Ideal computer for Trainsimulator 2013

[briyeo1950]

Did anyone else but the Medion Akoya E4057? I see Asda are out of stock anyway, it did seem a very good buy. My mother in law was looking for a new PC just to surf the web with. When I say surf the web I mean log into QVC

[crumplezone]

Bit late to the thread and maybe going over facts but from my system which still runs TS2013 pretty well on a i5 with 8gigs of ram and GTX460 I've a few following advices which could be benficial:

TS2013 in general isn't graphics intensive, its hard drive and processor intensive, while the improvements and change over to a new graphics engine happened with T2012 and further improved with 2013 the actual engine is still running DX9 era technology, it doesn't utilise DX10 or 11 technologies for the most part and most of the stuff it relies on to give you graphics ingame have been established and refined since as far back as 2006.

One of the few biggest improvements you can do is having a fast hard drive with plenty of space which is seperate to your main operating system. One of the biggest performance hits in TS2013 is micro-stuttering and having both Steam install folder and your OS on the same drive will aggrivate this issue considerably, its also in general for gaming rigs these days to have your OS on its own drive anyway to maximise the efficiency it can run at, as it being seperated for everything else it doesn't require to access anything else or have the potential of other programs interfering with it.

Solid State Hard drives have been recommend in the past and they are both coming down in price and improving in speed, size and performance and you can see a considerable improvement over standard hard drives, however knowledge of installation and putting SSDs into the computer is needed before attempting it as they need to be setup properly.

RAM is another big factor and a 64bit OS, Windows 7 is a good option and at the moment the OS in general will utilise anywhere between 1.5-2.5gigs of your ram when running(mine uses 2.15gig when on idle) so if you have 4gigs you only have just lower than 2gigs left to use on TS2013. When TS2013 runs I've found I can go up to 4.5gigs so on a 4gig system your completely using up all the RAM. With 8gigs in your system your allowing for a additional 4gigs for the rest of the system to utilise aswell as for any spikes in RAM demand the computer may need e.g. loading big scenery areas. With 4gigs you don't have any leeway left to work with.

Graphics cards for TS2013 are not as important and buying a super high end or the latest graphics card isn't nessessary and can also lead to some issues. The big factor about graphics card is while the high end ones and new ones can provide blistering edge performance the downside is the drivers can be A. so advanced the program doesn't recognise said graphics card B. quite abit buggy as they haven't had time to be either refined or checked for issues which normally arise in the first 6months of a new graphics cards life in the top end market. You can settle with a middle range graphics card with 1gig through to 2gigs of RAM and you will be fine for the most part and you won't need to spend a complete fortune, infact cards which are suitable for TS2013 range from £100-150 in some cases which compared to the latest which can push 300+ thats not really that bad.

CPU/processors are the final part, the intel i5s are probably the best middle ground processor you can currently buy, they are reliable, can overclock well and in general pack alot of performance for price and power ratio, yes you can go with a i7 but the i5 can do just the same at alot less of the price. 2.2ghz and above in quad cores is a good choice for anyone and even the most high end games these days only demand 2.5ghz unless there silly like crysis 3 which demands you to have some computer from 2030 to run it on highest settings.

Following those guidelines you can get things pretty cheap if you shop around and even look for hardware which is issued to system builders which is normally noted as OEM or will have some information about it being just the hardware and a manual. RAM prices are really cheap now to and as mention a graphics card needed to run TS2013 at reasonable settings e.g. 40-50FPS will cost anywhere between 100-150, overall you may run up a bill towards the £400 mark, but choosen wisely it'll last well beyond what the gaming industry considers usable.

My system is coming on probably 5 years now and will probably do me another 2years before anymore significant upgrades or a replacement of the system are needed and it handles TS2013 on highest seting bar shadows which are down to high so I honestly don't see people needing to spend massive amounts on a system just for TS2013 and I have cringed a few times seeing other threads where a person has bought massively expensive and high end hardware just to use TS2013 on it when it wasn't nessessary.

