Graphics Card; What's the best bang for my buck?

If you want an affordable computer that can run TANE then get yourself an ex-lease quad core Xeon workstation. Being enterprise grade machines their quality is considerably better anything you can buy down at the local shopping centre. My two ex-lease Xeons have seriously good cooling and my XW8400 Xeon even has cooling fans for the RAM modules. If you want good performance then don't use the broken down mess that's Windows 10 and use Windows 7 instead. Windows 10 has far too many background tasks running which will just soak up your computer's performance capabilities like a sponge and every upgrade which will claim to be 'making your computer better' will only serve to knock back performance a little more each time; - that's if if doesn't screw up your computer first and turn it into a brick as has happened with some Windows 10 users I heard about recently from a friend in the computer industry.

As to a graphics card I have yet to upgrade mine which I hope to be doing soon, but my present one runs the 1930s Cornwall route just fine with the sliders set to 'normal'. I don't know about other routes as I don't run anything with diesels in it, or weird plumber's nightmare steam locomotives, or representing railways in strange foreign countries that nobody has ever heard of or would want to visit.

Personally, I'd rather run TS 12 at max settings instead of going for TANE. I've heard that TS 12 topped out looks almost close enough to TANE, and I'm not really concerned about getting extra DLC and what not. I've had plenty of ideas for building my own routes but I've just been limited with a really poor pallette and a lack of motivation to getting low-fi routes to work. It's, like I said, humiliating to run a route built for TS 06 on my machine and having it top out at 15 frames tops, dropping to like 8 every other second.

All I want is to have a better game experience, not have to upgrade my trainz version. As long as JR still supports TS 12 I'm there. It may be soon that they stop supporting it, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

For now, I just want a way to have a great experience for a low price rather than having to look at eye splitting and irritating slideshows. Everything in my computer is built for it, it's just my graphics card that needs help. Now I'm enlightened about power supplies and sizes and stuff so that's why I turned here to try and find a good card that won't burn up my computer and empty my wallet. I've heard windows 10 is bad and I agree that it has its flaws, but I'm not so sure about downgrading my system, and I'm not even sure how to do it if it's even possible. Considering windows XP's service ended only about 4 years ago, Win 7 is sure to follow shortly behind.

Thanks for the input though.

-Kai
 
To my great surprise TANE actually runs smoother than TS2012 on my set up so I'm going to carry on with it and not worry about trying to prod TS2009 into life anymore. All my actual world building is done on TS2009 3.1 which I think would run better than TS2006 and has the advantage of quite a lot of reasonably nice assets for it being available on the DLS. It does seriously sound like you need a new graphics card though if you're getting such appalling frame rates and just about anything would be an improvement. I'm going to be looking at Nvidia's GTX series for my upgrade and I'm still presently saving up my pocket money to buy a replacement for the Quadro 600 I'm using. The Quadro 600 is great for graphics work, for gaming not so much.
 
Personally, I'd rather run TS 12 at max settings instead of going for TANE. I've heard that TS 12 topped out looks almost close enough to TANE, and I'm not really concerned about getting extra DLC and what not. I've had plenty of ideas for building my own routes but I've just been limited with a really poor pallette and a lack of motivation to getting low-fi routes to work. It's, like I said, humiliating to run a route built for TS 06 on my machine and having it top out at 15 frames tops, dropping to like 8 every other second.

All I want is to have a better game experience, not have to upgrade my trainz version. As long as JR still supports TS 12 I'm there. It may be soon that they stop supporting it, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

For now, I just want a way to have a great experience for a low price rather than having to look at eye splitting and irritating slideshows. Everything in my computer is built for it, it's just my graphics card that needs help. Now I'm enlightened about power supplies and sizes and stuff so that's why I turned here to try and find a good card that won't burn up my computer and empty my wallet. I've heard windows 10 is bad and I agree that it has its flaws, but I'm not so sure about downgrading my system, and I'm not even sure how to do it if it's even possible. Considering windows XP's service ended only about 4 years ago, Win 7 is sure to follow shortly behind.

