Question

[BDP]

I need some advice, What is the best graphics and Sound card to run with trainz 12 with little to no lag?

 

[JCitron]

Hi BDP,

What are the other specs of your PC. They'll all inclusive and if you have the best sound and video card, but old stuffed processor, old slow hard drives, and motherboard, your new parts will not be up to their full potential.

John

 

[Lendorf]

Most, if not all modern motherboards made since several years usually have a sound chip on board which is normally very good in producing high quality sound for any game. One only needs to enable this sound in the BIOS setup of the PC. No external sound card is required with one of these motherboards. Unless you have an old PC which requires an external sound card to be used, then the older PC will most likely be not good enough for the late versions of Trainz anyway.

Sound card do not produce lag, this is your video card doing it, when it can not handle all the graphics (scenery and rolling stock) seen on your screen at a given moment. Any of the current mid range to top video cards should do the job. As you have not given us any of your PC's specs, it is only general advice one can give.

Lennard

 

[JCitron]

I found that I have better performance with my built-in RealTek sound than I do with a SoundBlaster Z-series card. That card had such awful drivers that it would lag Trainz and eventually crash it to the desktop. It took me about a week of pulling my hair out, I even reinstalled the OS thinking I had something messed up. Then I noticed a SoundBlaster Clean-up utility running every time Trainz was in operation. I killed the SB by disabling it and there were no longer any crashes.

John

 

[BDP]

Specs: HP D7
Intel i7 processor, running windows 8
I not sure on the graphic card

 

[JCitron]

Specs: HP D7
Intel i7 processor, running windows 8
I not sure on the graphic card

It appears that this is a laptop?

If it is one of the models I looked at, it has integrated Intel Graphics. Trainz, and most graphics intensive programs, have issues with this and you'll have to set your performance sliders way down as well as choose Open/GL graphics in your options. Being a laptop, if this is he model I saw, then your sound is integrated and there isn't much you can do with it as it is. There was, at one time, a SoundBlaster external sound device - a box that has a soundcard in it - that connected to the USB ports. It works okay actually and I've used it on my own laptop to record music because it's better than the built-in.

John

 

[BDP]

Just from experience Open GL actually makes my trainz run worse

 

[AntonyVW]

Laptops are great for many things but they lack the ability to upgrade in the way that you would upgrade a desktop. Its unfortunately one of the reasons that they are not the best for running games. There are some out there that are far better than others but generally you pay for what you get.