Anyway ingame settings are a important factor and the most performance draining effect and stutter inducing is shadows which has been the norm for all games so adjusting that will be the biggest performance gain or loss and also having the right anti alias setting is helpful to, you may aswell run FXAA MSAA as the SSAA settings are performance hogs for the most part and not very widespread used in the gaming industry anyway plus overall anti alias hasn't worked since TS2012 so while you may get some smoothed parts overall jaggedness still remains anyway.

Good to see people are getting decent performance out of bought machines, 5-6years ago you would never get a decent machine bought off the shelf and they would be so compact inside they would have issues with heat and poor performance anyway from cheap created hardware.

[sargnickfury]

I just want to concur with what crumple zone said about importance of drives. That is one issue I have not had as I have a SSD drive, and a regular drive. I would add though I think you can easily making a mistake of thinking you need to put the game on the SSD drive. You want your OS on your SSD drive and you also want to be running in AHCI mode to get full performance gain. (If you are not in AHCI mode in bios you will not get ssd benefits, and you must do a new fresh install on HD with AHCI you cannot switch without reinstalling os) I keep my steam directory on a second larger drive that is traditional IDE. When you load a game it will hit that second drive quite a bit, however once you get going it's more likely going to be hitting your system drive, and your memory, as it tries to load texture ahead of time.
Basically if any of you gamers remember the old days of the MORPG in EQ and ever went to an auction. You remember the hell of trying to move from stuttering. For the first time GPU's had to deal with thousands of objects with different textures. Each person might choose different armor or colors of armor etc and no game had ever challanged GPU and drives to push so many textures. It was a stuttering mess for everyone. The same bottle necks then were mostly over come as most modern games have found ways to be very efficient in level design and memory and bandwidth has exploded in modern gfx cards. However what TS2013 does is really up the ante.... There is simply no other game out that pushing this many completely different objects with textures. Even if you take your most eye candy recent shooters BF3, Crysis etc they have some incredible visuals but the number of textures and objects are rather low just more complex models. Now add that your traveling by all these textures at 30 to 120 kph usually and you have texture flood a million fold higher then what those old auctions did to your system. Your GPU is equipped for this usually if you have any decent card, but your HD's and system will be working overtime trying to keep your hungry GPU fed information. Your memory, speed of memory, and mobo, and how quickly your OS can operate moving information from drive to gpu are the bottle necks I would think.
In recent years I have more and more splurged on a better gfx card, and lowered the cutting edge of CPU, and even mobo, as they just didn't make as big a difference in most games. So as I posted earlier I used a i3 2120 with HD7850, on a simple P8H67-m evo and that is what I have made most of my videos on. But I would hit nasty 15-18fps spots on many tracks. I could play BF3 on full, but TS2013 humbled me. Now I have everything on near full. I also do use the SSAA on 2x2 because otherwise track shimmer is rather bad because of my resolution. I can do this though because I run in 1280x960 resolution, I have a older quality 24" CRT that makes that resolution look quite frankly better than most any LCD or other flat screen I have seen (CRT thing is a whole other discussion, crt still is best visuals unless you have a oc'd IPS at 120hz), but because EVERY resolution is native on a CRT It allows me to lower resolution a bit from what some of you have to run on a flat screen in native to look right. (your flat screen will have one native resolution, it has to adapt any other resolution to that one which causes all sorts of lag issues and quality loss, a crt runs every resolution as native)
So as I said in previous post I upgraded my CPU yesterday to a i7 3770...all I can say is wow!! When I hit a rough spot now the lowest it has dipped was maybe 25fps for one second, and usually nevermore then about 32... I keep the max frame rate limited to 40. Everything looks smooth even with all bells and whistles on save shadows which I keep one down from highest level of detail. I know some turn them lower, but shadows are what make this game look real. I must have them!
If this were a shooter, 40 fps would NOT Be acceptable, as it influences extreme split second timing.. (sniper shot at say 300 as a guy pops in and out of cover...ms matter and you can detect a difference if your monitor can up that to 120hz with 120 fps) However when watching TV a movie, or this sim, you're really just watching a flow of images and you just don't notice the difference. 40fps is fine....really 32 fps is what most people see on TV....You could tell a difference if you say it next to a 48fps imax but otherwise your brain tricks you and does it's own gpu processing feeling in the gaps....there are gaps, you can see them, but your brain is really good at filling it in, it's only when you see it next to something of substantially higher fps you will see it.
Anyway for me the upgrade of CPU has made a 50% increase in fps performance and a i7 3770 was just a little over 250 on Amazon. I was not expecting it to be this much of a boost in performance. So This is definitely a CPU intensive game. For me though this also meant boosting speed of memory as I had bought memory with this future upgrade in mind, and now it can run at its full speed. Your best computer for TS2013 is one with a fast CPU, a fast bus, fast memory, and gfx card with LOTS of memory, and that can push textures . The good news on that last part is people always want the latest and greatest gfx cards, but if you can get a last gen top extreme card chances are it will push textures as well as current card or as much as it needs to for this engine, the current card may just push complex models or special effects from dx 10 titles better, which won't effect this game.....but all you need worry about is textures. When the overclockers that stay on cutting edge get latest new card you can always bet there will be a bunch of last gen top GPU's on E-bay.....So I would just go that route for keeping costs low. Get a fast CPU fast memory, make sure mobo has fast bus (as my mobo proves a budget board is fine if it's made by quality company). And definitely get a SSD drive for your OS, and put your steam directory on another drive.