Thanks for the input though.

-Kai

Win 10 gives roughly 10 to 15% better frame rates than XP or Win 7 there is a game mode which helps and the drivers are better.

You should be using kuid2:69871:2004:2 as track by the way. Have you tried middleton for laptops TS12 on it yet?

Cheerio John
 
I've heard that TS 12 topped out looks almost close enough to TANE

Uhh? Whoever said that needs their eyesight testing!

Totally agree Malc. The only time that statement would be even close to true would be if you scaled TANEs video and performance settings back to minimal levels. But in terms of response times, FPS and other performance factors, TANE thrashes TS12. I once ran both in separate windows on the same machine using the same route and session and it was no contest.
 
Win 10 gives roughly 10 to 15% better frame rates than XP or Win 7 there is a game mode which helps and the drivers are better.


Cheerio John

I'd cheerfully give up a 15% boost in frame rates John if it means I don't have to put up with Windows 10's nonsense.
 
Tablet stuff can mostly be uninstalled, One drive and Cortana disabled likewise tracking if it bothers you, easiest method is to just use Winaero Tweaker which will allow you to decide what to get rid of.

Start menu can be replaced with an alternative, Classic Start Menu is the best one, latest version works in 1803 but not the Insider builds and the developer has given up.
However he's made it open source so it continues to live as Classic Start, currently in early beta and working in insider builds currently only available on github.
Best place to find out about Windows Ten is Ten Forums, where there are hundreds of tutorials covering every aspect plus a very knowledgable community. https://www.tenforums.com/
 
Okay so I'm still generally confused about all this... first I'm hearing to get a new machine, then don't get a good graphics card for my current machine or it'll explode, then TANE is better and I might as well upgrade, I just need a solid firm answer, no skimping around.

What should I do? Get a card that will give me a better experience, not kill my machine, and allow for better playing, or get a new computer? And if so, what card?
 
What is you power supply wattage ?

You can only install a video card that won't over power that wattage

In my case, a GT430 is the highest that a 300 Watt LiteOff® power supply can handle ... and it is a carpy video card

I need a new PC
 
Okay so I'm still generally confused about all this... first I'm hearing to get a new machine, then don't get a good graphics card for my current machine or it'll explode, then TANE is better and I might as well upgrade, I just need a solid firm answer, no skimping around.

What should I do? Get a card that will give me a better experience, not kill my machine, and allow for better playing, or get a new computer? And if so, what card?

In general depending on your hardware TANE will give you better frame rates than TS12 at the same distance settings using the same assets. However note the in general and since TANE is more dependant on the GPU you need to have a GTX 1050 or better to see this. On integrated graphics you may not see this.

Your current machine appears to have a 75 watt power supply. The only thing that might run would be a passive cooled GT1030 and I wouldn't chance it. If your machine had a reasonable power supply then a GTX 1050 TI would do reasonably well.

You have TS12, have you tried middleton for laptopsTS12? The link is on one of my posts. It should run smoothly and that is one of the problems it is not the game that is the problem but the content you are choosing. Having said that a GTX 1050 TI will give you a much wider choice. A GTX 1070 TI will give you even more choice at reasonable frame rates.

Cheerio John
 

Trainz stresses the CPU and GPU. On a normal PC doing word processing the CPU runs about 5%, Trainz it will be 100% which means a lot of heat. Most consumer pcs are not designed to handle the heat and the big box stores cut costs basically on good cooling and reliability.

It's not as bad as it used to be when machines running Trainz would cut out from over heating but that's why the Dell workstations are a good starting point they are built to handle heavy workloads. So yes one of these may work,note they have a GTX 1050 TI as the minimum but really steer you towards the GTX 1070. The most expensive one would be the one for TANE with a 500gig SSD and a 2TB hard disk but these days I'd go 4 TB hard drive and WD black for reliability, 5 year warranty. The hard drive is probably a lesser warranty one.

