New 'puter

[Bill69]

Well I just bit the bullet and ordered a new computer for Trainz.

Specs.
CPU Intel core i7 860 2.8 GHz socket 1156
Ram 2 x 2Gig DDR3 1333MHz 4 Gig total upgradable later if required
MoBo Intel DP55WG socket LGA 1156
Graphics card ATI HD5770 1GB DDR5 PCIe
PSU Cosair 850 watt HX modular
HDD Seagate 1TB SATA 7200rpm
OS Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

No K/brd, mouse or monitor as I already have these.
Pickup Monday 12 April 2010

Any comments?

Cheers,
Bill69

 

[fran1]

Are you going to put one of your old drives in that has trainz installed or put it on the 1TB one. Myself I'd get another drive, partition it and install separate versions on individual partitions.
Aside from that looks fine to me, never ceases to amaze me how much trainz costs people. The game comes cheap, the comps need to be high ish end ones. Last time I had had a go at upgrading it cost £700, all because of trainz.
Regards Fran.

 

[Bill69]

Hi Fran1,
Yes I will be fitting two SATA 360 Gig drives, One has TRS2004 and the other has TS2009 installed. The extra drives and other periferals is why I have gone for an 850watt PSU.

Cheers,
Bill69

 

[fran1]

Sensible way to go I think.
Holiday + a new comp within months, splurging out a bit or are you just spoiling yourself?:hehe:

 

[Bill69]

Hi Fran1,

Yes I guess I am splurging a bit, but though I am oficially retired I have just had 3 weeks work filling in for someone else who was on holliday. So this extra income is what is buying my new 'puter.

Cheers,
Bill69

 

[RRSignal]

Aside from that looks fine to me, never ceases to amaze me how much trainz costs people. The game comes cheap, the comps need to be high ish end ones. Last time I had had a go at upgrading it cost £700, all because of trainz.

No, they don't need to be high-end ones, Q.E.D. right here. That's just what people choose to buy. It seems the OS plays a role in this.

 

[djt]

Myself I'd get another drive, partition it and install separate versions on individual partitions.

Partitioning the drive will do nothing for performance.

The game comes cheap, the comps need to be high ish end ones.

It all depends on what you consider “good performance”.

TS2010 uses a very out dated game engine that doesn’t exactly perform very well when you consider how mediocre the graphics are. It’s primarily CPU dependent and you need a processor with some grunt to get any decent performance out of it.

 

[RRSignal]

It works pretty well for me.

I think the moral is that game manufacturers can, should and will design for a lesser denominator based on equipment. (Yep, me!) Sure, Trainz could be a lot more if it demanded top-end, bleeding-edge hardware, at the exclusion of a very large (if not a whopping majority) of it's customer base that may not be or is unwilling to invest in other hardware. Auran might even be able to top that and design optimized versions for the particular instruction set and even platform, much as old-school designers did overlays, but that is costly and problematic for Auran - yeah, bugs for every diff! Ugh!

Too, I think a lot of these folks here are a bit more hardcore than the average Trainz user.

Believe me, I would love love love the best version of a train simulator as possible. I would honestly pay $100 each for the routes I care about and will let some stuff slide. But they have to appeal to a wide audience, and that means appealing to less-than-ideal hardware.

In other words, I understand the narrow margin that Auran has to ride. I'm really pretty impressed that they do as well as they do.*

* I really think that they design for Windows XP helps in this. Perhaps better optimization for XP-64 might help some of us.

 

[djt]

I think the moral is that game manufacturers can, should and will design for a lesser denominator based on equipment. (Yep, me!) Sure, Trainz could be a lot more if it demanded top-end, bleeding-edge hardware, at the exclusion of a very large (if not a whopping majority) of it's customer base that may not be or is unwilling to invest in other hardware.

The reality is that with such a small market for “train games” Auran can’t afford an up to date game engine, it just wouldn’t pay off.

Like I said before with how dated the graphics are it should perform a lot better than it does. Lesser capable hardware isn’t going to run TS2010 at a frame rate that matches the refresh rate of an LCD monitor so as far as designing the game to run on machines with less than “high end” specs, I highly doubt it was even taken into consideration. For the most part it’s mainly a re-hash of what we’ve seen from the last seven years of Trainz.

