Atomic Systems

Hello all! First post, so please be gentle...

Are the hardware requirements for RW or RW2 any higher than RS?

I've invested a fiver in RS (and a little more than that on a graphics card upgrade) and it's occupying my time very enjoyably, but I'm going to run out of scenarios before too long. It looks like upgrading to RW or RW2 would be a better investment, long-term, than buying the RS Expansion Pack; but my system is at best adequate for RS so I don't want to find that I've spent money on something I can't play at acceptable frame rates.

Apologies if this info is out there, but it's very difficult to search for Railworks in amongst all the RW2 stuff, and I'd appreciate people's actual experiences rather than just box specs.

Thanks!

Strictly speaking, no, but yes at the same time.

Running the default routes that were also available in RS should provide no more strain but possibly someone recently converted can provide a better comparison.

As for upgrading to RW or RW2, it makes no difference. Even if you buy RW, it has to be activated through Steam and you will be automatically upgraded to RW2 at no extra cost anyway.

You'd be as well telling us just what your system specs are, and are you willing or able to upgrade anything?

Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz (491 at cpubenchmark.net)
nVidia 7600 GS (236 at videocardbenchmark.net)
LCD monitor at 1280×1024 <edited to add>
2 GB
Win XP Pro 32

It's running RS acceptably with most of the graphics options set to low / off, although I've noticed a strange effect (e.g. with the Cl47 freight out of Didcot scenario) whereby the frame rate drops badly on long, straight, featureless stretches of track, but improves when approaching towns, bridges and stations!

I've just implemented some recommendations from the Rail Sim Performance Tweaking thread, but haven't tested it since.

Not hugely willing to upgrade further at the moment - I bought this video card to run RS, and I'm a bit limited by the AGP slot and the (Dell special form factor) 250W PSU so that was about the best option I could find; and a quick search suggests that the P4 is pretty close to the limit of the motherboard.

If RW isn't a sensible option now then I'll get a few add-ons for RS, and buy RW2 when I next replace the PC.

Thanks!

It's possible that the CPU is running idle for part of the time on the bare sections, which might be triggering power-saving measures, so you might want to turn *up* the detail a little to see what you can really handle. The graphics card should be adequate provided your monitor is not huge.

You should be able to run Railworks just as well on your machine, I think, but I wouldn't try running any of the bigger add-on routes or the Armstrong Powerhouse scenario packs until you can upgrade the hardware. Smaller add-ons like Port Road and Granfield (which happen to be free), Phorum Peninsula and Island Line should be okay. If you're feeling ambitious you might even try Falmouth, which even if you have trouble with the route itself, will add some useful items to your stock collection.

Thanks all! I fortuitously spotted the Steam Sale, so having bought RW2 for the princely sum of £12.49 I can confirm that it seems to run just as well as RS, and I'm now enjoying things like slightly nicer graphics and buffers actually working when coupling - plus enough scenarios to keep me going for quite a while now!