Terrible frame rates

Ekaton

New member
Hi, I just bought TRS2019 and the frame rates are terrible, it's much, much worse than TANE using the same maps. I'm getting, on average, around 15 FPS on the medium preset, with constant stuttering. Shadow, shader, post processing set to low and no improvement. How can I fix that?

My specs:
Intel Core i7-6700HQ
Nvidia GTX 960M
SSD Drive
16 GB RAM
 
Is it a desktop PC, try setting all performance sliders to minimum (and progressively work your way upward), as even a 32GB RAM, I9, with a several thousand dollar absolute top of the line video card, can be brought to it's knees with performance sliders set to full.

Try working "Off Line", disconnecting from the internet, when running Trainz
 
I would first determine what is causing the slow down. There are several things you can do to determine it. Bring down all you sliders and play in driver. If as you say there is stuttering, I would say the problem is not the graphics. Make a plain baseboard with nothing except the track and one loco. How does it play? Assuming you still get stuttering, Make sure there is no other programs running in the background. Disconnect the internet, run without antivirus, check performance of CPU, memory and determine if they run normally. How much memory has the graphics card? There are many things to check. Indeed, upgrading the card will help, but I run perfectly with a lesser card (1060GTX/6Gb) cheaper than the one suggested. As a last resort, do this: Install TRS19 on a USB 3.1 flash. Take it to a store that would allow you to plug the flash on a decent platform and see what happens. My T:ane runs perfectly out of such a flash, but only for trials and experimenting, because the poor flash will wear out pretty soon if used all the time.
 
The Nvidia GTX 960M makes me think this is a laptop.

For a comparison to a GTX 980M and relations check this out:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeForce-GTX-980M-SLI-vs-GeForce-GTX-960M_5999_6157.247598.0.html

Since these GPU's support the Optimus driver, ensure that the laptop is in fact using this and not a built-in Intel chip instead which doesn't have as much oomph to it as the GTX 960M.

One more thing to look out for, since this is a mobile chip, and most likely a laptop, check the cooling. There's a good possibility that the GPU is throttling back as it heats up and that is causing the stutters and slower performance. This is usually handled by ensuring the vents are clear of dirt and dust and a laptop cooler base with fans is used instead of placing the machine directly on the table, or worse, a soft surface such as a bed or couch.
 
Looks like it's a laptop, the GTX960M GPU is a mid range laptop GPU from 2015, so probably more like low end now, possibly with only 2GB, they come in 4GB or 2GB flavours, roughly equivalent to a Desktop GTX 750TI.

Possibly need to check the Nvidia GPU is being used and not the Intel which would be very slow.

May also be the game hasn't fully cached yet and or your AV's scanning everything on access which will cause stuttering on a low end system, so exclude TRS19 and your Userdata from scans.

Also run with the charger connected or the laptop may be running in power saving mode to save the battery.

Try 4000m for draw distance as a starting point and in game settings at normal and disable physX which has been known to cause stuttering.
 
To reinforce Mike's (Clam1952) advice:-
Make sure that the Game folder and subfolders are excluded from your antivirus checking. Trainz will load lots of files dynamically as you travel a route, any virus checking will cripple the load times.
Similarly, a slow hard disc will also be a problem.

Tane & TS19 put a lot of work into the GPU, on my desktop my GTX 770 reaches >70C with the fans howling if the route is complex. Check whatever cooking you have - many computers will throttle down to prevent overheating. Not a great problem for Word/Excel, but difficult when you're looking for performance.

Cllin
 
Thank you for your suggestions!

What surprised me was how terrible TRS19 works compared to TANE. I can play with good FPS and no stuttering, using the same maps (UMR 2019) for example, and with higher settings. Any idea why that may be? I was under the impression that performance is actually better for most in the new version.
 
Doesn't sound like its using the Nvidia graphics as in it's not auto switching, may need to set it up in the Nvidia Control Panel. Was a common problem with dual graphics a couple of years back.
How about disk space? if that's getting low that may not be helping.
It shouldn't run any worse than TANE usually it would be better maybe not much in the way of FPS but smooth even at a low frame rate.
 
Thank you for your suggestions!

What surprised me was how terrible TRS19 works compared to TANE. I can play with good FPS and no stuttering, using the same maps (UMR 2019) for example, and with higher settings. Any idea why that may be? I was under the impression that performance is actually better for most in the new version.

The sliders are a bit different, but the same. The set-points, I suppose they could be called, read the same but the settings are a bit lower. I discovered this myself with my own machine. You may have to adjust things down or up a bit to get that right balance for your machine since your GPU is different from mine.

Here's the settings I use for my machine. Try these as a base and work up and/or down from here:

Shadow quality: High
Main shadow resolution: 4096
Shader quality: Standard
Texture detail: High
Post processing: High
Water quality: High
Detail scenery: Clutter+TurfFX
Antialiasing: 8x
Detail update rate: High

Check boxes:

Check only Process objects behind camera

With your machine, I would be inclined to set the shadow resolution down and shadow quality down to medium, and set the Post Processing to medium or low.

In-game settings:

Run your draw distance at 4000 to 8000 range. This generally works well in busy areas with lots of detail. If you think about it, it's not worth using a long draw distance if there's nothing to see out there, and you're only making your video card and CPU work harder.

Check box for Process Objects Behind Camera

other settings.

Scenery Detail: Normal
Tree Detail: Normal
Post Processing: High

In addition to this, also follow the advice given on the antivirus. We've discovered this the hard way over the years. Antivirus programs salivate as each data file is opened. You see Trainz data, from any version for that matter, gets decompressed and loaded on the fly. As each and every archive and folder is loaded up, the antivirus program will scan that data causing poor performance.
 
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That card is your bottleneck: very low ratings on the card. You are not going to be happy with Trainz on that card. The GTX 960 (desktop) is much better performer than than the laptop version (960M), but even then, the 960 is not very good. UserBenchmark, out of 627 cards tested, rated the 960 at 93 out of 627, the 960M at 151. Trainz puts a huge demand on the GPU.
 
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