I am relatively new to the MSTS world,and this is my first post. I am just about to buy a new pc as my existing equipment cannot cope with the demands of Dorset V4, Gt Eastern etc.
Can anyone advise on the best spec for a new PC to offer the best performance when using MSTS?
thanks
PC Advice - Graphics
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jbilton
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Hi
Welcome to the forums.
There's been lots of posts over the years about specs.
Basically the faster the HDs the better.
So Twin RAID 0 SATA 300 is best.
CPU best you can afford........anything above 2Ghz is good enough.
RAM 1024Mb or more.....faster clock the better.
Graphics card faster is better........ but anything above 128Mb ram on board is wasted..........better to check for RAM speed (triple rate is good)
Screen........... best you can afford.
Operating system WinXP, Vista doesn't currently run MSTS well.
Cheers
Jon
PS
So the above would set you back about £460, plus Screen
Welcome to the forums.
There's been lots of posts over the years about specs.
Basically the faster the HDs the better.
So Twin RAID 0 SATA 300 is best.
CPU best you can afford........anything above 2Ghz is good enough.
RAM 1024Mb or more.....faster clock the better.
Graphics card faster is better........ but anything above 128Mb ram on board is wasted..........better to check for RAM speed (triple rate is good)
Screen........... best you can afford.
Operating system WinXP, Vista doesn't currently run MSTS well.
Cheers
Jon
PS
So the above would set you back about £460, plus Screen
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thegoonden
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To reiterate what's been said....MSTS is predominately limited by CPU and memory bandwidth (inc HD access speed). While a better video card does still help frame rates, I would have to say that the difference between my laptop (1.6GHz, no 3D accel at all) and my desktop (2.1GHz and a tweaked nv6800GS, about the 2nd fastest AGP card ever built) is more in the "polish" (antialiasing, anisotropic filtering) than in raw framerate (though that IS still better).
The trick is to get textures from HD to screen as quick as possible....so fast HD's on a high FSB board, loading into the fastest RAM the board can handle (look at overclockers.co.uk it's the only site i know that lists the timings of all RAM, which are as important as the RAM's speed, even if you do not buy from them, you will be armed with info....3 3 3 12 is better than 5 5 5 15 BTW), and all feeding a high bandwidth video card.
While MSTS will not touch the advanced features of anything newer than an GeForce 2/3, and while it will not (by default) trouble the GPU on a modern card.....the faster the card, the faster it can fill the screen with textures. And as I said, you can bang up the smoothing settings. 16x AA and 16X AF is BEAUTIFUL in MSTS (and astounding in BVE).
The trick is to get textures from HD to screen as quick as possible....so fast HD's on a high FSB board, loading into the fastest RAM the board can handle (look at overclockers.co.uk it's the only site i know that lists the timings of all RAM, which are as important as the RAM's speed, even if you do not buy from them, you will be armed with info....3 3 3 12 is better than 5 5 5 15 BTW), and all feeding a high bandwidth video card.
While MSTS will not touch the advanced features of anything newer than an GeForce 2/3, and while it will not (by default) trouble the GPU on a modern card.....the faster the card, the faster it can fill the screen with textures. And as I said, you can bang up the smoothing settings. 16x AA and 16X AF is BEAUTIFUL in MSTS (and astounding in BVE).