T:ANE performance question

[dstelley]

This may be slightly premature, but I'm trying to do some planning for T:ANE

For Video I have twin Quadro K600 cards installed and set up to use PhysX. (each with 1gb GPU ram)

CPU and Memory are fine as well. (Twin Xeon 2.3 CPU's with 8gb RAM each)

When I'm running T:ANE I'm seeing a lot of lag using the keyboard controls. Video left/right as well as throttle, brake keys all respond a couple seconds after I press them. With TS12 it was lightning fast. Even a test route with damn little in the route except track and an engine.

In the performance properties there is a check box for PhysX usage. I've tried it on and off.

Anyone experience anything similar?

 

[JCitron]

I would first avoid a Quadro. They are not needed for a game, and unless you are also doing high end CAD and 3d solid modeling, they are a waste of money. You could actually get better performance out of a medium-high to high-end gaming card such as the NVidia GTX980Ti or equivalent. The cost too of the Quadro-series cards is also premium because that market is so small. Again, a Ti series would do you better and more useful as a gaming card.

Diddo on the Xeons. Unless you are going to do major number crunching, 3d solid modeling, CAD or database work, you are not going to get the most out of these processors. You are better off with an i7 47xx series and get a higher ROI for games. A dual chip is also over kill in this respect too, besides I'm not sure if dual i7s are available.

The keyboard and video lag you saw is all from the older beta versions, even the later CE versions that came out were much better. The program has gone through substantial changes since those videos were produced.

I'm just trying to save you some money here, dude. Put the money into maximizing your system RAM and a high-end gaming system. It will give you a much longer ROI.

John

 

[johnwhelan]

The Quadro K600 cards are expensive because they are certified for certain CAD programs. Typically they lag behind the latest equivalent conventional video cards in performance and I seem to recall that they are not so good at 3D they are aimed at the 2D market place. Dual GPUs need the program to be aware there are two of them, TANE probably isn't dual GPU aware so it will just use one.

Dual CPUs are difficult to balance the work load and memory, a single multicore might be better. TANE appears to use as many cores is it can get its hands on so a single multi-core CPU might be better. XEON or i7? I run a XEON because I prefer ECC memory but its a personal choice, I wouldn't run a XEON for any other reason and if you don't have ECC memory then buy an i7 its cheaper and you aren't paying for the extra bit of hardware to handle the ECC memory. Running Trainz ECC doesn't gain you very much, creating in Blender or doing financial calculations etc it gives you an extra layer of confidence that a bit hasn't flipped. For financial calculations you can just run them twice and if you get the same result assume a memory bit hasn't flipped.

Cheerio John

 

[beckster181]

I agree with John RAM of less than 16 GB is pointless in this day and age, I am running an EIGHT core CPU from AMD with dual video cards since my son upgraded them in his games rig to a single card with faster GPU and the same ram on the dual setup, Tane CE v 1.2 is a bit spotty at times sort of gives a jerk like someone hit the brakes hard and released them quick in a car but CE isnt the retail version. this rig is a few years old and built as a games rig and also for video crunching and as a hobby but tane works fine on it the big difference came when i recently updated the rem from 1333 Mhz to 1600 Mhz still keeping to the 32 gig amount. and remember they are now talking DDR 4 RAM instead of DDR 3 but i am reliably told DDR 4 isnt yet available in Australia and will be big bucks when it is and only some boards are using it those with the x99 chipset but will those use DDR 3 in the mean time till DDR 4 available i dont know.

It all boils down to:

what you use it for

how much you crave the fastest (usually the most expensive) capabilities and

how much you want to spend on somethhing that will be out of date within 2 years ?

