CALLING ALL COMPUTER TECHS : Lets Clear things up !

[edion2]

OK. To start with, like most of us, I am a COMPUTER USER, NOT a technician. Like most of us, I understand that a "gaming computer" (a platform that can handle 3D game graphics better than average), needs at least a decent processor, a decent video card, a decent size HD, a decent amount of RAM (2GB) and a decent monitor (1024x768 minimum)

Like many of us, I don't have a clue as to what the TRAINZ software does when we click on LOAD in Driver or Surveyer.

Given : Route is rather large with thousands of trees everywhere, about a dozen in VARIETY in any one given "area" but high in numbers, and ground texture is similar, modest in variety but every inch is covered. Tracks are 2 meter tracks everywhere.

Guess/Assumption :
#1 A statrting point of view is the "first loco driver" in DRIVER MODE or the last saved point of view in SURVEYER MODE. When you click LOAD, it seems to take the longest time . . . of course, its loading everything from HD . . . OR IS IT?? From observing the "disk access light" it seems to be loading a specified area AROUND the initial "pont of view" BUT NOT the entire route. . . BECAUSE when you switch to another "driver's point of view" far away from the current location, there is heavy disk access. It seems to be loading that new point of view. As the view changes with the movement of the "point of view" (by the train moving or right clicking the mouse), new information is loaded into RAM. THEREFORE we have "draw distance". The computer waits to render distant objects or texture until we move closer. Therefore "data" is being "put into " cache as new data is read. (Any data residing in a cache can be retrieved faster than from HD) I'm sure that what the software ACTUALLY does is far more complicated than this.
IS THIS GENERALLY CORRECT ?

#2 IF #1 is pretty accurate . . . Everything starts with reading "data" from the HD. That data (math & graphics) is FIRST processed by the CPU according to preset "laws of physics". At the same time, "graphics data" is sent to the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). If the GPU is powerful enough, it won't need much help from the main CPU to process graphical data. How much the main CPU has to "aid" graphical processing depends on the "video card". It seems to me, that if you have a good GPU that can generate 3D graphics faster than "real time", how does the importance of "Graphics Memory" come into play with regards to its amount?

#2b It is the general consensus that "MORE THE BETTER" with regards to Video Memory . . . but there should be "balance" of performance of all the major computer parts, right ??? Example : No amount of money spent on a HOT video card isn't gonna do any good if you have an old Pentium computer, data bottleneck in the CPU. OR A new computer with an expensive video card is no good if you only have 1GB of RAM, bottleneck in the RAM . . . etc. etc. If our computer has a DATA BOTTLENECK somewhere, how do we identify WHERE the bottleneck is?

#3 There are many threads and discussion on FRAME RATE. Like most of us, I understand that there are many factors that may interfere with frame rate other than the CPU speed, HD access amount, RAM amount and Video card. Type of objects used, object poly count, number of variety of objects and the number of objects in any scene/frame all affects FRAME RATE. Where and how we "use up" frame rate in a computer system is our preference. Example: Some will use nothing but "low-poly" objects and use a very small variety of textures just t keep frame rate up. Others will sacrifice some frame rate to achieve a "more realistic world". What is the IDEAL FRAME RATE, is it 30FPS like a TV source or 24FPS like a movie film? How do we find out what the "frame rate" in the game is? There must be a point of diminishing return . . . Can human eyes perceive anything more than 30FPS?

Particulars :
Here, I can only speak in terms of my system. But I do understand that system performance can vary greatly from one system to another.

My current computer is "middle of the road" computer that I would ike to upgrade . . . but frankly I don't know where to start . . . or rather "HOW MUCH UPGRADE" to start with.

My system:
Dell XPS410 1.8 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
800Mhz Front Side Bus speed
160 Gig 7200RPM HD
3Gig RAM - 677Mhz PC6300 DDR2
Nvidia 7300 - 512MB (came with computer) set at average between "quality" & "performance"
37" HDTV monitor.
TRAINZ: running at 1360x768 resolution
Draw distance (both) 1 notch less than max.
Train poly at max

Why upgrade:
In some areas of my route where there are MANY varieties and number of objects, the drop in frame rate is becoming noticeable and annoying. This IS probably the single largest reason why people want to upgrade. I can only speak for myself, but many of us are not sure what to upgrade and to what extent to upgrade. Of course, there is always the option to BUY a new Gaming computer for a few thousand dollars . . . but lets be real.

