Looking for technical advice on a performance issue

Performance on my PC for TRS2019 (96000) is "laggy". As an example, if I run the "Highland Limited" session in Kickstarter County 2, the loco drivers in the session pause on each revolution of the driving wheels. I don't recall seeing this behaviour during the beta testing although, to be honest, I didn't run that many sessions as my interests were elsewhere. No one else seems to be complaining of the same issue.

Progressively, I have tuned down all the performance settings so they are at their lowest levels. i.e. no shadows, no turf effects or clutter, etc. The behaviour is marginally better but still unplayable IMHO. I'm lucky to get 20-30FPS and the rate is often down in the "teens".

My PC is an Intel I7-4770 @ 3.40GHz, 32GB DDR3 RAM, a Gigabyte GTX 780Ti 3GB video card, and TRS19 is installed on a fast 2TB HDD. It's an older machine but no slouch.

My PC always ran TANE smoothly and, with VSync set to none, I could often get 100FPS or better. At Vsync set to half I got the usual 60FPS and it ran smoothly with the occasional blip for scenery loading.

So, I went back to TANE SP3 and found that the "lagginess" was also evident. The session and route was different but the symptoms were the same. FPS rates were way down.

At this point I don't think TRS19 or TANE are the problem.

During all this I had Task Manager running and CPU, RAM usage, Disk i/o, etc was unremarkable. GPU usage barely got to the high 40's (percent) and VRAM usage never topped 50%. The GPU was slightly busier in TANE.

So, I'm stumped why this is a problem. I checked and my NVidia driver is a little old at Version 398.11 so I'm currently downloading the latest and will install tomorrow.

This is not the first time I've thought my PC was a little slow. Early this year I thought my 2TB drive might be a problem so I bought a new 2TB Seagate. That drive works fine and, for a period, everything looked good.

I've been looking at the many processes running on my PC but none seem to be hogging the CPU or disk i/o.

I'm a little suspicious of Windows disk management. On shutting down I sometimes get an exception with File Explorer but I have all the latest Win 10 updates.

I can't see anything in the Windows event logs but I don't think I'm looking in the right place.

It seems to me there is a bottleneck somewhere that isn't evident in the regular Task Manager display.

Anyone have any ideas?

Try game mode and see if it makes any difference.

The other thing is do a full security scan.

Cheerio John

If you have installed the download on a HDD a defrag should help, with any Large trainz install, the disk gets very fragmented, Win10 will probably sort it out itself when it decides it's optimise time however I'd do it now.

Hi Paul - What's the default refresh rate for your monitor? Is it 120 Hz or faster? (You mentioned that your framerate when V-Sync was set to Half, you were getting 60 Hertz).
Congruity between primary display default rate and your settings in T:ANE/ TRS2019 is essential for smooth video performance.
Shadows are huge framerate killers, but your rig should be able to handle them easily.
What Draw Distance preferences do you typically set?
I have an i7-4790K brother to your 4770, and haven't noticed any real impact of Intel's mitigation steps taken for Spectre and Meltdown, though I have a little more headroom for clockspeeds on my K-series chip to compensate.
Suggest also check your memory settings, including provision for virtual memory/ pagefile settings.
After running a performance benchmark ahead of the original closed beta release of TRS2019, I was astonished to find that a previous Windows Insider update had somehow turned off my XMP settings, resulting in base memory speeds much lower than my Corsair Vengeance default capabilities. A visit to BIOS and reboot fixed this anomaly quickly.
The other thing to check is your antivirus and malware utility settings that prevail during your gameplay.
I find that I can leave my Windows Defender on at all times, but some prefer to add T:ANE and TRS2019 into their Exclusions list.
Hopefully the defrag suggested by clam1952 above and your updated video drivers from nVidia have already fixed your perceived lagginess in these wonderful programs, but if not, check out the settings I've mentioned here in your next round of testing.

My primary and secondary displays are both 60hz. The updated video drivers made no difference and I didn't expect they would. I'll investigate the other options although I'm not convinced a defrag is necessary. I imagine it might take forever on a 2TB drive.

I could move the TRS19 database onto a 256GB SSD and see how that behaves. The 256GB SSD used to hold my TANE installation but the amount of data I've had to download for CRG work has outgrown that drive!

The comment about the BIOS changes might be a clue. Can Windows change those settings? Windows did change a number of my preference settings, such as time outs, during the spring update or whatever the last major update was.