We find staying one step behind the cutting edge will not detract too much from your system and will just about half the cost of the computer especially if you build it yourself as we do ( thats the hobby bit)

From what i have seen in using CE version of TANE any 6 core AMD chip or equal in intel (think that means an i7) with good video card any of the higher ATI HD cards 5700 and above or equivalent with 1 or 2 gig of GDDR 5 on it and 16 gig of 1600 mhz RAM (making sure to use all 4 RAM slots so you have full dual channel capabilities) and good cooling with a good cheap after market kit for air cooling of RAM north and south bridges CPU and Graphics card to keep ot well under its worry point will run TANE successfully.

hope this helps all that arent sure

Becky

 

[dstelley]

Well, this is all very interesting. My day use of this machine is mostly in CAD/CAM and I do a lot of video work on it. It really is a strong server in a PC frame (Lenovo D30). When I do my normal work, its very efficient. Its just T:ANE that seems to be bogging it down. TS12 didn't use multi core or multi GPU where the new version was going to. I'm hoping the final version is more efficient. I have a personal use with a decent setup and I'll likely use it more often but I had hoped this stronger one would really shine. Ahh Well.....

 

[johnwhelan]

Well, this is all very interesting. My day use of this machine is mostly in CAD/CAM and I do a lot of video work on it. It really is a strong server in a PC frame (Lenovo D30). When I do my normal work, its very efficient. Its just T:ANE that seems to be bogging it down. TS12 didn't use multi core or multi GPU where the new version was going to. I'm hoping the final version is more efficient. I have a personal use with a decent setup and I'll likely use it more often but I had hoped this stronger one would really shine. Ahh Well.....

What you have is a specialized CAD machine that is optimized for that sort of work. TANE has different requirements, the final version of TANE might run well on it but it wouldn't be my first choice of hardware for TANE.

Cheerio John

 

[clam1952]

Gaming performance wise the K600 roughly equates to a GTS340 which is a fairly ancient entry level card, Cad cards are just not optimised for games just as gaming cards are not optimised for Cad.

From Toms Hardware http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1649348/nvidia-quadro-k600-good-gamin.html

 

[davesnow]

How does my computer stack up?

Windows 7 Home Premium
Service Pack 1
Rating: 5.9 Window Experience Index
Processor: Intel Core i7 CPU 920@2.67 GHz
RAM: 8.00 GB
64-bit Operating System
Display Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

 

[KenRuof]

It will probably work Dave but I would assume you would have to turn everything down to min levels. Also disable shadows as of right now they are frame rate killers.

In contrast mine is the following
Windows 8.1
Processor: Intel Quad Core i7 @ 4.x GHZ
RAM: 16 GB
64-bit OS
Display Adapter: GTX970 4gb ram

I have all the video settings at max but I did turn off shadows and I have no problems.

 

[shaneturner12]

How does my computer stack up?

Windows 7 Home Premium
Service Pack 1
Rating: 5.9 Window Experience Index
Processor: Intel Core i7 CPU 920@2.67 GHz
RAM: 8.00 GB
64-bit Operating System
Display Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

I would suggest checking that your graphics card supports DirectX 11 - my Graphics Checker tool will help there.

Shane

 

[JCitron]

Well, this is all very interesting. My day use of this machine is mostly in CAD/CAM and I do a lot of video work on it. It really is a strong server in a PC frame (Lenovo D30). When I do my normal work, its very efficient. Its just T:ANE that seems to be bogging it down. TS12 didn't use multi core or multi GPU where the new version was going to. I'm hoping the final version is more efficient. I have a personal use with a decent setup and I'll likely use it more often but I had hoped this stronger one would really shine. Ahh Well.....

What you have is a specialized CAD machine that is optimized for that sort of work. TANE has different requirements, the final version of TANE might run well on it but it wouldn't be my first choice of hardware for TANE.

Cheerio John

To add to this, it's all about optimization within the GPU and CPU. With the video card Quadro cards and their like have chipsets that are optimized for CAD work and some video work. This chipset, in the case of the CAD cards, have the line drawing primitives already built in the ROM so instead of having to draw rectangles, circles, or hexagons, the CAD software, such as AutoCAD, will just send the information for these base objects or primitives. This is why they draw these things so fast. They also have different pipelining inside too so they are optimized differently than a game card.

