Recommended Video Card for Trainz 2010?

[johnwhelan]

This is all very interesting and informative. My computer is maxed out at 2 gigs of DDR SD memory, and for the video card, it can't handle a card that has more than 128megs. I have a G-Force 6800 AGP 128meg card, and as I found out a couple years ago, a higher end card with more memory did not improve performance.

Since TRS 2010 came out, I was advised a few times that Trainz 2010 would run ok on my machine. After reading the above posts, I just don't see that happening. I can run TRS 2006 ok on my machine, with the drawing distance less than half. For the most part, I make my own content which allows me to have control over poly's and photo resolution. Placement of objects and textures make a big difference on the performance and I've gotten used to the parameters I have to work with.

If I had any extra $$, of course I'd upgrade my machine, but I can't even afford to take a chance on 2010 to see how it would run on my current system. Again, what I've read here reconfirms that I should stick with 2006. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

We now return you back to your regularly scheduled program. : )

Single or dual core cpu? TS2010 uses DXT texture 4:1 compression so effectively your graphic card will behave as if it was a 512 mb card. You gain by the better error checking on the assets. TS2010 distance default is 5km rather than 2 km for TRS2006 so set them back a little. Trees will be a bit of a problem, the older style trees don't look as good in TS2010 but the newer Speedtree ones probably render more on the GPU.

TRS2006 usually bottle-necks on the CPU not the GPU TS2010 puts more work on the GPU.

2 gigs of memory isn't bad, if you are selective in content and use native mode you should get slightly better performance with TS2010 and Amazon.com have it for $20 at the moment which isn't too expensive to try.

Cheerio John

 

[JimDep]

Thanks John, it's a single core processor.

Is the Amazon version supported by Auran?

 

[johnwhelan]

Thanks John, it's a single core processor.

Is the Amazon version supported by Auran?

No matter where you get it Auran / N3V support it, Steam has some issues but direct download from Auran/N3V or from a DVD will give you no issues, apart from the UK Jut Trains version which used to have the DVD in the drive to play.

Single core processor not perfect but I think I'd still go TS2010 but set the performance settings back.

Cheerio John

 

[nugget2225]

From Culleydog32

I would like to know what kind of magical setup you guys are using if your playing trainz on high with a nvidia 8600, i have a AMD 1090T 6 CORE CPU,
8 GIGS OF CORSAIR DOMINATOR MEMORY AT 1600 MHZ, A 6GB TRANSFER WD HARDRIVE, AND A XFX 6950 WITH 2 GIGS OF VIDEO RAM WITH WINDOWS 7 HOME, and i still lag out , so whats the secret here? I have used 800 and 900 series nividia cards and the simulator was hardly playable, so my question is, might there be a good tuning method to get the most out of trainz 2010 , thanks in advance

 

[johnwhelan]

I would like to know what kind of magical setup you guys are using if your playing trainz on high with a nvidia 8600, i have a AMD 1090T 6 CORE CPU,
8 GIGS OF CORSAIR DOMINATOR MEMORY AT 1600 MHZ, A 6GB TRANSFER WD HARDRIVE, AND A XFX 6950 WITH 2 GIGS OF VIDEO RAM WITH WINDOWS 7 HOME, and i still lag out , so whats the secret here? I have used 800 and 900 series nividia cards and the simulator was hardly playable, so my question is, might there be a good tuning method to get the most out of trainz 2010 , thanks in advance

If you have been changing video cards especially manufacturers you may have some traces of old drivers left which can cause performance problems and must be removed. Personally I'd reinstall the operating system but others have different rituals.

I assume you have Win 7 64 bit installed not 32 bit?

TS2010 can only make use of two of your six cores and your cpu cores aren't especially fast, if you look at the last page you'll see that the top i3 is faster: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-overclocking-processor-recommendation,2866.html

Same for your memory, TS2010 can use 4 gigs, the operating system about a gig the rest is just keeping the case warm.

TS2010 is sensitive to the number of pixels on the screen. 1440 by 900 is 1,296,000 pixels, 1920 by 1080 is 2,073,600 so needs a lot more resources to keep up the same frame rate.

Content plays a big part. Build a simple layout and run one diesel loco on it the frame rate should be fine. Now run one of the complex layouts near a town and you can expect the performance to drop.

You have some performance settings available, experiment with them to find a level that is usable. In surveyor there are the developer settings in options they will help you identify assets that kill performance.

TS2010 is very flexible and you have many options unfortunately that means it isn't impossible to make the wrong choices.

Cheerio John

 

[clam1952]

Similar setup here with a few more drives and 1GB DDR5 GTS450
No lag very occasional stutter which if gets worse usually clears after an EDR and a defrag.

I don't put Trainz on the same drive as the OS
Use DirectX with newer cards, need to add DirectX9c along side 10/11 if you haven't got it.
Run as Administrator even if it is installed outside of program Files.
Turn off Indexing and Windows search.
Exclude Trainz folder from on access scans from AV and antimalware programs.
Defrag the drive Trainz is on regularly, especially if you add a lot of stuff or do any editing of routes or content creation.
Adjust any graphics card options to performance and work on the settings from there.

 

[nugget2225]

from culleydog32

thanks for all the helpfull input, so would i just be better off just running a copy of windows 7 32 bit and 4 gigs of ram for trainz, or xp 32 bit, because i dont use anything that even really requires 64 bit computing, and for my video drivers i did reinstall my os when i went from a nvidia gtx 460 to a xfx 6950, sure i am getting better fps but the lag is still bad on very large maps, and i also decided to raid 2 , 1 tb wd's with 64 mb cache hoping that would help

 

[mrscsi]

thanks for all the helpfull input, so would i just be better off just running a copy of windows 7 32 bit and 4 gigs of ram for trainz, or xp 32 bit, because i dont use anything that even really requires 64 bit computing, and for my video drivers i did reinstall my os when i went from a nvidia gtx 460 to a xfx 6950, sure i am getting better fps but the lag is still bad on very large maps, and i also decided to raid 2 , 1 tb wd's with 64 mb cache hoping that would help

Well you have 8 gb of ram that's reason alone to use a 64 bit os...

He said Trainz can use 4 gig, and it can. But in a 64 bit os with more than 4 gb Trainz can have it's 4 without sharing...

Just my 2 cents...

 

[nugget2225]

culleydog32

thanks again and great website

 

[johnwhelan]

thanks for all the helpfull input, so would i just be better off just running a copy of windows 7 32 bit and 4 gigs of ram for trainz, or xp 32 bit, because i dont use anything that even really requires 64 bit computing, and for my video drivers i did reinstall my os when i went from a nvidia gtx 460 to a xfx 6950, sure i am getting better fps but the lag is still bad on very large maps, and i also decided to raid 2 , 1 tb wd's with 64 mb cache hoping that would help

Win 7 32 bit only sees 3.5 gigs of memory total, TS2010 gets a max of 2 gigs of memory. WIN 7 should come with the 64 bit DVD so I'd do the upgrade first.

Cheerio John