Would Trainz operate on a laptop/ Is laptop suppose to have 400,000 files before use?

[RRSignal]

How up to date are or is this graphic card(s)?
nVIDIA GeForce GT 650M (Optimus) + Intel® HD Graphics 4000.

The 650M is probably decent for a laptop card, but low-end for a desktop card. HD4000 is integrated - by itself, worthless, though I suspect you are looking at 3rd Generation Intel laptop or AIO, in which case it makes n difference since you would have the nVidia card to do the real work.

And also what Nvidia Ge-Force with three numbers on the end as shown, is equivalent to the 8600 or 8800?

Very open to interpretation with the 8800 but I'll assume you mean the 8800GS. There really isn't that much on the market that is that low. Maybe a GT220

And on a site note, would you notice any performance difference between say an i3 & i5? or i5 & i7? (And why do these "i" seem to go up every second number?) The most important question though is about the video card.

As mentioned before, raw, "clock speed" GHz will help the most with Trainz. There is little real difference between the i3, i5 and i7 themselves, aside from the speed (GHz) available out-of-the-box. i5 and i7 will have 4+ core, but that really doesn't help much with Trainz in Driver mode at present. With a decent desktop, you can bump (overclock) the speed of an i3 or i5 to meet or exceed that of a stock i7 (though the i7 can be sped up too) so it becomes somewhat of a wash and the real difference is mostly the number of cores you need - which is only 2 for most Trainz purposes. Some folks might argue that the 4 cores of an i5 (or 4+ of an i7) help with non-Trainz background tasks or the extra crap imposed by some operating systems. Overclocking is not an option with most laptops, All-in-ones, or many OEM desktops.

As for the use of odd numbers in the i-series, I guess that's a marketing thing by Intel.

 

[JCitron]

The 650M is probably decent for a laptop card, but low-end for a desktop card. HD4000 is integrated - by itself, worthless, though I suspect you are looking at 3rd Generation Intel laptop or AIO, in which case it makes n difference since you would have the nVidia card to do the real work.



Very open to interpretation with the 8800 but I'll assume you mean the 8800GS. There really isn't that much on the market that is that low. Maybe a GT220



As mentioned before, raw, "clock speed" GHz will help the most with Trainz. There is little real difference between the i3, i5 and i7 themselves, aside from the speed (GHz) available out-of-the-box. i5 and i7 will have 4+ core, but that really doesn't help much with Trainz in Driver mode at present. With a decent desktop, you can bump (overclock) the speed of an i3 or i5 to meet or exceed that of a stock i7 (though the i7 can be sped up too) so it becomes somewhat of a wash and the real difference is mostly the number of cores you need - which is only 2 for most Trainz purposes. Some folks might argue that the 4 cores of an i5 (or 4+ of an i7) help with non-Trainz background tasks or the extra crap imposed by some operating systems. Overclocking is not an option with most laptops, All-in-ones, or many OEM desktops.

As for the use of odd numbers in the i-series, I guess that's a marketing thing by Intel.

The differences between the i3, i5, and i7 have to do with the cache and the intelligent branching done in the processors. The i7s come with the most cache, almost like that found in the lower-end Xeons, and share many of the branching capabilities also found in the Xeons. The i3 and i5 were earlier models and have found their way into lower to mid-end machines and are really great for mobile platforms, although the latest generation of i7s plus the Ivy Bridge chipset appears to mute that. The latest i7ms have far less power requirements than the earlier generations of all these chips, making the faster chips a better choice today.

Remember when building a machine, or purchasing a laptop, you want to purchase something that will be future-proof for at least 3 years. Saying this means when spec'ing out a machine, you want to maximize your money on what you can afford at the time, and not cut corners on the key components such as video, disk, and processors. You don't need the extreme versions of the chips, but you don't want a low-end processor either. The same with the video cards. There are many different flavors of the cards out there. You want to get one that has the fastest speed and largest amount of memory without killing your budget. In many cases, the latest cards are not always the best. I find that going one generation back has been the most sucessful for me. I realize both a savings because they are last year's model, and also more stable drivers since the manufacturer has had time to tweak the drivers for the chipset. The other added benefit is the chipsets on the cards are now more stable because they to have gone through multiple revisions (steps) in the chips, making them more stable as time goes on.

John