Atomic Systems

Got a new graphics card after my GTX 560TI died. Now have an Asus GTX 960 Strix OC 2gb card. Now able to run TS again after a week of not being able too.

How do you find the performance improvement moving up from one to the other? The 960 is on my radar, mainly for price but also because I know my power supply isn't up to juicing a 970 unfortunately.

On the old card I had TS settings set to high and was getting 30fps, have changed to highest and getting around 40fps. I have only tried one scenario. Graphics do look sharper though.

What is your CPU if I may ask?

Intel i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad Core.

deltic009 wrote:The 960 is on my radar, mainly for price but also because I know my power supply isn't up to juicing a 970 unfortunately.

A 970 doesn't bring much more to the TS table Matthew; Peter Hayes has recently tried one with the visuals and performance being indiscernible from those returned by his 970

peterfhayes wrote:The GTX 960 4GB works very well with the AOC 144 Hz VSync monitor. It will run on high AA settings in TS2015 at stable smooth frame rates but still doesn't get rid of the shimmer in OHW and Moire on the points in certain routes (with Dynamic Lighting on in TS2015).
I can't see any noticeable difference between this and my GTX 970 performance or visual quality wise wrt TS2015 both do the job OK.
pH

(http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 1#p1748933)

Thanks Gary, I forget the limiting nature of TS sometimes, but I use my GPU for pretty much nothing else.

After recently buying a 760, and comparing it against my 960, there is no discernible difference and keep the 770 in mind, some can cost less than a 960.

The 960 is the 'replacement' for the 760, so performance should be on a par but it's more efficient---Matthew has stated that his .PSU is towards the bottom end so the 960 fits the bill there.

Minimum PSU for my card 400 watts as written on the box.

In the second scenario in the ones done by tubemad for SLN, just before you got to London Bridge, at the junction where all the lines meet up, on my 560 TI, TS use to stop momentarily about 6 times, but with the new card it doesn't. There are quite a few AI trains at that point.

Just a note on further comparison between the GTX 960 and GTX 970 is that the 970 performs "better" frame write wise when I use some very high settings in NVidia Inspector. Smoothness is not affected.
At standard settings on G-Sync monitors with similar performing cpu's, mobo's and RAM they both handle TS2015 very well.
I do urge simmers to consider the 4GB VRAM option especially with today's large high resolution monitors and to match the gpu performance to the cpu, mobo, RAM combination.

Lately in NVI I have been using the undefined TS2015 AA compatibility bit of 0x00000202 (listed in NVI at the bottom of the parameters) and on some routes the Moire on points has all but disappeared, but still getting shimmers on OWW and upright posts.

pH

The 4gb version of my card is $80nz dearer than the 2gb version.

peterfhayes wrote:I do urge simmers to consider the 4GB VRAM option especially with today's large high resolution monitors and to match the gpu performance to the cpu, mobo, RAM combination.

Bingo! Buying a 2GB card at this point in time is not such a good idea and will likely prove to be a false economy, unless your aim is literally only TS2015. An upgrade is an upgrade but if people are able to just save a little longer and their PSU is capable, go for more memory. Certainly if you're a gamer, 2GB will already potentially be hamstringing you (part of the reason for this is the new console architecture. Consoles sneeze, PCs tend to catch a cold, whether we like it or not.)

Trev
About the same in Australia - just a suggestion for those large high definition monitors (or multi-monitors, large TV's etc) now in play.
If you have a large monitor(s), on a fast balanced system, and you are not getting the performance that you might expect in some situations, then increasing the VRAM may help.
The ASUS 27" AOG GSync (2560 x 1440) that I use peaks at over 2GB VRAM on some (not all) routes/scenarios whereas my 24" (1920 x 1200) Dell IPS uses less than 2GB VRAM.
pH

No need for high aa settings with nvidias downscaling option, got really good graphics with that on a 27" tv/monitor.

Keith