CPU at the limit.

Ghost42

Well-known member
GPU and memory around 50% usage but cpu at around 90+% (I5 2400 @ 3.1 gig.) The helpful Lad I visited tonight said you need 16 cores, new mobo and memory, not too helpful!
Is there something I can turn down to help the poor ond cpu cope? and maybe shift some of the workload to the gpu?
TRS19
 
GPU and memory around 50% usage but cpu at around 90+% (I5 2400 @ 3.1 gig.) The helpful Lad I visited tonight said you need 16 cores, new mobo and memory, not too helpful!
Is there something I can turn down to help the poor ond cpu cope? and maybe shift some of the workload to the gpu?
TRS19

What's the GPU, it looks a lot like it's being bottlenecked by the CPU, GPU should ideally be at least 90% and CPU nowhere near 90% preferably as low as possible, Bottlenecking is when the CPU can't keep up with the GPU.

Although it could be some other program running using the CPU, check in Task manager for anything using a lot of CPU. Getting rid of any other programs that are running at the same time that are using the CPU, if there are any should help.

If not that then dropping the Draw distance may help, as will depending on the GPU trying mid setting for everything else and turning off PhysX simulation and maybe dropping antialiasing from 8 to 4.
 
What's the GPU, it looks a lot like it's being bottlenecked by the CPU, GPU should ideally be at least 90% and CPU nowhere near 90% preferably as low as possible, Bottlenecking is when the CPU can't keep up with the GPU.

Although it could be some other program running using the CPU, check in Task manager for anything using a lot of CPU. Getting rid of any other programs that are running at the same time that are using the CPU, if there are any should help.

If not that then dropping the Draw distance may help, as will depending on the GPU trying mid setting for everything else and turning off PhysX simulation and maybe dropping antialiasing from 8 to 4.

Thanks for the reply Malc, the gpu is a gtx 970, should be up to the job, the main fault I see is a very slow refresh of splines - loco gliding across the terrain etc, could be up to 2-3 minutes.
I will try those settings and report back.
 
withthw draw distance at 4k aaand settings as you recommended I now have cpu 65/70%, gpu 38%, memory usage 7.5 of 16 gig and running smooth.
 
Great stuff
Coincidentally I've got a GTX970 in my oldest PC which has an AMD Phenom 1090T @ 3.1Ghz which is slightly slower than your i5-2400 and that will run TRS19 on pretty much similar settings to what I suggested. I keep it just to check the route I'm building will work on lower spec PCs.
 
Great stuff
Coincidentally I've got a GTX970 in my oldest PC which has an AMD Phenom 1090T @ 3.1Ghz which is slightly slower than your i5-2400 and that will run TRS19 on pretty much similar settings to what I suggested. I keep it just to check the route I'm building will work on lower spec PCs.

Great idea Malc, its difficult to benchmark a route, I have kept the trees on a separate layer to be switched off if required.
The route has many industries and consists which are the priority.
Thanks for the help - a much more pleasant experience viewing it! :)
 
On one forum, a writer said that pressing the "pause" key caused the program to immediately display the image. I found that this stopped movement and my graphics card was able to immediately display the scene. When I switch from one area of my route to another, the program wants to first terminate all movement, trains, trees, grass, etc. Then it proceeds to display the new scene. I think this has to be corrected by a program change, it is not related to hardware or settings. My system has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti that is usually running between 35-45%, my CPU utilization is 20-25%. My GPU has 12.0 GB of dedicated memory and the program doesn't appear to be able to utilize more than 3.0 GB. Is this limited by the software? It pushes graphical processing from my graphics card to my CPU.
 
Last edited:
On one forum, a writer said that pressing the "pause" key caused the program to immediately display the image. I found that this stopped movement and my graphics card was able to immediately display the scene. When I switch from one area of my route to another, the program wants to first terminate all movement, trains, trees, grass, etc. Then it proceeds to display the new scene. I think this has to be corrected by a program change, it is not related to hardware or settings. My system has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti that is usually running between 35-45%, my CPU utilization is 20-25%. My GPU has 12.0 GB of dedicated memory and the program doesn't appear to be able to utilize more than 3.0 GB. Is this limited by the software? It pushes graphical processing from my graphics card to my CPU.

I think we need to know more about your system and what you're trying to run. My expectation is the memory on the GPU will be used in two ways the first is what do I need to display at the moment and secondly anything I have been using recently will be cached in the memory to save having to haul it out of the CPU.

It sounds as if there is a delay in getting the correct imagery loaded into the GPU. An RTX 380 TI needs a lot of feeding. Are you using an M.2 NVMe SSD if not adding one to your system and putting trainz on it might well make a difference.
So laptop or desktop? How much memory do you have on the CPU. Which CPU?

Then you get into the assets. If you run Middleton for laptops that should run smoothly. If it doesn't then that gives another clue.

Cheerio John
 
I think we need to know more about your system and what you're trying to run. My expectation is the memory on the GPU will be used in two ways the first is what do I need to display at the moment and secondly anything I have been using recently will be cached in the memory to save having to haul it out of the CPU.

It sounds as if there is a delay in getting the correct imagery loaded into the GPU. An RTX 380 TI needs a lot of feeding. Are you using an M.2 NVMe SSD if not adding one to your system and putting trainz on it might well make a difference.
So laptop or desktop? How much memory do you have on the CPU. Which CPU?

Then you get into the assets. If you run Middleton for laptops that should run smoothly. If it doesn't then that gives another clue.

