RAM speed problem?

[sniper297]

Been wondering about this since I first noticed the difference, in a system that never heard of anything higher than 677mhz, is there a problem with 800mhz RAM? Got two 1gig sticks of Crucial Ballistix, when I went to www.crucial.com and entered the XPS400, I got "recommended";

2GB kit (1GBx2)
DDR2 PC2-5300 • CL=5 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR2-667 • 1.8V • 128Meg x 64 • • Part #: CT474084

There was a tab for "see other compatible kits" so I clicked that, and ordered;

2GB kit (1GBx2)
DDR2 PC2-6400 • 4-4-4-12 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR2-800 • 2.0V • 128Meg x 64 • • Part #: CT834457

Installed, worked fine, then one day i noticed on bootup it was reporting memory speed as 677mhz - wait, did I order the wrong chips? Nope, they are 800mhz, but even after installing the latest BIOS update for this system, the BIOS setup never heard of anything higher than 677mhz.

Today I installed and ran geekbench from http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/ and the beginning of the report;

<geekbench version="Geekbench 2.1.13" checksum="0d6b092c170de475aa9950cf44140c89">
<score>1887</score>
<elapsed>52.7</elapsed>
<metrics>
<metric id="1" name="Platform" value="Windows x86 (32-bit)" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="2" name="Compiler" value="Visual C++ 2008" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="3" name="Operating System" value="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="4" name="Model" value="Dell Inc. Dell DXP051" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="5" name="Motherboard" value="Dell Inc. 0YC523" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="6" name="Processor" value="Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="7" name="Processor ID" value="GenuineIntel Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 4" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="8" name="Logical Processors" value="2" ivalue="2" />
<metric id="9" name="Physical Processors" value="1" ivalue="1" />
<metric id="10" name="Processor Frequency" value="2.79 GHz" ivalue="2793000000" />
<metric id="11" name="L1 Instruction Cache" value="16.0 KB" ivalue="16384" />
<metric id="12" name="L1 Data Cache" value="16.0 KB" ivalue="16384" />
<metric id="13" name="L2 Cache" value="2.00 MB" ivalue="2097152" />
<metric id="14" name="L3 Cache" value="0.00 B" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="15" name="Bus Frequency" value="800 MHz" ivalue="800000000" />
<metric id="16" name="Memory" value="2.00 GB" ivalue="2145480704" />
<metric id="17" name="Memory Type" value="667 MHz" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="18" name="SIMD" value="1" ivalue="1" />
<metric id="19" name="BIOS" value="Dell Inc. A07" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="20" name="Processor Model" value=" Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz" ivalue="0" />
<metric id="21" name="Processor Cores" value="2" ivalue="2" />
</metrics>

Note the bus speed is listed at 800mhz, which is why I ordered the 800mhz RAM in the first place, but the RAM speed is 677mhz. Original memory that came with the system was two 512kB sticks of some generic RAM, those are 677mhz.

Main problem is I get poor performance and frequent program freezing requiring a reboot in TS2010 - is this a memory incompatibility issue? Would I be better off buying the older slower 677mhz sticks?

 

[clam1952]

Again......... Crucial get it wrong, I'm a bit wary on their on line memory tool, it's occasionally been wrong on a few occasions over the years.

Maximum ram speed is 667 for the XPS400, the 800MHz is probably the system bus, not the memory speed. Probably wouldn't notice that much difference between 667 and 800 with just 2 GB to be honest.

Normally ram will run quite happily at lower speeds and as it's Crucial Balistix I wouldn't expect it to be a problem the advantage is you should get better cas latency values at a slower speed which may make up a bit for the lower speed

I'd be inclined to stick some more ram in as it's got 4 memory slots and supports up to 4GB

Just checked on that part number and its listed for both speeds, looks like they are doing a one size fits all thing with that particular memory.