After the video driver update I went into TANE Kickstarter County and watched the large Chinese steam loco (payware) and the drivers behaviour was really weird. My best guess is that there is a data buffering issue.

pcas1986 said:

My primary and secondary displays are both 60hz. The updated video drivers made no difference and I didn't expect they would. I'll investigate the other options although I'm not convinced a defrag is necessary. I imagine it might take forever on a 2TB drive.

I could move the TRS19 database onto a 256GB SSD and see how that behaves. The 256GB SSD used to hold my TANE installation but the amount of data I've had to download for CRG work has outgrown that drive!

The comment about the BIOS changes might be a clue. Can Windows change those settings? Windows did change a number of my preference settings, such as time outs, during the spring update or whatever the last major update was.

After the video driver update I went into TANE Kickstarter County and watched the large Chinese steam loco (payware) and the drivers behaviour was really weird. My best guess is that there is a data buffering issue.

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It might just be defender or whatever AV you use doing an on access scan on each file as its loaded, I have all my Trainz stuff excluded however a few times after Win10 updates my exclusions have been removed.
Worth watching disk activity in resource monitor when running driver and see what other than TRS19 is accessing files, that's why I exclude Trainz stuff from defender.

pcas1986 -

My primary and secondary displays are both 60hz​

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Then your reported frame-rate when V-Sync is set to Half should actually be ~30 FPS and not 60 Hertz. (Which is why I mentioned this...)

Think you're on the Slow Ring too - Did you get the 17738.rs5 flight recently? Looks great so far and appears to be without any major issues.
After assessing it carefully for functionality and stability, I cheerfully had the Disk Clean Up utility perform a Full System Clean Up this morning to release about 35Gb of disk space occupied by the old Windows build and Defender updates.

How much space have you got on the C drive? I found that Trainz put a lot of folders in that drive and it left little space for the computer to use extra memory space. I moved all trainz folder to my main drive which freed up a lot of GB. The computer picked up after that.

C: drive 110GB free of 221GB. Don't think that is a problem.

My primary 2TB data drive was 1.8% fragmented but I did the defrag anyway. I was lucky not to do it until this afternoon as there was a power failure (rare) this morning. I was pruning bushes.

I've yet to investigate the BIOS and I intend removing a very old HDD (640GB) that I no longer use.

I did a system clean with Winzip System Utilities and it thought a couple of my drivers were a bit old. One of them appeared to be related to the PCI 16 slot that was interesting.

Yes, I'm on the slow ring despite MS suggesting I should go on the fast. I don't do bleeding edge any more. My current build is 17134.228. If I don't have any success with other "fixes" I'll go looking for updates.

All this takes a considerable amount of time. One of my clients is going to ask what I'm up to.

I should mention that it isn't only Trainz that is sluggish. I've been using Substance Painter and Substance Designer a lot this week. They are GPU hogs and sometimes come to a standstill when I add a texture node to a (PBR) material.

I think I've found the problem. While looking around in the BIOS settings I noticed that the CPU temp was at 91C. That looked a tad warm for my liking and the red bar next to the temp suggested the BIOS thought so too.

So I cleaned all the filters, put the power back on and the temp shot straight up to 90+ again. I have a Coolermaster CPU water cooler 120V that is about 3 years old and at that point I figured it may not be working. While cleaning the cooler radiator I did hear some sloshing so I assume there is some water in there. I couldn't see any evidence of leaks and, since it is a sealed system, there is no opportunity to top it up.

I turned the power on again but couldn't detect any water movement through the hoses with my fingers. Not sure if one is supposed to. At this point I figured the water pump might be U/S so I found the original, and unused, Intel CPU fan in the garage, removed the water cooler and put the fan on. It just snaps into place.

After removing the pump part from the CPU I noticed a trace of water at the join where the front and back halves join together so I think a seal is gone.

I fired the system up again and watched the temp in the BIOS and it got to around 44-45C and hovered around that value. I found a CPU monitor utility (Core Temp) on the internet and installed it so I could monitor things in Windows and TANE. My test TANE session is now smooth again. I've yet to try TRS19 and other CPU/GPU intensive programs.

I gather that Intel CPUs will shut down automatically if they reach a critical temperature although I don't know what that is. Mine hadn't done that but it was certainly misbehaving so I hope there is no lasting damage. I'd rush out and buy another PC tomorrow except I want to wait for the new NVidia cards. I'll continue to use the Intel CPU fan as I don't overclock so it should be adequate.

While typing this I've been watching the Core Temp program and the four CPU cores are running between 33C and 39C.

