Vid Card drivers

[Sly401]

Hi guys

Seen a couple of posts on various forums regarding using the latest Nvidia card drivers, seems quite a few people have problems using anything above 66.93

Now I always found that there always seems to be a "Best Driver" for each model of card regardlessof the sim/game I am using

Eg.
TI4400 and TI4600 always seemed to run best for me on 4?.?? detonator drivers.

FX5900 liked the forceware 6?.??

And now 6800 ultra was good with 66.93 but likes the 71.84 better

All these I might add are my findings in various Flight Sims

Now My question is this:= I get occasional errors with MSTS particuarly with the activity editor when I try and zoom in or out... and it seems to be vid related.. Does MSTS really not like the latest Nvidia drivers?

I ask this because all the posts I read concerning this were by people running 57xx or 59xx series cards and i would have recomended no higher than 66.93 for that series any way.. (if you were flight simming)

Only 2 weeks into MSTS so on a steepish learning curve...
Is anyone out there running a 6800 card? if so what drivers you using?

Thnx Sly

Apologies if this is wrong forum... quite surprising not to find a "Hardware" section

[GreatEastern]

In answer to you question, I am using a Nvidia 6800 utra card, and am using the drivers from Nivida 71.84, without problem.
MSTS with some of the new routes does require very good graphics cards and drivers.
Another problem is the large amount of memory required to run some routes. This means that you often need fast access from the hard drives, which I solved using two serial hard drives in what is called Raid 0.
Also I believe that once MSTS starts on an activity, it loads in more of the route as it goes, the reason for the serial drives, but it still keeps the route it has passed over in RAM. This means that you can run out of RAM on some of the larger routes. This can be solved using quick save every now and again.

[45002]

I put 1GB of ram in my pc Not forgetting XP likes a lot of Ram

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_71.89.html

But i have a FX5200,256MB GC plugged into the Brown Socket on my Mother board,Cant remember what the Brown Sockets Called

MARTIN

OH and have a ha ha at this

http://download.nvidia.com/downloads/nZ ... aphics.asx

[Sly401]

Thnx guys


Yep i have a pair of SATA raptors, maybe its time to stripe them again and see if loading during the game improves..

Really you have just confirmed my beliefs that Drivers suit cards not the application really even with MSTS

strange though that a current top line rig still has to work hard at running a 4 year old sim..........

Sly

AMD 64 FX53
NVidia 6800 Ultra
1 Gig Ballistix @ 5.2.2.2 1T
2 x Raptor SATA drives
Audigy Platinum

[Jonnie1972]

Hi

I came across driver problems with MSTS after an absence of approx 2years from the game.
I run a 6800GT card, so when I decided to get back into MSTS I was using the lastest drivers, at the time they were 66.93 and all was well, but when I was trying to do activities in AE, crash, crash and crash all the time, went back to 61.77, which I am using now and they work fine in AE.
Playing MSTS was never a problem for me, it was just in RE and AE.
Jonnie

[Sly401]

Yeah Thanx Jonnie...

My probs are with AE and RE also..
If I get to do any AE stuff reckon I'll do it on another machine...

All the rest of my stuff likes the 71.84

Thnx Sly

[chrisiveson]

I have two similar spec machines running MSTS, one's Intel, the other AMD.
I've found the AMD to be poor at doing the sums in AE whereas the Intel machine copes much better yet both machines run the sim around about the same.
Also, being a bit of a computer nerd, (I run seven machines, four desktop and three laptops) I've tried various setups for MSTS and found that it's not always the highest spec components that give the best results. Personaly I wouls stick to 1 gig of DDR ram and don't see the need to go over 128 Mb. of video ram. I think this is all due to the fact that it is an old program that did not utilize the available resources.
Looking at the original Kuju scotsman, it's a very poor model in comparison to the available superb locos of today thanks to the very clever model makers.
If only someone could build a new MSTS on which to display these routes and available stock!

Chris

[choccy]

You're spot on in very many ways, Chris. It's interesting you say the Intel performs the sums in AE better than the AMD! My gripe has always been that AE can't do it's own sums. Its calculated timetables are often way out. Whenever I design an activity I always compile the player train's timetable manually. It obviously takes time but at least it does the job much better.

I agree that increased spec machines do not necessarily give better results in MSTS, though quite what does is something of a mystery, though I think it meets with general agreement that the more memory the better. Again I would agree that 1 gig is enough.

