Atomic Systems

I built myself a new desktop recently:

Intel Core i5 2500k
Intel DH67GD motherboard
520W Antec HCG-520 PSU
8GB DDR3 RAM
2x 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs in RAID 0 (which I'm running MSTS from)
1TB HDD
NVIDIA GT430 1GB video card on 301.42 drivers
Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1

I used a GT430 as I had one lying idle from an abandoned HTPC project, therefore it cost me nothing to try it. Runs MSTS absolutely sweet as a nut, have never seen it work so well. However, anti-aliasing doesn't seem to work on this video card at all. Any setting I apply for MSTS in the NVIDIA control panel has no effect at all. As a test, I installed an (intermittently faulty) 8800GT and when it works, it works perfectly, AA is applied as expected with no noticeable drop in FPS. I especially notice the aliasing on the rails and also on the sides of the Irish Rail 201s from the Making Tracks Irish Enterprise route.

Is anyone else having similar trouble? Or could someone suggest a video card which will work well? I'm half tempted to source a GTS 240 (which is a later OEM version of the 8800GT) as I at least know it works, but it's a few generations old at this stage. By the way, I know MSTS isn't GPU intensive at all, I just want something that will apply anti-aliasing correctly on MSTS, yet also be good enough to run RailWorks 3 well.

I'm afraid I can't help with the 430 but I have a GTX460 and use driver 296.10 and all control panel options function. 296.10 gives me the best graphics performance I've had to date with MSTS (subjectively, because I have no measuring tools) .

Dennis

I was never able to get this working properly so I decided to get another card. Got a second hand GTS 250 which is working 100% with what I need. I'm a happy camper.

Now, if only the darn thing wouldn't crash when I switch cabs...

Glad you're sorted with the card.

Which cabs are you having trouble with?

There shouldn't be any trouble cab swapping unless the consist you are running with contains an AI engine with no cabview (similarly if you couple up to a static dead loco with no cabview). We had this issue on the Greater Eastern route & a patch was released quite quickly to solve it.

It seems to be on anything I've tried, but I mainly use the Irish locos and rolling stock so it's mostly the Making Tracks Irish Enterprise stock and some freeware locos. It doesn't happen all the time - seems to only be when I've travelled a considerable distance and even then, that's not always enough to trigger it. I modified soundcfg.dat at one stage and that seemed to reduce the frequency of the crashes but not eliminate them.

I've had this problem for years in both XP and Windows 7 and have just gotten used to saving the activity before switching cabs, in case it does crash.