Paul,
If you're happy with your PC - apart from the CPU overheating - if you can find a compatible CPU replacement and just drop it into the socket.
Alternatively, now motherboard and CPU. You can probably use the RAM. All the peripherals should transfer easily.
The only disadvantage is that you'll have to persuade MS to re-authorise Windows...

Regards
Colin

ColPrice2002 said:

Paul,
If you're happy with your PC - ...

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At the moment I'm very pleased as TRS19 ran faster than I can remember. I'm amazed that overheating can cause these issues.

ColPrice2002 said:

...
The only disadvantage is that you'll have to persuade MS to re-authorise Windows...

Click to expand...

I've done that before because I usually build or rebuild my own PCs. Next time around I might buy a complete package with Window Pro.

Understood,

I fried one CPU a while ago (before the thermal shutdown being built-in).so I'm a litle paranoid about cooling for the CPU and GPU! - and making sure that the case has sufficient cooling as well...

My experience is that TS19 is smoother and gives higher fps than TANE - for the same route & session, using the same quality settings.

On my nVidia card (GTX 770), I can set "performance" which also makes a positive difference.

Colin

PC_Ace said:

Glad you worked out what was going on...
...​

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I intend to keep an eye on the temps over the next week or so but then I'll be away for three weeks. A replacement (CoolerMaster Liquid 120) costs about $100 plus postage but maybe I can buy one local. The Intel TS15A looks very similar to the one that came with the CPU although TS15A appears fractionally taller with longer fins. The original packaging for my CPU doesn't identify the model. Perhaps its on the unit somewhere. That unit has the fan speed control.

I'm not sure the old system is fixable. The hoses are plastic so not much give there and they may be hardened after 3 years. The leak, if it is one, is right in the centre of the cooling block. I'm not even sure the pump works. Curiously will make me want to pull it apart to see how it is constructed. If I screw up a repair I'm not sure I like the idea of water leaking on my video card that is directly underneath. I suspect the original coolant vaporised.

Since I intend to replace this PC as soon as the latest NVidia cards arrive here, and I have a better idea of which card is most suited for my purposes, I'll probably stay with the stock cooling fins and fan.

It's been an interesting exercise and thanks to all for the advice. I did make most, if not all, of the suggested changes.

That makes sense to me, since you are planning to replace the PC soon anyway.
Just monitor the temps closely, in the meantime, since I know from experience that the thermal properties for that stock cooler on the Haswell i7s are really insufficient for running intensive T:ANE/ TRS2019 scenarios.
In my case, I was running BOINC distributed computing tasks, involving heavy floating point computations concurrently on both my GPU and 4790K CPU, which frequently lead to thermal throttling when CPU temps exceeded 95C.
Replaced the stock cooler with a much larger one and I haven't looked back since. Temps hardly ever exceed 75 C even under the heaviest loads and most of time stay under 50 C.

Ouch! glad you spotted that, worse that can happen is it's shortened the life of the CPU a bit,
I avoid any form of liquid anywhere near electronics, I use a Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO which keeps the CPU nice and cool under load on the i7 and the Ryzen is just using the AMD Wraith cooler it came with which does a surprisingly good job so I haven't got round to fitting the spare 212 EVO I've got.

Is that the lurid red version?

I discovered that the replacement I found earlier was a more up market cooler with dual fans. Not sure if it will fit. There are plenty of other options so I might rethink this.

I've run TRS19 and Substance Painter and while the temps rose a bit they got nowhere near the 90's I was getting before.

I can't believe the difference in performance compared to previously. Its almost like having a new faster PC so I wonder how this heating problem has been going on.

pcas1986 said:

Is that the lurid red version?

I discovered that the replacement I found earlier was a more up market cooler with dual fans. Not sure if it will fit. There are plenty of other options so I might rethink this.

I've run TRS19 and Substance Painter and while the temps rose a bit they got nowhere near the 90's I was getting before.

I can't believe the difference in performance compared to previously. Its almost like having a new faster PC so I wonder how this heating problem has been going on.

Click to expand...

No just plain black, not into fancy colours, can fit a second fan however it's not needed, CPU runs pretty cool as it is, might be the 4 Case fans are helping though....

Think 6.5 inches seems to be the standard height for these large fan coolers.

i have a question while running trs19 my gpu is doing all the work my cpu is been lazy resault very laggy performace in driver and suvyour how can i set up the game to share the workload between cpu gpu.amd FX8350 8 core cpu radeon sapphire nitro RX470 8 gb gddr5 OC with 16gb ddr3 16gb ram running on win 10 64 bit.