Honey, I need a new 'puter!

[steamboateng]

My voice certainly was civil enough, even mellow, almost a whisper. I caught a glare and a.....grunt!
I stiffened my back. Suddenly I envisioned myself at the center of a dimly lit hockey rink, a broken stick at my feet, looking across at an opponent a brutish 6 inches over me, his gloves off and laying at my feet. I shuddered, stifened my back again, and reached way down inside.....and I said it again.
"Let's talk." she said.
Now, trying to slip a new computer past your significant other may not be as confontational as I describe, but it surely can be a chore trying to rationalize a $2000 expenditure to pursue a hobby exclusive of her charm, wit and company.
In my case, I was lucky. It only cost me two weeks at St. Marten, in the Antilles, one week at Orlando, with the Mouse, and another week at the Fla. Everglades, patting alligators. Oh yeah, it cost a lot of pina colladas, too. However, full permission was granted.........empty bank account and tapped out credit cards notwithstanding.
So I wait awhile, 'till Xmas mabe......take advantage of the sales. I certainly got enough time to explore the available options. Google is free!
First order of buisiness: How to get the mostest for the leastest!
And here, brother Trainzers, is where you come in.
I know there are some of you out there that already have what I covet: an
i7 processor, solid state drive, nVidea GTX 480 graphics, Winows 7 and Trainz 2010.
I would appreciate reading your experiences with Trainz 2010 on such a rig. I know the GTX 480 card is relatively new to the market, but would like to hear from you regardless. I plan at least a 5 year bonding with my new toy, so I want to make the right decisions.
Regards:clap:

 

[RRSignal]

Don't know about the Windows 7 thing, but I'm about to buy an i7 myself, but not for gaming unfortunately. However, I don't believe in buying the latest and greatest. The CPU might be an i7 930 as it's less than $300. I haven't settled on a mobo but I want one with Sata3 capability. I'll look at SSD prices in about a month, but I'm thinking Raptor at the moment. It'll run XP-64. I can build a pretty hot system for a bit above a grand (it would be $1,200 if I didn't already own license to XP-64.) I'll settle for a little less than state-of-the-art for half the price. Just trying to spare you some headache.

 

[Paulsw2]

You're dead set then on Nvidia rather than ATI? I've really enjoyed my HD5870 card so far.....

Paul

 

[saintjimmy]

Some have problems with ATI cards and Trainz (fortunately not me, and I rather enjoy my 5850). ATI is supposedly releasing their 6000 series sometime this year, so maybe you'll be able to pick one of them up. The 6870 is supposedly (emphasis on supposedly) going to be as fast or faster than the GTX 480. We'll see how it really measures up in a few months. Just something to consider.

Otherwise, I would recommend going for the i7 930, 6-9 GB of triple channel DDR3 (that's what the i7 9xx processors need), a large SSD (100+ GB, so to use as your Windows and Trainz drive), a power supply of at least 700 watts, and a motherboard with SATA 3 and USB 3, and even PCI-Express 3.0 if it's out by the time you are ready to buy.

Just be aware that both AMD and Intel are going to be releasing all-new products (new AMD graphics cards and processors, new Intel processors) later this year and through the first half of next year, so a new performance level is going to be coming soon that could make the current products obsolete.

 

[Xengeance]

Just be aware that both AMD and Intel are going to be releasing all-new products (new AMD graphics cards and processors, new Intel processors) later this year and through the first half of next year, so a new performance level is going to be coming soon that could make the current products obsolete.

...or dirt cheap. Gotta love that 'hey, we got new models of everything, let's mark down all our old crud by half price and still make a profit because we gouge the end-consumer anyways!' mentality. Ah, Economics.... but I digress.

If you're going for a solid state drive, you may want to think about using it in tandem with a conventional hard drive. As of right now the solid state HDD's aren't very big capacity-wise compared to some of the multi-Terabyte stuff coming out lately. I'd recommend a regular hard drive as your Windows partition and your everyday 'Spreadsheet & Solitaire' files, and use a solid state drive exclusively for anything you need to crank the highest possible performance potential out of (like Trainz! :hehe: ).

Also make sure that your RAM, CPU, and motherboard are all compatible with each other, especially with the bus speeds. Otherwise that may not play nice with each other (or at all!) due to them all wanting to operate at different bus frequencies (the 'net is covered will all kinds of guides and stuff for things like this - check out this one for example from Tom's Hardware, and manufacturers like Intel and the like typically keep a list of 'compatible hardware' that will go with whatever technobauble has caught your eye.)

