Lo_Poly said:
Did you even read what I posted? And I don't like dell at all.

Nope didn't read everything you wrote, back tracking now. I don't do Dell either but they have highly rated LCDs at good prices. Remember, just because it's labeled Dell or Sony or Whatever doesn't mean it's actually made by them. Dell use to sell CRT monitors that were re-branded Sony's. Also I noticed in your list you had a DVD-rom drive, if you still have it on your list I would take it off and just get a second DVD Burner as they also play DVDs too.

tdstead · Aug 22, 2007

Change of plans Here

Got a 512MB his x1650 IceQ, nice card, never seen one so big, Has A large heat sink feed by a large fan in a box on top of the card and its own exhast port making it quite thick, any way back to the point could not get drivers for it for Win98, Tech's fault, got me the wrong card.

Now getting probly tonight a FX6200 thats still supported by Nvidea so should be able to load the latest drivers and stop 2004 and classic complaing about the drivers being too old.

Tech is going to look for a xp2600+ processor instead of the 2000 I have running at 1.63 GHz to go on my board as well if he can find one

I think this should keep me happy

Tom

Tom

GP_38-2 · Aug 22, 2007

ZapperJet · Aug 22, 2007

Get the PC with Vista, wipe this disk, install XP.

If not, I guess your out of luck. But please, avoid Vista at all costs.

Now, at first glance at this thread (I didn't read it all, pardon me), I think that your setting your system a bit high for what you actually do.

Quad core is far from what you need and only increases the out of pocket cost. I know how many people imply that "the more cores the better". However, that only applies to multithreading tasks, none of which support quad core, only dual at most.

Looking at the machine posted at the beginning of this thread, I'd have to say it was built not for a gamer, but for a 3D developer, software writer, etc. (all it needs is Linux)

Then, looking at what you actually do with your system, I'd say that you need a system no more complex then mine (see sig). SketchUp is not an advanced modeling and rendering system, nor is GMAX. Google Earth is barely intensive on my machine, and will only gain speed by increasing your network bandwidth. Sims 2 performs fine on my system, no hiccups at all. Gimp runs well too.

I don't know about the rest of the items listed, so I can't say if they are intensive enough to qualify for Quad-core or are even Multithreading for dual-core.

On that note, a recent study from TomsHardware shows that Quad-core's overclocked to the same speeds as it's dual-core counterpart perform 50% faster in application use. However, they perform almost identical in gaming performance.

Anyway, it's up to you. I didn't have $2500 to spend on for my new system, but I bought a machine (assembled, that is) worthy of most games (Including Oblivion). And it performs well in all applications I throw at it, and renders very quickly in Blender3D + YafRay 0.0.9.

Cheers,
John

GP_38-2 · Aug 22, 2007

SuperFudd · Aug 22, 2007

tstead,

I also have a 2000+ (see below sig). I thought of uprading to 3000+, the most my M.B. can handle but after reading reviews and such I decided I would probably not see a difference.
As for your upgrade to an FX6200, I supose that depends on what you are uprading from.
I say try those changes and see what happens. If your power supply is strong enough, it won't hurt.

johnwhelan · Aug 22, 2007

Lo_Poly said:
I went ahead and nuked my shopping cart.

Anyway, I stand by these as if I were a Japanese soldier in WWII.

Windows Vista Ultimate

22" LCD Monitor

5.1 Stereo System

Wireless (ergonomic if possible) keyboard and wireless 4-button or more laser mouse

Anyway, let's get started with the case. Which one of these would be best?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811166030
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119039

If you had a different case in mind, bear in mind I don't like insane graphics on the case or those neon lights. Just a simple Silver/Black color scheme. Also, (at least) 4 5.25 bays and 2 3.5 bays minimum.

I know a reliable technique for grounding yourself.

I think we need to start with the video card strangely enough. It's about the most power hungry component and will define the requirements for the power supply and the case.

I suggested a single 8800GTS 640 mb since it only needs 128 watts under load 71 watts idle compared to 205/93 watts for the 8800 GTX with bells and whistles. Some one once added up the textures in a single Trainz scene to be about 700 mb so the 640 mb video card is a fairly good match.

