Does Railworks uses the quad core CPU?

[ckmemphis]

Not true by a long shot. Most of your “simulation” type games like MSFS and RailWorks use older game engines that are still CPU dependent and put very little of the workload on the GPU.

Ok, that makes sense to a lot of us here. But taking what you're saying in consideration, if RailWorks is 90% CPU dependant, is it really that important to have a R6000(500 pound) GPU like a NV295 GTX? Surely then if you have a good, fast and powerful CPU, namely quad core, a big expensive GPU that requires a tornado wind to keep it cool would be not that big a requirement. Or do I stand under correction on this one ?

I currently run a Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.6Ghz, with 8 gig RAM, and a oldish 256mb GPU, 64-bit W7, and I can say that I don't see a need to upgrade, ofcourse to get a i7 wouldn't be too bad.... I do get stutter, but that is basically to do with the game core, and not necessarily a hardware problem....

[CaptScarlet]

Ok, that makes sense to a lot of us here. But taking what you're saying in consideration, if RailWorks is 90% CPU dependant, is it really that important to have a R6000(500 pound) GPU like a NV295 GTX? Surely then if you have a good, fast and powerful CPU, namely quad core, a big expensive GPU that requires a tornado wind to keep it cool would be not that big a requirement. Or do I stand under correction on this one ?

I currently run a Core 2 Quad Q9400 2.6Ghz, with 8 gig RAM, and a oldish 256mb GPU, 64-bit W7, and I can say that I don't see a need to upgrade, ofcourse to get a i7 wouldn't be too bad.... I do get stutter, but that is basically to do with the game core, and not necessarily a hardware problem....

In my opinion It is all a matter of balance between the various parts so that the bottlenecks in any system are minimised for the type of program you want to run.

John

[djt01]

if RailWorks is 90% CPU dependant, is it really that important to have a R6000(500 pound) GPU like a NV295 GTX? Surely then if you have a good, fast and powerful CPU, namely quad core, a big expensive GPU that requires a tornado wind to keep it cool would be not that big a requirement. Or do I stand under correction on this one ?

The Nvidia is a dual GPU video card which RailWorks (or any other CPU dependent game for that matter) makes little or no use of.

At this time the Nvidia GTX 285 and the ATI 5870 are the two top GPU's as far as RailWorks is concerned. Image quality is just as important as the performance of a game and if you want to run at a decent resolution along with AA and AF that's were the video card comes into play.

Keep in mind that just as John has mentioned above combining a lower end CPU with a high end video card is just going to cause a bottle neck in the system. It is about putting the right components together.

In your case I would seriously consider overclocking that CPU, depending on the motherboard/memory you should with ease get 3GHz out of it. As far as a video card goes, the Nvidia GTX 275 or the ATI 5850 would probably be a good match for that system.

By the way any reason why you need the 8Gb of memory? With the Core 2, 4Gb (2x 2Gb modules) of RAM with the tightest timings you can find is the best way to go.