If you''re spending that sort of cash then I'd want to select the parts.

Cheerio John
 
In general depending on your hardware TANE will give you better frame rates than TS12 at the same distance settings using the same assets. However note the in general and since TANE is more dependant on the GPU you need to have a GTX 1050 or better to see this. On integrated graphics you may not see this.

Your current machine appears to have a 75 watt power supply. The only thing that might run would be a passive cooled GT1030 and I wouldn't chance it. If your machine had a reasonable power supply then a GTX 1050 TI would do reasonably well.

You have TS12, have you tried middleton for laptopsTS12? The link is on one of my posts. It should run smoothly and that is one of the problems it is not the game that is the problem but the content you are choosing. Having said that a GTX 1050 TI will give you a much wider choice. A GTX 1070 TI will give you even more choice at reasonable frame rates.

Cheerio John

What's middleton for laptops? Is it like a Diluted TS12 designed for low end computers?

Is there any way you can link it here?
 
Trainz is not for low end PC's ... I ran TRS2006 for years, and years, on a low end integrated graphics laptop, with framerates @ 6 - 16 FPS
 
What's middleton for laptops? Is it like a Diluted TS12 designed for low end computers?

Is there any way you can link it here?

Its available for download in the DLS .its a route, but one that makes few demands on your processor and GPU .
by the sound of things you would be best getting a second hand pc with better upgrade options. i bought a 17 inch rog 750 for $1000 and it was only 3 years old, this had a 4gb card and 32 gb ram as well as an ssd and two internal drives.
it would be much cheaper in the states. this ones only $529 and the card should run TANE ok, there are masses of desktops too out there that are cheap when used but eminently upgradable.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Fast-Gamin...687273?hash=item285d6673e9:g:gdQAAOSwruVa-31i
 
What's middleton for laptops? Is it like a Diluted TS12 designed for low end computers?

Is there any way you can link it here?

I picked up a refurbished laptop that had an i5 processor and intel series 4000 integrated graphics which had directx 11 so I played to see if I could get TANE to run on it. All the assets are 3.5 so will run on TS12. The i5 is powerful enough to run TANE and the GPU technically can run directx which is all TANE needs.

Because I knew there wouldn't be enough processing power for a lot of scenery I looked for a layout that offered other things such as sidings for shunting etc. It has very few scenery objects but they are big. Each additional scenery object carries about a 500 poly overhead so the station is a row of terraced houses that has had a couple of platforms added. The different parts are some distance from each other but that doesn't matter on the machine impact side.

It doesn't use speedtrees they just killed the frame rates but it uses a technique from the high detailed underframes that have been developed for the UK stock. Every wagon or coach except the goods vans uses the same undercarriage and Trainz is happy with repeating assets they don't cost much.The tops are very low poly and look very different.

It has coaches and carries passengers, it even has them waiting in the stations so for the heck of it I added cattle and sheep in docks that are visible waiting on the docks and they load onto cattle wagons etc. Chris Nawlins straighten the track out and built a very nice session in TANE that has about half a dozen trains running carrying passengers, sheep, coal, sand, gravel and cattle. He managed to get some fly shunting in his session but the session is TANE not TS12. The track is the lowest impact I could find. In TANE it gives 20+ fps on the laptop, touching 27 to 28 fps at times.

It has just one loco a steam engine which I created specially. Only 1386 polys or 2150 in preview but it uses the same wheels as the wagons and it has LOD. It's G15 loco with an engine spec from a larger loco.

The game engine will run on low end machines you just have to be very selective which assets you use.
I haven't try it in TS12 but there is no reason why it shouldn't run. TANE would probably give you slightly better frame rates if you have directx 11.

https://www.jatws.org/johnw/Middleton_for_Laptops_TS12.zip


I also have a canal layout that runs on the laptop as well. Barges don't have rotating wheels and are low poly. You can pick up the other assets from JATWS.org as well.

Cheerio John
 
Back
Top