TS2009 More than 3GB?

[Approach_Medium]

Hi;
My aging system has 3GB of DDR2. I had considered an upgrade to the max the mobo (Asus P5AD2-E Premium) will support, but read somewhere that Windows XP (Pro) will not support more than 3GB.
If this is true, I would assume then, that adding another 1GB would do nothing for TS2009.

This system is nearing life-end at 5yrs, and I have already upgraded the video.
I really want a new system, but am currently unemployed, so it's out of the question.

I am planning to eventually install Windows 7 on this machine, and I expect that it will support more than even the 4GB max my board can.
But the question then will be whether TS2009 will run on Windows 7, and whether it will use all 4GB if I do upgrade.

Does anyone run TS2009 (SP2) with 4GB or more, and if so, does Trainz use anything beyond the 3GB that Windows will use?

Thanks for your help

FW

 

[Stagefright]

OK, there's two factors in play here. First, any 32-bit version of Windows (XP, Vista, 7) can only address approximately 3.5 gb of RAM due to inherent limitations in 32-bit processing, so assuming you have a 32-bit version of Windows, you're not going to see much improvement at all.

The other factor is, how much memory does Trainz actually use? I'm running Windows 7 (64-bit) with 8 gb of RAM installed. Trainz is running in another window using 547 mb of RAM according to Task Manager.

The bottom line here is: save your money toward a new computer. I don't believe the extra gig of RAM will result in any noticeable improvement. You will see a vast improvement running a modern pc with decent video etc.

My $0.02.

Darrel

 

[TheStoon]

Hi;
My aging system has 3GB of DDR2. I had considered an upgrade to the max the mobo (Asus P5AD2-E Premium) will support, but read somewhere that Windows XP (Pro) will not support more than 3GB.
If this is true, I would assume then, that adding another 1GB would do nothing for TS2009.

This system is nearing life-end at 5yrs, and I have already upgraded the video.
I really want a new system, but am currently unemployed, so it's out of the question.

I am planning to eventually install Windows 7 on this machine, and I expect that it will support more than even the 4GB max my board can.
But the question then will be whether TS2009 will run on Windows 7, and whether it will use all 4GB if I do upgrade.

Does anyone run TS2009 (SP2) with 4GB or more, and if so, does Trainz use anything beyond the 3GB that Windows will use?

Thanks for your help

FW

Hey there, its actually slightly worse - an app on 32bit Windows can only address 2Gb of memory, so that is Trainz current limit.

There is a way to compile a 32-bit app to be able to use more memory, but that would only be beneficial if you were running it on a 64-bit OS, or an OS that accepts the /3Gb flag. (This flag allows applications running under 32-bit Windows to address up to 3Gb of memory - but only if they have been made aware of it during compilation)

Even on a 64-bit OS Trainz will still be limited to 2Gb address space as it currently stands. This will be the case under Windows 7 too.

32bit XP itself does support 4Gb of address space, however - some of this is reserved for accessing hardware, so your usable memory will be somewhere between 3Gb and 4Gb if you upgraded the memory installed on your mobo - it depends on the hardware you have installed (Graphics Card, Network Adapter etc), and the way this is configured.


Steve

 

[johnwhelan]

Hi;
My aging system has 3GB of DDR2. I had considered an upgrade to the max the mobo (Asus P5AD2-E Premium) will support, but read somewhere that Windows XP (Pro) will not support more than 3GB.
If this is true, I would assume then, that adding another 1GB would do nothing for TS2009.

This system is nearing life-end at 5yrs, and I have already upgraded the video.
I really want a new system, but am currently unemployed, so it's out of the question.

I am planning to eventually install Windows 7 on this machine, and I expect that it will support more than even the 4GB max my board can.
But the question then will be whether TS2009 will run on Windows 7, and whether it will use all 4GB if I do upgrade.

Does anyone run TS2009 (SP2) with 4GB or more, and if so, does Trainz use anything beyond the 3GB that Windows will use?

Thanks for your help

FW

Your motherboard has an LGA775 has for the cpu. I wonder which cpus it supports and what you have installed at the moment. You might be lucky and it may accept a dual or quad core cpu, combine that with TS2009 that should give you a reasonable performance boost. I'm guessing don't go and buy one without checking tomshardware forums or some such place first.