 

[Azervich]

Hi Sniper,

Your system seems to be a little slower than my old computer.

specs was
CPU = Pentium D 3.2ghz overclocked to 3.6ghz
DDR2 = 677mhz overclocked to 690mhz 2GB
PCI-E x16 Nvidia 8500GT 512GDDR2
Serial ATA II 3.0gb/s hard drives x3

and TS09/TS2010 run a bit sluggish

The new system I built in March.

i5 650 2.80ghz overclocked to 3.04ghz
DDR3 1333mhz overclocked to 1420mhz 4GB
PCI-E x16 Radeon 5770 GDDR5 1GB
Serial ATA II 3gb/s Hard Drives x3

This one just runs TS2010 stable if you only have small routes, but runs Speedtreez very nice.

What you could do is overclock your computer to see if you get anymore performance or build a whole new one to keep up with the specs, I have plans to get TS12 soon, I may need to build a whole new computer again even though this one is a few months old.

-Aaron

 

[johnwhelan]

Crucial was telling you which memory modules would work in your computer not the speed at which they would be used. There is a difference.

You probably paid slightly more for the DDR2-800 part but on the other hand you're running it well within its tolerance so you should have fewer glitches than if you had DDR2-667.

Cheerio John

 

[sniper297]

Yeah, I suppose I should add a link to what got me going on this;

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=75302

Main problem is I have a bunch of newer games, it's not all ancient stuff, and this computer has no problems with;

Railworks
Quake 4
Doom 3
Oblivion
Silent Hunter IV

Among others, the only one I have major freezing problems with is TS2010. Haven't played TS12 much yet, so I don't know much about that, other than I tested the one reproducible gripe from TS2010 to confirm TS12 also does it - select the terrain paint tool, wait 8 1/2 minutes, freezes every time. Reboot system, start TS2010 (or 12) and type "ZX" in the texture select window, that clears the pictures since there's no texture that starts with "ZX", if I do it that way I can paint all day without it freezing, so it's definitely caused by the selection display. Tried disabling all but one of the built in textures, it still does it, but takes longer than 8 1/2 minutes. As a workaround I created a blank route named "palette" and painted a swatch of each texture on the ground really fast, and with all the textures disabled in content mangler (so the selection window is blank) I can just pick textures from the palette.

I did swap the old RAM back in, swapped video cards with a similar computer, swapped Nvidia for ATI, the only thing I can think of I didn't change was the hard drive - could the hard disk be going sour?

 

[johnwhelan]

Yeah, I suppose I should add a link to what got me going on this;

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=75302

Main problem is I have a bunch of newer games, it's not all ancient stuff, and this computer has no problems with;

Railworks
Quake 4
Doom 3
Oblivion
Silent Hunter IV

Among others, the only one I have major freezing problems with is TS2010. Haven't played TS12 much yet, so I don't know much about that, other than I tested the one reproducible gripe from TS2010 to confirm TS12 also does it - select the terrain paint tool, wait 8 1/2 minutes, freezes every time. Reboot system, start TS2010 (or 12) and type "ZX" in the texture select window, that clears the pictures since there's no texture that starts with "ZX", if I do it that way I can paint all day without it freezing, so it's definitely caused by the selection display. Tried disabling all but one of the built in textures, it still does it, but takes longer than 8 1/2 minutes. As a workaround I created a blank route named "palette" and painted a swatch of each texture on the ground really fast, and with all the textures disabled in content mangler (so the selection window is blank) I can just pick textures from the palette.

I did swap the old RAM back in, swapped video cards with a similar computer, swapped Nvidia for ATI, the only thing I can think of I didn't change was the hard drive - could the hard disk be going sour?

Trainz uses a lot of content from many different content creators. As a result not all of it is as efficient as it could be and additionally how and which assets are placed on the route can have a big impart on performance.

Most games have a poly count given to the designer per screen shot. There is no such limitation in Trainz.

So as a result to be able to run anything you need a fairly high end machine.