Taken today running steady at 40fps:

[smarty2]

AHCI mode

Less jargon for us non technically minded dummies please! Is this available on all mobo's? And are you saying put your game on a spinning platter and your OS on an SSD? Wont the spinner be the bottle neck then? Must say your post is very confusing to us mere mortals! Wonder if you techie types visit here regularly? http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/examples/ ... rator.html
Thinking about installing this on my browser? http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/drivel-defence.html

[gptech]

This Will probably be moderated rather quickly, and my excuse is "6 Nations, good time had by all and possibly one drink too many"...........


but.........there's an awful lot of . being posted about SSD's.
They're fast, regardless of whether your BIOS is set to IDE or ACHI ............
But fast is only half the story............capacity is dire, on a £ per GB basis, much of any sped increase in playing TS2013 comes from having the game on a separate physical drive, it helps if it's an SSD but isn't essential.

[smarty2]

Well to be fair they are coming down in price, but I have noticed quite an improvement having TS2013 on an ssd compared to having it on my old velociraptor spinner particularly in the stutters department, that's why I cant understand why anyone would put their games on a spinner separately rather than having it the other way round and having the OS on the spinner and game on an ssd? Total non techie ignorance on my part no doubt, but still seems illogical if seek and loading times are infinitesimal on an ssd compared to an old hdd?

[gptech]

There is no one single answer......having the OS and page file on an SSD helps for reading cached files, which is what SSD's were designed to do ( albeit not in that configuration ) where having the game on an SSD gives fast loading times. Once data is in RAM and before it's paged out to disc it matters not one bit that it came from a spinning drive or an SSD.

[sargnickfury]

Sorry for any confusion. Please understand when speaking about computers we often don't know what the meaning of acronyms are ourselves. People use things like RAID, DOS, RAM, etc and do not think about what they stand for we just know what they mean. If you do not know how to configure your bios I don't recommend you go any further. In the bios on your computer on boot up most mobos (Geek Speak for motherboards) will have a choice between running in IDE (I don't even know what it stands for anymore, it's the old format for communicating with hard drives) or AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface). AHCI usually was something really only needed for RAID set ups on servers. However AHCI also features NCQ (Native Command Queuing) this helps when reading many small files for SSD drives, in plain english it makes them more efficient...as much as 20%..small files are the heart of the issue we're talking about. It is beyond all shadow of a doubt and many benchmarks to prove it important for a SSD to run in AHCI. If you do not run it in AHCI you will still have a fast drive, but you will be handicapping the speed you could have. Many don't like making the switch, because if you just switch your bios to AHCI you will get a blue screen on boot up. Windows needs to be installed in the mode it will use. There is a way to edit the registry without doing a reinstall but it's more of a patch really, and not recommended. You want to change your computer to AHCI, then just hook up your SSD drive and install windows in ahci mode. After that you can hook up what other drives you have AHCI will still read and write to them fine, it only matters that the boot disk have AHCI mode on when installing. (I will advise this make sure you flash the bios on your SSD on current install BEFORE you do this, I found that out the hard way. All SSD should have bios updated before use just like a motherboard.)

