Expected TANE performance on AMD Hardware

Hello all,

Just purchased the Deluxe Edition of TANE for 50% off over the Easter weekend, figured I'd try it out. Out of curiosity, I'm wondering if anybody running TANE has system specs similar to mine... I'm wondering what kind of performance I can expect. Running Trainz 12, SP1, for instance, I usually get FPS in the mid 20's to 30's range while running long 60+ car trains over the Donner Pass route (including being able to have the entire train and surrounding scenery in view). I have the draw distance and most other sliders set fairly high, most between 75 and 100%.

My specs...

Windows 7 Home Edition
1 TB HD, 778 GB free (this is where Trainz 12 resides, because of the abundant space)
~230 GB SSD, 83.2 GB free
AMD FX-8320 eight-core processor
AMD Radeon R9-270x graphics card
8 GB DDR3 RAM
750w (if I remember correctly) PSU
Direct X 11 installed

I have Kaspersky Internet Security (In low-profile gaming mode), Malwarebytes Pro, and CCleaner constantly monitoring the system. I've never tried disabling these while gaming, but would if it would make a difference in TANE. (Looking into stopping CCleaner from monitoring. Seems like it may be a waste of resources.)

I've read some things on the forums about some potential conflicts with AMD hardware... Does anybody know anything more about that? I will be getting a more up-to-date and more powerful system in the future, and may just put TANE away on a shelf until then if this system doesn't handle it very well.

Thanks!

I used to run it on an R9 280X and with shadows off (aka TS12 mode) 50-60fps 1080p is achievable without cooking it. Not alot of background junk, just MSE, but different people have different computing habits and associated safety measures so disable them if you feel necessary just remember to turn them back on.

Double that memory if you can afford it.

Get one with a non-standard cooler... the regular standard one seems to not keep it cool enough for some systems.

I have thought about upping the RAM to 16 GB, and also maybe upgrading from an 270x to a 290x, and upgrading the processor to the 8350, but am not sure if these upgrades would be possible with the current system, or if it would be more economically viable to just wait a couple more years and invest in a new system altogether.

A new system is a big decision so I'll leave that up to you, but a word of warning; the 290X is a power hungry beast and runs well over 90*c on the best of games, much less a poorly coded one like TANE which also isn't optimized for AMD cards.

Suggest GTX 970 or 780 for roughly the same kind of money.

Hmm... I may go for an Nvidia/Intel system the next time around... May see if I can just double the RAM to 16 GB with current system and give it a little boost, if possible. I have a M5A99x EVO R2.0 motherboard. Not sure if this system will support 8 additional gigs of RAM. I seem to remember asking the computer place that built it about the possibility of future upgrades, and they told me there wasn't much that could be upgraded.

d0g said:

Hmm... I may go for an Nvidia/Intel system the next time around... May see if I can just double the RAM to 16 GB with current system and give it a little boost, if possible. I have a M5A99x EVO R2.0 motherboard. Not sure if this system will support 8 additional gigs of RAM. I seem to remember asking the computer place that built it about the possibility of future upgrades, and they told me there wasn't much that could be upgraded.

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Your motherboard, according to this here, will support up to 32GB.

http://www.memorystock.com/memory/ASUSM5A99XEVOR20.html

John

Hmm... Would there be much use in going past 16GB? My last system had 4 GB, so what I've got now is already far above and beyond what I had last time around.

d0g said:

Hmm... Would there be much use in going past 16GB? My last system had 4 GB, so what I've got now is already far above and beyond what I had last time around.

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You can use a decent Nvidia card with that motherboard, actually supports Nvidia SLI as well as AMD Crossfire.
I use a GTX680 with an AMD Phenom 1090T + 8GB DDR3 on my second Rig and it copes well with TANE.

Would it make a considerable performance difference to install it to the SSD? It has around 85 gigs of space left, while my conventional HD has around 880. I currently have both a "Plain" TS12 install and a SP1 version installed on the D drive (conventional HD), and Railworks and another transportation simulator live on the SSD.

I have the FX 8320, with a nvidia gtx960, one 240gb ssd, and two 500gb drives, with 16gb of ram. I get decent frame rates, could be better if I had a 970 or 980 like mentioned previously. I barely use 8gb while doing normal tasks, but have yet to test that while actually running T:ane. In terms of an ssd, Desktops I have noticed do not really see much of a gain. I currently run it off of my western digital blue drive, been meaning to move it to my black drive.

I have stuttering on an asset intensive area - lots of things in industrial park. I put TANE on an SSD and no difference. There have been comments speculating about the xfer of data to the video card being a bottleneck given that its processor can be used for some normal tasks. My mother board is quite old - 5 years. Therein may be my issue. Just an aside that motherboard selection (speed of buss xfers) may be an area of interest for TANE.

boleyd said:

I have stuttering on an asset intensive area - lots of things in industrial park. I put TANE on an SSD and no difference. There have been comments speculating about the xfer of data to the video card being a bottleneck given that its processor can be used for some normal tasks. My mother board is quite old - 5 years. Therein may be my issue. Just an aside that motherboard selection (speed of buss xfers) may be an area of interest for TANE.

Click to expand...

TANE dumps a lot of processing on the video card and is probably optimised for Maxwell 2 GPUs (GTX980), nVidia is reputed to be releasing Pascal GPUs in June with better performance than Maxwell 2, I strongly suspect in the memory access. I might think about a GPU upgrade in July / August. If it helps TANE runs fine on my machine, GTX980 on a six+ year old motherboard.

Cheerio John