Whatever you do, do NOT buy one of those 'pre-installed & ready-to-go' boxed slag heaps. By selecting your own parts individually and bargain hunting on the net (I recommend NewEgg) or local electronics store, you can easily build a computer that's twice as powerful than some cheapo Dell or HP for the same price. And you also don't get all of that proprietary, OEM, pre-installed shovelware they stick on your hard drive before it even leaves the factory, either. I swear, if I had a nickel for every time I had, but didn't want, an 'Aquarium Screen Saver Platinum EX' or '50 free dinosaur cursor themes' icon on an OEM desktop......

 

[steamboateng]

I have found this site helpful for hardware and config info.
www.digitalstormonline.com
Click on the 'Community' header. and choose 'Config Discussion' from the drop down tab and navigate to'Read Me/Buying/Posting Guide'.
The articles brings up some helpful and practical solutions to cofiguring a new rig, as well as some insights into hardware choices.
In the community forums, there is a topic header on just hardware choices and comparisons which I found helpful.
Just as a side note, I configured and priced a $2700 rig on this site w/i7 950 cpu, Asus P6X58D mobo-Intell X58 chipset, USB3.0-SATA6Gb's, 6Gb's DDR3, 1200W PSU, DVD-R/RW/CD-LiteScribe writer, 80 Gb Intell SSD, 600 Gb WD Velociraptor drive, and one nVidea GTX 480 graghics card. Now this is a 'dream machine' to me, so I went on line and priced the same hardware thru Newegg, e-Bay, etc. and I come with only a $300 differince. These guys will build, oc cpu, test, and warantee rig for the $300 difference. Sounds good to me. No, I'm not buyig this rig, too much $$. I can save another $300 going with an EVGA X58 SLI 3 mobo and a 500 Gb WD 7200rpm HD rather than a Velociraptor drive. Interesting solutions here.
Regards

 

[johnwhelan]

Try reading through http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-a-pc-overclock-components,2725.html

Think about your electric bill, a high end machine can cost more in electricity than in purchase price.

That GTX 480 you dream of is power hungry. Running Trainz from an SSD drive will give you less than 1 fps extra over a Velociraptor.

Also Velociraptors are warrantied for 5 years, and will give you a noticeable performance increase over a 7200 rpm disk.

I run the Xeon equivalent of the i7, cmp uses all four cores and hyperthreading, currently TS2010 driver does not. I use an ANTEC Sonnata case with a 500 watt power supply running an ATI 5850 which seems to work reasonably well. NCIX.com will assemble and test for $50 includes one year warranty.

Cheerio John

 

[steamboateng]

John, I agree with you on all points taken. My current antiquated AGP rig runs 2-75 Gb Raptors in Raid 0 config, and I am well pleased with them. I have had HD problems in the past, and I can't say enough about how well Western Digital handled the problem, sending me two new larger Raptor HD's for the price of postage, and guiding me though a new Raid set-up.
However, I never intended to run Trainz off the SSD. The SSD strength lies in it's combined read/write capabilities, and it will shine in apps such as Windows Office, Blender, Photoshop, CAD programs, etc. A smaller...say 40Gb SSD drive, can easily handle those apps, as well as the Window 7 OS.
Most games are read-only oriented, Trainz included (though I'm not sure of the Surveyor end of it). I am mulling over now whether I should go with the Velociraptor (either a 300 or 600 Gb drive) or a WD 500 Gb standard 7200 rpm drive for gaming. Velociraptor pricing precludes any thought of a Raid set-up.
Velociraptor at 10,000 rpm, or standard WD at 7200 rpm, what do you say, guys?
As I stated earlier, I'm chasing the mostest for the leastest (Aren't we all!).
However, future relevancy is also a factor. I would rather pay now for the upgrade ability of the system, than later, being stuck on a dead-end upgrade street. AGP vs. PCie is a perfect example of this. I got burned once; don't want go that way again.
The i7 cpu's, combined with the Intell X58 chipset is the high end standard right now. The 920, 930, 940, 950 and 960 chips are all the same chip. "They all overclock the same and perform the same".......I quote from the guru's over at Digital Storm. These chips can be easily oc'd to 3.7 or 3.8 GHz (Motherboard quality taken into account.) and run a stable system. In otherwords. a 920 chip or 930 chip at $280 can be oc'd and perform just as well as an oc'd 960 chip costing $570. So my present choice is to go with an i7 processor, oc'd to 3.7 or 3.8 Ghz on a suitable X58 mobo (Asus Rampage 2?). Of course this means I gotta go with a beefed up CPU cooler.
Now don't get me wrong, I am not a died in the wool nVidea fan. AMD/ATI stand well in my good graces (driver issues aside) and I'm still open to going with a 5870 (?) or better card. As noted above, an imminent AMD 6000 series release may hit the maket late in the year. As John points out, the nVidea GTX 480 is a power pig. I know it can get up to 500 watts at full load. And it's a hot little sucker, running up to 90 deg C. at full load. But it's also the bestest, nastiest graphics card out there, at this time.
Truth is, Trainz, still running on DX9, will most likely, never come anywhere near pushing this card to it's limits. The card is capable of pushing up to DX11 graphics in nearly any game, with all sliders maxed out. Future game compatability.........sounds like a winner. Let's see what AMD comes up with in a few months.......
6 gigs of DDR3 RAM. Anyone see a need to go higher? I'm listening.
Power supply..........I'm pretty much set on going with a 1200 watt unit, though a 750 watt unit will suffice, for now.....but what about 2 years from now....?
OS....right now looking at Windows 7 Pro 64, but I wonder if Windows 7 64 Home, might just as well do the trick. Any thoughts?
Talk to you all later.
Regards and thanks for input all.

