Sweet Spot

raymac1946

Old But Crafty
When I got my Dell XPS 8940 a couple of years ago I bumped up the specs a bit with Trainz in mind. Right now I have an i7-11700, 32 GB of RAM, a 1TB NVME drive and a GTX 2060 6GB GPU. I have set the graphics to High and I find that TANE, TRS2019 and Trainz Plus all run smoothly enough for my purposes. Mostly I stick to running short 1950s style consists with 40 foot boxcars, a caboose, and a GP7 or GP9 on the point. I do a bit of primitive route creation, mostly to learn about Surveyor S20.
Now I have noticed that some folks here have massive hardware compared to myself - 12 gen i9s, GTX 3080s, 64 GB RAM. I am curious as to what they get for that investment - higher quality graphics, lots of AI trains, bigger routes? I have been able to plug along quite well on the SnC route with a Coronation Scot consist and that is a pretty big route.
I don't have hardware envy or anything, but I would be curious to find out what most folks see as a "sweet spot" for running Trainz these days. My old rig had a i5-2320, 16 GB of RAM, a 1060 6GB and an SSD and I was happy enough with that.
 
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Well, many Trainzers use their PC for other uses too which might require more horsepower. I saw a video the other day where the guy threw a i9 12900k together with a GTX 4090 and was getting more than 400 fps in triple A games. But if you have the money and no significant other to answer to then more power to them.
 
I think your machine is above the average in specs but remember that the average user doesn't post very often. Currently I think the thinking is 10,000 in the 3D score and enough CPU to keep it filled, so typically an i5 is enough. You can check with task manager and see how much CPU and GPU you're using if it's 5% on both then you may have spent too much cash.

Cheerio John
 
I have the Dell 8950 with the water-cooled i9-12900K, 32 GB of RAM, a 1 TB NVME drive, and the RTX3080. I upgraded my RAM to 64 GB and put in a SoundBlaster AE-9 audio card and external controller. I got this system because my old custom-built system died, and the components were way too expensive to buy in the early part of 2022.

For Trainz, I don't maximize my graphics card settings and still run the program with the same settings I used when I had my GTX1080TI on my older system. The reason is heat. The case is so poorly designed that the RTX3080 runs at 75C immediately with the case closed and then starts throttling down when under load while running Trainz when the temps reach the maximum of 83C. To keep the RTX3080 from melting, I prop my case side open and lower the power limit on the video card to 85% and speed up the fans on the video card to 65%.

Due to the poor mounting for hard drives, I put my hard drives inside an Oyen 5-slot USB-C external drive enclosure. When I mounted my older 10 TB hard drive inside my system, it not only made the case rattle, but the drive also ran extremely hot due to the lack of air flow. I do have a small hard drive mounted inside in addition to the 1 TB NVME drive that I use for swap space. I placed my beefy page file along with my temporary files on that drive to minimize the wear and tear of the NVME drive.

Why all the beefy hardware? This wasn't just to run Trainz. My older i7-5960 did a great job doing that including TRS19 and TRS22 when those came out.I also use my computer to edit music and video and need the large disk space to hold both the data. If my UPS hadn't died and taken out my old motherboard, I'd still be using that machine.

Your system is indeed in a sweet spot and don't upgrade if you don't have to.
 
Just checked Task Manager while chugging along the Legacy of the Burlington Northern II route with a Geep 7 and a few boxcars. CPU was around 25% up to 40% maybe in populated areas. GPU around 40%. I have not have a problem with heat even though I have Dell's wimpy air cooled solution. CPU temps maybe go up to 75 C max. and GPU is around 60C.
 
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