The reason for putting the OS on the SSD vs the gaming files is your operating system is doing the majority of the hard drive work while playing your game. Your game executable etc from game drive is already in memory. However the OS is still dealing with all your hardware and playing traffic control. Putting your game on the SSD will speed up load up of your route, (and I guess that would be nice) However it will not offer a huge benefit for overall performance like having your OS on it. You OS is behind all the system behind the scenes the communicating of your various hardware. Putting a OS on a SSD is a BIG boost. Most games load up everything needed for that level in the GFX card memory and or page files on system drive etc. and they no longer hit the game directories once level is loaded. So I guess it's a matter of whether you want your in route performance increased or your load times. Or if you can afford it, heck get BOTH on SSD. TS2013 folder gets really big as you get more routes and I think steam can only choose one drive so you would need SSD that covers all games you own and keep installed and all their files. For me that would be quite large.
It is not my intent to confuse anyone, but to try and explain it the best I know how, and I fully admit there are many more knowledgeable then me. These are things I have found trying to boost bench marks on my pc. I hope they will help.

______
I should also add if you still have any ancient IDE drive with the large pin connections and not the SATA connections they will not work in AHCI mode, unless you were to put them in an extrenal ide drive case that has a built in controller, and a sata connection..(I did this with one old ide drive i had), Most here will not have any IDE Hard Drives anymore...but occaisionally you see people with systems that still have a IDE dvd player cdrom or floppy drive....you would need those to be upgraded to SATA to use AHCI......these issues will only ever be the case with people using really old legacy systems, that i doubt would run TS2013 well, or people like me that build frankenstein computers over many years....in which case you already know all of this. So likely you would not need to worry about old IDE drives.

If you want to know more about AHCI read wiki article, esp at the bottom on SSD it actualy makes it sound like it can double the IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing

and read this as well about TRIM which also needs AHCI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

[gptech]

................will have a choice between running in IDE (I don't even know what it stands for anymore, it's the old format for communicating with hard drives)

Integrated Drive Electronics, from when the 'magic trickery' bits were built into the drives rather than the motherboard (or in REAL geek terms, the mainboard or planer board). Thr term IDE controller was still (confusingly) used though to describe the socket the data cable plugged in to, even though no control of the drives was undertaken by the motherboard circuitry.

However AHCI also features NCQ (Native Command Queuing) this helps when reading many small files for SSD drives

NCQ is more useful if you're using a spinning drive, in the case of SSD's the latency is the other way round---the drive waits for the system in other words. in this case NCQ is more likely to have ensured a completely seperate set of commands is able to be executed.

............Many don't like making the switch, because if you just switch your bios to AHCI you will get a blue screen on boot up. Windows needs to be installed in the mode it will use. There is a way to edit the registry without doing a reinstall but it's more of a patch really, and not recommended.

Whilst I agree it's not *the* way to do it, and installing in the right mode is best, there's nothing wrong, or un-recommended, about changing mode http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

(I will advise this make sure you flash the bios on your SSD on current install BEFORE you do this, I found that out the hard way. All SSD should have bios updated before use just like a motherboard.)

I have to disagree most strongly with the second part of that---NO motherboard should need a BIOS update at first install, unless of course you're using some other hardware that isn't supported in the 'as shipped' BIOS revision. Better advice would be to check that the BIOS on the SSD fully supports what you intend to do before proceding, rather than applying an update automatically.

Wikipedia's a great resource, but the best place to find out about AHCI, TRIM, NCQ et al is Intel.com (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... /ahci.html for example)

[sargnickfury]

NCQ is more useful if you're using a spinning drive, in the case of SSD's the latency is the other way round---the drive waits for the system in other words. in this case NCQ is more likely to have ensured a completely seperate set of commands is able to be executed.

That was thought to be the case because of how NCQ was originally designed for them. However NCQ now has SSD specific settings. i know on my vertex it is a big difference. Forgive the use of Wikipedia, but on this it is accurate easy to read, and conveys the point.

