Trainz on laptop??

R

railroy19

New member
Wondering if trainz will run ok on a laptop?
I may buy a new computer and wondering if anyone on here uses a laptop for trainz and how they like it. I have a great desktop but was going to use the laptop when away to maybe use the laptop to work on my routes in surveyor and then transfer the work to the desktop at home. Any comments or suggestions will be appreciated. Graphics cards, memory, Cpu.
Thanks to All:)

Bob
 
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Most people on the forum will advise you to shy away from a laptop if you have a choice. Other than the fact that they are not as easily upgradeable, there is a heat issue when running Trainz. All I have is a laptop, so I make do with it. When I run the sim, I have a board with a supplemental fan that I sit the laptop on, or else mine will overheat. Those can be bought on eBay for $15-20.

I've run 2006, and right now I'm building in TS2010. In order to make it work for me, I've had to turn down some things like draw distance, clarity of scenery, etc, or else either things won't draw, or you get screen stutter. Most times when you are driving in a loco, distance won't matter that much anyway.

The biggest advantage to me having a laptop is that I can sit in the family room with my wife and don't find myself at work during the day, and in the office building routes all evening. There are high end laptops, but you are going to pay for them.

Hope this helps,

Jim
HP 8530P, Intel Core2 Duo, Win 7 Pro, 64bit, 4Gb RAM
 
Laptop

I have a Toshiba Satellite L670, Win7 x64, 4Gb RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 5460 Video Chipset with 1 Gb RAM and 500 GB HDD. Works like a treat running TS12 with most settings at either mid range or full depending on which route I run.

I would probably suggest staying away from HP systems, they do not have a good rep here, generally classed as cheap and nasty by most buyers here. Toshiba's start at about $990 here, mine cost me $1485

Pretty good deal.

Regards
Peter
 
I have a Lenovo Z560 laptop with a Core i3 with dedicated graphics and it works very well. I can run ECML and get a reasonable frame rate, although I'd second the advice about cooling - get an external cooler of some kind.
 
The key thing with Trainz is to find a laptop with dedicated (as opposed to integrated) graphics. As a rule, stay away from anything listing Intel graphics or anything called "accelerated". You'd have to post here with an exact nVidia or ATI chipset in order to make a judgement call, but most $1000+ laptops with dedicated/discrete video should have a decent card. Oh, and if you're going to get a laptop with 4Gb or more of memory, get it with a 64-bit version of Windows.

I don't use a laptop for Trainz FWIW. I'm too cheap to spend that kind of money on any computer! :p
 
Get a desktop ... even a $ 3000 Alienware laptop is not truely desgned for gaming, let alone an @ $ 850 Laptop like the HP DV7 ... Which is not recommended at all.

Not too many laptops are for Trainz !

And Trainz framerates will be choppy on all laptops.
 
I'm very much a portable gamer.

New laptop: Dell Latitude E6410. 4GB RAM, 7GB page file. Onboard Nvidia NVS 3100M.

TS12 = flawless, much better than my normal home computer.

Jay
 
Thanks to All.

Well now I have some info to process.
Now I will have to start shopping.
I wanted to install the game in my wifes laptop and see how it works, but after being married for over half a century I'm smart enough not to make a stupid move like that!!;)

Trainz has already got me into enough trouble.

Bob
 
If you have a laptop, I have some good advice. Download this program called Gamebooster. It improves fps by around 10 or 15, but the only disadvantage is that the battery will end quickly. For now, I use trainz 2006 and classics 1 and 2 on my laptop. I am hoping to pickup trainz 2009 for my laptop around July. I am running trainz on a Dell Inspiron 1545 with 2.16Ghz and Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit operating system. I am slowly saving for a gaming desktop that could handle trainz with no problems. So that way, I can play these 2 copies of trainz on the go, and play trainz 2010 and any recent version hungry for good specs on a gaming rig.
 
JJDella said:
I get 200 FPS in urban areas Cascade, with everything on full, even trees on ULTRA

Jamie
Click to expand...

I don't know what type of super laptop you are using to get 200 Frames Per Second ... I can see someone getting 20 FPS on a good laptop, or a mediocre desktop.

I get 20-30 on my GF's carpy laptop, but when traffic and assests are dence, it falls to 4 FPS ... on my desktop it is @ 20-40 FPS.

Rarely does any video game achive 60 FPS, let alone Trainz.
 
cascaderailroad said:
I don't know what type of super laptop you are using to get 200 Frames Per Second ... I can see someone getting 20 FPS on a good laptop, or a mediocre desktop.

I get 20-30 on my GF's carpy laptop, but when traffic and assests are dence, it falls to 4 FPS ... on my desktop it is @ 20-40 FPS.

Rarely does any video game achive 60 FPS, let alone Trainz.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you need a new laptop. I can run Flight Simulator, Morrowind and Oblivion on mine, as well as Trainz, on high settings quite happily, and my machine isn't particularly powerful.
 
Would 2004 Driver run halfway decently on a small netbook?

Right now Celeron @ 2.66 ghz, 2 gig ram, intergrated graphics and Win XP 32 bit gives me AVERAGE 15-17 fps on the jet log when using surveyor. Overall machine is 2005 Dell Dimension 3000.
 
cascaderailroad said:
Get a desktop ... even a $ 3000 Alienware laptop is not truely desgned for gaming, let alone an @ $ 850 Laptop like the HP DV7 ... Which is not recommended at all.

Not too many laptops are for Trainz !

And Trainz framerates will be choppy on all laptops.
Click to expand...

I run a DV6... never had a problem. 30 fps almost all the time. $75 graphics card too.
 
What I am saying, if you buy an off the shelf Laptop from any ol' "Big Box" store, you might find 1 or 2 that would run Trainz well ... unless you modified it and upgraded the video card with a replacement.

Seems that buying a decient laptop is still a very confusing chore. Few salesmen in a store even know what type of CPU Chip & Processor Speed is, and what type of video card it has. They look at you clueless ! And say: "Oh ... You need the Quad Core I7".
 
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Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but if you are going to run Trainz on a laptop, 2004 and 2006 are single threaded meaning running it on a dual or multiple core processor does no good. It only runs on one processor.

Trainz 2010 and I would believe 2012 is multi-threaded and will use two processors. I have a Dual Core machine and mine both stay busy fairly evenly running 2010. I don't know how a quad core machine would handle the processes.

I monitor my processor usage and core CPU temp with a free utility called Core Temp. It's a pretty neat utility to have
 
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