For my system, I was thinking of getting the Nvidia 8800GTX SC (super clocked) with 768MB RAM. . . a good chunk of investment. But, I have no way of knowing if I'm buying an "Indy Car engine" for my "Toyota" of a computer. AM I BUYING TOO MUCH VIDEO CARD??? In other words, I'm afraid that the CPU or the amount of RAM (3GB, limited by 32bit Win XP) might become the NEW DATA BOTTLENECK, resulting in an OVERALL IMPROVEMENT of "not that much". In such case I would want to Upgrade to "Win XP 64bit" to access an extra 1GB of RAM . . . and maybe a new CPU with 2.8 or 3Ghz Core 2 Duo . . . then maybe my motherboard spec isn't up to snuff. OH SUCH DELEMA !!

If I opt to buy a new computer and the video card . . .

How important is "Front Side Bus speed" ?
Are there any motherboard that can access more than 4GB of RAM ?
Is there a RAM access limitation in Vista OS ?
Cooling wise, is Trainz the kind of software that will make the CPU or the video card run HOT? Are additional cooling system important?

Is there an article or a table that shows "balanced combination" of CPU to Ram to video card for 3D gaming?

Any info from any "computer tech" types of members will be greatly appreciated by myself, and hopefully by many.

Thanks

 

[CasyJ]

My system:

System Manufacturer: Compaq Presario 061
System Model: DW269A-ABA SR1012N NA510
BIOS: BIOS Date: 03/19/04 17:30:05 Ver: 08.00.08
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3000+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.1GHz
Memory: 768MB RAM
Page File: 468MB used, 1311MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

Video System:
-------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 6200
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 6200
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0221&SUBSYS_02F1196E&REV_A1
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Trainz Options:
Default DirectX with 0 cache.

Runs smooth with any map.

 

[seeseeme]

This thread may be interesting to follow.

You mention;

How do we find out what the "frame rate" in the game is?

There is a program called FRAPS that can help with this but I am not sure where I found it.

Hopefully some will point you (and me) in the right direction ... as I do not have it anymore .

Craig

 

[AJ_Fox]

I agree here with Casy. The AMD Athlon in my humble opinion is the best board for graphics. Everything else is derivative. I have the 64 bit version which does the job. BTW I'm not trying to start a seemingly endless debate here about which processor is the best for gaming.

Cheers

AJ

 

[john259]

I was thinking of getting the Nvidia 8800GTX SC (super clocked) with 768MB RAM

That sounds good, it should improve things a lot over the 7300. You need to check:
Has the system board got an AGP or a PCI-E interface socket?
Is the power supply wattage adequate?
Will the case fans provide enough ventilation?
You should find the answers to first two in the computer's manual. For the third, try Dell's forum.
The other question is whether Trainz would actually make use of all that video ram - perhaps someone else could comment on that?

There will always be a bottleneck but with Trainz a powerful video processor is definitely one of the most critical factors.

Cooling wise, is Trainz the kind of software that will make the CPU or the video card run HOT?

Yes.

John

 

[robin-nisbet]

re:fraps

here is a link to the fraps website http://www.fraps.com/ ... hope this helps

 

[seeseeme]

here is a link to the fraps website http://www.fraps.com/ ... hope this helps

Thanks for the link, I actually thought I first got it somewhere else and it was not as easily found using the common search features.

Craig

 

[robin-nisbet]

re:fraps

i found it doing a google search ....

actually google found nearly 30 pages for fraps downloads ... lol

 

[Ferngren]

The 7300 video card looks to be your bottleneck atm. Some users have problems with that card and some games simply doesn't support it. I agree with John - check what kind of video card slots you have on the mobo and that the PSU can handle an upgrade.

Mobo's for more than 4GB? Yes, my humble and inexpensive Asus M2N-SLI can handle up to 8GB of RAM at 800Mhz.

