Atomic Systems

Really hacking me off with these seemingly no apparent reason for happening SBHH's!!!! Could any of you dear posters that never have these, post what systems you own please just so's I can get a picture, now I do not want esoteric systems which would be out of my reach but middling systems that seem to be successful in avoiding the dreaded ding?

4850 512Mb (default clocks)
Intel Q6600 quad core running at 2.7Ghz (instead of 2.4Ghz)
Windows 7 64bit
4Gb RAM
1Tb HDD
All in a small form factor case (a Shuttle case)

*edit start - added game settings info*
TSX enabled
FXAA enabled
In game settings set to low for most items except shadows to medium or high depending on route (I like the shadows so sacrifice other things to allow me to turn shadows on)
*edit end*


I used to get a lot of SBHH but it is relatively rare now and only tends to be after many hours editing or when I am messing with BIN files or RWTools tweaks to scenarios. My version of TS2012 is only default content + DLC I have purchased plus items I need for the Mayflower line or TPR and then of course the Freeware Packs.

I don't install anything else.

I have no idea if you have a relatively controlled TS2012 install or not but since I became stricter and more careful about what I install I have had far fewer problems and nothing has changed in terms of my computer spec.

Don't get me wrong I am not saying this is the cause of every problem. Not at all. I am giving my experiences which for me have been greatly improved since I became much stricter about what I install. My computer has not changed just my behaviour

Hope that helps. As you can see my spec is nothing amazing. It is all over 3 years old I think. The only issue I have is with heat as the Small Form Factor case is not a fan of RW maxing my graphics card out. No problems in any other game just in RW. The initial screen where you can choose to "Drive a train" or "Drive by Route" max's my machine so much it sometimes gets too hot. Strange that the graphics card works harder in the loading menus than in the game but it has always been like that with RW/RW2/TS2012. An interesting feature of the game shall we say

One SBHH in 100 hours with TS2012, and that was in the first couple of days on Portsmouth Direct.

i3 540 overclocked to 4.4Ghz
ATI 6850 graphics card
Windows 7 64 Bit
4GB RAM
1TB HDD

Mostly I run DLC rather than freeware.

nobkins wrote:4850 512Mb (default clocks)
Intel Q6600 quad core running at 2.7Ghz (instead of 2.4Ghz)
Windows 7 64bit
4Gb RAM
1Tb HDD
All in a small form factor case (a Shuttle case)

I used to get a lot of SBHH but it is relatively rare now and only tends to be after many hours editing or when I am messing with BIN files or RWTools tweaks to scenarios. My version of TS2012 is only default content + DLC I have purchased plus items I need for the Mayflower line or TPR and then of course the Freeware Packs.

I don't install anything else.

I have no idea if you have a relatively controlled TS2012 install or not but since I became stricter and more carefulk about what I install I have had far fewer problems and nothing has changed in terms of my computer spec.

Don't get me wrong I am not saying this is the cause of every problem. Not at all. I am giving my experiences which for me have been greatly improved since I became much stricter about what I install. My computer has not changed just my behaviour

Hope that helps. As you can see my spec is nothing amazing. It is all over 3 years old I think. The only issue I have is with heat as the Small Form Factor case is not a fan of RW maxing my graphics card out. No problems in any other game just in RW the initial screen where you can choose to "Drive a train" or "Drive by Route" max's my machine so much it sometimes gets too hot. Strange that the graphics card works harder in the loading menus than in the game but it has always been like that with RW/RW2/TS2012. An interesting feature of the game shall we say

I have a pretty modest system with a lot of additional content installed

HP a6541.uk
Processor: AMD Phenom 8450 Triple-Core Processor 2.10GHz
RAM: 4GB
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium (64bit)

The size of my Railworks folder is just over 100GB. I have not had an SBHH when driving for very long time, except on WCML after the update which was down to a bad asset download (i.e. a verify cache fixed it) although I occasionally get them in the editor; particularly if flying around at great speed causes too many assets to be loaded in too short a time

In came settings are TSX on, passenger and smoke density lowest, shadows off, object texture high, scenery slider 10, all tickboxes (DOF, procedural flora etc.) off and everything else medium

FoggyMorning wrote:The size of my Railworks folder is just over 100GB

That is a sizeable install Steve. I am not in your league there Not sure what mine is. I would guestimate at about 30Gb to 50Gb.

nobkins wrote:

FoggyMorning wrote:The size of my Railworks folder is just over 100GB

That is a sizeable install Steve. I am not in your league there Not sure what mine is. I would guestimate at about 30Gb to 50Gb.

A good third of this is decals for various route building projects that have either not got off the ground yet or are on hold. I am not sure how much of the rest is actually used, as I have in the past downloaded a number of freeware US routes that include a lot of assets, but it is more difficult to uninstall assets than it is to uninstall routes if you decide not to keep them, so I think that quite a high proportion is probably redundant. I regularly check for zero byte files using RW_tools and clean out any .cost, .bak and .tgt files that are not needed and this seems to work well for me

Hi Martin,

This is my system spec;--

AMD Athlon 64 x 2, 6400+, 3.214 Mhz Dual Core.
4 GB ram
Graphics GTS250 1Gb
500 GB HD
Win 7 Home Premium 64bit.

Running WCML with TSX -- On, SSAA2x1 and options set to Medium.

Kind regards
Mike

Hi Guys,

Just ordered my new "Laptop" for extreme Gaming, it is £1400, and here are the specs!

