Upgrading PC for better RW performance - on a budget

[flightsimflier]

Hello all

My PC is a 2-year old Advent off-the-shelf item from PC World. Having got into RW over the last few months, I am looking at extracting a little more oomph somehow, but on a VERY limited budget.

I've been though the tweaking tutorials by Kromaatise and got a pretty stable setup with frames generally in the teens (usually just a little more than the 14 minimum that Railworks will display) but a fair few stutters which I can only seem to cured by turning off Antialiasing altogether, so I am living with the stutters at the mo

The full spec is as follows:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 running at 2.5Ghz
Advent (well Foxconn I understand in actuality) motherboard
ATi HD4830 512Mb card OC at 625Mhz
4Gb PC2-6400 RAM running at 400Mhz. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit by the way.

Firstly, I quickly discovered had to write off overclocking as an option, as the BIOS is locked OEM, and replacing the motherboard or BIOS is definitely not on my to-do list...

Second, I considered a new graphics card, but having done some research, I don't think that with the amount I have to spend (sub £100) I am going to see much improvement - I looked at the HD6770 and HD5870 with 1Gb memory running at about 800Mhz - about the top end of my budget - and the benchmarking results would seem to suggest only a few frames/sec increase. Would anyone disagree?

Finally, I am looking now at perhaps replacing the RAM with something faster - the Motherboard will only handle 2 x 2Gb so I can't go bigger, but I could go faster with 4Gb of PC2-6400 RAM apparently running at 800Mhz - the Recommended Upgrade shown here - http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/listpar ... 04&Cat=RAM, double the speed of my current memory.

So the question is, if I have a punt of just over £50 on swapping the RAM, will I see any appreciable benefit when running Railworks 3? Answers on a postcard please!!

[gptech]

In a nutshell....no. Think of the money as the first £100 in your 'get a new PC fund'

The speed of the memory is the same, only the notation is different. The bus speed is 400MHz, the data rate is 800MT/s so you'll see both figures being used to describe the same memory. MT/s (MegaTransfers per Second) is a rating of the delivered speed rather than the clock speed, so as it's DDR (Double Data Rate) and transfers occur on both both the rising and falling edges of the waveform the MT/s is twice the bus speed.

[secludedsfx]

Yeah, save up £500-£700 and re-ask on here then for advice for a pc

[flightsimflier]

Right you are then! Cheers gptech for explaining that for me, and to secluded wotsit, at least nobody could accuse you of beating around the bush

[jimmyshand]

Mate I've got a rig that's not too dissimilar from yours in terms of spec, in fact arguably worse. I've worked out some very handy tricks to eke out some good performance from low end kit. I will try and post something up tomorrow lunchtime at work as I'm out of time tonight but do not despair, there are plenty of things to try and none of it costs a penny.

[flightsimflier]

Hope springs etc jimmy so I shall look out for any tips you may have, all suggestions being gratefully received, the cheaper the better!!

[jimmyshand]

My rig is an off the shelf Packard Bell, 3 or 4 years old now. Specs are Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4ishGhz, 4GB Ram, Vista 32 (with 3 Gig switch applied), Nvidea Geforce 9600GS.

First thing I use is a free utility program called "enditall" which aggressively shuts down all non-essential background programs. For a while I used "Gamebooster" but this didn't seem to have any noticebale effect, enditall definitely shuts down more.

The next trick I deploy is to use a flatscreen TV instead of a PC monitor. The big trick here is to set the screen resolution setting in Railworks really low, I use 1280x768 (or something similar) which radically reduces the strain on my PC and gives a big improvement in frame rates. Obviously this low res setting gives a poor image on full screen mode so I then use the TV remote to change the TV screen to 8:4 mode which compresses the image on screen slightly and transforms the grainy 1280x768 image into full HD quality graphics! The only downside is that you lose an inch or 2 of viewable screen either side of the TV but this is no loss on a 21 inch TV or higher and in either case the unused screen area stays black so you can't tell anyway!

I swear by this method as it keeps your PC running easy in low res mode, but you are using the TV to compress the image slightly and give you a high res image on screen. As a result of doing this I can now run most routes on with full TSX on, highest settings and even shadows on high! I am getting 20-40 fps most routes. WCMLN I just knock off the shadows between Carstairs to Glasgow.

I'm enjoying RW in all it's visual glory but with a budget rig probably worth no more than 200 quid now!

[flightsimflier]

I've used Enditall in the past with flightsim, though the missus was a bit taken aback when she saw the skull'n'crossbones desktop shortcut and thought I was contemplating suicide

Perhaps I'll give it another try...

As regards the screen resolution, I can have a look at that, but as I am using a 23 inch tft monitor with a native res of 1680 x 1050 I will probably go boss-eyed and I don't have the option to letterbox the image to less than full screen I think.

Still, every little helps (as they say in Tesco's!)

[gptech]

As regards the screen resolution, I can have a look at that, but as I am using a 23 inch tft monitor with a native res of 1680 x 1050 I will probably go boss-eyed and I don't have the option to letterbox the image to less than full screen I think.

Try running the game in a window, choose a resolution that matches the aspect ratio you have now (1680/1050 = 1.6, the example below works out at 1.59999) and untick the 'full screen' box.

Try a few different sizes, when you find the one that works best see how it performs with the 'full screen' mode selected.

[flightsimflier]

Thanks for the tip, I will try that out now

[flightsimflier]

Well many thankyous to jimmy and then to gptech - after an hour or so fiddling with the screen resolution settings, I have settled on 1280x768 which gives me the correct aspect ratio with the full screen box checked. This makes the menus in the game a tad fuzzy, but how long do I spend looking at them?? By also increasing the aa by one notch, and checking the 30fps lock, I have in game visuals which are perfectly acceptable and SMOOOOOOTH like I never saw before, thus boosting the immersion factor through the roof.

I've tried these new settings on a variety of routes, in a variety of different locos, I am all round happy with the improvement.... thanks again for the advice!

[gptech]

Good to learn you've managed to make it better

....and checking the 30fps lock...

If you add

Code: Select all

 -FPSLimit=30

to the end of the 'target' line of the desktop shortcut you wont have to tick the box to apply the lock every time you run the game.

[ttjph]

If that doesn't work, you may need to try "/ -FPSLimit=30" (note the space). Don't ask me why.

[flightsimflier]

Interesting.. does it have to be 30 or can I choose any number? In more sparse scenery the 30 limit helps the smoothness, but if I could use, say, 20, I think it would help even more...

[flightsimflier]

Ok, my desktop shortcut is apparently a web link to steam://rungameid/24010 . I have tried adding -FPSLimit=30 on the end of the URL, with and without the / and space, but whilst it doesn't hurt and the game starts, it doesn't set a frame limit in game. I imagine I am trying to add this in the wrong place, so if you could clarify that for me, I would be grateful!