RAM limitations;

-Windows Vista 32bit = 4GB
-Vista 64bit Home Basic = 8GB
-Vista 64bit Home Premium = 16GB
-Vista 64bit Ultimate and above = 128+GB

 

[backyard]

It's just another game....

8) Your making it too hard....

What is your question?

Trainz, allocates memory, as is capable for your machine...

I have 2048, as usual, Vista, takes less than half...so...

A completed map, leaves a ton of mem.

The Trainz Cache memory, is relative to the particular route you are so involved into...

When you exit the route, your mem, is cleared.

In fact, when you leave the Cab view, your cache is cleared....

And...

so...

Do you need a graphics card?...GeForce 8800GT.

Thea's guys, know what their doing...

A heavy map, is hard on the norm, I'm sorry, Trainz has developed into a program, that takes a serious upgrade, and developing your software solutions, is up to the user...and well worth it, in my opinion.

 

[johnwhelan]

Quite a list of questions some of which are relevant and some not. Lets start by explaining what we know about how the program works. Each model we see on the screen is actually two parts, the first is the mesh and the second is the texture applied to the mesh. The work of drawing is split up by the operating system according to the video card driver for windows. In simple terms to draw a 3D box on the screen is done by the cpu with a video card that doesn't understand 3D shapes and off loaded to the GPU if it does. This split is done according to the video card driver.

The video card itself applies the texture which it holds in it's memory if it has enough. How much is enough? Well one of our graphics experts added up all the textures by hand in one scene and came up with a figure of 700 mbs. So for that scene a video card with less memory would be requesting the cpu transfer extra copies of textures.

Then we come to the operating system and what else is going on. The ideal operating system should be running Trainz and nothing else. Unfortunately most run antivirus software, Sykpe in the background and many other things. Vista is a good solid secure operating system that sacrifices game performance for other objectives so expect 10-20% worst performance compared to XP especially with 2 gigs of memory under 32 bit.

Trainz itself can cache things in memory, but the current version is limited to 2 gigs so the optimum amount of memory is 2 gigs for Trainz plus 512 mb for XP and I'm not certain what the figure is for 32 bit Vista. Not all the 4 gig memory address space is available since the hardware address for video cards, hard drives keyboards etc take up some of the address space.

Some motherboards can have more than 4 gigs of memory but Trainz has a max of 2 gigs it understands, if you use a 64 bit operating system then the operating system can make use of extra memory.

The models, low poly what does it mean? If you create a cylinder in GMAX the defaults are 5 segments and 18 sides. 5 segments just means 5 cylinders stuck together end to end so if we change this to a single segment we have reduced the poly count to one fifth of the original without any visible change. If the cylinder is small then in Trainz three sides looks the same as 18 sides. So we now have a cylinder that looks exactly the same but one has 30 times more polys than the other. This will have an impact on performance.

Trainz has to cope with textures and it takes roughly the same amount of work to handle a texture as 200 polys so a model with six texture files has a rough performance penalty of 1,000 polys. Putting all the textures in a single file is more work but does pay off.

Also having a texture file that doesn't need to be processed first loads the load on the cpu. Trainz can use .jpgs but there is a performance penalty compared to .tga files.

Lod or level of detail if you can't see the detail why draw it, smaller simpler models that are used in the distance help enormously and if used correctly can help performance with no visible difference. Which brings up another point, models in the distance take just as much processing power as models close up if lod isn't used, this is why drawing distance matters. If the item is small then the visible impact of it not being there is smaller than if an object close up wasn't there. The drawing distance affects the total number of items that Trainz has to draw and the fact that a video card can draw one scene with few items in at 30 frames per second doesn't mean it can draw a different scene with lots of complex shapes in at the same rate.

Trainz appears to have two modes, scenery which stays still and rolling stock that moves. Scenery items do not have to be recalculated every frame in the way that rolling stock does. TC is supposed to convert uncoupled rolling stock into scenery which lowers the load. Generally speaking the latest version of software runs faster and this is certainly the case for Trainz.

Also TRS2006 and earlier versions spend processing time working their way around errors in the config.txt file. TC expects there to be no errors so doesn't have the overhead. Error free content helps performance.

