Does Trainz (TC3) support Crossfire?
- Thread starter Mick_Berg
- Start date
ZecMurphy
Community Assistant
Hi Mick
I've just spoken with Chris (WindWalkr) and he has told me the following.
Trainz (any version) is not optimised to run with Crossfire, although it should work and may give better performance. However, nothing has been done to provide support or to stop it working. According to the information he provided, it is handled by the drivers for the video card.
Going by this information, the best thing for you to do would be to do a test of Trainz with crossfire enabled and disabled, and with 1 video card as well as both. This will allow you to see if it is worthwhile having the second card and/or crossfire for running TC3.
I've just spoken with Chris (WindWalkr) and he has told me the following.
Trainz (any version) is not optimised to run with Crossfire, although it should work and may give better performance. However, nothing has been done to provide support or to stop it working. According to the information he provided, it is handled by the drivers for the video card.
Going by this information, the best thing for you to do would be to do a test of Trainz with crossfire enabled and disabled, and with 1 video card as well as both. This will allow you to see if it is worthwhile having the second card and/or crossfire for running TC3.
Thanks Zec for a quick reply.
I've done lots of testing and have not come up with a positive conclusion. What I have seen is that with Crossfire enabled and TC3 running, if I look at the activity levels of the two cards, (this has to be done with TC3 in windowed mode and at low resolution so I can see the ATI Catalyst application) the primary card shows high (75%-ish) activity, and the second just 1%. Frame rate measured using Fraps Benchmark shows increases in the order of 1-2%. Not exactly mind-boggling.
If I returned the second video card, I could buy TRS 2009 and the new S&C pack!!
Thanks,
Mick Berg.
I've done lots of testing and have not come up with a positive conclusion. What I have seen is that with Crossfire enabled and TC3 running, if I look at the activity levels of the two cards, (this has to be done with TC3 in windowed mode and at low resolution so I can see the ATI Catalyst application) the primary card shows high (75%-ish) activity, and the second just 1%. Frame rate measured using Fraps Benchmark shows increases in the order of 1-2%. Not exactly mind-boggling.
If I returned the second video card, I could buy TRS 2009 and the new S&C pack!!
Thanks,
Mick Berg.
saintjimmy
You! Off my planet.
Don't worry Mick, I'm not offended in the least. It's better to get your facts absolutely straight than to just take one person's statement. I just know my friend tried Trainz with his ATI 4870 X2 and he said there was absolutely no difference with the framerates with Crossfire enabled and disabled. Although he tested it with 8. something drivers, it looks like little has changed now with the 9.x drivers. Maybe someday Trainz will support Crossfire/SLI in the future. Who knows...
Take care
Kyle
Take care
Kyle
The Great Crossfire Experiment came to an official end yesterday when I returned the second 4650 card to Newegg. They accepted it for refund with no argument. (I highly recommend this company as a source of computer parts.) I installed the 9.x drivers and re-did the overclocking, (Auto-tune), now it runs a bit faster at 740Mhz (GPU) and 540Mhz (Memory).
I still get the occasional crash on exit, that seems to do no harm. If I start and exit Trainz via CMP, I don't get the crash.
Mick.