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/...x?type=1&name=P5AD2-E Premium&SLanguage=en-us

Trainz is currently limited by a 2 gig memory limit plus say 512 mb for the operating system so 3 gigs is fine.

Run Belarc advisor http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html and see what you have.

http://br.asus.com/550/html/events/mb/socket775/p5ad2-e-p/overview.htm

Cheerio John

 

[Approach_Medium]

Hey guys;
Thanks for the help.
I have been "out of the loop" for quite some time in regards to hardware, and had completely forgotten about the limitations of a 32 bit system (2^32 is about 4.3 Gigs).
My mobo will not support dual core.

So, I think I'm going to go with StageFright's suggestion, and hold onto my money until I can afford a new machine.
By then, I should be able to get what I "need" for around 3G's or less.
And by then, there will probably be another version of Trainz that will be a lot more intense, and require at least dual core!

FW

 

[itareus]

FW

.......So, I think I'm going to go with StageFright's suggestion, and hold onto my money until I can afford a new machine.......

Very wise, upgrading 3 gb to 4gb RAM on a 5 year old machine is money down the drain.

.......And by then, there will probably be another version of Trainz that will be a lot more intense, and require at least dual core!.......

I think I'm right in saying that Trainz can already utilise more than one CPU core (but does not need more than one). Dual core PCs are about "minimum spec" these days.

TS2009 will run on Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit) - there are a few posts about this on the forums.

When you can get a new PC get the best graphics card you can, value wise, and make sure you have a decent power supply unit (500w plus?) capable of supporting upgrades later. Voice of experience here - I have just fallen foul of this one trying to upgrade the graphics card on a machine (bought for business use, not gaming) its 300w psu won't handle good graphics cards.

Cheers

Chris

 

[Approach_Medium]

FW



Very wise, upgrading 3 gb to 4gb RAM on a 5 year old machine is money down the drain.



I think I'm right in saying that Trainz can already utilise more than one CPU core (but does not need more than one). Dual core PCs are about "minimum spec" these days.

TS2009 will run on Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit) - there are a few posts about this on the forums.

When you can get a new PC get the best graphics card you can, value wise, and make sure you have a decent power supply unit (500w plus?) capable of supporting upgrades later. Voice of experience here - I have just fallen foul of this one trying to upgrade the graphics card on a machine (bought for business use, not gaming) its 300w psu won't handle good graphics cards.

Cheers

Chris

My current machine is in an Antec box (tower) with an antec TruePower 550W.
Perhaps, if the box, hard drives, CD/DVD drives, fans, etc can be re-used, I could actually upgrade at a reasonable cost.
Of course, the Mobo, CPU and video card are still going to be the most expensive components.

FW

 

[johnwhelan]

FW



Very wise, upgrading 3 gb to 4gb RAM on a 5 year old machine is money down the drain.



I think I'm right in saying that Trainz can already utilise more than one CPU core (but does not need more than one). Dual core PCs are about "minimum spec" these days.

TS2009 will run on Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit) - there are a few posts about this on the forums.

When you can get a new PC get the best graphics card you can, value wise, and make sure you have a decent power supply unit (500w plus?) capable of supporting upgrades later. Voice of experience here - I have just fallen foul of this one trying to upgrade the graphics card on a machine (bought for business use, not gaming) its 300w psu won't handle good graphics cards.

Cheers

Chris

Increasing the memory from 3 gigs to 4 gigs is a waste of time for Trainz on any machine no matter how old it is. Assuming of course that the 3 gig is configured to be dual channel if deal channel is available.

TRS2004 only uses one cpu core, TRS2006 makes some limited use of a second core, TC3 does better, TS2009 can make use of more than two cores under some circumstances.

You need to balance the cpu against the GPU somethings are done on the CPU some on the GPU. TRS2004 does alpha blending on the cpu. TS2009 in native mode makes much more use of the GPU.

Cheerio John

 

[SuperFudd]

fwassner,

I was about to get a new computer to replace my now 7 year old computer about a year ago but I was informed my days at the company were numbered so that was put on hold. I have been unemployed for 8 months now and it pretty much sucks, as you may have noticed. Searching for a job cuts into my Trainz time yet only 3 interviews so far.
My computer specs are below. Considering how well TS2009 works with 1 gig of RAM, I doubt that more than 2 gig would be worth while with XP.

