Best Gaming CPUs for Trainz - Q3 2017

PC_Ace

Hauling Heavy Pixels
What an amazing year 2017 has proven to be for PC enthusiasts in terms of hardware choices on offer!
AMD has finally delivered some serious competition for the incumbent market leaders in both CPUs and GPUs.
This has affected pricing - and the delivery of technology improvements ahead of their originally planned market introduction dates - to the benefit of consumers.

Exemplifying this is this article on "Best Gaming CPUs" by Toms Hardware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-cpus,3986.html

I'm really glad I held off upgrading my current gaming machine until now - it's still very capable and runs T:ANE really well, but its immediate future is to be relegated to just another of my networked support PCs, as I now have a clear insight into which
platforms and components my replacement gaming rig will include.

Now that the hype and hoo-hah associated with new product launches such as Ryzen, Vega, and 8th Gen Core i7 and i9 and X-series chips from Intel has subsided - we've had a chance to absorb the myriad of hardware reviews and build options and pricing combinations involved in crafting a rig capable of delivering optimal performance at 'a reasonable price' in demanding simulators such as T:ANE and Star Citizen.

Unfortunately for me, that resolve has resulted in my new rig being a replacement, rather than an upgrade of my current i7 4790K/ GTX 1070 platform: i.e. new motherboard and chipset, new RAM and cooler solutions, etc. and eventually, a new graphics card to boot. That's the only way I can concoct a gaming PC solution that's demonstrably faster than my current one - and one that will also serve my productivity and business applications needs for several years to come.

What about you? Which way will you choose to go if you're considering a new build?
How much does being able to run T:ANE smoothly and at the highest possible quality settings influence your decision-making and expenditure planning processes (as it does mine!)?
 
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I will be watching this tread with great interest as I will be building my new rig between Nov. and Dec. I too am having a tough time with CPU and GPU makers. Even choice of a chip set/ motherboard is proving to be a fine dance of trying to find the best bang for your buck.

I am an old school AMD ATI fanboy and now with Ryzen it seems AMD is back in the game, but Vega seems to be falling short when it comes to gamers. As it seems right now the 1080ti still seems to be king of the hill for gamers as the Vega is popular with the Bit Coin miners.

The budget for my new T:ANE rig is $2500 including a 27" 4K monitor :cool:. Right now I'm leaning towards an Intel/ nVidia rig. I like using http://partpicker.com to both view completed builds as well as specking out my new BFG :hehe:.

Dave
 
I'm thinking about upgrading my MoBo, CPU, and RAM soon, since my old AMD FX4300 is creating a horrible bottleneck for my GTX 1070. I'm thinking a 6th gen Intel i7, or maybe waiting until the 8th gen chips are around and getting a 7700K for a good price. I don't need the latest and greatest thing.

What do you guys think?

Matt
 
For TANE? Well at times, its cpu demands are legendary, ....

For my next build, there's only one way. Into xeon territory..
Damn the power plants, im gonna run tane. (famous last words)

https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C620/X11DAi-N.cfm
x11dai-n_top.jpg


And with 2 of these.. Should be enough i hope,,,.
https://ark.intel.com/products/120498/Intel-Xeon-Platinum-8180M-Processor-38_5M-Cache-2_50-GHz

56 raw cores at 3.8ghz each?
(that is, if you can manage to keep it cool enough to make every core run at turbo)






"Dear, the power plant called, they want you to stop playing Trainz."
 
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i built a 7700k build back in january with all the bells and whistles and had used intel for 10 years. i decided this past june to give amd a try and sold my intel rig and built a ryzen 7 1800x,the 1700 and 1700x will do just as good btw. i am extremely impressed with what amd delivered.tane loves cores, all 16 threads are in use when i am building my route. i am using the 1800x at 4ghz, 32 gb of system ram at 3200mhz, a gtx 1080ti, a 500gb nvme m.2, 2 500gb ssd's and a 6 tb storage hardrive on a 32 inch 1440p monitor. now that all the bugs have been fixed in ryzen i am in heaven. i absolutely love this computer, this pc runs tane better than the 7700k did, but i believe it because the ryzen cpu's have 20mb of l3 cache on the chip, sure extremely large routes take a min to load just like any cpu. to be completely honest i had considered buying the 8700k but i plan on keeping my 1800x for awhile, ryzen 2 comes out in january and will be compatible with my current motherboard. so my board will be good through the next 2 ryzen cpu's and i won't have to tear my pc apart.when intel decides to release an 8 core 16 thread cpu at a reasonable price, then i might go back to intel, but until then, i am staying with ryzen. this is my experience so far.
 
