Ideal computer for Trainsimulator 2013

[gavo01]

Actually upgrading from XP to Win7 is possible.

See here

[gptech]

Actually upgrading from XP to Win7 is possible.

See here

Yes, but that's a clean install which doesn't retain your programs or settings. As far as I'maware the only true upgrade, one that just replaces the OS but keeps all your programs, to Win 7 is from Vista. In theory you could upgrade XP to Vista, and then Vista to Win 7 but that's a lot of messing about.

[gptech]

It seems that there are a lot of different W8 packages around...! Win 8Pro 64bit upgrade being the most applicable, I presume?

is it rollbackable....

Why Win 8? You're unlikely to have the hardware to make use of the *features* of Win 8--touh screen etc--so Win 7 may be a better choice.
Whichever, as you have an XP machine it's likely you have older, XP era hardware---can you source Win 7/8 drivers for your motherboard chipset, your peripherals such as a printer, any other goodies you may plug in it such as a camera or phone?

As it seems there's no straightforward upgrade from XP, you won't be able to "roll back"---if you decide to revert back to XP it'd mean a brand new install.

[rkk01]

I'd run MS's compatability check first...

Hardware is mainly * Vista era, ? IIRC, but I wasn't a fan of that OS so stuck with XP on the main desktop

* - I rarely upgrade the whole thing in one go, it's always a bit of a rolling process. Would need to check various driver copmpatibilities

ETA - mixed reviews on Win 7 compatability for the mb chipset...

[stephenhornsey]

My Medion arrived last week, bought a modem\router for it for £12 from Amazon and have installed TS2013 so far (on the same drive as the operating system). Will try out ILS Cliffs of Dover next as I couldn't run that on my last PC as the framerates were about 1 a month, so it should be a good test for it.



I've tried various graphics setting over the last couple of days for TS2013 and the smoothest on the WCML, for example, with virtually no scenery loading or AI train loading stutter and 30 - 50 FPS, was:
1024x768
FXAA
Anisotropic x4
Scenery detail: Medium
Scenery density: 10
View distance: High
Shadow quality: Medium
Water quality: Medium
Procedural flora: Off
Adaptive bloom: Off
Depth of field: Off

Raising any of those individual settings, caused slight stutter as scenery loaded or as AI trains appeared. Anti Aliasing and shadow detail and Scenery quality settings caused the highest FPS drop down to 25 - 30.

My flatscreen monitor is 9 years old now, would that make a difference?

[stephenhornsey]

Just tried something I've never done before and set the screen resolution to 1280x768, there's a 'narrow screen' black border at the top and bottom of the screen but it runs even smoother than 1024x768. Even with scenery quality turned up to high.

The swaying motion of the train is much more noticeable when there's less or no stuttering, it's looser and aggressive in places like the real thing.