Trainz 2010 run from a USB 3.0 key anyone?

[Lataxe]

I've reached the conclusion that the narrowest bottleneck in my PC when it comes to running Trainz 2010 is the data read & transfer speed from the hard disk hosting Trainz programs & data. I have Trainz running from a different internal physical disk from that hosting the O/S and sessions run at a reasonable (to look at) frame rate once the screen content has loaded. The CPU and GPU seem to do quite well.

But it takes a while to load a new session and up to 15-20 seconds for the screen to fully repaint when moving views between one part of the route map and another (i.e. when moving between drivers and their locations on the map). It is a 2560 X 1600 screen, mind.

I have just installed a USB 3.0 card into the PC and this certainly shows much better data read & write times when doing backups to an external hard disk. For example, a Samsung USB 3.0 external HD saves large files from an internal disk at the same speed as an internal disk-to-disk transfer of the same files. But the limit on speed in this case seems to be that of the Samsung disk technology (2.5" 7200rpm) rather than the speed of the USB 3.0 interface.

What I'm wondering is, would a fast USB 3.0 flash drive read & write data even faster? The theoretical speed limit for USB 3.0 is 5Gb/sec but the Samsung USB 3.0 external HD data transfer rate peaked at only about 95Mb/s (still 2-3 times as fast as another external USB 2.0 disk I have). If a USB 3.0 flash drive with an inherently faster data read/write maximum speed of its own could be found, perhaps Trainz could be located on such a flash drive to improve the load and screen redraw rate quite dramatically.....?

Anyone experience using USB 3.0 external drives (HDs, flash or otherwise)?

Lataxe

 

[whitepass]

My Trainz install is like 12 GB and I do not know of a USB flash drive that size. External HD use the same HD as internal ones so will be no faster.

 

[lewisner]

Q1. Is your PC SATA 2 or 3?
Q2. Have you tried running Trainz from the same HDD as your OS?
Q3. Have you thought of buying a 60GB SSD and running Trainz from that? This one on ebay is £75 used for just one month http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/OCZ-Verte...K_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item33720b0772
Q4. Your monitor is very large. What GPU are you using and is it powerful enough for a monitor of that size?

 

[Lataxe]

Thanks, both, for your replies and apologies for the delay in respeonding.

There are USB 3.0 keys now available up to 64Gb, which would be large enough for my Trainz 2010 and its content (just over 40Gb at present). I take the point that an SSD might be faster but the advantage of the USB 3.0 key is that its very portable and re-usable. But if it doesn't offer a Trainz data transfer/frame rate as good as that from an internal HD or SSD then I suppose it's a non-starter.

I have run Trainz from the same internal physical disk as that on which the O/S is installed. Trainz then runs no faster than it does installed on the (separate physical) data disk inside the PC. In fact, when run from the O/S disk Trainz seems to take a little longer to load, initially and when swapping between driver views within a session. I imagine that the disk access times are a bit slower if the same disk has to whizz its head about for both the O/S and Trainz data.

I don't know how to determine what interface standard the disks use. Is there a Windows system or device manager tool that can discover the disk interface type? I suspect it may be SATA2 (the motherboard is 2 years 1 month old).

The PC runs 64bit Win7 with 8Gb RAM. The CPU is an AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2Ghz and the GPU is a Radeon HD 6670, which has 1Gb of its own memory on board but can also annex up to 4Gb of RAM from the system to dedicate to graphics processing, if that RAM is not being used by something else. The GPU seems able to use system RAM, as well as its own, when Trainz is running, presumably because Trainz is only 32bit so cannot itself use above the 3+ Gb of RAM that is the 32bit program limit.

In all events, although a Trainz session is slow to load (initially but sometimes also when changing driver views) the frame rate seems smooth, even at 2560 X 1600 fullscreen. I don't have a tool to measure the actual frame rate but there is no jerking or stuttering after the first minute ot two of final session-loading has passed; the scenery flows past very smoothly. After a session has been running a while it also seems to swap driver views much faster, perhaps because the GPU is caching a lot of the relevant data in that system RAM it has annexed...?

There is some useful discussion in the forums concerning SSDs, particularly the type that doesn't connect via SATA but rather direct to a PCI slot. The SATA 60Gb SSDs seem about the same price as a 64Gb USB 3.0 key. But the PCI SSDs seem to be very expensive and also not quite sorted for all motherboards, at the moment anyway.

Perhaps the best strategy is to wait another 6 months whilst those PCI SSDs mature and become less expensive? Those who have managed to get one working with Trainz on it seem to be mightily impressed with the increase in Trainz frame rate, load times and general smooth running. They seem to offer an inherently faster data transfer route within the PC architecture.

According to various posters in the forum, Installing one of these PCI SSDs also seems improve the Trainz visuals much more effectively than does a faster processor or a better graphics card. Presumably it is the disk data transfer rate that is the major bottleneck when running Trainz, especially if one is using a 5400rpm disk over SATA2 as I seem to be doing.....?

Lataxe. woffling on.

 

[D94R]

My Trainz install is like 12 GB and I do not know of a USB flash drive that size. External HD use the same HD as internal ones so will be no faster.

They make them up to 256GB, but they are not cheap.