Chassis & Display
Viper III: 18.4" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2760QM (2.40GHz) 6MB

Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB)

Graphics Card
1 x 1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11

Memory - Hard Disk
500GB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Sound Card
Intel 5.1 Channel High Definition Audio + SPDIF/MIC/Headphone Jack

I'm running a very modest rig but I'm punching way above my weight and running on pretty high settings. I was plagued by SBHH for many years until I applied the 3GB switch which stopped it overnight. The new update has also now allowed me to run on higher settings than ever before and still free of SBHH

Here's my story:

Off the shelf 4 + yr old Packard Bell Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 Ghz (no overclocking), 4 GB RAM, Geforce 9600GS, Vista 32 bit with 3GB switch applied. I run a freeware program "enditall" to shutdown all non-essential background apps prior to loading RW. I have also installed Bill's free AA patch that was recently uploaded to UKTS.

First menu, TSX on, I set antiostropic to 8, AA slider thingy to just under half way (MSX4 something or other). Screen res set to 1280x768. I also deploy a cunning trick to do with screen res. I use a widescreen HDTV as my monitor so by setting 1280x768 resolution it much lessens the burden on my PC hardware to display the image and then I use the TV remote control to compress the screen size slightly which gives the visual quality of running full HD res 1900x1080 but with only the PC resource needed to run 1280x768! It means you lose an inch or 2 of screen size but the gains in performance are massive.

In game I have object textures set to highest, everything else set to high except for passenger density which I set to low. Shadows I run on medium mostly, procedural flora, depth of field and the other new thingy all unchecked.

Amazingly, even with my feeble PC spec, I am able to run the game on the same high settings as some of the NASA brigade by deploying the tricks above! Since the update, my FPS are well in excess of 30 or even 40 on most routes in open areas. Woodhead I am around 20 FPS in built-up areas with these settings, sometimes dropping lower to 14/15 when in the hotspots around Manchester but still no SBHH!! WCMLN the same as Woodhead pretty much.

Another trick I use is to turn shadows off when driving at night and I avoid using headlights when driving by day. Both shadows and headlights are FPS killers so if you don't need them on for a particular scenario then leave them off.

Core 2 Duo E6850 @ 3 GHz | 4 GB | GTX260 | Win 7 64bit

Very little in the way of add-ons - a few small DLCs (66; MJAs; Zombies) plus the GSC1 freeware stuff.

Only one SBHH, and that was after placing a lot of static consists in a scenario (and not saving for too long... ).

My (quite high-end) system has the following specs:
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bits
- Intel Core i7 2600 3.4 GHz
- nVidia GTX560
- 8 GB RAM 1600 MHz
- 2 TB HDD

With this I can set TS2012 to the highest settings (TSX on, of course), with MSAA 8x (resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels).
And I can't remember the last time I had a SBHH.

Martijn

martw wrote:My (quite high-end) system has the following specs:
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bits
- Intel Core i7 2600 3.4 GHz
- nVidia GTX560
- 8 GB RAM 1600 MHz
- 2 TB HDD

With this I can set TS2012 to the highest settings (TSX on, of course), with MSAA 8x (resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels).
And I can't remember the last time I had a SBHH.

Martijn

That's strange I have an identical machine and can barely run FXAA..?

Operating System - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU - Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.07GHz (Should be 3.06GHz by my stats show its been ever so slightly overclocked?)
RAM - Crucial 6GB (3 x 2GB) Dual-Channel DDR3-1600
Motherboard - Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
Graphics - Nvidia GeForce GTX 470, 1280MB RAM, running on a Samsung SyncMaster P2370HD (1920x1080 @ 60Hz)
Hard Drives - 1TB Seagate 7,200RPM SATA 3GB/s ST31000528AS

SBHH is a rare occurrence for me, but mostly caused by missing stock for a scenario, or whilst in the Editor.

EDIT - TS2012 Settings: TSX on, MSAA x8, Anisotropic x 8, All in game settings at their highest, 'Low Detail Shadows' OFF, 'Procedural Flora' ON, 'Adaptive Bloom' OFF, and 'Depth of field' OFF.

60maniac wrote:

martw wrote:My (quite high-end) system has the following specs:
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bits
- Intel Core i7 2600 3.4 GHz
- nVidia GTX560
- 8 GB RAM 1600 MHz
- 2 TB HDD

With this I can set TS2012 to the highest settings (TSX on, of course), with MSAA 8x (resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels).
And I can't remember the last time I had a SBHH.

Martijn

That's strange I have an identical machine and can barely run FXAA..?

Make sure your NVIDIA card is set allow the application to control the settings (NVIDIA Control Panel) and perhaps try running with shadows set to very low or off.

Thanks for the input fella's, I am at a loss as to why it happens it seems to be totally random, it will even happen if I am just on the menu after 25 minutes!? (making tea). I can get them on a scenario by just panning the camera around the cabin! I have a quad core processor admittedly long in the tooth now and only 2.2 ghz not oc'd, 6 gig of 800 mhz ram, asus m2n sli mobo again long in the tooth and another bit of old kit an 8800gtx, asus xonar soundcard plus 2 ssd's, one with W7 Ultimate 64 bit and the other the same but 32 bit! Perhaps my kit is just too old for TS2012 and I need to save my pennies and get a new mobo gpu cpu and ram, heck might as well get a new blinkin puter! I would keep my case though since it's an thermaltake kandalf L.C system. I have tried the settings on many different erm settings but have stuck with TSX on SSAA 2x1 anisotropic 8x, shadows off, and a mixture of medium to high settings, p.c is set for performance so no unnecessary spanglies, freeram xp pro to free up the ram hoovering of the sim and usually task manage processes that aren't needed. Thing that is annoying though is I get an sbhh, then run it again and don't? Seems though that Intel ccpu's are the way to go and will at some point invest in an i5 plus suitable mobo.
Just out of interest a question for those in the know, the AMD Llano cpu, any good or what?