If we are going 22 inch monitor what is the native resolution? Is that the resolutino we will be running at? We need to get a feel for how many frames per second we are aiming for. I'd say 40 fps average min on the TC benchmark.

By the way there is a issue with Vista at the moment which is it duplicates the memory on the video card in main memory. Effectively reducing the amount of memory available to games, plus it takes up more memory any way. Memory is a Trainz bottleneck. XP really is faster and better suited to 32 bit games. If you want to go Vista Ultimate has very few advantages over one of the cheaper versions, and most of these are applicable to enterprises and concern the management of a large number of PCs.

Buying a case with a power supply such as the Antec means some one has done some work on the thermals inside also it costs less to ship one package rather than two so there are cost savings there as well. The Sonata should handle the GTS8800 but I'd hesitate a bit before putting in one or two GTXs.

I think you'll find that the ASUS P5B Premium Vista Edition has 5.1 sound built-into the sound processor. Have a look at some reviews. This board has been designed with Vista in mind and can take 8 gigs of memory when you want to move to 64 bit Vista.

Thoughts?

Cheerio John

ZapperJet · Aug 22, 2007

As far as PSU goes, the system I'm running (see sig) runs very well on an Ultra 600W PSU with one 400GB SATA Drive (too long to put in sig).

If you wanted to be prepared to upgrade to 2 cards in the future (which is why I bought an SLI mobo), then a 700W+ PSU is recommended.

Cheers,
John

Lo_Poly · Aug 22, 2007

Pardon my french, but I kinda prefer ATi. Better and actually sorta less expensive.

The SAMSUNG 226BW Black 22" 2 ms (GTG) DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor is the monitor I chose.

I think I'd like to have at least 30-20 fps in horridly detailed areas on maps. You know, the areas so detailed it lowers your fps by 10 fps or something.

The COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UWK Black/ Silver Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case is the case I decided to go with. Lots of room for expansion.

johnwhelan · Aug 22, 2007

ZapperJet said:
As far as PSU goes, the system I'm running (see sig) runs very well on an Ultra 600W PSU with one 400GB SATA Drive (too long to put in sig).

If you wanted to be prepared to upgrade to 2 cards in the future (which is why I bought an SLI mobo), then a 700W+ PSU is recommended.

Cheers,
John

Could you run the benchmark?

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=14993

If you don't have TC we can find another session somewhere. That should give us something to see how the GTS works with Trainz.

thanks John

Lo_Poly · Aug 22, 2007

Still wanting to build that computer. And John if you're curious, this computer I'm on gets 14fps average. In highly detailed areas it will go below 1 fps. I've seen 1 Frame per 20 seconds a few times actually.

johnwhelan · Aug 22, 2007

Lo_Poly said:
Pardon my french, but I kinda prefer ATi. Better and actually sorta less expensive.

The SAMSUNG 226BW Black 22" 2 ms (GTG) DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor is the monitor I chose.

I think I'd like to have at least 30-20 fps in horridly detailed areas on maps. You know, the areas so detailed it lowers your fps by 10 fps or something.

The COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UWK Black/ Silver Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case is the case I decided to go with. Lots of room for expansion.

OK top of the line computer

Hi John, I have run a couple of tests
my normal settings = Antialias setting = 4 Anisotropic filter= 16 1280x1024 res. All Trainz options max.

Result using TC/Driver=

TrainzLogEnd> Averaged 69.832472fps over 300.290100sec

DaveW

__________________
Intel core2 duo E6600(2x2.40Ghz).ASUS P5N32-E mobo. Nvidia 8800GTX 768Mb. 2Gb DDR2 667Mhz. Soundblaster X-FI . XP Professional

With 1,310,720 pixels.

You want the same performance or say 60 fps on the 22 inch Samsung 1680 by 1050 1,764,000 pixels. Nice monitor by the way, does the top end HDTV 1050. The benchmark is quite low end but to get the same performance you need another 50% more on than this cpu and video card. Don't forget Vista currently will cost you about 15%-20% performance hit.

