a very small help

[ll22012]

Good morning
I would like to change my video card......well.....but I d'ont know, what is the best solution
-1-MSI GeForce N560TX Ti Twin Frozr II with 2 Ga of DDR5 ram
-2-MSI GeForce N580TX with 1.5 Ga of DDR5 ram
Could you accept to tell me what the best.?
In advance,many thanks for your answers
regards.
jean-pierre

[smarty2]

Depends really on what the rest of your system is like?

[ll22012]

Good morning
I have an intel Core I5 661 on 3.33ghz
I just upgraded to window seven 64 bits with 12ga of ram DDR3
and a Hard disk 7200tr/mn with 500ga
many thanks for your help
regards
jean-pierre

[Irishrailguy]

Don't just go all out on the graphics card. The game may rely on the graphics card mainly, but if you haven't got a decent PSU with enough wattage in it, you can't operate the card efficiently enough to gain much performance over your current setup. Can you give us your complete spec please?
I would also suggest looking at other manufacturers of the cards you are looking at, in my opinion I can see better versions of what you are looking at on Scan.co.uk.

Kev

[gptech]

It would also help if you said what GPU you use now, and why you need to change it.

[ll22012]

Dear all,
it is very kind of to take some interest for me......sincerely
I have for my GPU a Nvidia GeForce 460 GTS with 1 ga of ram.......and why I would like to change ??? only ,for two or three reasons
-1- my computer refuses for all activities to open the new route Edinburgh to Dundee
-2-when I start an activity on the Woodhead route.....it is very very long to begin.....because my computer shows one asset after one asset and I must wait to see all tracks and all catenaries and all platforms......and I down 5 or 6 screens per seconde at Sheefield and Manchester
-3-when I drive the class 390 I can see the station onle in cabview......if I want to see the train by touch 2 or 3 .....the screen of my computer seems crazy and I can see nothing
I have downloaded the last driver and installed for my video card.....I try to run my game in médium quality only...
EXCUSE MY POOR ENGLISH......and thank you so much for you help
Regards
jean-pierre

[gptech]

A 460 should handle those routes nicely enough, I'd suggest your underlying problem stems from something else other than a lack of grunt in the GPU---unless of course the card is failing. I don't have the routes so I'm unable to give you a comparison with my system (i5-2500k and running a 550) so all I can suggest is you work through Kromaatickses guide at http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 9&t=118677 and give your OS a good 'spring clean' and check.

[secludedsfx]

I would suggest an SSD instead of a new graphics card myself if you're getting issues with loading time.

[holzroller]

I am using an MSI 560TI, with shadows turned down a little I can run the route on SSAA x 2. Most other routes I can run with the shadows on full.

[Irishrailguy]

Well, I have to admit, I have a Seagate 1tb external drive with awful read/write speeds and response times and although my RW3 install is located on it, I can load the WCML on max settings in 20-30 seconds. So there appears to be much more to it than just the disk the files are located on...

[ll22012]

Many thanks for all of you
I repeat,it so kind to try to help me.....I would like to Know something....."secludedsfx" says it will be better to change sor a SSD instead a GPU.......my Railworks file is very heavy....89,9Go......how many coast for a good SSD without any problems for all my files ?
May be it is the best solution..but I must wait for a moment to get a lot of money.....because I can buy a GTX580....the price is under 400 euros.....but for a 500Go SSD , I don't know if I have enough money
Well ,I wish you a good week-end and have a good night.
sincerely yours
Regards
jean-pierre

[gptech]

Personally I have my doubts about the benefits of SSD's, particularly as the loading times you've stated are excessivley slow even for a conventional spinning disc. I suggest you check your drive(s) for fragmentation and errors, even run the Windows Experience Index to see what figure that comes up with---if it's abround the 5--5.2 mark it'll be as good as you'll get from a conventional disc, lower than that would indicate a problem with the drive or it's settings.
I use a SATA II drive for RailWorks, even after clearing the cache routes only take around a minute to load, bear in mind that once somethings loaded into RAM the speed of your hard drive is irrelevant---the discussion at http://www.overclockers.com/forums/show ... p?t=636906 might be interesting for you.

[kirkheath]

From my experience, I see that railworks is more dependant on the CPU rather than GPU but it does help performance to have a good one. I am suprised the results you get with a 460. Adding to this, as someone else mentioned a SSD does really help loading times and help with loading new scenery tiles on big routes. A 500GB SSD is not needed at this time.

I have a 120GB SSD that has my operating system on and Railworks as well as another game called ARMA 2. The game seems to run smoother on the same frames as a normal HDD. A 500GB SSD really would not be needed unless you want alot of games on it
I managed to get my SSD for £124GBP.

Why not try look for a SSD like 120GB and say a GTX570 GPU or a GTX480 (I have one), GTX480 is same as GTX580 only slightly older and slightly slower, but looking at benchmarks the two best GPU's were the GTX480 and GTX580. The advantage of the GTX480 is that it will perform similar to a GTX580 but with it being older it will be less expensive to buy. With other games like BF3 I can run it on full graphics and not have any slowdowns, it is a great GPU. I also did not have much money when I was buying new PC bits. What I did was upgrade over time, for example, buy a SSD one month then the next month I would buy a new GPU.

For an idea of performance My PC is like this:
AS rock Z68 Extreme 4 Motherboard
Corsair Force 3 120GB SSD
WD Green 2TB HDD
Intel i5 2500k @ 4.5GHz (Overclocked) - The sandybridge chipset is very strong chip, and reccomended by many to use for games. Plus easy to overclock and maintain a stable clockspeed
Gigabyte GTX 480 with 1536GB Memory SOC edition
8GB Corsair XMS3 memory
Windows 7 64 Bit
Corsair TX850W PSU (Another important part!)

[gptech]

We can throw recommendations about all day, some we'll all agree on whilst others will lead to healthy debate----but until we can ascertain exactly what is holding Jean-Pierres machine back all those recommendations are just a big 'wish list'
Certainly, if he upgraded all the parts of his machine it'd fix it ------ eventually------ but we need to identify what is wrong with it that needs replacing/upgrading/tweaking first.

Jean-Pierre,
do all your other programs and games perform as they should?
was the installation of Win 7 a fresh install or an upgrade?

[peterfhayes]

The other point is J-P's RAM - 12 GB of dual core DDDR3 could lead to an unbalanced system. That type of i5 system would normally have 4, 8 or 16GB in 2 or 4 RAM slots - so how is the 12GB configured? 2 x 4 plus 2 x 2 and are all the RAM modules matched?
The other point is how full is that HDD??
Regards
pH