If we take your video card a 8500 GT, then look here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card-game-performance-radeon-hd-6670,2935-7.html to see where it fits in, it isn't really in the top performers. 512 mb of memory even with DXT compression can easily be eaten up by a few assets in Trainz.

Your cpu look it up here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu,2951-5.html again its well down the list if mentioned at all.

Looks like you are running 32 bit windows XP, TS2010 can use 4 gigs of memory under 64 bit windows, you also need a gig for Windows by the way.

The latest thoughts on hard drives are the lower the latency the better, so SSD for preference, Raptors aren't a bad second choice.

Built in content, practically all of it comes from the content creators, very little is done by Auran/N3V these days and what they do produce such as the Duchess gets comments about when will they release a patch to fix some of the more glaring errors.

So your choices are run simple routes and low poly rolling stock. Use repetition as much as possible ie 20 identical wagons rather than 20 different ones or spend a bit of cash on hardware. TS2010 does have a way of identifying resource hungry assets so replacing these may well help.

Cheerio John

 

[sniper297]

Well, if I had money to throw at the problem I would buy a new system, got this one in October 2005 so it IS ready for a nursing home. I did take all that into consideration with the AI traffic causing drops in framerates, put together "disk" consists, all them ancient low poly cars with sliding disks instead of rolling wheels. Zero difference, it ain't the video card. 30 AI trains with newer engines and cars 15FPS, 30 AI trains with sliding disks, 15FPS. In a static test it does make a difference, 100 hiawatha coaches in a yard 28FPS, 100 bilevel commuter cars 25FPS. But this is some kind of loading problem, to me it looks like it's just not pulling stuff off the hard drive fast enough. I got this system right after I moved, first prebuilt I'd had in 10 years, first one ever with a Maxtor rather than Western Digital, so I really don't know anything about the Maxtor 6L160M0. I doubt I could even get a WD hard drive in this thing, Dell used non industry standard connectors on everything including the hard drive. :n:

 

[johnwhelan]

Well, if I had money to throw at the problem I would buy a new system, got this one in October 2005 so it IS ready for a nursing home. I did take all that into consideration with the AI traffic causing drops in framerates, put together "disk" consists, all them ancient low poly cars with sliding disks instead of rolling wheels. Zero difference, it ain't the video card. 30 AI trains with newer engines and cars 15FPS, 30 AI trains with sliding disks, 15FPS. In a static test it does make a difference, 100 hiawatha coaches in a yard 28FPS, 100 bilevel commuter cars 25FPS. But this is some kind of loading problem, to me it looks like it's just not pulling stuff off the hard drive fast enough. I got this system right after I moved, first prebuilt I'd had in 10 years, first one ever with a Maxtor rather than Western Digital, so I really don't know anything about the Maxtor 6L160M0. I doubt I could even get a WD hard drive in this thing, Dell used non industry standard connectors on everything including the hard drive. :n:

The speed of the hard drive doesn't make that much difference to the frame rates. I've run Trainz off an SSD and a Raptor the difference is less than one frame per second. What is different is the speed at which things appear when the screen shot changes.

Maxtor / Western Digital not much difference in performance assuming the same 7200 spin speed etc. Certainly not enough to warrant switching the drives.

Trainz is a real time program so what happens is it sets up a scene then starts to grab things from the hard drive. After a short period of time it writes the frame even though not everything has been imported from the drive.

What might be worth doing is looking at the performance settings. TS2010/12 defaults are five kms not one kilometer so slide these settings back to the left from the default settings.

As you mentioned a five or six year old mid range machine is getting a little elderly. The latest code TS12 will almost certainly be coded for the best performance on something like a 6/8 gig machine running Win 7. Adding memory and moving to a 64 bit operating system would help but I hesitate to say it would solve everything. If you have two empty memory slots I'd take the memory to 3 gigs at least with a pair of matching memory modules.