 

[FootplatePhil]

fwassner,

I was about to get a new computer to replace my now 7 year old computer about a year ago but I was informed my days at the company were numbered so that was put on hold. I have been unemployed for 8 months now and it pretty much sucks, as you may have noticed. Searching for a job cuts into my Trainz time yet only 3 interviews so far.
My computer specs are below. Considering how well TS2009 works with 1 gig of RAM, I doubt that more than 2 gig would be worth while with XP.

Sorry to go off topic - I tried to send a private message, but it wasn't accepted. I don't give up that easily !..

I just wanted to express my best wishes to both SuperFudd and fwassner for a good outcome regards their employment.

Phil"

 

[SuperFudd]

Thanks Phil,

SuperFudd = DLSAFERatJUNOdotCOM

 

[geoffwilliams]

Your motherboard has an LGA775 has for the cpu. I wonder which cpus it supports and what you have installed at the moment. You might be lucky and it may accept a dual or quad core cpu, combine that with TS2009 that should give you a reasonable performance boost. I'm guessing don't go and buy one without checking tomshardware forums or some such place first.

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/...x?type=1&name=P5AD2-E Premium&SLanguage=en-us

Trainz is currently limited by a 2 gig memory limit plus say 512 mb for the operating system so 3 gigs is fine.

Run Belarc advisor http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html and see what you have.

http://br.asus.com/550/html/events/mb/socket775/p5ad2-e-p/overview.htm

Cheerio John

John
TS2009 allows 2GB ro be allocated for cache. Are you saying that it does not happen?
Thanks
Geoff

 

[JCitron]

fwassner,

I was about to get a new computer to replace my now 7 year old computer about a year ago but I was informed my days at the company were numbered so that was put on hold. I have been unemployed for 8 months now and it pretty much sucks, as you may have noticed. Searching for a job cuts into my Trainz time yet only 3 interviews so far.
My computer specs are below. Considering how well TS2009 works with 1 gig of RAM, I doubt that more than 2 gig would be worth while with XP.

Welcome to the unemployed club too. My workplace closed in July. I've gone back to college full-time. I had about 3 interviews myself with one of them where I was up against 38 other external candidates and one internal candidate. The other companies wanted to pay me far less than what I was making 16 years ago with no benefits!

So after seeing this trend in the workplace, I decided it was time to go back to school for what I always wanted, and I am now a music student at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. I will have my piano performance audition hopefully in December or January if everything goes okay.

Anyway back to topic, I have an Intel Quad-core that I purchased when CompUSA stores were going out of business. This replaced my Duo-2 that came with my motherboard. This update along with the 64-bit Windows 7, 4GB of RAM, good cooling, and my venerable 8800GTS. I can say that TRS2009 runs pretty well with few stutters and with the sliders maxed.

TRS2009 definitely makes use of the additional cores in the processor. I see a big difference the overall performance of the program compared to TRS2006 on the same platform.

I've been pricing out new hardware, but it's still too far out of my student budget at the moment. I'll have to wait until I'm working again. By the time that comes, there will be a whole new crop of hardware to consider and a new version of Trainz.

John

 

[johnwhelan]

John
TS2009 allows 2GB ro be allocated for cache. Are you saying that it does not happen?
Thanks
Geoff

Can you point me at the documentation that says TS2009 allows 2 gig to be used for cache?

The 2 gig limit is a compiler one in the compiler that creates the executable or basically fairly fundamental.

Cheerio John

 

[geoffwilliams]

Can you point me at the documentation that says TS2009 allows 2 gig to be used for cache?

The 2 gig limit is a compiler one in the compiler that creates the executable or basically fairly fundamental.

Cheerio John

TS2009->Start->Options->Advanced
Allows me to select 2048MB for the resource cache
Geoff

 

[johnwhelan]

TS2009->Start->Options->Advanced
Allows me to select 2048MB for the resource cache
Geoff

No idea sorry.

Cheerio John

 

[geoffwilliams]

No Problem, thanks anyway.
Geoff

 

[drrt4]

i hav 2 problems

i dont want to take this foroum but i hav a problem with sum content. 1: the acela express i got it to work in TRS2009 it works but its...glitched i can see right thro it. help: acela?
2: i hav alot of rollingstock but the passenger cars i downloaded cant load passengers? the ones that come with the game load passengers i dont get that? help: passenger cars. if u can help thank u.

 

[geoffwilliams]

Ok, I have done a bit of research and asked the techies.
To start with Windows XP and Vista 32bit can and will use memory up to 4GB,
64bit operating systems will allow 8GB.