A GTS is about $380 the GTX about $600. An ATI 2900 isn't as fast as a GTX but at 205 watts draws more current than even the overclocked GTX at 200 watts. This pushes up your power supply requirements and your cooling requirements substantially. You are out of the "Package" range so start looking for 700 watts to 1000 watts power supply and water cooling.

Wait six months and new cooler solutions might be around. By the way I can build a built up area that will run 1 fps on any machine no matter how fast.

The package range will give you substantially more fps than your current machine. To get 10% more you start to double the cost.

Those are the trade offs. I'd go 19 inch monitor 1440 by 900 it lowers the requirements and costs substantially or you can back the sliders off max.

Cheerio John

tdstead · Aug 22, 2007

Back again and still Bad

Got the card alright, says its win98 compatible with win98 drivers but windows wants no part of it, tech thinks something has happened to windows its self, suggesting complete backup and restart from scratch, will proby do it when I get in the mood, I have so much stuff loaded on my machine that I would have to reload.

Lucky got a DVD writter in the swap deal, Just for intrest checked Trainz World directory with Nero backup I have a 80 meg and it says 29.6 meg left on the drive this is intresting.

Don't konow what I did last night during all these swaps, did crash the computer a little but not in classic but had a problem where built in items were saying missing items, reinstalled all ok, got some of what I had already fixed back from the arcive option ok, looks like thets one thing the fixed real well.

Tom

johnwhelan · Aug 23, 2007

Lo_Poly said:
Pardon my french, but I kinda prefer ATi. Better and actually sorta less expensive.

Just a comment, I run an ATI 850 XT PE which cost me $600 a couple of years ago. At the time for DirectX ATI where extremely good for performance and price. DirectX came out of Microsoft and ATI put in in their hardware. nVidia now has a decent implementation of DirectX so there is no longer an advantage to running ATI. The 2900 is the most power hungry card on the market by the way which means you have to watch the cooling.

I'm not bias against ATI at all.

Cheerio John

Lo_Poly · Aug 23, 2007

tdstead said:
Got the card alright, says its win98 compatible with win98 drivers but windows wants no part of it, tech thinks something has happened to windows its self, suggesting complete backup and restart from scratch, will proby do it when I get in the mood, I have so much stuff loaded on my machine that I would have to reload.

Lucky got a DVD writter in the swap deal, Just for intrest checked Trainz World directory with Nero backup I have a 80 meg and it says 29.6 meg left on the drive this is intresting.

Don't konow what I did last night during all these swaps, did crash the computer a little but not in classic but had a problem where built in items were saying missing items, reinstalled all ok, got some of what I had already fixed back from the arcive option ok, looks like thets one thing the fixed real well.

Tom

Can you people PLEASE just start your own threads?!

johnwhelan said:
OK top of the line computer

Hi John, I have run a couple of tests
my normal settings = Antialias setting = 4 Anisotropic filter= 16 1280x1024 res. All Trainz options max.

Result using TC/Driver=

TrainzLogEnd> Averaged 69.832472fps over 300.290100sec

DaveW

__________________
Intel core2 duo E6600(2x2.40Ghz).ASUS P5N32-E mobo. Nvidia 8800GTX 768Mb. 2Gb DDR2 667Mhz. Soundblaster X-FI . XP Professional

With 1,310,720 pixels.

You want the same performance or say 60 fps on the 22 inch Samsung 1680 by 1050 1,764,000 pixels. Nice monitor by the way, does the top end HDTV 1050. The benchmark is quite low end but to get the same performance you need another 50% more on than this cpu and video card. Don't forget Vista currently will cost you about 15%-20% performance hit.

A GTS is about $380 the GTX about $600. An ATI 2900 isn't as fast as a GTX but at 205 watts draws more current than even the overclocked GTX at 200 watts. This pushes up your power supply requirements and your cooling requirements substantially. You are out of the "Package" range so start looking for 700 watts to 1000 watts power supply and water cooling.