Native mode puts a lot more down to the GPU, depending on your power supply a new graphic card may well do wonders. The trick will be getting one that the power supply can handle. If you switch brands to AMD then reinstall the operating system to remove old traces of video drivers. There are other pet ways to do this.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card-game-performance-radeon-hd-6670,2935-3.html

The Radeon HD 5770/6770 or above is where I'd recommend on the graphics card side, toms has the tdp values which help when looking at the power supply side.

Hope this helps

Cheerio John

 

[clam1952]

Could check the drive using a benchmark program and see how it compares against similar models.

Should be a standard Sata connector on that drive even in a Dell. Sata is different to IDE, may be the reason you think it's non standard?

 

[sniper297]

Could be, been a long long time since I built my own. Used to upgrade hard drives by disconnecting the CD-ROM drive, plug the CD-ROM cables into the new hard drive and set the jumpers for slave, to transfer files to the new HD. Wanted to do that with my son's HD last year when he got a virus that wiped out his OS, at that point discovered the cables weren't the same. Dell power supply does use non standard connectors, found that out when I bought an 8600GT, which required (new to me) special amperage on one of the rails which this don't have. Can't plug in an industry standard power supply, so back to the store and swapped the 8600GT for the 8500GT, latest model that don't need the extra amps. That could be my biggest problem, just don't have enough wattage to run all the hardware at full tilt boogie.

 

[johnwhelan]

Could be, been a long long time since I built my own. Used to upgrade hard drives by disconnecting the CD-ROM drive, plug the CD-ROM cables into the new hard drive and set the jumpers for slave, to transfer files to the new HD. Wanted to do that with my son's HD last year when he got a virus that wiped out his OS, at that point discovered the cables weren't the same. Dell power supply does use non standard connectors, found that out when I bought an 8600GT, which required (new to me) special amperage on one of the rails which this don't have. Can't plug in an industry standard power supply, so back to the store and swapped the 8600GT for the 8500GT, latest model that don't need the extra amps. That could be my biggest problem, just don't have enough wattage to run all the hardware at full tilt boogie.

They've been playing around with the power and other connectors over the last few years which can make upgrading more complex. The amps on the lines have differed as well as some voltages have become more important.

Have a dig round and see if you can find the size of the power supply then perhaps we can make some guesses. Dell did do some low profile cases with odd power supplies but most are "standard" power supplies.

Cheerio John

 

[clam1952]

Should be a standard ATX 375 watt power supply in the XPS400. Won't have any of the newer connectors for GPU's and probably wouldn't handle anything that would need them anyway.

 

[sniper297]

Only one I've seen is this;

http://www.power-on.com/ea550u.html

Which is $100 bucks more than I have right now. Lot of scratch to go from 375 watts to 550. They also mention you might need an adapter cable, apparently that depends on what the assembly line crew was drinking the day it was made (HIC!)

 

[johnwhelan]

Only one I've seen is this;

http://www.power-on.com/ea550u.html

Which is $100 bucks more than I have right now. Lot of scratch to go from 375 watts to 550. They also mention you might need an adapter cable, apparently that depends on what the assembly line crew was drinking the day it was made (HIC!)

Seems a bit high priced. At roughly $100 The Radeon HD 6670 doesn't need a separate power cable and at 66 W tdp will probably work with your existing power supply. The DDR 5 1 gig version would be nice. Take a look at the hierarchy chart on page six but it should be a substantial improvement over what you have at the moment. Don't forget to remove all traces of the old video drivers first or the performance will but substantially worse than it could be.

If you need one Newegg.com is a reasonable place for power supplies, $50-$65 should get you a very reasonable good quality one but decide on the graphic card first.

I can't see any details on how much power the 8500 GT uses but its almost certainly 90 not 40 nm so it will be a lot less power efficient. A comment from one review about performance "The 8500 GT is a bit of a disappointment when it comes to gaming, and it's so underpowered that I doubt it will be able to fare any better when DirectX 10 titles come along."