One thing you seem not to have done is read the Trainmaster forum. Microsoft did for a time schedule MSTS2 but cancelled the project. At that point a team in which Tim Court, the author of Mid East, is taking a prominent role began to plan Trainmaster. If you read the forum carefully you will see that Tim advises us that it will be much more graphics intensive than MSTS and so, for that, it seems a quality graphics card will be highly desirable!

Now what sensible task can you give 4 desktops and 3 laptops?

Mark

[chrisiveson]

Well, I suppose I should say they're not all on at one time! Been building, upgrading and repairing PCs for a few years now. It all started with a fifty quid Amstrad from a market stall. Got chatting to the vendor, who later became a good friend and had started dabling like me two years previous to this purchase. Several more machines further on I am now at this present stage. In fact just this afternoon I've come home from work with a PC to repair and upgrade.
As a lorry driver I thought a laptop would be a good idea so got a S/H Sony Vaio but it turned out to be a bit heavy, so laptop number two was a nice small Dell with seperate floppy and CD rom. Like the Sony it was a 600MHz pentium 3 Number three was purchased so I could run MSTS on holiday in the caravan, that's a P4 3.06 GHz with dedicated NVIDIA graphics.
Three desktops in the Study/Computer room/spare bedroom (specially done out to accomodate PCs with all the extra sockets and workbenches etc. and this one I'm on now downstairs in the lounge alongside the Sony laptop.
I had seen snippets of the trainmaster but not really taking much notice (shame on me) as I remembered the original trainmaster and didn't think much of it (shame on me again)

Sorry for the long post, I could go on for hours

Chris

PS. All machines are on CAT 5 LAN through BB 2meg router and switching hubs, Dell laptop is WIFI and is in the bedroom (no network cable ((SHE said)) in that room)

[Sly401]

Hi guys,

Seems to be a common theme here,
I too have been building machines purely for Flight sims for years and at present have 4 machines linked on a network lowest is Athlon 2100 plus TI4600 and current rig is the FX53+6800 ultra guess I can't bear to part with em whenever I build a new one..

Wish there was something like FSUIPC for flight sims available for MSTS then I could run a second machine purely for sound

Have any of the other Train sims got a multiplayer element? That is what I miss most compared to flight sims

Maybe someone could design a group of activities that a group could run simultaneously as single player games together but keep in voice contact via Teamspeak coms... could do wonders for the community

Ah just Sly going off at a tangent again.. you'll prolly get used to that lol


Regards Sly

[SteveFranks]

When I bought RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, I desperately needed to update my drivers to get all the visual effects of the water, but the very last driver set for my Ti4600 card would crash my MSTS Activity Editor. I had to back down the list of latest drivers, testing about 6 to get one that gave me the newer effects demands, yet allow me to run older software like MSTS.

The last driver set offered by Gainward for my father's Ti4800 card worked well in the above situation, but he found problems with his computer puzzle collection. He ended up using the same universal Nvidia driver set as I.

[Iluka]

Hi All

This is a very interesting Topic with very good threads.

I have a Chaintech Ge-Force FX5600XT 128mb video card and I never have updated the drivers since I bought it in Jan 2004 upon the advice of my PC supplier.

MSTS runs perfectly and I just bought from the USA (last week) Real Flight Radio Control Flight Simulator G3 - the latest release with real physics 3D Flight Performance and it runs like a dream!! - they recommended 1GB of RAM which I have.

I am convinced that maximum RAM capacity is the secret to satisfactory MSTS performance and it is a lot cheaper than a new Video Card.

Kindest Regards

Mike

[Sly401]

Hi Guys

Perhaps someone could recomend an activity that we could use to benchmark MSTS... ?
I am new here so not sure yet which items stress out MSTS the most..

Tile loading and multiple sounds seem to be the main resource hog to me, however number of objects will come into this somewhere along the line (pun)..........

Not been google up any MSTS type benchmarks or performance comparisons.. but I find it hard to believe that no one has hard numbers to compare

Sly

[leezer3]

Anyone interested in graphics card drivers can't go wrong if you install the OmegaDrivers (Versions for ATI & NVidia) from http://www.OmegaDrivers.net
Basically, these give you a customised & optimised driver set that should work with any card & setup, with absolutely no probs. I've seen massive improvements over the default ATI supplied drivers using these on both a Radeon 9200SE & a Mobility Radeon 9000.

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.tk

[thenudehamster]

Just one thing to be wary of - some ATi cards have anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing enabled and emulated in hardware, and you can't turn them off - and that makes them incompatible with RailDriver, if you are thinking of using one.
PI are working closely with Nvidia on the development of the TrainMaster sim and updates to RailDriver - so that should hint as to where your gfx card priorities may have to go...