I'll stick with my i5 4690k and GTX1060 6gb for the foreseeable future, it's perfectly adequate for running TANE smoothly. I suspect that, along with myself, that many other Trainz users can't justify or can't afford to buy new PC equipment just for the dubious luxury of running Trainz!

Rob.
 
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I am returning to Trainz after a bit of a break (well, 5 years actually). Trainz has always required something not far of the bleeding edge for decent performance, so I was not surprised to find I needed an upgrade for TANE. Although I can run TRS 2006 really nicely on my 6 year old laptop, I am going back to a desktop for TANE. The cost of an apparently decent Trainz capable laptop is just astronomic! Below is what I have settled on (it's off-the-shelve, but without appropriate payment from the manufacturer the brand name is with-held :)).


My 2017 Q3 selection is just far enough off the bleeding edge to be almost affordable:

i7-7700 Processor (8M Cache, "up to" 4.2 GHz) - no 8th generation, no K, and no overclocking here
GeForce® GTX 1070 with 8GB GDDR5 (lots of nice GDDR5 - my monitor is 27" 1920x1080 HD, so hopefully should be good for 60'ish fps frame rates on most/all routes)
256GB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD (for Trainz, supplied content, and OS)
2TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive (for Trainz download content and more mundane non Trainz data)
16GB Dual Channel DDR4 2400MHz (8GBx2)
460W power supply - not a lot of upgrade potential, but fingers crossed, by my calcs should be adequate for supplied config
Windows 10 Home :confused: (since I currently run Windows 7 pro might be a learning curve)
sundry other bloatware and inclusions of dubious value.

Both this and TANE are currently being shipped. I will let you know how it pans out.

Phil

Oops, may have put this the wrong spot as I misread thread title. My reply more "Best gaming config for Trainz as at Q3 2017"
 
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I stayed with amd and went to a fx 9590 and loving the power it has. 32gb of ram and 256 gb samsung 850 evo, plus an Geforce Aorus 1080ti xtreme card.
 
An xeon will not run games very good.

I'm not sure I agree, mine coupled with a GTX 980 runs TANE quite well certainly sufficiently well for my needs.

A number of gamers use them as they can be cheaper than the equivalent i7 but don't have the integrated graphics which gamers typically don't need as the have a separate GPU.

Cheerio John
 
An xeon will not run games very good.

I'm not sure I agree, mine coupled with a GTX 980 runs TANE quite well certainly sufficiently well for my needs.

A number of gamers use them as they can be cheaper than the equivalent i7 but don't have the integrated graphics which gamers typically don't need as the have a separate GPU.

Cheerio John

If you look at how many pci-e lanes the xeon platform(2 xeons) has, it has double what a single i7 at best can have. (that is, if the lanes are not merged once they reach the pci-e cards)
Throw in two gtx1080s. I dunno.. thats smokin.

I suppose the only issue is finding a windows OS to support 50 cpus. (not sure if any versions of win10 do)
And if you use a server OS, it might not support directx? or the nvidia drivers?

Gosh i wish i could afford that motherboard and those two cpus.

I did some benchmarking on the system contained in my signature....
And found some helpful stuff.

Take a look at this blog if you wanna see how the system runs: https://forums.auran.com/trainz/entry.php?1636-Free-system-benchmarks
 
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If you look at how many pci-e lanes the xeon platform(2 xeons) has, it has double what a single i7 at best can have. (that is, if the lanes are not merged once they reach the pci-e cards)
Throw in two gtx1080s. I dunno.. thats smokin.