Cheerio John

 

[gawpo50]

Could be, been a long long time since I built my own. Used to upgrade hard drives by disconnecting the CD-ROM drive, plug the CD-ROM cables into the new hard drive and set the jumpers for slave, to transfer files to the new HD. Wanted to do that with my son's HD last year when he got a virus that wiped out his OS, at that point discovered the cables weren't the same. Dell power supply does use non standard connectors, found that out when I bought an 8600GT, which required (new to me) special amperage on one of the rails which this don't have. Can't plug in an industry standard power supply, so back to the store and swapped the 8600GT for the 8500GT, latest model that don't need the extra amps. That could be my biggest problem, just don't have enough wattage to run all the hardware at full tilt boogie.

Hi everybody,

Seems to be a lot of different replies on the problem of slow or assumed to be slow systems. I can give you some real life examples of my own which may help clarify somethings. First, two system specs from both my systems;

System 1 - Desktop (4 years old)
CPU: X64 Dual Core AMD 3.1 GHz
RAM: DDR2 667 MHz Dual Channel - 4 Gb
Video Card: nVidia GTS450 (with latest drivers) 1 Gb DDR5 Video RAM
HDD: 1 x 250 GB Seagate SATA II, 1 500 GB Seagate SATA II (both 7200 RPM)
Monitor: 24 " LED AOC running at 1600 X 1080 32 bit
Power Supply: Themaltake 700 Watt w/SATA Connectors and separate power rails

System 2 - Toshiba Laptop (Satellite L670)
CPU: Intel iCore5 460M (1066 MHz FSB, 2.53 GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache)
RAM: DDR3 1066 MHz 4 GB
HDD: 640 GB SATA II (5400 RPM)
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 5460 1 GB DDR3

Both Systems use Win7 64.

The laptop in most areas performs better than my desktop. The difference is noticeable to the eyes. I tested using TS12 with latest SP over a 3 day period at a recent train show mainly running the Norfolk & Western, Mojave and ECML routes. Not once did the laptop stutter,in fact I received plenty of good comments on how smooth it was running.

Now, all I can put the difference down too is latter generation hardware in the laptop using latest technology. Hard drive does not make any real difference accept at startup. Memory speed is most certainly a factor along with graphics card and CPU. Having said that, you do need a good power supply, up around the 500 - 550 watt or better, depending on how many different bits of hardware you have in your system.

I am now in the process of upgrading my desktop to a new CPU, still AMD along with DDR3 1066 MHz RAM which will make a lot of difference.

Hope that helps all of you out a little.

Regards
Peter

 

[Beattie]

Hi everybody,

Seems to be a lot of different replies on the problem of slow or assumed to be slow systems. I can give you some real life examples of my own which may help clarify somethings. First, two system specs from both my systems;

System 1 - Desktop (4 years old)
CPU: X64 Dual Core AMD 3.1 GHz
RAM: DDR2 667 MHz Dual Channel - 4 Gb
Video Card: nVidia GTS450 (with latest drivers) 1 Gb DDR5 Video RAM
HDD: 1 x 250 GB Seagate SATA II, 1 500 GB Seagate SATA II (both 7200 RPM)
Monitor: 24 " LED AOC running at 1600 X 1080 32 bit
Power Supply: Themaltake 700 Watt w/SATA Connectors and separate power rails

System 2 - Toshiba Laptop (Satellite L670)
CPU: Intel iCore5 460M (1066 MHz FSB, 2.53 GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache)
RAM: DDR3 1066 MHz 4 GB
HDD: 640 GB SATA II (5400 RPM)
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 5460 1 GB DDR3

Both Systems use Win7 64.

Regards
Peter

Going to say the reason the desktop is slower is the cpu and ram speeds are going to be the problem here. I agree the ram and cpu and ram work together can't have one good and the other bad if cpu is bad that will be much worst overall. Just a little information for everyone there.