NCQ is also used in newer solid-state drives where the drive encounters latency on the host, rather than the other way around. For example, Intel's X25-E Extreme solid-state drive uses NCQ to ensure that the drive has commands to process while the host system is busy processing CPU tasks. [3]

NCQ also enables the SSD controller to complete commands concurrently (or partly concurrently, for example using pipelines) where the internal organisation of the device enables such processing.

For example, the SandForce 1200[4] based OCZ Vertex II 50GB drive running on a Dell Perc 5i (which doesn't support SATA NCQ) delivers about 7,000 4k IOPS (50% write) at a controller queue depth of 32 IOs. Moving the drive to the similar Dell Perc 6i (which does support SATA NCQ) increases this to over 14,000 IOPS on the same basis

Whilst I agree it's not *the* way to do it, and installing in the right mode is best, there's nothing wrong, or un-recommended, about changing mode http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

It will allow it to run in AHCI but there are a host of drivers and system files that may have their registry settings now maximized and set for IDE, unless you can be certain you know every single service and programs registry settings effected, and that could change chipset to chipset and motherboard to motherboard based on this, to really be sure you are getting best performance is unkown. Will it get it working? Yes? Will it get as good performance....? Unknown....it could likely cause other settings to be incorrect. Without knowing how all your particular services and drivers for your system work, it's just better to reinstall. Since we're doing this for the sake of performance and not simply rescuing a dead machine....I would not feel good about not reinstalling. A spare tire will get you on the road, a replacement will be even better but if you plan on doing 120 mph might want to put on a new matching set. If you plan on driving 40 just a replacment tire will be fine....it depends on yoru needs and performance. Something this integral to system structure I think should call for an reinstall, I reinstall for a lot of lesser problems, but I am a PC tweaking addict.

I have to disagree most strongly with the second part of that---NO motherboard should need a BIOS update at first install, unless of course you're using some other hardware that isn't supported in the 'as shipped' BIOS revision. Better advice would be to check that the BIOS on the SSD fully supports what you intend to do before proceding, rather than applying an update automatically.

Bios is updated for many reasons, often motherboards have some glaring issues that only a few people with certain hardware combinations will see. It is always likely that the best performance will be achieved by most recent bios. In "ye olden days" it was not possible to update the bios as easily as it is now...so there was a greater reason to do this before install then than it is now. I can see the logic of waiting till you know the motherboard is working well as it came before monkeying with bios today, so perhaps that is no longer a good example. It was referencing I guess a prior era when you had to do floppy boot etc and pray nothing went wrong when flashing bios. I ALWAYS did it first....because it was too much of a headache to work with later, and if I had to send it back I wanted to do so while the purchase was still warm. In the case of SSD however you HAVE to do this first or not at all. The updates in bios on SSD drives can have quite an impact my Vertex for instance was known to get a huge performance boost by going to newer bios, many other SSD's have as well. But when you flash the bios of most SSD drives you have to wipe the drive....there is no continuing with the current install, or at least I know that was the case with my OCZ. I only figured this out after loading everything up...and I was not about to lose the performance increase, so I mentioned that so someone else wouldn't have to do it over as I did.

Wikipedia is not the best source for info, but it is handy when you don't wish to search for more intricate references and is more easy for people to understand who don't work in IT. I can promise you the info on NCQ, and how it relates to SSD, and TRIM are correct, if not complete.

In any case I just wanted to offer what has worked for me, and my experience in this process. I will admit it is not a perfect solution, and there is still the issue of the game cache....however overall I found my performance better when the OS is on the SSD across the board...and it not only boosted my gaming but other daily tasks as well....clearly ssd for both might be better, and as they become cheaper and larger that is more viable...but I'd still prefer them seperate if only to allow seperate pipelines for accessing them. There are more in depth articles on SSD and differing opinions as to best setup.....this has worked for me. I think I've added all I can, and don't want to cause any disagreements, if it helps someone that is my only interest....good luck.

[smarty2]

Whoa, I didn't mean to start a tech war!! Sarge, thanks for the attempt to explain it more clearly, I wouldn't say you failed miserably... no not completely, at least I know what the gobbledegook means even if I don't fully understand it, one thing I have learnt is.... I'm keeping away from flashing anything! Cheers for that.

