SSD - my findings.

[RattyB]

Hi all,

I've just installed a dedicated SSD into my PC for the purpose of running steam/railworks. If you are interested I'm using a OCZ Agility 3 240GB SSD Sata III unit. This is opposed to the 1gb Sata II RAID 0 setup my O/S is running on. My PC spec is:

MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
RAM
16.0 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 961MHz (9-11-9-27)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK Computer INC. P8Z68 DELUXE (LGA1155)
Graphics
VX2245wm (1680x1050@59Hz)
1023MB GeForce GTX 560 (ASUStek Computer Inc)
1023MB GeForce GTX 560 (ASUStek Computer Inc
ForceWare version 301.42
SLI Disabled
Hard Drives
224GB OCZ OCZ-AGILITY3 (SSD)
932GB Volume0 (SATA)

RS loading times aren't greatly changed - still between 1 - 2 minutes. However in game there is a big difference. The whole experience is much much smoother one. More or less gone are the frame rate drops every 2 minutes or so, and the WCML is now much more playable. However, London to Brighton still suffers frame rate loss as you get towards London. After Clapham the game becomes very bogged down and this is spoiling a nice route.

This is a great sim, but alas it is like driving a new Land Rover Defender: modern running gear on a 60 year old design and body, and the two really don't complement each other. My feelings are that the only way this sim is ever going to reach it's full potential is for the whole thing to be rebuilt from the bottom up - really no sim should require an SSD to pep it up to such a noticeable extent. It's very sad because it is a great bit of kit, but it can't be fixed by cobbling on patches and work arounds when the foundations are not there.

[AndyUK]

When I had Win 7 and TS2012 on an SSD my experience was more or less the opposite of the above. Scenario loading times were quicker but in game performance was much the same, any marginal improvement in smoothness was probably due to the placebo effect, and no difference in frame rate - not that I expected any. The SSD failed and I reverted to a conventional HDD so I can't run any comparison now, but I'm not in a hurry to replace it just to save some time loading scenarios.

Andy L

[jevon]

I'm wondering why you've not overclocked your K-series processor? You paid for the power, so why not use it?

With the Asus UEFI and AutoTuning software this procedure is not at all complicated. There are also plenty of overclockers on the net willing to help if you need it. With adequate cooling (air or liquid) and a 4.7 or 4.8 OC you should see no stuttering at all north of Clapham. BML runs smooth as silk on my setup, even with 30AI units active.

RW is all about the cpu. The one you have is excellent, but it's being under utilized.

[smartie38]

RW is all about the cpu. The one you have is excellent, but it's being under utilized.

Doesn't really matter what cpu someone has when the game code isn't designed to make full use of the processing power, take my 6 core 1090t, all ts2012 does is max out 1 core, the other 5 are sat there with hardly any usage, I have on average 25-30% cpu usage even when playing complex scenarios etc, that's a shed load of cpu processing power right there that's being wasted! It really is frustrating to see low fps on this sim and only a low amount of cpu being utillized.

[gptech]

..take my 6 core 1090t, all ts2012 does is max out 1 core, the other 5 are sat there with hardly any usage...

Whilst I agree with you that the game doesn't take full advantage of modern hardware, the PhenomII and Sandybridge CPUs are very different beasts---the PhenomII holds it's own very well against a first generation i-series CPU, particularly when running software written to take advantage of multiple cores and/or threads ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds ... eviewed/12) but we are talking about 2+ year old hardware---a positive age in computing terms.

If you're seeing 5 cores inactive I wonder if you've somehow prevented Windows from switching the active threads from core to core to 'balance the load' ?

Perhaps the answer is a re-write of the game code, but would that be a wise move given that a fair number of users are still running the game on older hardware? I'm sure locking existing users out is not part of RSC's plan, and re-writing the game may very well do that, or mean that those with 'lesser' hardware see a performance degradation.

[RattyB]

I'm wondering why you've not overclocked your K-series processor? You paid for the power, so why not use it?

With the Asus UEFI and AutoTuning software this procedure is not at all complicated. There are also plenty of overclockers on the net willing to help if you need it. With adequate cooling (air or liquid) and a 4.7 or 4.8 OC you should see no stuttering at all north of Clapham. BML runs smooth as silk on my setup, even with 30AI units active.

RW is all about the cpu. The one you have is excellent, but it's being under utilized.

Oh it is...don't worry. That above mentioned Asus prog is taking care of that!