Cheerio John

This is definitely not hardware because I have an i9-12600K, 64GB RAM, a RTX3080, and the program loads up from an m.2 drive. My data is stored on a large NAS-quality hard drive with a 64 MB cache and once the content is loaded, there's little drive access because of the system memory.

The thing is, we all see this, John in TRS19 and up. SP1 Patch in TRS19 helped a bit there and in TRS22, and Plus too. The problem, according to Tony is too many consists on the route. I have found, as I pointed out in the original thread on the same subject, is that if I un-pause while going from Surveyor to Driver everything loads up instantly. As everyone else has pointed out, pausing when moving about in Driver helps load up the assets quickly. Since this all worked perfectly fine before, this is a bug.

I have found that also some tracks are better than others and avoiding the Pro-track the most seems to help the situation but not 100%, so pressing the pause button when moving around in Driver and when exiting back to Surveyor to adjust a consist before continuing, pressing the pause button to un-pause the program before returning to Driver really helps.
 
Last edited:
I have a wild theory, probably not worth anything, but I think the GPU does the graphics but the CPU gets hit with the database chores. And I am not sure that the Trainz database is really optimized to rapid lookups which must pretty much be constant when running a route with a lot of changing assets. I have noticed that any work with assets, often even in CM, it can kick the CPU, and that has little to do with graphics.
 
Thank you for your comments John and JCitron. I'm with JCitron. My system is quite robust with an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor 3.20 GHz with 24.0 GB (15.9 GB usable) RAM running Trainz from an SSD. When I'm running Trainz I have no other significant processing activity going on. When I look at the Performance data from Task Manager, both my GPU and my CPU are running at about 1/3 of their capability. I don't see how it could be a hardware issue. Besides that, I didn't experience this problem until the last 6-10 months, so it appears to me that something in the program changed.
 
This is definitely not hardware because I have an i9-12600K, 64GB RAM, a RTX3080, and the program loads up from an m.2 drive. My data is stored on a large NAS-quality hard drive with a 64 MB cache and once the content is loaded, there's little drive access because of the system memory.

The thing is, we all see this, John in TRS19 and up. SP1 Patch in TRS19 helped a bit there and in TRS22, and Plus too. The problem, according to Tony is too many consists on the route. I have found, as I pointed out in the original thread on the same subject, is that if I un-pause while going from Surveyor to Driver everything loads up instantly. As everyone else has pointed out, pausing when moving about in Driver helps load up the assets quickly. Since this all worked perfectly fine before, this is a bug.

I have found that also some tracks are better than others and avoiding the Pro-track the most seems to help the situation but not 100%, so pressing the pause button when moving around in Driver and when exiting back to Surveyor to adjust a consist before continuing, pressing the pause button to un-pause the program before returning to Driver really helps.

I think the technical term is being on the bleeding edge. Colin was having problems with routes in TS19 and TS22, TANE seems much more stable to me.

Cheerio John
 
I'm giving up. On my brand new desktop, see signature, Trainz is gobbling up 96.5% of GPU capacity - while I'm doing exactly nothing. I've only got the Main Menu page showing (plus the Launch window). Graphic and video settings are down to Low, 2000m viewing distance, etc. In other words, two almost static Trainz images are enough to fry my motherboard. Don't tell me I'm doing something wrong here; it's the N3V developers who are incapable of making the game much more resource-efficient.

Don't tell me either that I should install a separate video card; I succesfully did that, and it allowed TRS19 to work well, but the card also destroyed my audio setup. Specifically, the second video card irreparably broke the Stereo Mix driver, which is indispensable for my audio and music production activities. I removed the card and had to roll back the system to a restore point where the audio still worked.

For me, the cost/benefit ratio of Trainz has become unacceptable. I'm considering stress, irritation, and time consumption to be cost too, in addition to the money paid. Sure, the benefits of Trainz can be high, in that it allows an outlet for one's creativity, and can be pleasantly absorbing if it is running well. But it rarely is.

Goodbye. I will be removing Trainz from my system.

52790296284_706b32c684_b.jpg
 
Last edited:
>Intel® UHD Graphics 730 just isn't going to cut it.

Most desktop machines these days use a separate graphics card.

Stereo Mix problems seem to be quite common. Try:

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-10-stereo-mix-not-working-or-picking-audio

I'll cross my fingers for you.

Cheerio John
 
+1 with johnwhelan........you need to get a decent GPU........what you have is very poor. Don't mean to insult you!
 
Thank you John, that's food for thought then!

By the way, no worries about my audio setup; I had already got that up and working again.
 
The Intel UHD Graphics 730 is an integrated graphics card of Rocket Lake processors. It features 24 EUs based on the Xe architecture (Intel Gen12 like Tiger Lake). The performance depends on the CPU model and therefore clock speeds. The GPU does not feature dedicated graphics memory, but uses the shared main memory.

Sadly the card is not up to the task. Technically without dedicated memory, the card isn't supported at all.
 
I see significant differences between TS19 and TS22+ on my PC. Both have the GPU (2080Ti) running around 95-100% but the GPU temp immediately goes up to around 78C in TS19 whereas TS22 temps are around 56C. Because of the temp jump the fans light up like a jet about to take off. The CPU (i9-9920) is barely awake with 3-4% utilisation.

The Main Menu window (with the favourite loco) always seems a bit intense for GPU and the fans. The temp, and the fans, drop off when in game proper.

Maybe a good reason to run TS22 rather than TS19.
 
Back
Top