New PC performance issues

[davvydo]

Hello everyone, hope you are all well and have had a good Christmas.

I received a PC base unit for Christmas, a really fast machine, but unfortunately for me there are some major issues when it comes to playing TS15.
I have to turn the graphic details to the bare minimum to get any performance worth seeing, and even then there are issues. The sounds seem to be distorted when running a steam loco when I take it above 14mph. Just a bit lost as what to do to solve this.

My PC specs are :

Processor: AMD A10-7700K Raedon R7, 10 Compute Cores 4C+6G 3.40GHz
RAM: 8.00GB (6.94 usable)
System Type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

My partner doesnt think its the RAM thats the problem, But i cant help thinking that it is :/

Any help greatly appreciated

Many thanks
David

[jstange]

Your PC is by no means "a really fast machine", definitely not in graphics performance as it is using integrated graphics (APU) sharing the memory with slow DDR RAM.

Get an extra GPU and you will see the difference...

[peterfhayes]

David
Do you have a video card installed, and if yes how much VRAM
if No, then TS2015 runs better using a dedicated video card rather than on-board graphics. That may be your problem?
What is your monitor size(s) and resolution?
The A10 may not be capable of Running TS2015 with al the bells and whistles - sorry.
pH

[gptech]

I'd agree with your partner, whilst the Kaveri range of APUs improves on the performance of earlier models it's still pretty mediocre in CPU performance---and guess what TS2015 needs more than anything else....
Whilst it has 10 cores, only 4 are for the CPU with the GPU using the other 6; not that more than 2 cores matters that much with TS as it's still predominantly a single threaded application.
The article at http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2 ... i-review/1
includes "Of course, you can overclock the A10-7700K to impressive levels, but honestly we're not sure why you would. If it's in pursuit of CPU performance, you might as well just buy a cheaper, faster and more efficient Core i3 CPU." (page 12) which is a common enough conclusion in reviews.

Just what exactly are your in-game graphics settings and do you have any other means of *tweaking* things?---I've no idea if there's anything you can play with that's specific to the GPU/drivers for the CPU y'see.

[davvydo]

I run my PC off the TV which is a 42'' running off a HDMI cable. By saying its a fast machine, I'm talking about start up etc.

Graphics: (just copying off the manual, so please excuse me if I'm repeating myself)

Integrated AMD Raedon R/HD8000/HD7000 Series Graphics in A-series APU
Multi-VGA output support: HDMI, DVI. RGB ports
-supports HDMI with max resolution of 4096x2160 @24Hz/1920x1200Hz
-supports DVI with max resolution of 2560x1600 @60Hz
-Sipports RGB with max resolution of 1920x1600 @60Hz
-Maximum shared memory of 2048MB
-Supports AMD dual graphics technology

Multi GPU support: Supports AMD Quad-GPU CrossFireX technology

Again apologies if it sounds a bit vague but im not very big on graphics cards!

Many thanks
David

[gptech]

Your PC is by no means "a really fast machine"

I'd argue that it actually is, for what it was designed to do---of course that wasn't playing games based on old and pretty inefficient routines, but as a general purpose/multimedia machine it will certainly hold it's own.

EDIT:... see David's post above

[gptech]

-supports HDMI with max resolution of 4096x2160 @24Hz/1920x1200Hz
-

Are you trying to run the game at that resolution? 8,847,360 pixels for video is lot different to 8,847,360 pixels in a game, performance hit wise.

[davvydo]

No not in that resolution
desktop resolution was 1920 x 1080 and changed the resolution down on the game, runs a lot smoother but looks like im playing minecraft more than a train simulator, maybe its the resolution that is at fault, would i be best off using a PC monitor do you think?

David

[gptech]

would i be best off using a PC monitor do you think?

It would certainly do no harm, and wouldn't take long, to hook it up to a monitor (if you have one lying about) to test with.

[deltic009]

The integrated graphics are what's going to be slowing you down. Get something like a GTX 750ti or 760 and you'll really notice a massive kick in performance.

[davvydo]

I may try a monitor and see how it works.

Get something like a GTX 750ti or 760 and you'll really notice a massive kick in performance.

I shall look into it, thanks for the advice everyone

David

[malkymackay]

The integrated graphics are what's going to be slowing you down. Get something like a GTX 750ti or 760 and you'll really notice a massive kick in performance.

You are certainly right there. I've got one of the older A series APU's (A8 5600K Black Edition) and using the integrated graphics I could run ok with most of the options turned way down in TSX mode. I've recently bought a GTX970 and I can now turn everything up while running at 1080p on a new 24in Asus LED monitor (excluding Procedural Flora, DoF, Bloom & Headlight flares, which I don't like).

[gptech]

Adding a *proper* graphics card would no doubt improve things a lot, but at around £100 for a 750Ti, £160 for it's bigger brother (approx. prices of 2GB equipped cards--don't consider anything less) is that a viable answer to the problem?

David, what graphics card did you have in the old PC, do you still have it, and is it just sitting around gathering dust?

[ttjph]

I recently helped configure TS2015 on my Dad's new A6-6400K (running on APU, no separate graphics card for now). We installed AMD System Monitor to watch what the CPU and GPU sections were doing and I would highly recommend doing this.

I started with most of the CPU options turned up full (bar the litle stuff like procedural flora, headlight flares, fancy clouds etc) but with shadows off and AA only on FXAA, at full screen (around 1600x900 or something). That chugged along around 15-16 fps using the start of good old Chasing Yellows, with the GPU maxed out. I tried turning down the texture filtering, which gained a couple of fps, but essentially we were just asking the GPU to process too many pixels.

By going to Windowed mode and a res of 1280x720 (IIRC) we got consistent high 20s fps running out of Paddington (GPU limited), climbing to around 32 fps in open countryside at which point the GPU dropped to a little under 90% - thus CPU limited. We could have tweaked a few things to maximise the overall APU usage but that seemed entirely playable as a start, and pretty balanced.

The A10-7700K looks to be more capable than his A6, so should be able to cope with those settings fairly easily.

HTH!

[davvydo]

Adding a *proper* graphics card would no doubt improve things a lot, but at around £100 for a 750Ti, £160 for it's bigger brother (approx. prices of 2GB equipped cards--don't consider anything less) is that a viable answer to the problem?

I've bitten the bullet yesterday and bought a GEforce GTX 750Ti card yesterday and it has solved all my problems, Its never ran so smooth, thoroughly recommend it for the simulator

It was on offer in PCworld for £119.99. I saw it and I thought it's worth a try and I'm so glad I did, was at the end of my tether with performance issues hampering my gaming experience and I was seriously considering leaving the simulator world altogether, bit drastic i know but i was seriously frustrated
but now I'm here to stay

Many thanks for all your advice, I really appreciate it
Happy Gaming

David

p.s. I shall post some pictures of the simulator working soon