 

[CaptainSalty]

Well I just bit the bullet and ordered a new computer for Trainz.

Specs.
CPU Intel core i7 860 2.8 GHz socket 1156
Ram 2 x 2Gig DDR3 1333MHz 4 Gig total upgradable later if required
MoBo Intel DP55WG socket LGA 1156
Graphics card ATI HD5770 1GB DDR5 PCIe
PSU Cosair 850 watt HX modular
HDD Seagate 1TB SATA 7200rpm
OS Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

No K/brd, mouse or monitor as I already have these.
Pickup Monday 12 April 2010

Any comments?

Cheers,
Bill69

may I ask how much this costs? Im contemplating something similar

 

[Bill69]

may I ask how much this costs? Im contemplating something similar

Hi CaptianSalty,

All up it cost just under two grand. But that was with some parts a wholesale plus 15%. Not what you will get in a computer shop. I am buying the parts and assembling it myself. It is similar to a model Quay computers sell for $2999 although that includes a monitor.

Cheers,
Bill69

 

[CaptainSalty]

Hi CaptianSalty,

All up it cost just under two grand. But that was with some parts a wholesale plus 15%. Not what you will get in a computer shop. I am buying the parts and assembling it myself. It is similar to a model Quay computers sell for $2999 although that includes a monitor.

Cheers,
Bill69

I've been pricing components off of trademe but I'd be lucky to keep it under 2k. Was looking at assembling a 1336 platform in the hope that it could still be treading water in 4 years time.
Do you think a 1156 system is a better deal?

 

[Bill69]

It really depends what you want, this is a 1156 socket cpu, you have a choice of i3, i5 or i7 with socket 1156. I think the i5 retails about $375 and the i7 retails about $526 I don't know the price of the i3 offhand, but the i7 is a much more powerfull cpu. I have been advised that the 1156 is more likley to become the accepted standard than the 1336 in the near future. Ofcourse you have to rely on the crystal ball a bit for that.

Have a look at this http://www.computerdirect.co.nz/products/productcode.asp?grp=PCD&CODE=PCDCDL126 it's a pretty good price and includes a good monitor.

Cheers,
Bill

 

[cascaderailroad]

High End Gaming PC...bunch of malarcy

Can a $700, Windows 7, HP laptop: 4Gb Ram, 500 Hard Drive, with a factory video card, run TS2010 ?

If only extremely high end PC's could run Trainz...Auran would go out of business as few could afford all the expence just to run a game.

I have a (net cost $700) Vista, HP Desktop, 3Gb Ram, 500Gb Hard Drive, Nividia 8500 Video Card, and I expect that to run TS2010, as it runs TRS2006 extremely well.

High End Gaming PC...bunch of malarcy

 

[winjmoore]

1336 and the i9 when it come out but how many cores dose trainz support. better to get what you need like are auran talking about a new relise. And if / when TRZ2012 rools out how different will the main codeing be. Having said that I use top of the line video and 3rd fast CPU (cause fastest cpu is 4 time what Bill69 said and that is far to much money. Don't know why people keep saying ATI with its known issues with railworks (only seen if people know how to get most from video card). but then for trainz they are fine. 4 gigs with a 64 bit system is all well but what is the overhead or running a 64 bit os. 3 gigs might be better with 32 bit or 6 gigs with 64.
also depends on the size of the layouts and the number of trainz you are running.
in 2004 i had speed markes of 120mph on a UK steam line and the speed looked right. on a fast p3 i had to stop developement and the layout was huge. more work was done on an athlon then a p4 but a quad saw it right and the layout is finnished now huge. but theose markers still are 120 and boy those steam trainz fly. a sunday afternoon with spear time will see it righted. If anyone knows where to find spear time let me know

 

[winjmoore]

Can a $700, Windows 7, HP laptop: 4Gb Ram, 500 Hard Drive, with a factory video card, run TS2010 ?

