Computer design: Motherboard

[MFMPorter]

I am trying to design a new computer (as part of a College Course) which amongst other things needs to be able to play Railworks.
I have looked at about a dozen motherboard specifications, two of which state that they support Shader Model 4.1. Could anyone tell me please whether this is important at this stage, or whether it is just the graphics card that needs to have the right pixel shader model specified. If I don't need this on the motherboard what other criteria should I look for in the spec. that are related to Shader?

Many thanks
David W.

[PaulH2]

If the motherboard is specifying what shader models it supports, it presumably has an integrated graphics chipset - in general, for RailWorks (and other games), this is to be avoided as performance is usually substantially worse than using a dedicated graphics card (integrated chipsets often share system RAM rather than having dedicated memory, for example). So, although RailWorks doesn't currently support the very latest shadr models, this type of board is better avoided in any case.

We know that the graphics engine in RailWorks is being updated which is likely to (we assume) put more of the load in the graphics card. We know very few details of that update yet, but one possibility is that newer shaders (and possibly even DirectX 10 or 11 features) will be included. If I were designing a new PC for RailWorks, I'd look at a graphics card supporting DirectX 11 (as the majority of cards from both nVidia and ATi/AMD released in the past 12 months or so do), as a measure of "future proofing".

Paul

[MFMPorter]

Paul

Thank you very much for getting back to me. Certainly a few things to think about there - I guessed I could leave the question of shader to the graphics card. I am no expert of course and will need time to think through your advice.

Many thanks
David W.

[MoonKid47]

If your building a new computer the main things to think of in futureproofing would be the specs of the motherboard, the CPU and the speeds of the RAM. The graphics card is usually separate as its just a standard PCI_Express 16x plugin.

On the mobo side, look at one of the newer ASUS or Gigabyte board with USB3 and SATA 6GB, hopefully one with EFI instead of a BIOS as this will be well worth it, provided your budget can stretch to it.

If you need any help you can PM me, I've recently moved from being very technical and hands-on with PCs over to the Sales side at the lovely VIP Computers distie. So specs, prices and what you'd be looking for is right up my alley

[MFMPorter]

Thanks, MoonKid47. I might take you up on your offer!

David W.

[MoonKid47]

I'll have to check with management on if we can sell to individuals, but as soon as I find out tomorrow ill let you know...

[MFMPorter]

Thanks for your trouble, but I should state that at the moment at least this is an entirely ficticious exercise.

Regards
David W.

[MoonKid47]

Ahh, i got the wrong jist of it

Anyways, yea, if you want a hand with anything on tech specs of PCs I'm more or less a genius at it