Suggestions for better performance

[boc61]

Here is my setup

Win7 Home premium
i5 2500 3.3ghz
System drive is 128GB SSD
16GB of RAM (1333Mhz)
1TB SSD for storage
Trainz on a dedicated 256 GB SSD
GTX 680 GPU.

This system is about 2 years old but it still should be decent I figure, but I've never been happy with the way Trainz runs on it. it isn't as smooth as I would like, my FPS is somewhat on the low side and things just feel choppy. I've tried all sorts of settings with the graphics, using the in game preferences and the NVidia control panel, I've tried some things with trainzoptions and run without it. I use Game Booster to shut all the extra stuff down, but I can't find the right combination that gives me that sweet spot. Am I expecting too much from my hardware or can this setup run Trainz at a relatively high level?

I'd love to hear some suggestions , especially if you have a similar setup. Thank You.

 

[fran1]

-freeintcam
-showkuids
-allownoctrlrightclick
-framestoaverage=25
-framerate=25
-height=1024
-width=1280

These are my trainzoptions. The screen sizes are the screens native resolution and are set in 3 places. Nvidea screen resolution, the options tab in trainz and select display, and I've forgot where else. The display option in the control panel.
Using dx also seems to improve matters.
Using game booster on a decent system won't help.

 

[boc61]

What bearing does the NVidia controls have on the game in terms of the ingame options? If I select "Let the 3D application decide" I assume the ingame settings take hold, but what about the performance sliders for quality, performance and balance. Do they override the in game settings in any way?

 

[PC_Ace]

Sounds like a fairly decent rig to me, boc61, especially with all those SSDs.
Are they all on SATA/ PCIe 3.0/ (6Gb/s) slots on your motherboard? Or PCIe 2.0/ 3Gb/s?
There's no doubt in my mind that an SSD improves performance in TS12. (It made a big difference on my rig.)
Remind me how many cores/ threads the i5 2500 sports? Is it a quad or dual core?
How do other modern era games run on your machine? Do you have any benchmarks you can share?
I received another GPU driver and nVidia GeForce Experience update today and installed it. Have you applied the latest drivers too?
PC

 

[boc61]

Sounds like a fairly decent rig to me, boc61, especially with all those SSDs.
Are they all on SATA/ PCIe 3.0/ (6Gb/s) slots on your motherboard? Or PCIe 2.0/ 3Gb/s?
There's no doubt in my mind that an SSD improves performance in TS12. (It made a big difference on my rig.)
Remind me how many cores/ threads the i5 2500 sports? Is it a quad or dual core?
How do other modern era games run on your machine? Do you have any benchmarks you can share?
I received another GPU driver and nVidia GeForce Experience update today and installed it. Have you applied the latest drivers too?
PC

The SSD's are in PCIe 3 slots., the i5 2500 is a quad core. I don't play any other games and I wouldn't know a benchmark if I tripped over one. I'll grab the new drivers, thanks for the heads up.

 

[fran1]

What bearing does the NVidia controls have on the game in terms of the ingame options? If I select "Let the 3D application decide" I assume the ingame settings take hold, but what about the performance sliders for quality, performance and balance. Do they override the in game settings in any way?

In the nvidea manage 3D settings I have max pre rendered frames at 4, multi display set to single, power management to maximum and vertical sync to adaptive. The rest I leave application controlled or global settings.
Have you got show only programs on this computer ticked, if so it will show trainz as 2004 for some reason.
Using the in driver main menu, options, video settings use the top 4 sliders plus good weather fog to smooth the fps out.
Your system is quite a bit better than mine and fps is 20-25 steady.

 

[flaugher]

Well, re-installing DirectX helped (I forgot that after video driver updates you should do that). I had to find another redistributable version. I can now run in DirectX mode. Mostly though I think I have to admit that 32-bit Windows XP is behind the times. When I built the machine there were interface issues so I opted for 32 rather than 64. Looks like for now the best thing to do is run in a 1024 x 768 window and just take the slowness. I am up to about 20 fps on the more "barren" routes. Hope for a new machine someday. 30 minutes to start driving a scenario is getting old. May return to Brand X until that happens.

 

[flaugher]

Got another fairly major improvement by 1) completely deleting and re-installing AFTER updating graphic drivers and re-running DirectX, then 2) getting into the NVIDIA settings and setting vertical sync to Adaptive, half-rate, and then the same in Trainz. Maybe it's just an NVIDIA thing. I also went back to running full-screen with native resolution. I'm stalling much less and running in the 20's at times. Much better. Don't want to go back to Brand-X. Love Trainz' trees, scenery, engine dynamics, cars, signals ... everything! I definately did NOT want to go back to marketers shoving things in my face all the time, or the new trading cards. Trading is what ruined all the space games. I hope Trainz never goes that way.

 

[boc61]

Thanks for all the suggestions, I've applied some and am happy with the results. Continuing on, this machine is almost 2 years old so I'm thinking of starting some upgrades. I already added a 2nd SSD for Trainz, so now I'm looking at the graphics. I have a 2GB GTX 680 right now. Does Trainz benefit from SLI? Would adding a second 680 be of any help, or would replacing it with a single higher end card be better?

 

[JCitron]

Thanks for all the suggestions, I've applied some and am happy with the results. Continuing on, this machine is almost 2 years old so I'm thinking of starting some upgrades. I already added a 2nd SSD for Trainz, so now I'm looking at the graphics. I have a 2GB GTX 680 right now. Does Trainz benefit from SLI? Would adding a second 680 be of any help, or would replacing it with a single higher end card be better?

I don't think Trainz benefits from SLI right now. I don't know of T2 will though. Hmm... something to ask over in the Kickstarter forum.

John

 

[PC_Ace]

Well the answer from N3V's Windwalkr to the question about SLI supoort is now in!

"Just to be clear about this: there's very little support necessary from the application to run SLI or Crossfire. We will of course be taking the steps necessary to enable the feature. Whether SLI is a significant benefit depends on the specific workload, so we can't really make any predictions about that in advance. With the heavily multithreaded architecture of E2, we don't expect to be CPU bound and so GPU performance will definitely be a big factor in overall frame rate."... (Windwalkr)

Accordingly, that has helped me to determine the most cost-effective upgrade path for my current Trainz Simulator-dedicated computer.
I will simply add another Asus R9 280x DC2 TOP 3Gb to match the new one on my mobo and run them using Crossfire. I was considering buying the nVidia GTX 780Ti (or whatever will be the top single GPU card at the time T2 launches) but this path is much less expensive and the GPU performance (with two cards) likely to be much better. My existing power supply and quad-core CPU could in fact support 3-way SLI or Crossfire, if deemed worthwhile.
Of course, if money is no object, then 2 or more GTX 780Tis or Titans running in SLI would be even better!
Cheers! PC

 

[flaugher]

One last thing here. After reading all the posts here and other threads, and looking at my 5-yr old machine, I've admitted it's time to move on. 64-bit world or Mac, here I come. Off now to follow the "PC Replace or upgrade?" thread. :udrool: