Settings for upgraded Railworks

[AndyUK]

Gav,

I used to run a similar system, but with a GTX260 card, with XP 32bit and 4GB RAM and I did notice a small reduction in what I believed were scenery loading pauses in RW2 when I upgraded to Win7 64bit. Can't say how it might benefit TS2012 though as I'd already made the change when that came out.

You can get an upgrade version of Win7 for XP and Vista, both 32bit and 64bit versions in the same box but you can only use one of them, for less than the price of a 'full' version.

Andy L

[GavNormandale]

thanks andy, from what i see i will have to upgrade to windows 7 then upto 64 bit, costing £100+£70, reason i'm thinking of upgrading is i have heard that the 32 bit version will only use 3gb of the available ram, wanting to be sure that its going to be worth the money before i spend

does the extra RAM make a big difference?

Gav

[AndyUK]

Gav,

Not sure where you get the £100 + £70 from? The upgrade version will take you from Vista 32bit to Win7 64bit (or 32bit but I don't see any point in that) for about £80.

I think the ability of the 64bit OS to use the full 4GB does make a difference, and you can always add more.

Andy L

[GavNormandale]

sorry to trouble you andy but do you have a link to that upgrade, i can find two versions, on this page you can upgrade from another copy of windows 7 which costs £70

http://emea.microsoftstore.com/UK/en-GB ... me-Premium

this page is the one i can find for upgrading from vista but it doesn't mention 64 bit and costs £100

http://emea.microsoftstore.com/UK/en-GB ... um-Upgrade

or does this version include 64 bit but not mention it?

cheers

Gav

[Darpor]

I'll just add this in here, for Nvidia users, it's what I posted earlier in another thread. Just to note, since rolling back from the problematic driver, I have raised settings from mostly medium to high, along with using low shadows and have still even had an fps increase!

Just to throw something into the ring here. I too was using the latest Nvidia driver, 280.26 but it was causing issues alongside Firefox whereby loading the browser would cause the driver to crash and then recover. A quick internet search revealed this was the case for many.

I have rolled back to 275.33 and on loading TS2012, in TSX mode with full settings apart from shadows on low, on the benchmark scenario "Autumn Leaves", I am now getting another 10fps, simply by rolling back the driver. Looking around, it seems 280.26 is the cause of many ills for people.

[AndyUK]

sorry to trouble you andy but do you have a link to that upgrade, i can find two versions, on this page you can upgrade from another copy of windows 7 which costs £70

http://emea.microsoftstore.com/UK/en-GB ... me-Premium

this page is the one i can find for upgrading from vista but it doesn't mention 64 bit and costs £100

http://emea.microsoftstore.com/UK/en-GB ... um-Upgrade

or does this version include 64 bit but not mention it?

Gav,

The second link is to the upgrade version that looks like the one I got, mine was on disk rather than by download. Scroll down the page and you'll see it includes both 32 & 64 bit versions .
Other online stores have it a bit cheaper, Amazon is about £82, or you might be able to get an OEM version of Win7 Home Premium 64bit for less but that would mean a clean install rather than installing over your current OS. A clean install might be a better option whichever version you go for.

Andy L

[GavNormandale]

The second link is to the upgrade version that looks like the one I got, mine was on disk rather than by download. Scroll down the page and you'll see it includes both 32 & 64 bit versions .

Andy L

DOH! you mean the bit in Bold Type, howd i miss that!

thanks

Gav

[anorak001]

At last, finally, got Railworks 3 running at 33+fps with TSX on, anti-aliasing at 4th notch and everything max out in options. Now it really does look the business and runs superb.

[GavNormandale]

hi, had more of a look at my PC to see why i'm getting so many crashes, the rating i am getting using the method in the FAQ forum is 5.6, all individual ratings are 5.9 but my processor is only 5.6. my processor is a 'intel core 2 duo E6850 3GHz', surely with 3GHz this should score higher. Does this sound like it may be faulty?

[Kromaatikse]

No, a Core 2 Duo is two whole generations old now, so a 5.6 score sounds about right. The Core i-series have increased performance-per-clock twice over since then.

Crashes can be caused by old or faulty drivers, corrupted files within Railworks, running out of RAM (people have reported that installing more than 4GB can help, though I have run RW3 successfully with only 2GB), or even by a weak or failing power supply. RAM is pretty cheap these days.

[GavNormandale]

hi thanks for the reply, which do you think is the best option, new processor or upgrade to windows 7 64 bit (use more RAM), doubt i could afford both!

cheers

Gav

[Kromaatikse]

If you are currently running Vista 32-bit, then an upgrade to Win7 64-bit could well help.

[GavNormandale]

thanks, will be looking into that

Sorry one more question, what does OEM mean, is this the version i want, also does anyone have experience with this supplier, seems so much cheaper than anywhere else, makes me paranoid!

[AndyUK]

Gav,

OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer. OEM versions of operating systems are meant to be supplied with new PCs or with components to build a new PC, and are sold by the likes of Novatech and other manufacturers for that purpose but there's no check on how you use them. Apart from probably not being able to use them to upgrade an existing operating system, you'd have to reformat your hard drive, they are exactly the same in my experience as any other version.

Andy L

[GavNormandale]

thanks andy and Kromaatikse, will be watching for that one coming back in stock

Gav