need help building a good pc for ts 12

[n9mfk9]

Hi all
i like to build a pc for under a 1000$ to run ts12
were should I start?
is a gforce gt-530 video card good ?
thanks Beau

 

[RRSignal]

Not really. How much do you have to spend? Are you going to be recycling anything from an old system and, if so, let us know the details. Also, do you have TS12 yet and are having issues with your current rig?

 

[lewisner]

If you are building a PCI I suggest getting a magazine such as Custom PC. They have lists of components to build various standards of PC up to Elite. If you can get an i7 2600k CPU and and ATI Radeon 6950 GPU together with a decent mobo it will work really well.

 

[steve123]

ATI is a better video card than Nvidia for Trainz, and the CPU 2600K
DOMINATOR 1600 RAM 12 GB it gives you head room to do a few thing at once gigabyte mobo Z68 series
steve

 

[n9mfk9]

I do not has ts 12 yet
here are spec of my current system

OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium
Version 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2 Build 6002
Processor AMD Phenom(tm) 9550 Quad-Core Processor, 2200 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 6.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 5.75 GB
Available Physical Memory 3.72 GB
Total Virtual Memory 11.7 GB
Available Virtual Memory 9.47 GB

here are video card spec
Name NVIDIA GeForce 9100
Adapter Type GeForce 9100, NVIDIA compatible
Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce 9100
Adapter RAM 256.00 MB (268,435,456 bytes)
Installed Drivers nvd3dumx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvd3dum,n vwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Driver Version 8.16.11.8780
INF File oem77.inf (Section002 section)
Color Planes Not Available
Color Table Entries 4294967296
Resolution 1024 x 768 x 59 hertz
Bits/Pixel 32
300w psu

 

[Euphod]

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

Above is a link to a good site that lists all video cards and ranks them according to their relative performance, When you find the card(s) you are interested in, you can click on the link to also find out their price to value rating.

Right now, New Egg has the 560Ti for sale for a very good price for such a high ranking card.

 

[RRSignal]

An i5 should be more than enough for Trainz as even TS12 is pretty limited in its use of multiple cores, although an i7 might be a bit more futureproof if you plan to hang onto your computer for 5 or more years. If you're planning on overclocking, then you'd get one of the processors with a "K" suffix, although I strongly advise against OCing unless you really know what you're doing and have adequate cooling - I see too many n00bs fry their machines. See for an discussion of the available chipsets. Keep in mind that you're not going to use onboard video, you're probably not going to overclock, and you cannot take any real advantage of multi-GPU setups like SLi or Crossfire as far as Trainz is concerned. And I'd recommend a minimum 850W power supply for new builds now - historically, you'd only need that much if you ran multiple GPUs but some of the single GPUs like the nVidia 570 and 580 need that much to maintain a comfortable margin of safety and upgradablility. As Euphod pointed out, the 560Ti is a really good card but even that still requires a minimum 700W power supply.

As for your current rig, I doubt you'll be able to recycle anything out of that into your new computer, but if you want to get the most out of a new gaming rig, make your current computer your internet/email machine and run your gaming machine offline (or mostly offline, maybe just to connect to the DLS on an as-needed basis) with no firewall, no anti-virus, etc. - all that really drains resources.

 

[fran1]

RRsignal,
He mentioned 1000$ in the first post.

 

[RRSignal]

Ah, thanks. You can get a lot for a grand then. You may want to look at some of the barebones kits at Tigerdirect to get a sense of how far your money will go. I advise against actually buying any barebones kits because they usually cheap-out on a couple parts - usually the PSU and any hard drives or SSDs - but they can be good starting points.

Here's what I'd get:

Coolermaster HAF-22 case
Corsair 850W PSU
i5-2500
Gigabyte P67 motherboard in the ~$100 range, maybe a Z68 board in the $130 range
nVidia 560Ti
8Gb Hyper-X DDR3
Kingston 120Gb SSD
Coolermaster Hyper-212 CPU cooler (it fits that case, I've done lots of builds with it.)

 

[GossenGarrat]

Ive got a good system myself.
i5 650 quad @ 3.2GHz
8GB Ram
ATI 6750 video card
450W Power Supply

My system runs trainz well, except when it has problems with faulty content (gradually fixing). Intel processors are better because each core handles two processing threads, AMD only does one. So a quad intel chip is comparable to an oct-core AMD chip. You could just do what I did: get an used computer off eBay with the processor and RAM capacity you want and upgrade things like RAM, video cards, and power supplies yourself. My whole system cost me about $450, $350 for the computer, $75 on graphics, and $20 on the power supply.
See if we can get Shane over here, he is really good with the hardware side of Trainz.

 

[bobhahn]

Shell Shockers

One thing you should do immediately is go to newegg.com and tigerdirect.com and sign up for their mailing lists. Yeah, you'll get spammed, but until you finish building your machine, this is spam you want.

Every day these guys run specials on one thing or another.... CPUs, motherboards, power supplies, video cards, memory... everything.

If you're a careful follower of these ads, you can acquire your new system, piece by piece, at a substantial discount.