[BadWhippet]

LOL! No flashing!

Seriously, I'd say nothing should ever be flashed unless the manufacturer tells you to, or there is a hardware problem having an impact on everything you do with your system. Otherwise, the old adage of "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" applies when it comes to BIOS flashes (an interrupted flash can permanently damage your hardware, likely rendering it unusable). There is no one panacea for fixing performance issues because it all really depends on where each system's bottleneck happens to be. SSD drives won't fix anything much (I have SSDs and decent SATA drives - I run Windows on my SSD and other stuff on my regular drives, but I HAVE tried Flight Simulator and Train Simulator on my SSD. No improvement visible that would be worth the precious space they occupy on the SSD).

____________________________________________________

(UN)POPULAR BOTTLENECKS: (in no particular order)

Windows Vista: Vista has been 'optimised' to carry out indexing and all sorts of other background activities, and it forever seems to occupy at least half the CPU processing capacity and even more system RAM at any one time (and doesn't always release it nicely for games or applications that need it). There are tweaks on the net to cull some of these background activities (such as disabling the nuisance search indexing), but ultimately a different version of Windows will result in improved performance of everything - including Train Simulator.

Windows XP 32-bit (or any 32-bit OS): It can only use 4Gb RAM (which is more than enough for most games), but the kicker is that the amount of memory on your graphics card takes a chunk of this. If you add a spanking new 2Gb graphics card to your 32-bit operating system, you've just robbed yourself 2Gb of available system RAM and this can have a worse result than anything else you do to your system. This does not apply to 64-bit operating systems such as the rare XP 64-bit, common Windows 7 64-bit and Windows 8.

The great graphics upgrade mistake: many don't know what they're buying when they upgrade their graphics card - and this is largely the fault of the companies who choose the names. The numbers in the name don't have a direct correlation to their newness or greatness. For example: how many ordinary folk would know that a now very old nVidia GTX295 still equals and sometimes outperforms the very new GTX 660? I know someone personally who had the misfortune of ditching an old nVidia GTX 280 for a 'bargain' new GTX 440, only later discovering what a mistake that was. Use Tom's Graphics Hierarchy Chart to know what you're getting - it's invaluable (and updated monthly), and also remember that the amount of memory on the card can also make quite a difference (as always: the more, the better - unless you have Windows XP 32-bit)!

Hyperthreading i7s: Uber-fast Intel i7 PCs can suffer in games performance stakes when hyperthreading is enabled (it very much depends on how well a game has been coded to use multi-threading). Hyper-threading is enabled by default - and it effectively gives the appearance of double the number of CPUs on the PC. Many games aren't so keen though and, although the performance hit isn't massive, it can lead to a disappointed "not--THAT-much-faster" reaction when loading up old games onto a spanking new i7. I have an i7 myself, but the current 'gaming sweet-spot' for the money is really a cheaper i5 (those with 'K' after the chip series number can see a really big overclock).

High shadows settings: the single biggest performance hog in any game is usually shadows. Choosing a lesser setting can make all the difference to a choppy game without having great detriment to the visuals. This was certainly true of the older Rail Simulator engine (I've not tested in Train Simulator but I've read other people recommending that shadows are knocked back a bit).

High framerates!: A silly one this (high framerates is what we all aim for), but sometimes a framerate-reducing utility can really smooth stuttery performance (if lower shadow settings doesn't help). If your game can spike to high framerates but doesn't stay there and you still see choppy performance, a framerate limiter can help by stopping the CPU and GPU from putting in too much effort into the next few frames, and instead even out the effort across all frames. I've not tried it in Train Simulator because I don't have stutter, but framerate limitation definitely smooths out Flight Simulator's stuttery performance (I use a utility called FPS Limiter which works better than Flight Simulator's own 'framerate limit' option).

Anti-virus and firewall hogs: if your performance seems generally bad, there seems to be a lot of hard-disk activity before anything, or all games seem to chug on a system that shouldn't be chugging, some anti-virus/firewall utilities can be very invasive. I know of a couple that are notoriously bad for this (not cheap ones either), but am not going to name them because a perpetrator on one person's machine can be the giardian angel on another, but if you disable your anti-virus and restart your PC with the anti-virus STILL not running, and you find your game is much better - time to search for a new utility. You don't even need to spend on this (Microsoft's own Security Essentials does a pretty good (and non-invasive job) as many of the 'best', and there are other good free alternatives.

