Wondering over specs for TS12

[nfotis]

The GPU is definitely weak; you can get something much more modern for around $50, maybe less on a good sale or rebate. As for the 80Gb hard drive...are you sure it's only 80Gb? If so, you're going to have a tough time fitting the OS and much more than a minimal install of Trainz on it as the OS may eat about 1/4 of that disk. A memory upgrade would be nice if you can do it, since the ability to use more than 3-3.5Gb of memory is the only major advantage of a 64-bit OS.

I'm curious to know the maker or motherboard of that machine: The components make me wonder about the age and upgradeability of it.

Hello again,

the idea is to start with the old PC (my current -ancient- desktop PC is an AMD Sempron 2.5 GHz, with an AGP Nvidia 5700le card, and running Linux on a 80 GB disk).

The motherboard is this: http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P965 Neo-F V2.html - it supports up to 8 GB.

My idea is to start with this machine, then upgrade the RAM to 4+ GB, and later to a card like GeForce 560 (after selling the GF 7950 GTX), finances permitting
(the power supply is 550W, so a single-GPU card should work easily).

My main computer is a laptop one (which I recently upgraded with a 500 GB 7200rpm disk).
In the desktop, I do not expect to use much more than the OS and Trainz in the 80 GB disk. Maybe I'll upgrade later to another disk, but I feel that 80 GB is more than enough.

Cheers,
N.F.

 

[RRSignal]

Well, GPU will make the biggest difference. More application-available memory may or may not help some but I think that will be a distant second in terms of performance boosters. Although Trainz can use up to 4Gb, I haven't seen Trainz actually use more than 2Gb and I don't recall offhand anyone else posting their memory usage statistics clearly demonstrating otherwise, though I'd love to see some data if it's available. I ran TS2010 for the first year it was out on a minimum-spec system with 1Gb of memory and, while adding memory helped, the difference wasn't nearly as dramatic as upgrading the GPU.

BTW, don't think you have to upgrade to a 560; frankly I think that's overkill. If money's an issue, and I'm guessing it is, you'd be far better off spending, say, $50-$60 for a GTS250 on rebate now from Tigerdirect, than buying a 560 in a few months or a year, even if the price drops by half.

 

[nfotis]

I suppose that moving to a quad-core CPU is not necessary at all, correct?
I like having a 4-core processor, but in practical applications rarely I used it.

My experience with Trainz was up to TRS 2010 on a GF 8800GT/512 MB, which was adequate (not great) on a 1280x1024 monitor.
I know that the 7950 GT is approximately 2/3rds of it (and using a higher resolution monitor will probably kill it), but I expect to use it as a stepping stone before a more heavy duty card like the GF 460 (which could be recycled in an Ivy Bridge system or similar in the future) - we'll see.

Any more ideas are welcome.

Cheers,
N.F.

 

[RRSignal]

Correct. Driver can only utilize 2 cores.

 

[ModelerMJ]

Hey guys, just wanted to say Thank You -- this thread helped me a lot as well.

Funny thing... I was researching a system and had actually decided on an XPS8300, but was unsure of some of the options and so started researching them. That brought me here, and it was nice to see I wasn't too far off base.

I too started with the low-end 8300, but tweaked it as I went. For example the 5770 graphics card was not an option (see how fast things change?) but there was a 6770. After reading up on that I discovered it's virtually the same card, there was just some re-branding for OEMs vs retail.

So what I ended up getting was:
Dell XPS8300
Intel Core i5-2400 @ 3.1GHz
4GB DDR3 @ 1333MHz
AMD Radeon HD 6770
1TB SATA drive
23" Wide Screen HD Monitor
Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Based on everything I've read, here and elsewhere, I think I'll be fairly happy with this.

Thanks again.

 

[RRSignal]

Looks good. I think you'll do well with that machine.

 

[chunky51]

im running i5 2.8 quadcore with 8gb ddr3 1600 ram with nvidia gt430 1gb graphics card with 4T harddrive this runs with all the settings allthe way to the right

 

[RRSignal]

Your graphics card is pretty weak. I've run TS2010 with all the sliders except AA all the way to the right on an i7 with a 430 (AA at 4x) and can reliably get 30 fps, though but I get much better framerates on XP with a GT240 on a 3.2 dual core, usually 60 for most routes. In other words, you'll get good performance with your current system, but you should get great performance with a better video card, provided your power supply can handle it.

 

[tomurban]

"Pretty weak" is a bit harsh. I am also running 2010 with an i5 3.2 Ghz 650 with 5Gb of dd3 ram @1333GHz and a msi gt430 (factory OC 800mhz). With all sliders at max, I get 30-50 FPS in DirectX. OGL is less running around 20-30 FPS. DirectX does seem to make a difference. OS is win7 32 bit. I have a dual boot system with XP and I am not seeing any differences between the two OS.

tomurban

 

[Red_Rattler]

Curious, whats the minimum operating system for TS12?

 

[WindWalkr]

Windows XP (with Service Pack 3).

kind regards,

chris

 

[wreeder]

MacOS X 10.5

William

 

[NitroStar]

Hello. So if all of y'all's PC's are running TS12 so well then why is my system running it like a slideshow (13-20fps)? I have:

AMD Phenom II 965 @ 3.8
12GB 1066 ram
Powercolor PCS+ HD6970 2gb graphics card
Corsair TX650W power supply
2- black caviar 500gb drives
1- 3TB storage drive
Windows 7 64bit
and NO antivirus or bloat.
My rig blows away any new game except TS12. My GPU usage is only 20-25%. There has got to be some tweak that I can change to straighten this out. Is it because TS12 does not run good with an AMD cpu? I have turned in a ticket but have not heard anything back yet. I have been searching for answers but have not found any yet. Thanks for anything.