If only extremely high end PC's could run Trainz...Auran would go out of business as few could afford all the expence just to run a game.

I have a (net cost $700) Vista, HP Desktop, 3Gb Ram, 500Gb Hard Drive, Nividia 8500 Video Card, and I expect that to run TS2010, as it runs TRS2006 extremely well.

High End Gaming PC...bunch of malarcy

the price is eralavent (but seams like a good deal can i have on
You do not say what CPU it has so it cannot be said weather it will run trains well.
Video is ok though
let me explain
there was the 800 then the 900 then the 100 (just for a few months) then the 200 newest about a year in stock
the 800 came out in 2006
the second number is the strength of the video card 2 being bottom olthough there are often onboard 10 or 15's even lower. The top card a 95.
so if you are looking at a 8500 you are looking at 4 year old technology and the 5 denotes middle of the range.
Really typical of hp to be selling old stuff would run 06 fine but pulling the extra sliders (antiscopick filtering etc) up would make trainz jerky.
But that's laptops for ya
Mid range HP laptops...bunch of malarcy

 

[djt]

1336 and the i9 when it come out but how many cores dose trainz support.

Its socket “1366” not “1336” and the new six core i7 is already out and isn’t called i9 –

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2960

Don't know why people keep saying ATI with its known issues with railworks (only seen if people know how to get most from video card).

I don’t know why people claim that RailWorks has issues with ATI GPU’s.

Here are some screen shots taken with an i7/975 setup with an ATI 5870, no issues here. The screens were taken at 1920x1080; 8xAA/16xAF with everything maxed out in RailWorks options.

I also have a GTX 285 and without a doubt the ATI 5870 out performs the Nvidia card.



http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4156/screenshotoxfordtopaddiy.png


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http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7002/screenshotcastlerockrai.png


http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6907/screenshotcastlerockrait.png


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http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/8349/screenshotcastlerockraic.png

 

[Paulsw2]

I have a core i7 860 and, so far, I think it's marvellous. And it seems to love Trainz.

I have been advised that the 1156 is more likley to become the accepted standard than the 1336 in the near future...

Really? Oh, I wish so, but I'm not sure! 1156 is seen as the 'cheaper' set up isn't it and Intel have recently launched i7 930 and 960s, so not sure they're ready to give up on 1336 quite yet.

Paul

 

[winjmoore]

Well spotted on the socket type.... I think you misunderstood where I was comeing from though. Lets face it we both have great rigs. The i9 when it comes out will have 2 more cores they say. and it will to start will be clocked slower than the i7.
That is of cause specluation. I read intel's board to find out about intel products. But the board your referances is good.
Really what I was getting at is do you know how many cores trainz supppports. Maybe if trainz is all you play and you do not need an i7 and i5 will be just fine. and dito with the video card, I note that in one of your pics you get 117 frames per second. It is recomended that 30 frames per second or more is enough.
So me and you both have expensive rigs but you can see that if you know the most demanding app that someone will run then you might not need such an expensive rig. Generally though I'd take the app and double its requirements just to feture proff the persons PC.
I stick by my claim re ATI.
But I'm willing to be proved wrong.
Can you for me do this... In ATI CP move all the sliders to max and tick all the boxes as well. go to the Bath.... and find the pipgions session. I note that in the Bath layout there and parts of the engines that are missing and some of the wagons only show the couplings and shadows.... So have a look around the yard you are in. I have not tried for 6 months maybe the ATI guys have sorted it in their drivers which would be good. Please let me know if that works for you thanks

 

[cascaderailroad]

No one really answers the question dirrectly...Few people can afford a $2500 gaming laptop...surely it doesn't take a 1Tb machine to run TS2010.

If someone were to go out to Best Buy or Staples, and buy a 4Gb laptop, I would expect that most laptops above the $700 range will run TS2010.

If it takes a super computer, Auran is digging it's own grave. Only a handfull of people have several thousands of dollars to spend on a new Windows 7 PC, just in order to play with Trainz. Don't be silly with all the overtechnical PC talk.

Give it to people straight...does an off the shelf laptop run TS2010 ?