Display size will impact performance. 800 by 600 screen size has 480,000 pixels, yours at 1360 by 768 has 1,044,480 pixels so your system will have to work twice as hard to see the same frames per second.

Identifying bottlenecks is difficult. One maybe running dual core, for some tasks in some computer systems running a task on single cpu lets things run faster than running on two cpus. The reason is the time taken to decide which cpu or core should be used and how many times you have to make the decision.

When you measure frames per second you have to be careful not to impact what you are measuring. Jetlog is better than fraps there is a thread here that has some information

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

including how different systems compare. How do you identify the bottleneck, you don't but you can use experience to identify the probable bottleneck. In your case upping the video card should clear the problem but you may have to up the power supply as well. nVidia have the name for performance this week but ATI's 3870 is quite respectable compared to last years cards but is built on 45 nm fabrication which means it runs cooler and needs less power to achieve the same performance. Check the benchmarks at tomshardware.com.

Cheerio John

 

[trainmetal]

I was going to post a more detailed response but John admirably beat me to it

I have been putting together some specs for my "dream Trainz PC", and have the following in mind:-

Gainwood Bliss NVIDIA 8800 GT, 1024MB TV, DVI-DVI Golden Sample
http://www.gainward.net/product/product_detail.php?products_id=149

There are other 1Gb 8800GT on the market now, but at the time I was investigating this spec, only Gainwood were selling this much memory on 8800GT. Also the 9600GT 1Gb cards are available and look pretty good for power versus cost.

Western Digital Raptor Hard Drive 74Gb 10K rpm as a separate drive containing only Trainz. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=244
I would actually like 3 of these in raid 5 configuration, but that is quite expensive.

I believe having Trainz installed on a separate drive and such a fast one would result in quicker load times, smaller pauses when new data is requested mid game etc.

Finally, I would like one of these drives to use a swap file (page file) drive for windows - HyperDrive4 (Revision 3) loaded with 4Gb ram http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/

I think a system incorporating some or all of these components would really fly.

 

[john259]

FWIW Tom's Hardware Guide ranks the 9600GT two performance tiers above a 256MB 8800GT.

But how much effect would all that extra video ram in your 8800GT spec make? Does anyone really know for sure whether Trainz would actually make use of any of it?

John

 

[johnwhelan]

I was going to post a more detailed response but John admirably beat me to it

I have been putting together some specs for my "dream Trainz PC", and have the following in mind:-

Gainwood Bliss NVIDIA 8800 GT, 1024MB TV, DVI-DVI Golden Sample
http://www.gainward.net/product/product_detail.php?products_id=149

There are other 1Gb 8800GT on the market now, but at the time I was investigating this spec, only Gainwood were selling this much memory on 8800GT. Also the 9600GT 1Gb cards are available and look pretty good for power versus cost.

Western Digital Raptor Hard Drive 74Gb 10K rpm as a separate drive containing only Trainz. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=244
I would actually like 3 of these in raid 5 configuration, but that is quite expensive.

I believe having Trainz installed on a separate drive and such a fast one would result in quicker load times, smaller pauses when new data is requested mid game etc.

Finally, I would like one of these drives to use a swap file (page file) drive for windows - HyperDrive4 (Revision 3) loaded with 4Gb ram http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/

I think a system incorporating some or all of these components would really fly.

Check the hard drive specs but some of the Sata drives are close to the Raptor performance, when we dug into perfmon Trainz didn't seem to be bottlenecked on the hard drive so three Raptors might not give you much performance gain.

Cheerio John

 

[johnwhelan]

FWIW Tom's Hardware Guide ranks the 9600GT two performance tiers above a 256MB 8800GT.

But how much effect would all that extra video ram in your 8800GT spec make? Does anyone really know for sure whether Trainz would actually make use of any of it?

John

Mandy25? did the sums and there were 700 mbs of textures used on a specific scene so if the graphics card has to have the textures available then it saves swapping them in and out.

Cheerio John

 

[john259]

Mandy25? did the sums and there were 700 mbs of textures used on a specific scene so if the graphics card has to have the textures available then it saves swapping them in and out.