Wait six months and new cooler solutions might be around. By the way I can build a built up area that will run 1 fps on any machine no matter how fast.

The package range will give you substantially more fps than your current machine. To get 10% more you start to double the cost.

Those are the trade offs. I'd go 19 inch monitor 1440 by 900 it lowers the requirements and costs substantially or you can back the sliders off max.

Cheerio John

I found two good GTX cards. What would you go with?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130079
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130078

I also happened to notice the mention of a GeForce 9 series on the wikipedia article. Your opinion?

ZapperJet · Aug 23, 2007

John,

I'm afraid I don't have TC. However, I can give benchmark results compared to my old machine.

Old Machine:
- AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2Ghz 512kb L2
- ATi X800XT AIW 256mb AGP 8x
- 2GB Corsair DDR400 PC3200 RAM
- Biostar M7NCG 400 Motherboard
- SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

In areas where I would previously reach 7 frames per second, I now get 20-30 fps. This is true for most all layouts that I have benched on. This is now the basic "law of performance" in Trainz, so the results are pretty constant.

Lo_Poly,

I know your looking to go ATi, I would not recommend it. This is coming from a guy who has been using ATi since the dark ages, until now. At the last second, I chose to go with the nVidia G80 series (8800) after reading reviews that it runs more efficiently and receives a higher minimum fps than it's ATI counterpart (HD2900XT 512mb). I got it for the same price too.

So far, the G80 has not failed me. The only issues I've noticed are some problems with OpenGL acceleration (at one point OpenGL didn't work at all). This shouldn't affect you in any way if you run TRS in and Google Earth in DirectX mode.

You may wait, however, for the 9xxx series cards. But as of now they are only speculation and will probably be particularly high priced when released.

Cheers,
John

johnwhelan · Aug 23, 2007

ZapperJet said:
John,

I'm afraid I don't have TC. However, I can give benchmark results compared to my old machine.

Old Machine:
- AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2Ghz 512kb L2
- ATi X800XT AIW 256mb AGP 8x
- 2GB Corsair DDR400 PC3200 RAM
- Biostar M7NCG 400 Motherboard
- SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

In areas where I would previously reach 7 frames per second, I now get 20-30 fps. This is true for most all layouts that I have benched on. This is now the basic "law of performance" in Trainz, so the results are pretty constant.

Lo_Poly,

I know your looking to go ATi, I would not recommend it. This is coming from a guy who has been using ATi since the dark ages, until now. At the last second, I chose to go with the nVidia G80 series (8800) after reading reviews that it runs more efficiently and receives a higher minimum fps than it's ATI counterpart (HD2900XT 512mb). I got it for the same price too.

So far, the G80 has not failed me. The only issues I've noticed are some problems with OpenGL acceleration (at one point OpenGL didn't work at all). This shouldn't affect you in any way if you run TRS in and Google Earth in DirectX mode.

You may wait, however, for the 9xxx series cards. But as of now they are only speculation and will probably be particularly high priced when released.

Cheers,
John

Your old machine is about where I am except my video is a bit faster and my cpu a bit slower. Three times my machine would give us quite respectable performance. Agatha's country session is a bit too slow on mine but not by much. So let's discount the performance by 30% for the 22 inch monitor and we are probably about there with the 8800 GTS. I can still build a layout that will kill the frame per second but for most it will do fine.

My vote then is for the 8800 GTS.

Note to low_poly is that acceptable?

Cheerio John

Lo_Poly · Aug 23, 2007

johnwhelan said:
Your old machine is about where I am except my video is a bit faster and my cpu a bit slower. Three times my machine would give us quite respectable performance. Agatha's country session is a bit too slow on mine but not by much. So let's discount the performance by 30% for the 22 inch monitor and we are probably about there with the 8800 GTS. I can still build a layout that will kill the frame per second but for most it will do fine.

My vote then is for the 8800 GTS.

Note to low_poly is that acceptable?

Cheerio John

I chose the EVGA 768-P2-N837-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card.

What next?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814130078

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