Looking for input on upgrading AMD CPU and GPU

[d0g]

Hello all,

I am looking to upgrade my current CPU and GPU, and was wondering how I could expect Trainz to run compared to what I have now. I currently have an AMD Ryzen 7 2700x CPU and an Radeon RX Vega 56 GPU. I usually have to set Trainz 19 and 22 to half-sync and totally disable shadows to get smooth performance on high-detail routes. I am thinking of upgrading to a Ryzen 7 5800x CPU with a Radeon 6900xt GPU, and an additional 16 GB of RAM.

Would these upgrades likely cause a noticeable performance increase with Trainz?

Thanks.

[autodctr]

Your GPU is definitely the weak spot. I only use nVidia, but my old machine was a Ryzen 7 2700 with a RTX 2070. I ran 1/2 sync and didn't have trouble running shadows on a lower setting. And I use very high detailed routes. That machine had 16 gig RAM.

The Radeon GPU would be a good choice. If you already have 16 gig RAM, you would probably have a decent running machine by just adding the GPU.

[normh3]

Just a thought, you might consider replacing the GPU first and may decide your CPU is OK. I bought a RTX3060Ti last year and it runs Trainz fantabulous. (Yes I spelled it that way on purpose)

[autodctr]

+1 with normh3. I maxed out my RTX 2070, but never the CPU or RAM.

[wreeder]

To the OP, Just from the change in CPU you would see an big improvement but adding the GPU would be the icing on the cake.

[johnwhelan]

You can mix nVidia GPUs with AMD CPUs, there are a few things that the nVidia cards allow such as turfFX.

Cheerio John

[wilts747]

I think I would replace the GPU and wait out on the CPU and RAM until you see how things run. Trainz doesn't actually use that much system RAM unless you are multitasking at the same time, and although benchmarking one CPU against the other looks good on paper Trainz is so GPU dependant such results can be a little misleading. Forum members with 2081 GPU have reported turning back setting because of video judder so I think graphics perfection is a bit of a tall order when it comes to Trainz. It may be worthwhile however using system monitoring software to determine how your current system is doing and whether you actually utilising what you already have before buying more of what you are not actually using now. Peter

[autodctr]

+1 w/wilts747.........your bottleneck right now is the GPU. Again, I had a Ryzen 7 2700 with an RTX2070 and I maxed out the GPU. The CPU usage was high, but not maxed.

[johnwhelan]

You could try running task manager whilst you're running trainz. It puts an additional load on the system so don't run it all the time but it should show how much of your CPU, Memory and GPU you're using. Different layouts and assets will use different resources by the way. Asset preview will give you some clues as to what is going on. Assets without LOD will need more hardware resources.

Cheerio John

[d0g]

After quite a bit of testing, I've found that my GPU is routinely only getting to between about 80 and 90 percent utilization in Trainz 2022. My CPU usually has about 20-30%. Does this mean that something is already limiting my graphics card? I was under the impression that the GPU should be near 100% in most games, which it is fairly consistently in others that I've tested.

[johnwhelan]

After quite a bit of testing, I've found that my GPU is routinely only getting to between about 80 and 90 percent utilization in Trainz 2022. My CPU usually has about 20-30%. Does this mean that something is already limiting my graphics card? I was under the impression that the GPU should be near 100% in most games, which it is fairly consistently in others that I've tested.

Set the sliders up, choose more demanding content?

Cheerio John

[d0g]

The issue is that this utilization is the same even when the game is struggling in the 20-ish FPS range, regardless of how high I have the settings.

[Vostrail]

It's probably your CPU that is limiting performance. The 20-30% load that you are seeing is an average across all of the CPU threads, but you are likely to have one or two threads max'd out with others being only lightly loaded. While running Trainz, you can check by opening the Windows Task Manager. Then click on the Performance tab and, at the bottom left of the window, click on Open Resource Monitor. From there, click on the CPU tab and you can view the thread utilisation graphs.

[lewisner]

I'm about to replace my ancient (2018) Nvidia RTX 2070 with an RTX 12GB 3060 GPU. I did as much research as my brain could handle and it really came down to RTX 3060 versus the AMD 6700XT. Although the AMD card is more powerful than the Nvidia it is a power hog whereas the 3060 is very low on power draw. The thing about the 3060 is that it is available in 8GB and 12GB variants the latter being much better with 50% more VRAM and many people are ditching the 8GB version because it struggles to handle some high end video games.