Executed programs all run in a 2GB address space, the limit of the compiler, but the pertinent point is that all running programs will run in a 2GB address space, if they use more than 2GB they use the swap file.

Windows Vista will use 1GB of memory for itself, and more if it needs it and it is available. It will hog up to 2GB of memory at the expense of other programs.

So, if you are running Windows Vista, and antivirus program, modem software etc etc and have 3GB of memory, a maximum of 2GB of memory is available to Trainz, and this will often be less. Increasing the memory by 1GB will make certain that there is 2GB available to Trainz. It will run smoother because it is not having to swap out to the swap file.

Now for the resource cache. I am told that just because a program is limited to a 2GB address space, there is nothing to stop that program from allocating any amount of free memory for whatever tasks it needs. So it is quite feasible that Trainz can and will use 2048MB of memory for a resource cache. However, if you take into consideration the above, a 2GB resource cache and 1GB used by Vista will leave 1GB or less for Trainz to run in. So the allocation may never happen.

I read somewhere on the Razorback site that someone sets the cache at 64MB and allows the operating system to do the caching, so I downloaded the trial version of Fraps to see if I could determine a difference.

I concluded, that for my system (4GB RAM 512MB video card) there was no difference in frame rate whatever the cache was set at.
Hope this is of some help.
Geoff

 

[johnwhelan]

Ok, I have done a bit of research and asked the techies.
To start with Windows XP and Vista 32bit can and will use memory up to 4GB,
64bit operating systems will allow 8GB.

Executed programs all run in a 2GB address space, the limit of the compiler, but the pertinent point is that all running programs will run in a 2GB address space, if they use more than 2GB they use the swap file.

Windows Vista will use 1GB of memory for itself, and more if it needs it and it is available. It will hog up to 2GB of memory at the expense of other programs.

So, if you are running Windows Vista, and antivirus program, modem software etc etc and have 3GB of memory, a maximum of 2GB of memory is available to Trainz, and this will often be less. Increasing the memory by 1GB will make certain that there is 2GB available to Trainz. It will run smoother because it is not having to swap out to the swap file.

Now for the resource cache. I am told that just because a program is limited to a 2GB address space, there is nothing to stop that program from allocating any amount of free memory for whatever tasks it needs. So it is quite feasible that Trainz can and will use 2048MB of memory for a resource cache. However, if you take into consideration the above, a 2GB resource cache and 1GB used by Vista will leave 1GB or less for Trainz to run in. So the allocation may never happen.

I read somewhere on the Razorback site that someone sets the cache at 64MB and allows the operating system to do the caching, so I downloaded the trial version of Fraps to see if I could determine a difference.

I concluded, that for my system (4GB RAM 512MB video card) there was no difference in frame rate whatever the cache was set at.
Hope this is of some help.
Geoff

Sort of right but not quite. At the PC store or LAN admin level the answer you have is what I would expect of their technical level.

However a 32 bit operating system has to communicate with the PC hardware so uses hardware addresses to do this. Since the maximum that can be addressed by the address lines is 4 gigs roughly 512 mb of memory is disabled to allow the operating system to talk to the keyboard and other things in your BIOS. So depending on the motherboard 32 bit XP and Vista can use around 3.5 gigs of memory but not 4.

A 32 bit operating system normally limits any program to 2 gigs of memory, but the program can be compiled to access 4 gigs of memory under a 64 bit operating system. Technically under certain circumstances a 32 bit program is permitted to access more than 2 gigs of memory under a 32 bit operating system but you are getting very hardware / operating system specific including specific versions of windows.

64 bit XP, Windows 7, Vista can use 64 bit addressing dependent on the cpu physical address lines. 31 bits gets you 2 gigs, 32 bits gets you 4 gigs, 33 bits gets you 8 gigs, 64 bits can address a lot more than 8 gigs but you are dependent on the motherboard, memory controllers etc. Also specific version of the operating system may be artificially limited.

Vista basically will use memory for caching the hard drive if no program is using it but will run in 512 mb of memory.

Does this make any difference to Trainz well yes it's been muted and I think accepted by Auran programmers that the software could have its compiler switches changed so it still ran under a 32 bit operating system at 2 gigs and the same code would run in 4 gigs under a 64 bit operating system.

Cheerio John