 

[johnwhelan]

For upgradeability a decent ASUS motherboard is a good start. Power supplies can be upgraded. 6 gigs is a reasonable number for TS2010, but it depends on the cpu / motherboard, triple channel is 6 gigs, dual channel is 4 gigs and offers similar bench-marked performance.

One limiting factor will be the hard disk speed, because of the small file sizes used by Trainz RAID doesn't gain you much, so my money would be raptor, and less on the cpu. Toms has monthly value on cpu and graphics cards by the way.

Performance wise Win 7 professional offers no performance improvements over home premium.

Cheerio John

 

[steamboateng]

It seems the deeper I get into this, more questions are generated than answered.
It seems that gaming off of a Velociraptor HD might give me up to a 10% boost in read and sequential access times as compared to a 7200 rpm drive. But this boost may be hardly noticable in game. SATA 2 technology has improved 7200 rpm performance quite a bit. Particulrly with a good SATA controller. On a cost basis the Velociraptor is about 5 X more expensive than a standard 7200 rpm drive. Is it worth it? This probably comes down to a preference decision. Sure, I like the Velociraptor drives plenty (especially the newer 2.5" drives) but the performance gain vs. price is a real issue.
SATA 3 technology is right around the corner. (As of yet, there are no truly SATA 3 capable mobos, according to the Digital Storm gurus. Bandwidth is limited on mobos touting SATA 3, due to SATA Controller limitations.) Should I wait for a fully capable SATA 3 mobo to be developed? It seems to me this would open up a whole new level of performance for Disk operated HD's. (Intell SSD's are already SATA 3 compliant-just no mobo to do them justice.) Any of you 'puter builders out there got a handle on this stuff?
It has been stated more than a few times by folks who know (I trust) that Trainz, up to 2010, is a cpu oriented app. SLI/Crossfire have little performance functionality. OK! That says the better my cpu, the better Trainz runs. Unless the new Intell processors, due in several months time, revolutionize chip archetecture or performance somehow, I will stick with the i7 9xx goup, which oc'd to 3.7 GHz or better, can handle just about any app I plan to throw at it, including TRS2015.
I got my 'dream machine' down to about $2500, (Remember, I want this rig to be somewhat relevant 5 years from now. This means I've got to pay for the latest relevant technology.) but I'm getting a little hung-up on the SATA 3 issue.
Regards

 

[johnwhelan]

This is where you get the opinions. Mine is you can't see any difference over 30 fps anyway.

Disks are measured in milliseconds, memory in nano seconds or about 10,000:1. Disks are on the critical path if you are loading something or writing something but the perfmon stats say TC3 doesn't use a lot of disk accesses and if you have 4 gigs of memory or more it makes even fewer disk accesses.

TS2010 puts a lot more processing on the GPU but does have DXT compression so the GPU does become more important than earlier versions but GPU memory isn't quite so important with 4:1 compression.

Having said that we are seeing more scripting and bigger textures plus higher poly counts on the new stuff.