Hope your new amd desktop performs better.

 

[johnwhelan]

Hi everybody,

Seems to be a lot of different replies on the problem of slow or assumed to be slow systems. I can give you some real life examples of my own which may help clarify somethings. First, two system specs from both my systems;

System 1 - Desktop (4 years old)
CPU: X64 Dual Core AMD 3.1 GHz
RAM: DDR2 667 MHz Dual Channel - 4 Gb
Video Card: nVidia GTS450 (with latest drivers) 1 Gb DDR5 Video RAM
HDD: 1 x 250 GB Seagate SATA II, 1 500 GB Seagate SATA II (both 7200 RPM)
Monitor: 24 " LED AOC running at 1600 X 1080 32 bit
Power Supply: Themaltake 700 Watt w/SATA Connectors and separate power rails

System 2 - Toshiba Laptop (Satellite L670)
CPU: Intel iCore5 460M (1066 MHz FSB, 2.53 GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache)
RAM: DDR3 1066 MHz 4 GB
HDD: 640 GB SATA II (5400 RPM)
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon 5460 1 GB DDR3

Both Systems use Win7 64.

The laptop in most areas performs better than my desktop. The difference is noticeable to the eyes. I tested using TS12 with latest SP over a 3 day period at a recent train show mainly running the Norfolk & Western, Mojave and ECML routes. Not once did the laptop stutter,in fact I received plenty of good comments on how smooth it was running.

Now, all I can put the difference down too is latter generation hardware in the laptop using latest technology. Hard drive does not make any real difference accept at startup. Memory speed is most certainly a factor along with graphics card and CPU. Having said that, you do need a good power supply, up around the 500 - 550 watt or better, depending on how many different bits of hardware you have in your system.

I am now in the process of upgrading my desktop to a new CPU, still AMD along with DDR3 1066 MHz RAM which will make a lot of difference.

Hope that helps all of you out a little.

Regards
Peter

Intel i5 is much more powerful than the AMD dual core. For Trainz Intel is probably best. The optimizing compilers tend to favour the latest Intel cpus.

Cheerio John

 

[sniper297]

One thing I'm missing is the "or equivalent", what is the equivalent of a 3.4ghz single core? Specs mention a Core 2 Duo without specifying any clock speed, since a dual core is earlier technology than the Core 2 Duo is dual core 2.8ghz good enough to meet the minimum? I have no idea what the difference is, the names would imply that both chips have two cores, presumably the newer one has more bells and whistles like hyperthreading or something.

System Requirements

Minimum

• Windows XP (with Service Pack 3)
• 2GB RAM
• Pentium D 3.4GHz (or equivalent)
• nVidia GeForce 7200 / 128MB (or equivalent)
• 15GB free hard drive space

Under this configuration, it is expected that the game will successfully run all included routes. Frame rate will vary substantially and will be considered poor (barely playable) in the most dense areas. It is expected that the user will lower the screen resolution, draw distance, and other quality options.

Recommended

• Windows Vista / Windows 7 (64 bit)
• 2GB RAM
• Core 2 Duo (or equivalent)
• nVidia GeForce 8600 (or equivalent)
• 15GB free hard drive space

Under this configuration, it is expected that the game will perform acceptably in all areas. It is expected that the user will use a moderate-to-high screen resolution and draw distance.


That's for TS12, either minimum or recommended is 2gigs, the 8500GT almost makes the recommended. For TS 2010;


Minimum

• Windows XP (SP3)
• 1GB RAM
• Pentium D 3.4GHz (or equivalent)
• nVidia Geforce 7200/128MB (or equivalent)
• 15GB Free Hard Drive Space

Recommended

• Windows Vista/Windows 7 (64bit)
• 2GB RAM
• Core 2 Duo (or equivalent)
• nVidia Geforce 8600 (or equivalent)
• 15GB Free Hard Drive Space

Again meets or exceeds minimum, assuming a 2.8ghz dual core Pentium is the equivalent of the single core 3.4ghz they're talking about. What would be the Celeron equivalent, 32 core 50ghz? :hehe:

 

[johnwhelan]

One thing I'm missing is the "or equivalent", what is the equivalent of a 3.4ghz single core? Specs mention a Core 2 Duo without specifying any clock speed, since a dual core is earlier technology than the Core 2 Duo is dual core 2.8ghz good enough to meet the minimum? I have no idea what the difference is, the names would imply that both chips have two cores, presumably the newer one has more bells and whistles like hyperthreading or something.

