Best setup for Mac Pro to run trainz

I expect that few people here have the experience of using Trainz on this setup, but i thought I may as well ask to see what people might suggest .

I've been running trainz 2010 and Simulator 2 for Mac on an 8 core 2008 Mac Pro WITH 12 G RAM and two one 1gb radeon 5770's with a dual monitor setup , I had a lot of performance issues with TS2 related to stuttering even at very low graphic settings despite using the two radeon 5770 graphics card so have reverted back to 2010 . I am running pretty large graphic intensive narrow gauge routes.

Previously i was running 2010 pretty smoothly on this unit using a samsung 256 g SSD but ran out of space ( mainly due to Trainz content ) so have now been running it off a 1 td 7200 drive .

I also have experimented with windows 8.1 , purchased trainz versions TANE , 2012 and 2010 and attempted to run them well on an Acer predator i7 with 16 gb ram , ssd, middling radeon card with lots of v ram, but had huge issues with it crashing all the time, so went back to the Mac which is comparatively trouble free.

I've now purchased a 2010 Mac Pro six core 3.33 xeon processor, radeon 5870 card with 1g VRAM , 13g RAm and a 500 gd samsung 850 , the Mac pro has room for four drives , can anyone suggest what would be the best setup out of these two options ?
1. run osx on the 256 g ssd and install trainz on the 500 gb drive ( way mac osx accesses trainz kuids may prohibit this )
2. install the system and trainz on the 500 gb drive.

I am worried that I will , once again fill up even a 500 gb drive, Due to the way i "think" osx works with trainz ,i don't think i can move the whole program and all its attendant files onto another drive, although i can run the trainz app itself when the program is installed on one of my other drives

At the moment i have the following files in my user >library > application support > trainz folder.
201 gb of backups
93 gb original files,
local 14.9 gb
editing 8.26gb
settings 2.7gb
pushing around 320 gbs which all in all is a crazy amount of storage for one game and this is only trainz 2010.

Trainz mac2 actually stores its backup and other files in a library folder called Containers within app support, so far its 69 gb , presumably less backups and also less content in it so far compared to trainz 2010

Finally, would a nvidea card be a better choice for trainz as i believe they have better support for open gl , the new mac pro has a radeon 5870 which is a much better card than the 5770, but i would be prepared to go for a newer less power hungry gtx card if there were real benefits over the 5870

So- to summarize- i am hoping to get some suggestions for three problems here
which is the best drive setup ?
can i delete any of these backup files safely to free up space ?
and what does anyone think is the the best brand card to run trainz on the mac ?
i would most likely be running yosemite on this new machine , have been using snow leopard up till now. Snow Leopard is rock solid but its showing its age...appreciate ANY suggestions as theres so little Mac advice around for Trainz

I think you may be lucky to get the kind of detailed information you are looking for. This is the niche end, of a niche platform for niche software.

If you willing to "jump down the rabbit hole" you could run virtually any (Windows) [FONT=Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]GeForce 'Maxwell' based video card on your MacPro under OS X Yosemite by using "[/FONT]alternate" NVIDIA graphics drivers instead of using an "Apple approved" graphics card and drivers. In other words, you could use a (Windows) GTX 9xx card, for example. There's several threads on doing this sort of thing in the MacRumors.com forums. But it's the sort of the thing that's not for the faint of heart, some assembly required, batteries not included, YMMV, etc.

wva-usa said:

If you willing to "jump down the rabbit hole" you could run virtually any (Windows) GeForce 'Maxwell' based video card on your MacPro under OS X Yosemite by using "alternate" NVIDIA graphics drivers instead of using an "Apple approved" graphics card and drivers. In other words, you could use a (Windows) GTX 9xx card, for example. There's several threads on doing this sort of thing in the MacRumors.com forums. But it's the sort of the thing that's not for the faint of heart, some assembly required, batteries not included, YMMV, etc.

Click to expand...

I may well consider doing so . i've been looking at different card options anyway ,I found this post from oct last year "NVIDIA has released their alternate graphics drivers for OS X Yosemite 10.10.0 These are separate from the drivers Apple ships as standard, and should be considered experimental. These drivers have been known to solve OpenCL issues with certain applications, as well as providing better native GPU power management for certain devices. "
however does anyone have experience of nvidea working better than radeon cards on a mac ? i suppose if the card didn't improve things i could always install bootcamp on a dedicated drive and see if i could run TANE that way, might be a better experience than using the acer , or bung it in the acer and see if that improves things on that unit .

On the backups front, it has occurred to me that if i have the files backed up on another drive i can just reinstall them from from there if need be , i already have backup of backups, so will delete some old ones from application and see if it affects any routes i have currently installed.

just an update for those who want some info on this setup in the unlikely event that anyone else has a similar rig .
i have now purchased a 500gb samsung ssd and have installed train s2 on the drive . with the 5870 and the ssd its a much smoother , but there is still some stuttering on larger routes. however since it was almost causing 2010 to grind to a halt most of the time and was literally having to wait many seconds at a time for objects to appear both in surveyor and when running driver, the extra oomph with the card is welcome. it runs rollins pass fine but not my larger NG freelance i've been working on for a while now, which is about 80 boards . so i've just shelled out about $430 oz to buy a 4 gb nvidia gtx 970 4gb ram, this will run on a mac pro i understand , with just no boot screen . i will post some ram and cpu usage screenshot later on today and when i get the new card i'll make a comparison and let people know how well it works ( or not )

some images and frame rate info

To measure frame rates i used my apple id to navigate to the developer downloads section n (http://osxdaily.com/2015/04/02/monitor-frames-per-second-fps-live-mac-os-x/ shows you how to do this ).

I downloaded quartz debug and this allows you to see real time fps rates . With the radeon card at times i was getting 60 frames a second, BUT there were also times when it went as low as 10 and other times , when i was running two locos on different parts of the route , that there was a lag of seconds between one camera viewpoint to another . Locos took seconds to redraw and I got the invisible loco effect - with steam and nothing else appearing until there was enough info to render the object. not good ...

if you click on the link below are some images to illustrate the issue , this is a route i have more or less created myself using only one board from the NG tall timber route originally in trainz 2010 and extending it to 80 boards , its scrambled a bit since i ported it to 2012 , with a few obsolete textures and some items missing here and there. The track and train is fine in most places, but it may take years to complete it as theres a hell of a lot to do with texturing and completing the details .https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B...2tzcUV6bXdMclQ4Vk52QVlpZ2JRYWdxRUE&authuser=0

i had a look in activity monitor to see how much ram was being used, never more then 3 gb ( i have 13 ) so it would appear that on a mac at least 2012 needs a lot of VRAM rather than RAM to make things smooth out.

One thing that has occurred to me , i have edited some objects, locos and rolling stock too make them work in 2012, ( the assets had warnings about outdated meshes being less efficient ) could this be slowing things down ? I wonder ,as Rollins pass is optimised for 2012 is pretty detailed and it runs without any stuttering so far.

4 gb non mac graphics card arrived- installed with no problems,has been definite improvement with trainz mac overall smoothness of play but i am disappointed that i cannot get higher frame rates than 15 ftp. whereas had up to 60 with old card, however details are rendering better and fewer stutters . i'v been dropping lots of detailed foliage into the durango and silverton route and it seems to be managing that ok.
will probably buy new TANE mac version and try that out, also have TANE for PC with 16gb and decent card but haven't bothered with it yet, I will compare the two and report back .
no doubt hardly anyone is interested in this thread but will persist for sake of anyone else with similar setups.