Cheerio John

 

[djt]

I would appreciate reading your experiences with Trainz 2010 on such a rig. I know the GTX 480 card is relatively new to the market, but would like to hear from you regardless. I plan at least a 5 year bonding with my new toy, so I want to make the right decisions.

I've been running TRS2009 and TS2010 on two i7 setups, one with a 975X/ATI 5870 and one with a 980X/GTX 480 (specs below) since last spring. I've also run XP/SP2 64-bit, Vista 64 and Windows 7 64 on both setups.


I've posted screen shots in various threads over the last few months that give examples of the performance you can expect out of the i7 here is one such thread -


http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=58757&page=2


I'm not sure how the i7 setup is going to last you 5 years if you're into PC gaming (I'm lucky if I get a years worth before upgrading) but I'm currently not having any problems with the 15 or so games/sims that I run on these two machines.


Something to keep in mind is that TS2010 is so out dated that building an i7 setup just for Trainz is kind of a waste. One look at some of the latest DirectX 11 titles will have you questioning “TS2010 who?”, lol.

It seems that gaming off of a Velociraptor HD might give me up to a 10% boost in read and sequential access times as compared to a 7200 rpm drive. But this boost may be hardly noticable in game. SATA 2 technology has improved 7200 rpm performance quite a bit. Particulrly with a good SATA controller. On a cost basis the Velociraptor is about 5 X more expensive than a standard 7200 rpm drive. Is it worth it? This probably comes down to a preference decision. Sure, I like the Velociraptor drives plenty (especially the newer 2.5" drives) but the performance gain vs. price is a real issue.

Here's a good read on setting up storage solutions for another resource hungry game, FSX, take a close look at the section “ABOUT STORAGE PERFORMANCE” towards the bottom of the guide -




http://www.simforums.com/forums/setting-up-fsx-and-how-to-tune-it_topic29041.html




As far as SATA 3 goes until the new Intel X68 chipset gets released with native SATA 3 support in the form of ICH11 I wouldn't get too excited. I've got the Marvell 6GBps SATA controller on one of my X58 motherboards and I haven't even bothered trying it.

Unless the new Intell processors, due in several months time, revolutionize chip archetecture or performance somehow,

Intel's “Sandy Bridge” architecture is supposedly being released in Q1-2 of 2011 but is not targeting the high end market. From what I have read so far about “Sandy Bridge” is that it will have very limited overclocking potential and is only targeting the mainstream.


So far the rumor's are sketchy as to what Intel has in store for it's enthusiast's platform i7 900 series/X58 chipset platform replacement.






ASUS Rampage III Extreme (901 BIOS)
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition w/Corsair H70
Corsair DOMINATOR-GT 6GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) CMT6GX3M3A1600C7
EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked (259.32)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows 7 Ultimate 64
WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs
Corsair AX1200 Watt
Corsair 800D w/NoiseBlocker fans


ASUS Rampage II Extreme (1802 BIOS)
Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition w/Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT
Mushkin Redline Ascent 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (6-7-6-18-1N)
Asus/ATI 5870 (Catalyst 10.8)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows XP/SP2 64-bit Edition
WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs
SILVERSTONE 1500Watt SST
SILVERSTONE TJ09-B

 

[steamboateng]