If you notice too that the card, as Clam1952 pointed out, has the base chipset of the early GTX3xx series. With CAD-type cards, these do not advance as quickly because the workstation users want absolute stability. Game cards push the envelope then the CAD market catches up later using some of the same technology, but usually quite a number of versions behind. Keep in mind too that if you were to get the absolute latest Quadro, you'll be paying a substantial increase over the cost of a consumer card in part due to the specialized market, and the higher premium for the other technology. With 3d cars, they have specific drivers and pipelining setups that are optimized for 3d modeling, meaning they have the base geometry shapes prerendered in the card's ROM and like the CAD cards, can pull up the base geometry. These work for solid-modeling designs, and the 3d modeling software companies, such as Discreet and Pro-Engineer, have written specific drivers to work with the optimized chipsets and these cards.

The CPU might not be as much of a problem, but then again you're going to face bottlenecks due to the optimization. a Xeon is a much different animal than it's very close relation the Intel i7, which is based on the Xeons. However, then again, the Xeon has different branching instructions which are meant to handle high amounts of data and don't have the specialized instructions for game play and other consumer stuff such as theatrics and smooth playback.

If you want to spend this kind of money on a PC, look at the Intel Extreme series processors and maximize the system RAM along a decent game-level video card.

John

 

[davesnow]

I would suggest checking that your graphics card supports DirectX 11 - my Graphics Checker tool will help there.

Shane

Graphics Card DirectX Information
Generated by Graphics Checker by Shane Turner

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Graphics Card Dedicated System Memory(MB): 0
Graphics Card Dedicated Video Memory(MB - shared with processor): 501
Graphics Card Maximum Shared Memory (MB): 3835.55
Graphics Card Current Pixel Format: R8G8B8A8_UNorm
Feature Level Support:

Graphics Card supports DirectX 11 :False
Graphics Card supports DirectX 10.1: True
Graphics Card supports DirectX 10: True
Graphics Card supports DirectX 9.0C: True
Default Graphics card:True
The above graphics card does not meet the DirectX version requirement for T:ANE - T:ANE will not run in DirectX mode using this card

Detected OpenGL version for default graphics card: 3.3.11672 Compatibility Profile Context


It'll probably work in Open GL won't it? I have to use Open GL for TS12 anyhow--- doesn't work well in DirectX.

 

[johnwhelan]

If you want to spend this kind of money on a PC, look at the Intel Extreme series processors and maximize the system RAM along a decent game-level video card.

John

If you read his posts carefully you'll see that he already has this system and wondered if it would work for TANE. I don't think you can really say one way or the other until TANE final ships but I
suspect its sliders close to min time.

Cheerio John

 

[JCitron]

If you read his posts carefully you'll see that he already has this system and wondered if it would work for TANE. I don't think you can really say one way or the other until TANE final ships but I
suspect its sliders close to min time.

Cheerio John

I know he's been playing with his dad's system, but given that the video cards are the equivalent of a GTX340, it would behoove him to upgrade to something worthwhile. I agree right now his sliders will be at the lowest on the scale in most cases.

John

 

[davesnow]

Based on my computer specs listed above, would somebody please recommend a good replacement graphics card that would work good for me? Thank you.

Dave Snow

 

[LNERlover5]

Based on my computer specs listed above, would somebody please recommend a good replacement graphics card that would work good for me? Thank you.

Dave Snow

Considering their costs and your present hardware, Geforce GTX 960's or even 970's might not be a bad idea. I can't speak for bottlenecking, however the Nehalem i7's are getting on a bit now... If you wanted to go red then AMDs R9 290 series of cards are quite low in price at the moment compared to their release prices, with the R9 390 series of cards being projected for next month.

The card of choice will also require a decent PSU, however since you're already running a HD 4800 series card, it's safe to assume you have PCI-E connectors on the PSU (Unless you're using molex adapters).

Jack.