I'd like to upgrade hardware: new ssd or new VGA?

[fillflange]

Hello.

I've been using trainz for years and now I've got more than a hundred GB of contents. I've always experienced lags when playing maps created by myself (maybe because I use too many contents ) and now it's time for an upgrade. Due to a limited budget I have to choose between an ssd (I'm using a samsung F3 magnetic hard disk) or a new vga.
My actual computer is composed by:

Intel core i3 2100
Asus p8p67le
4GB ram
Radeon HD4850 512MB
2 samsung f3 HD
Corsair GS600

In case of new vga I think I'd choose a radeon 7870 or GTX660ti (when price falls)

Thank you

 

[AntonyVW]

Id go for the graphic card. In particular adding more ram than the 512m you have at present (1gb at least). The better your resources here the better your pc will handle the graphics.

 

[erafjel]

Hi,

I think you will see more performance increase from a new VGA. I would say it's your current HD4850 that limits performance. Just replacing your HDD with SSD might not give much improvement, with the VGA still setting the limit, so to say...

I'm not saying that an SSD does not improve performance, but you need a VGA that can match the SSD performance.

 

[sniper297]

The way TADDaemon works, hogging RAM and stealing CPU cycles from Trainz.exe every 5 1/2 seconds to see what's new on the internet, I suspect the biggest performance increase would be upgrading to high speed cable broadband. I have upgraded to an SSD and a Pentium D 3.4 and a Geforce GT430 with 1 gig of RAM, and how smooth Trainz runs for me still depends on how well the AT&T DSL and the Auran download station are running that day.

 

[JCitron]

Your video card is very underpowered right now, and your choice the 78xx series are not the best cards out there. They suffer from compatibility issues and lock-ups with Open/GL which is very important for Trainz operation.
The 78xx series also suffer from chip-set compatibility issues with Intel Sandy bridge chipsets, so this is something else to consider. Since this causes machine lock-ups and stability problems.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7870-review-benchmark,3148-21.html

If you want to stay with the AMD platform, go with the 6900 series cards. The 6950 2GB is a decent video card with nice overall performance which is better than the 78xx series cards.

John

 

[fillflange]

Your video card is very underpowered right now, and your choice the 78xx series are not the best cards out there. They suffer from compatibility issues and lock-ups with Open/GL which is very important for Trainz operation.
The 78xx series also suffer from chip-set compatibility issues with Intel Sandy bridge chipsets, so this is something else to consider. Since this causes machine lock-ups and stability problems.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7870-review-benchmark,3148-21.html

If you want to stay with the AMD platform, go with the 6900 series cards. The 6950 2GB is a decent video card with nice overall performance which is better than the 78xx series cards.

John

Do you think that opengl issues will be solved by future driver update?

Is GTX660ti a better choice (when price drops)?

Thanks to all for your answers!

 

[N33]

Do you think that opengl issues will be solved by future driver update?

Is GTX660ti a better choice (when price drops)?

Thanks to all for your answers!

A GTX660ti may well be a better choice as it does have 2GB of video ram and a little thing called adaptive Vsync.

What adaptive Vsync does is it limits the FPS to the refresh rate of the monitor thus avoiding screen tearing. It should also work with no problems on your current set up.

The opengl issues may be fixed in a future update but the 660ti works out of the box with opengl so it avoids waiting for an update on drivers

Regards

Johan