Hello djt! While catching up with reading several months of back posts (I've neglected Trainz forums since last spring, waiting for dust and fury over TS2010 and Auran's corporate stance, to settle-maybe should wait another couple of months) I came across several of your posts. Really liked your pix. I did take note of the rigs your running, (drooled all over my beer stained T-shirt) and hoped you would check in here. Your experience building gaming computers is welcome.
I checked out the article you referenced re: FSX storage solutions. It seems that the article's test data validates the notion that running games off a VelociRaptor drive as compared to a standard 7200 rpm drive adds little to game performance. I also checked out test data at www.anandtech.com regarding VelocRaptor vs. other drives, and the results were similar - the Anandtech review stating outright that there is little gaming performance gain with VelociRaptor drives.
As it stands right now, I'm looking at an i7 950, oc'd to 3.7-3.9 GHz, on an Asus Rampage ll X58 mobo (beefy heatsinks and pipes), with a Nuctua NH-D14 Extreme Performance air cooler, (dual 140 mm fans) and 1200w psu. An 80 GHz Intell X25-M SSD will will run WIN 7 64 Pro (about a 20Gb load), Photoshop Elements, PSP, Blender, and MS Office suite. A 500 Gb WD 7200 rpm drive will hold the few games I run as well as utility apps, and files. I would think that 6 Gb DDR 3 would do well enough for any gaming, and, of course an nVidea 480 (1.5 Gb ram) graphics card.
I realize that such a rig is overkill for Trainz (I would like to run FSX also-which runs awfull on my present computer, FS 9 ran soo much better). I'm not an 'extreme' gamer type, so I would think an investment in an i7 platform would bode me well for 5 years; any perfomance shortfalls corrected (somewhat) whith upgraded video cards. Hopefully there will be no earth shaking changes in computer architecture which will render my build irrelevant!
Which brings me back to SATA 3, X68 mobo......I would like to go this route, when available, as X58 technology is 2 1/2 years old and new tech right around the corner, but when?
I will be kicking my own butt if that stuff hits the market 6 months after I buy into X58 platform.
You may have noticed I'm concerned with cooling, going with the beefier Asus mobo and Noctua dual 140 mm cpu cooler. This is really overkill since I don't really plan to go into 'extreme' overclocking (over 4.0GHz) or run more than 1 video card. But its a fact that chip life and heat are related. Short of the expense for a water cooled unit, I want to keep that i7 puppy as cool as possible.
Why such a large psu? Well, that's for upgrades and add-ons. Don't want to shortsheet myself there.
John and djt, thanks again for input.
Regards

 

[saintjimmy]

Just take note that there are new AMD graphics cards coming out this year which might perform better than the GTX 480 and which could lower the price of it by about $100 (max, if any at all), so you could either get the GTX 480 at a potentially lower price, or get a better graphics card for the same price as it is right now.

 

[djt]

It seems that the article's test data validates the notion that running games off a VelociRaptor drive as compared to a standard 7200 rpm drive adds little to game performance.

Actually if you read through the suggestions in that forum I think that currently SSD's offer little to no improvement over the WD Raptor's as far as “in game” improvements are concerned. Then again FSX isn't a “normal” game and is very dependent on hard drive performance and how it's set up for loading ground textures.


My idea of the years has been that if I have that system resource hog FSX running smooth then I'll have no problems with the other 15 or so games/sims I run. The Raptors are so cheap right now that I wouldn't even bother with 7200 RPM drives. I'd grab a 150GB Raptor for the OS and a 600GB for storage (games).

Just take note that there are new AMD graphics cards coming out this year which might perform better than the GTX 480 and which could lower the price of it by about $100 (max, if any at all), so you could either get the GTX 480 at a potentially lower price, or get a better graphics card for the same price as it is right now.

The new 6000 series from ATI/AMD is only going to be a “refresh” of the same GPU architecture found in the current 5000 series. Nvidia will most likely also offer a refresh of the GTX 480 (called the GTX 485) so there's nothing to get excited about here.


As far as image quality is concerned Nvidia has AMD/ATI currently beat with older game engines (like trains) that use transparency textures. Then there is also the usual ATI spotty OpenGL support that seems to vary from driver revision to driver revision.








ASUS Rampage III Extreme (901 BIOS)
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition w/Corsair H70
Corsair DOMINATOR-GT 6GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) CMT6GX3M3A1600C7
EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked (259.32)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows 7 Ultimate 64
WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs
Corsair AX1200 Watt
Corsair 800D w/NoiseBlocker fans


ASUS Rampage II Extreme (1802 BIOS)
Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition w/Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT
Mushkin Redline Ascent 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (6-7-6-18-1N)
Asus/ATI 5870 (Catalyst 10.8)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty
WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows XP/SP2 64-bit Edition
WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs
SILVERSTONE 1500Watt SST
SILVERSTONE TJ09-B

 

[saintjimmy]

Not saying that he should get the new card, but that he should wait for them to be released so prices of current cards will drop, and then he can make the decision to buy the new or current.

 

[steamboateng]

I stated earlier, that I'm wide open to AMD video cards. I got at least 3 months before I make a final decision. When I list system components I'm listing what's on the market now. I also stated I'm not running any games on the SSD. That's reserved for programs which can take advantage of the SSD's superior read/write performance. Besides that, who can afford all those SSD Gb's for the likes of Trainz! It's way beyond my humble wallet! I still favor a VelociRaptor over a standard drive for gaming, and I will go that route if I can keep the build under $2500. It's a price vs. performance thing. Thanks again all, for your input.
Regards:wave: