PC advice

[kieranhardy]

Apologies but i think i'm back to asking for advice.

I've had the new pc a couple of weeks ago and i have to say i'm far from impressed with certain things but more than impressed with others. Before i start the graphics card is a Radeon ATI HD 5450 512mb one, i know i wasn't expecting miracles with this but i was expecting certain things below to work, intel core I3 550 3.2ghz processor with 4gb of ram on windows 7.

The good point is it's quick, and msts runs like a dream, which was originally something that i wanted.

The bad points are down to a multitude of different things.

Firstly the lack of vsync in windows 7 on non aero mode makes screen tearing an issue. The functions in the Catalyst control centre for my graphics card will not work for windows 7 (apparently with the way windows 7 is set it wont allow CCC to alter vsync) so i had to download D3Doverrider which has vsync to help this. One game in particular that has bad screen tear is Rollercoaster tycoon 3 when panning with the mouse. (the game itself runs fine) But of course if i apply vsync it takes my framerates down to my monitors max of 75, which then makes panning on the game juddery. I've altered settings but vsync causes stutter and screen tear causes the illusion of stutter.

The lack of vsync believe it or not is also causing an issue with flash player on the internet, some games on flash in window mode have screen tear, as i can't find a way of applying D3Doverrider to it i switch on windows aero which cures it, however the game will be smooth then 20 second later, will judder then go back to being smooth, the game in question is not intense on graphics in the slightest. Youtube on the other hand is cured when it comes to tearing with windows aero.

What has really annoyed me is how Open Rails & Rail simulator (the latter i didn't intend on playing, just wanted to see how it ran) react though. Upon installing RS i didn't alter the settings, if the camera is latched onto the train i get juddering, it also does this if i pan the camera slowly, however if i pan faster with shift it stops, as it does if i have the static camera on the train. I've altered all the settings since and nothing gets rid of it, i'm getting good framerates regardless of the settings, and i would have expected the issue to improve with details set to the basics.
Open rails is the opposite, at times trains passing the camera and on latched mode there is this odd judder sensation, even when framerates are in the 30's.

Would anyone know if a windows 7 process/service could be at fault anywhere that's interfering?

Is there any advice someone could give? I don't really want to buy a new graphics card as to do so i would probably need a new power supply too (the current one is 500W). As this was a new machine i'm rather against doing that.

RS & RCT3's scrolling seemed to perform far better on my old machine which had inbuilt graphics and 1gb of ram so i'm a bit miffed to be honest that these games that aren't exactly top of the line are having issues. The whole situation has made me sick to the stomach to be honest, i feel like I made the completely wrong choice with this pc.

Cheers in advance,

[LeeEAS]

Apart from the problem I had with the PC rebooting itself when I first set it up and some of my old games not running properly or at all on Windows 7, I have not had any problems with my setup, thus far.
However it is not easy to solve some issues, and others cannot be solved at all as the author of the game will not release patches for the next generation of Operating systems. I did put in as much effort as I could into researching to decide which top of the range components I could get for a reasonable price and also comparing what setups other people has so I could hopefully gain some understanding what worked well with what. I also checked how many of my old games would no longer on the setup, and how well new ones would on certain graphics cards and CPUs before making my final decision.
Unfortunately you have to sacrifice some old games from working to get better performance on new ones, although this should not be the case with RS and OR as you have mentioned.

I believe what you are getting in RS is the 'jelly cab' effect, which is a known bug. I have not experienced this in RailWorks with my setup.
As for OpenRails I manage to get 130fps on it but it isn't loading the trains properly so I decided to leave it until the next release before trying again with it.