Visuals upgrade (graphics card)

[Irishrailguy]

I'll just give my two cents on the matter of game performance: As a user who has had a 580 for over 3 years I've never really experienced consistently low framerates using TS. The card handles the game's requirements very well, but the one thing users who have anything more than decent/good specs consistently complain about after upgrading is the occasional lag experienced when a new terrain tile is populated with assets. The loading algorithm for TS is almost absolute, there's little that's 'procedural' about a TS route when driving through one. As such it would seem to me that regardless of how good a CPU or GPU you have, you'll always experience a noticeable drop in framerates while travelling along routes (mostly the newer ones like the SLL).

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but my view on the matter is that the data isn't properly cached. If the game has to fetch large quantities of data from disk every time it wants to load a tile, the read speed of your storage device is directly responsible for the amount of lag you experience when travelling along a route (or loading one for that matter). In that case, a storage device like an SSD with significantly faster read/write speeds would be a solution to inconsistent frame rates, on top of a new GPU improving the overall frame rate too.

Kev

[gptech]

You're not mistaken Kevin, the biggest cause of stuttering is the way the core game handles things and whilst an SSD does reduce lag considerably, on it's own won't eradicate it totally.

[peterfhayes]

I agree with Kev that you will always get some stuttering from TS2015 depending on Route and scenario, due to the way that the code is processed.
But it may not totally be a HDD issue (although a SSD helps) but it could be to "memory mismatches" with "hard page faults", in that the code has been retrieved from the HDD, is present in the VAS but not present in the RAM so the cpu has to wait for the code to become available before it can be processed and the latency that occurs gives rise to the characteristic stutter or hesitation.

As I say above the best way to minimize issues in TS2015 is to have a balanced system running it.

Gary - good points on the video card evolution - thanks!

pH

[smartie38]

During the time I've been playing this sim I've gone from a gtx470, 580, 680, 780 & now finally a 980 and the one piece of hardware that made the biggest difference to how this game plays, installing it on an ssd! Still doesn't run silky smooth though due to the core code issues but the ssd made the biggest difference, I actually saw no fps increase with each of those gpu upgrades, not that I was expecting any as the game is heavily cpu dependent and the outdated core engine doesn't help matters performance wise.

The release of ts2014 improved performance alot, fps jumped up considerably with that release but dropped back down quite a bit when ts2015 came out.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

[3digitdriver]

Well i got it in and installed, just a few things to move around but its up and running. Ok so before i made the change, i created a scenario using the GCR with all the sidings full of stock and 3 AI trains. Whats improved? well first thing i noticed obviously was i can turn alot more graphics settings up without a drop in FPS so the edges and lines are alot more pleasing on the eye. Now this is where it gets interesting, with my old card i found sometimes id get missing textures(you know yellow black missing texture paint) when on a scenario like this, but this seems to have disappeared. Also, id get certain sounds stop working, mainly after driving from view 2 then returning to the cab ie horn sounds or something else wouldn't play, again this seems to have disappeared. Next, sometimes id get certain parts of the train stop showing, EG jumper cables, this now doesn't happen. So even though there's no drastic improvement to how the game plays as far as FPS is concerned, it's definitely running smoother and happy and looking alot nicer. Its hard to describe the differences chatting about it here, but there is improvement. I wasn't looking for any more FPS, but it is nice to have these issues fixed, before when these things used to happen, id save, and then restart explorer and that would do the trick. So my personal opinion is i recommend it. Tried a few other games with it, seems what ever i throw at it it will take, i haven't tweaked it yet, and to be honest i probably wont if there's no need to. The only negative i can say is the size, but if you measure well before hand shouldn't be an issue. Also in reviews i read people complained about the fan noise because it has 2. Well i was waiting to see when they would cut in, and they already had, i just hadn't noticed as there are very quite so to be honest you would have to be very picky to find this an issue. I'm not a Computer expert as some of you noticed, i know the basics on putting them together and how to make things run. So big thanks all for your input and guidance, if your reading this and have thought about getting one, do it you wont be disappointed. Now time to really appreciate a certain class 40 cheers all

[driverden]

Just to add to the comments on sound when I installed my 970 one of the first things I thought I noticed was an improvement in overall sound a bit like going from mp3 to hd sound. But of course that's not possible is it?
Dennis