I suppose the only issue is finding a windows OS to support 50 cpus. (not sure if any versions of win10 do)
And if you use a server OS, it might not support directx? or the nvidia drivers?

Gosh i wish i could afford that motherboard and those two cpus.

I did some benchmarking on the system contained in my signature....
And found some helpful stuff.

Take a look at this blog if you wanna see how the system runs: https://forums.auran.com/trainz/entry.php?1636-Free-system-benchmarks

My xeon is seven years old and is a single CPU. It works fine for what I want to do.

Cheerio John
 
i don't know but for anyone on a budget, amazon has has the ryzen 1700x marked down to 290.00 usd for a couple weeks now, to me thats a heck of a deal, i have considered buying one just for my sons christmas gift,no matter what setup people are using, everyone should look at getting process lasso, it's free but has a pro version. you can shut down services and change the affinity mask of your cpu and dedicate all resources to what ever sim,game or piece of software you are using. probably one of the best investments i made. back on topic, the 8700k may be the new king for gaming right now, but it's the exact same tech as the 6700k and 7700k. lets not forget that without amd, intel probably wouldn't have even dropped the 8700k and the x299 chips so soon. that 8700k would have probably been 500 ore more without competition. my biggest problem with intel, they have the large premium price and then put toothpaste on the cpu's, terrible thermals.consumers shouldn't have to delid there cpu's to get the max performance out of them. i strongly believe intel does this because look at the 2600k, it's still a strong cpu, if it wasn't for the outdated chipset, it would probably be comparable to the 6600k or 7700k. intel wants consumers to tear there new 8700k's up or overheat them so they will buy a new one.when it all comes down to it, both companies just want your money.amd at least solders the ihs on the cpu.i also strongly believe amd has there ryzen and threadripper cpu's locked so they absolutely won't go over 4-4.2 ghz. i think ryzen 2 will bring higher overclock speeds to the table. what do you guys think?
 
My xeon is seven years old and is a single CPU. It works fine for what I want to do.

Cheerio John

After looking into it, Windows 7 Professional supports up to TWO physical processors, and up to 256 cores distributed over the two processors.
So someone COULD actually get that supermicro motherboard.


Hmm, lets see i need to find 27,000$, QUICK....

PCPartPicker part list

Other: Supermicro X11DAI-N Dual LGA 3647 Sockets Motherboard ($749.95)
Other: Intel Corp. Bx806738180 Xeon Pltnm 8180 Processor ($10797.63)
Other: Supermicro SNK-P0070APS4 LGA 3647-0 4U X11 Purley Platform CPU Heat Sink ($89.99)
Other: Intel Corp​. Bx806738​180 Xeon P​ltnm 8180 ​Processor ($10797.63)
Other: Supermicro​ SNK-P0070​APS4 LGA 3​647-0 4U X​11 Purley ​Platform C​PU Heat Si​nk ($89.99)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LED 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($304.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($449.99 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB SEA HAWK X Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($804.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB SEA HAWK X Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($804.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Thermaltake - Core P7 Tempered Glass Edition ATX Mid Tower Case ($299.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA T2 1600W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($448.89 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 7 Professional Full 32/64-bit ($134.99 @ My Choice Software)
Monitor: Asus - ROG SWIFT PG278QR 27.0" 2560x1440 144Hz Monitor ($639.99 @ Amazon)

Total: $26,413.99
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-09 18:42 EDT-0400


If I could, I would.
 
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why in the world would you want a xeon for trainz? xeon is for servers and large companies, thats insane.2 1080ti's? trainz doesn't even support sli i don't believe. i own a 1080ti and a single card is fast.
 
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why in the world would you want a xeon for trainz? xeon is for servers and large companies, thats insane.2 1080ti's? trainz doesn't even support sli i don't believe. i own a 1080ti and a single card is fast.

It depends what you use the machine for. Xeons support ECC memory which means the memory is less likely to get corrupted. More important for some tasks than others. If you're just running TANE you can just reload the memory from time to time no harm done but if you are doing something and saving the contents of memory then its more important.

Cheerio John
 
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