Cheerio John

John,

I'm not disputing the obvious desirability, just curious as to whether Trainz is programmed to really do it. Sorry to appear sceptical.

John

 

[trainmetal]

John,

I'm not disputing the obvious desirability, just curious as to whether Trainz is programmed to really do it. Sorry to appear sceptical.

John

Hi John,

Trainz does not have to support per se, as it is DirectX / OpenGL and the graphic card drivers job to produce the results. What Trainz does, is to send information to DirectX which in turn sends it to the Card via the Driver.

Put it another way, when Trainz 2004 came out, 512Mb Graphic cards where still in design stage. Graphical chipsets in the latest cards where only being thought about being developed, yet they all work quite happily - most of the time.

Another example of the flexibility of this system would be widescreen support - there is no built in support for widescreen in 2004/2006 (have not seen TC so cannot comment on that), but by amending the trainzoptions.txt it can support wide screen resolutions quite happily.

Hope this has helped your scepticism on this.

Regards,

Tony

 

[AHSAN]

This thread may be interesting to follow.

You mention;

There is a program called FRAPS that can help with this but I am not sure where I found it.

Craig

Hello

link here: http://www.fraps.com/

Regards

Ahsan
NAT Team

 

[edion2]

johnwhelan,

Thank you for your VERY informative post. It sure clears things up a lot for me . . . and I'm sure I speak for many users like myself.

OK . . . I got FRAPS and ran it. Overall my average FPS "out in the country" away from yards seems to hover around 13 to 15 FPS. When I'm passing an on coming train (30 to 40 cars) it drops to 11 to 13 FPS. When I'm in the main yard it drops to 9 to 11 FPS (jittery movements).

In comparison, the built-in "Marias Pass" route runs at 15 to 20 FPS in yards, pretty solidly locked at 20 FPS "out in the country" and from time to time it jumps up to 30 FPS. The built-in "City & Country" runs at 24 to 30 FPS.

All of the above running at 1360x768.

While the built-ins are just fine for most users, they are bit too "model-like" for my taste. If you are interested, some screen shots of my route-in-progress can be seen in the last couple of pages in the "US Screen Shots" and "Kitbashed industry show & tell" Threads in the Screen shots Category.

With regards to UPGRADE :

It seems to me that for now, I'll be getting a new video card. I'm hoping that the upgrade will improve my average FPS to 15 to 16 FPS range in the main yard, and 16 to 20 "out in the country". For my eyes, 15 to 16 FPS is where I start to "notice" degradation of "smooth" movement. I think I'm in the range of realistic gains from the upgrade.

I also found out that I have 3 PCI-E slots. One 1X, One 4X and One 16X . . . so I do have a slot for the nVidia 8800 GTS card. I'll be ordering one from Circuit City or Comp USA or any other retailer that offers "30 day return, no questions asked policy". Just in case the "gains v.s. $ spent" ratio isn't satisfactory . . . although I doubt I'd be returning it. So this is one time I'm going to bypass the "e-Bay suer bargains".

With the power supply . . . the computer has a 375 watt power supply. This specification, even to me, seems minimal. I would assume that 8800 series of video cards are power hungry . . . right? So if I have to upgrade the PSU, what wattage should I get? Please keep in mind that probably in a year or two, I will be getting a new computer system . . . So a "stop gap" type upgrade of PSU would be fine for now (less than $100?).


ferngren,
Thanks for the OS v.s. RAM access list . . . clears up another nagging question.

With regards to RAM :
According to johnwhalen, Trainz can only utilize 2G of RAM. Since I have 3G total, and less than 1G of it is used up by the OS leaving more than 2G for Trainz, any more added RAM over the current 3G won't be used. Is this really the case with TRS2006? How much memory does TC "see" . . . anyone know??

With regards to "Working resolution" :
I realize that FPS will certainly improve if I ran trains at 1024x768 . . . but I'm spoiled. I can't imagine anything smaller than my 37" HDTV screen for Trainz ! But I can run at slightly lower resolution while retaining the "wide screen" aspect ratio . . . maybe 1280x800 or even 1024x680 or something that doesn't distort the x-y ratio to a noticeable point. But right now, 1360x768 is the native resolution in or out of Trainz.

By the way, 1360x768 is one of the selection in the "Options" area of Trainz. I assume that Trainz will include "current Windows resolution" in the list automatically.

This is great guys . . . I found more solid answers to some of my nagging questions in the last few days than all peeking in various threads.

KEEP THE INFORMATION COMING !!

Thanks

 

[johnwhelan]

johnwhelan,

Thank you for your VERY informative post. It sure clears things up a lot for me . . . and I'm sure I speak for many users like myself.

OK . . . I got FRAPS and ran it. Overall my average FPS "out in the country" away from yards seems to hover around 13 to 15 FPS. When I'm passing an on coming train (30 to 40 cars) it drops to 11 to 13 FPS. When I'm in the main yard it drops to 9 to 11 FPS (jittery movements).

In comparison, the built-in "Marias Pass" route runs at 15 to 20 FPS in yards, pretty solidly locked at 20 FPS "out in the country" and from time to time it jumps up to 30 FPS. The built-in "City & Country" runs at 24 to 30 FPS.

All of the above running at 1360x768.

While the built-ins are just fine for most users, they are bit too "model-like" for my taste. If you are interested, some screen shots of my route-in-progress can be seen in the last couple of pages in the "US Screen Shots" and "Kitbashed industry show & tell" Threads in the Screen shots Category.

With regards to UPGRADE :

It seems to me that for now, I'll be getting a new video card. I'm hoping that the upgrade will improve my average FPS to 15 to 16 FPS range in the main yard, and 16 to 20 "out in the country". For my eyes, 15 to 16 FPS is where I start to "notice" degradation of "smooth" movement. I think I'm in the range of realistic gains from the upgrade.

I also found out that I have 3 PCI-E slots. One 1X, One 4X and One 16X . . . so I do have a slot for the nVidia 8800 GTS card. I'll be ordering one from Circuit City or Comp USA or any other retailer that offers "30 day return, no questions asked policy". Just in case the "gains v.s. $ spent" ratio isn't satisfactory . . . although I doubt I'd be returning it. So this is one time I'm going to bypass the "e-Bay suer bargains".

With the power supply . . . the computer has a 375 watt power supply. This specification, even to me, seems minimal. I would assume that 8800 series of video cards are power hungry . . . right? So if I have to upgrade the PSU, what wattage should I get? Please keep in mind that probably in a year or two, I will be getting a new computer system . . . So a "stop gap" type upgrade of PSU would be fine for now (less than $100?).


ferngren,
Thanks for the OS v.s. RAM access list . . . clears up another nagging question.

With regards to RAM :
According to johnwhalen, Trainz can only utilize 2G of RAM. Since I have 3G total, and less than 1G of it is used up by the OS leaving more than 2G for Trainz, any more added RAM over the current 3G won't be used. Is this really the case with TRS2006? How much memory does TC "see" . . . anyone know??

With regards to "Working resolution" :
I realize that FPS will certainly improve if I ran trains at 1024x768 . . . but I'm spoiled. I can't imagine anything smaller than my 37" HDTV screen for Trainz ! But I can run at slightly lower resolution while retaining the "wide screen" aspect ratio . . . maybe 1280x800 or even 1024x680 or something that doesn't distort the x-y ratio to a noticeable point. But right now, 1360x768 is the native resolution in or out of Trainz.

By the way, 1360x768 is one of the selection in the "Options" area of Trainz. I assume that Trainz will include "current Windows resolution" in the list automatically.

This is great guys . . . I found more solid answers to some of my nagging questions in the last few days than all peeking in various threads.

KEEP THE INFORMATION COMING !!

Thanks

Depending on your hardware and operating system although you have 3 gigs of memory less than this maybe usable. Don't assume that your operating system only uses less than a gig of memory, 64 bit Vista on an 8 gig machine will use 6 gigs quite happily to cache files if Trainz takes 2 gigs.

Marias Pass almost certainly was built by one of the users or a team, what you are really saying is they are better at selecting and placing items than you are especially in yards.

TC, TRS2006, and TRS2004 all have the same memory 2 gig limitation.

Cheerio John