More stupid newbie questions

[ccowan2126]

What sort of things tend to slow a computer down more ? Colors and textures, buildings, rail cars and locomotives, misc. scenery items ?
How big (number of baseboards) can be run without much trouble?
I have Trainz 2009 installed on my Dell laptop with Dual core T4200 @ 2Ghz with 2G ram and run of the mill graphics card ( not really sure what it is). So far I can run several of the larger preprogrammed routes in the thing without problems, but am building a larger route on about 18 baseboards.
I intentionally got 2009 as opposed to the 2010 version because I did not think my computer was capable.
Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[llebrez]

Generally speaking, base boards don't slow down a computer. Assets do. You may run a route nicely, but arriving to a town with a busy station will make things to slow down. The number of consists will do too. Your computer should have a little more memory (4 GB..) a 7200 RPM HDD or SSD, and a good graphics card. Laptops normally lack what is required unless you have an expensive gaming one.

 

[JCitron]

The biggest killers of performance will be CPU, RAM, and graphics. The CPU needs to be powerful enough to handle scripting and control of the multiple AI driven trains plus all of the interactive industries, your train, signals, and the environment.

You need enough RAM, at least 4 GB to keep this stuff in memory otherwise the computer will start paging to disk when it starts swapping out to make room.

Your graphics card or circuitry on the L/T needs enough oomph to be able to draw the polygons quickly. One that shares the systemboard's memory isn't going to cut it because both subsystems are going to fight for the same resources causing a vicious cycle of pagefile swapping and a large number of disk writes, which will cause more performance problems.

In general you want a fast hard drive as IIebrez pointed out. The faster the better. The program needs to load in the content during driver, so having a slow hard drive will hurt performance.

In general laptops aren't built for highend graphics or performance. You're quite lucky to see the performance you are getting now. I know that DELL and HP make some workstation-quality laptops. These are meant for running CAD programs, which in many cases need similar hardware to run as we need to run Trainz in a reasonable manner.

John

 

[jammydodger]

@JCitron, I know what you mean about RAM. I have 2GB of DDR2 in my computer, and that's really what lets it down. 2X 3.00GHz processor and 384mb GeForce 8800GS are both fine, 232GB SATAII HDD etc etc, just the RAM which is the let down. Mind you, I wouldn't mind a bigger HDD and a better video card too

 

[JCitron]

@JCitron, I know what you mean about RAM. I have 2GB of DDR2 in my computer, and that's really what lets it down. 2X 3.00GHz processor and 384mb GeForce 8800GS are both fine, 232GB SATAII HDD etc etc, just the RAM which is the let down. Mind you, I wouldn't mind a bigger HDD and a better video card too

Your system is similar to my old system I just retired, or more likely will repurpose for something else, which happens all the time in my house. We have so many old systems running here and there, that we have an operational computer graveyard in the backroom of my basement.

I discovered the RAM issue pretty recently, and not with Trainz, but instead with server software. I happened to be doing some work at my former job that required that I setup a duplicate copy of a database. The MSSQL server had typical system requirements that most systems have today, and the system I repurposed for the project had more than enough of the specs. What I didn't do is increase the RAM, which was already at 2 GB.

Well, the performance, to put it bluntly, sucked! The hard drives were constantly chattering as the system swapped memory in and out for the minimal amount of work it was doing. Finally when I had a chance to get more RAM, which meant scrounging around for some, I was able to get the machine to perform half decently.

The same was true at home for me as well with my computer. Initially I built my old system with 2GB of RAM. Trainz ran okay, but got really laggy when the hard drive started kicking in a lot. Finally I had enough bucks to go out and get more DIMMS, and fully populated the machine up to its full capacity of 4 GB. What a difference this made! Trainz no longer stuttered even with the most built-up areas coming into view.

So now when I build systems, I spec out as much memory as I can afford at the time. Since memory prices have dropped down so low, the amount of memory I can purchase has increased over time.

John