System Requirements

Minimum

• Windows XP (with Service Pack 3)
• 2GB RAM
• Pentium D 3.4GHz (or equivalent)
• nVidia GeForce 7200 / 128MB (or equivalent)
• 15GB free hard drive space

Under this configuration, it is expected that the game will successfully run all included routes. Frame rate will vary substantially and will be considered poor (barely playable) in the most dense areas. It is expected that the user will lower the screen resolution, draw distance, and other quality options.

Recommended

• Windows Vista / Windows 7 (64 bit)
• 2GB RAM
• Core 2 Duo (or equivalent)
• nVidia GeForce 8600 (or equivalent)
• 15GB free hard drive space

Under this configuration, it is expected that the game will perform acceptably in all areas. It is expected that the user will use a moderate-to-high screen resolution and draw distance.


That's for TS12, either minimum or recommended is 2gigs, the 8500GT almost makes the recommended. For TS 2010;


Minimum

• Windows XP (SP3)
• 1GB RAM
• Pentium D 3.4GHz (or equivalent)
• nVidia Geforce 7200/128MB (or equivalent)
• 15GB Free Hard Drive Space

Recommended

• Windows Vista/Windows 7 (64bit)
• 2GB RAM
• Core 2 Duo (or equivalent)
• nVidia Geforce 8600 (or equivalent)
• 15GB Free Hard Drive Space

Again meets or exceeds minimum, assuming a 2.8ghz dual core Pentium is the equivalent of the single core 3.4ghz they're talking about. What would be the Celeron equivalent, 32 core 50ghz? :hehe:

Auran/N3V want people to buy the game so they like to say it will run on a wide range of machines and it perfectly true if you select exactly the right assets and set all the sliders well over to the left, run your trains through the desert and look forward out of the cab at the none existent scenery you can get fairly respectable frame rates. Oh and I think they expect you to be using 640 by 480 screen size.

Reality is if you want to set the sliders more to the right, include the odd village or town, like to vary the wagons or coaches or run steam locos then you need to go above min specs. If you have a screen of more than 1440 by 900 then you almost certainly need to be above min specs and even at this screen size min specs are doubtful.

N3V for the most part didn't make the content, some content is more efficient than others and it depends what you want to run.

Oh they get a lot of technical support from nVidia which explains why they always quote nVidia, TS2009/10/12 can make use of 4 gigs of memory should you have them available under 64 bit windows.

Cheerio John

 

[sniper297]

Efficiency would help, I just discovered one major problem with framerates today - each and every loose consist is numbered and considered a "train" by Central Portal Control, whether it's just a single box car or an actual train with an engine or two. While experimenting with that I found I could keep the same dozen or so AI trains running with triple the framerates - by deleting all the loose consists on the route. With MSTS and Railworks when you come into the visible radius of a big yard loaded with freightcars, you get a big drop in framerates, which is to be expected. With TS2010 the big yard can be 15 miles away from the starting point and the framerate drops at the very beginning and stays down in the single digits permanently. Apparently it loads, processes, and continues to fiddle with and worry about every last car on the route regardless of how far away, moving or sitting in a hidden industry spur. Makes a hell of a challenge for a switching route where the whole point is to have lots of cars to switch around. Visibility and quality sliders have zero effect, all the stuff causing the performance drop is way way way beyond the 5000 meter limit.