[gptech]

Well to be fair they are coming down in price, but I have noticed quite an improvement having TS2013 on an ssd compared to having it on my old velociraptor spinner particularly in the stutters department, that's why I cant understand why anyone would put their games on a spinner separately rather than having it the other way round and having the OS on the spinner and game on an ssd? Total non techie ignorance on my part no doubt, but still seems illogical if seek and loading times are infinitesimal on an ssd compared to an old hdd?

Yes, prices are falling and there's no doubt that an SSD is vastly faster than any spinning drive. I have the feeling that sarg is seeing a performance boost because his page file is on the faster drive...you could be the willing victim....volunteer I mean, and move your page file to your SSD to test this theory
If you do decide to accept this mission though, I'd recommend you actually leave a small page file on C:, some older progs/games have been known to throw a tantrum if they don't detect a page file where they expect it.... Windows will (should?) however use the page file on the fastest/least used drive it finds.

Unfortunately, or at least as far as I know, nobody has done a thorough test of an SSD in all the possible permutations in relation to TS2013----not the kind of thing we're likely to see in the main stream PC media.

[sargnickfury]

Pagefile? What pagefile?
I disabled that once I got SSD.....there's two schools on that as well....I haven't seen any performance diff either way, but it reduces wear on the SSD. It may not matter anymore with SSD technology now, but as it has not caused issues, I keep it off. In the post 32 bit world and large memory the only reason to keep would be if an ancient program just refused to live without it.

I can't say how it all improves it, I only know all my systems seemed to improved, I have a feeling it has to do with basically all the OS's systems always being in memory, perhaps it just makes it much faster for them to direct cpu and control traffic on the bus, how much oc vs chipset enters in that I don't know. But everything has run a little smoother game wise since I put OS on it.

I am going to have to still disagree on bios for anyone who is more technically adept you should absolutely update two bios's if no other, your MOBO, and your SSD drive if you have one. The first is no longer remotely scary as almost any new motherboard can be reset in case of a bad flash, and today updating a bios is scarily easy, but I would download it first, and the flash, vs the updating over internet as some utilities will offer now, if you mess up, your motherboards manual will tell you how to reset...headache yes...killer? no. For the SSD depending on your model several of the more popular ones really do need it or you will get significantly lower performance then since they updated. Likewise ther mobo may need it to better use SSD as there have been many improvements on bus side concerning ssd as well.

If you're not comfortable building a computer from seperate parts, or tweaking registry then maybe don't touch the bios. It's probably sage advice to not tinker with it if your not tech inclined, if your really worried though take it to any computer shop and they'll do it. Also read online about the bios updates and what they have covered. It's not hard, and as long as you fully read the instructions before proceeding, and don't touch anything while it updates you should be fine. I have no idea how many motherboards I have installed since my first 286 graduation from Atari.....but I have only ever killed ONE motherboard by flashing bios, and that was the old days floppy boot when there was no reset, and I got a bad floppy disk.....and honestly that motherboard had it coming anyway.......

Unfortunately, or at least as far as I know, nobody has done a thorough test of an SSD in all the possible permutations in relation to TS2013----not the kind of thing we're likely to see in the main stream PC media.

As soon as I can put the cash aside from home and baby projects I shall take this up. I would really like to benchamark it side by side myself. Would be nice if someone could make some sort of AI train or something you could use that you do not drive that drives same route with various increasing complexity areas to benchmark with. As is it's almost impossible to duplicate the same drive twice. If we could agree on one as a community and post our various numbers. Still I would like to try and do this, and as I would like to have two ssd's now.......well maybe this summer.

[smarty2]

I tried a ramdisk for the sim and that did increase performance but I didn't do any comparisons so I can't say by how much, I followed the instructions which required you to remove the pagefile completely, never caused me any problems, but since putting my OS on an ssd I never bothered going through the faff to re install it.