Dorset Coast.. video card gets you through Clapham

jetgriff · Post by **jetgriff** » Thu May 04, 2006 6:55 am

well i tried 1 gig ram but it only helped a little, so i put in a nvidea ge force 6600 card, this did the trick.... if you can afford the extra $$ try the 6600GT

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Thu May 04, 2006 7:34 am

What frame rates did you get and how much AI / Static consists were there at the time? Im using an old G Force 440MX 64mb card

and i get a nice steady 2fps all the way from Vauxhall to Clapham

Still if you time your blinking with the freezes as the screen refreshes you dont notice the stuttering at all.

parsfan · Post by **parsfan** » Thu May 04, 2006 8:44 pm

<<Still if you time your blinking with the freezes as the screen refreshes you dont notice the stuttering at all. >>

My wife thinks i'm mad as it is without doing that

Weescotty · Post by **Weescotty** » Thu May 04, 2006 10:50 pm

Doesn't always help with Dorset.

Heres my specs -

AMD X2 4400
2Gb RAM
7800GS

Still had to turn down graphic detail to get through Waterloo.

Problem isn't the detail, it the sheer number of shapes\textures that are loading. Eventually the disk can't keep up and MSTS bombs out with a "Failed to load shape" error.

What is needed is way of caching route shapes in RAM, not loading as each tile comes into view.

Weescotty · Post by **Weescotty** » Thu May 04, 2006 11:00 pm

Was wondering if installing MSTS on an I-Ram with 4x1Gb memory would help?
I-Ram is basically a solid state hard drive.

Heres some read tests, as you can see way faster -

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Fri May 05, 2006 5:37 am

What is needed is way of caching route shapes in RAM

I remember a while back someone saying that they ran MSTS in a RAM disk - a virtual disk stored in memory, loading each route he wanted to drive into RAM before starting. I remember thinking that was a good idea, but i cant remember now how to set up a RAM disk in Windows (I could do it in Dos easily).

If anyone can advise i might give it a go and see if it helps at all.

tonyveal · Post by **tonyveal** » Fri May 05, 2006 6:55 am

Weescotty

I have an almost identical setup (except ATI graphics) and confirm I have the same problem even running with SATA disks in mirrorred RAID formation (about as fast as you can get). I haven't been able to really resolve the problem, although I keep trying different things (block sizes etc). It is very annoying because usually at the point it happens I am usually getting 20+ fps (even running at 1600x1200, all maxed out). It appears the graphic engine and graphic hardware is handling everything easily, it is simply loading from disk.

I have a suspicion that every file is loaded (even if previously loaded) as a seperate entity eg where a shape is used over and over it is loaded over and over, hence the huge amount of disk access?

Weescotty · Post by **Weescotty** » Fri May 05, 2006 11:17 pm

Tony - Yeah the problem isn't graphics/cpu power related. It the simple fact that the disks can't keep up with the amount shapes etc being requested by MSTS, so eventualluy MSTS . out saying it "failed to load shape xxx".

What is needed is either -
a) A solid state hard drive, e.g. the I-Ram
b) Route loaded to a ramdisk
c) Someway of caching all the files used by the route during the route load.

Ramdisk for all Windows OS
http://www.speedguide.net/read_articles.php?id=131

Post by **NeutronIC** » Sat May 06, 2006 2:24 am

The artificial benchmarks of the I-Ram show that it is very fast, but look at the real-world benchmarks using real apps and it's only marginally faster than the real thing. The problem is the SATA bus and this is quite revealing in that it shows faster disks are only going to have marginal improvement now until SATA itself is improved.

If you want to go down the ramdrive route, then for my money, i'd put a truck load of main memory in your machine and set up a big ram disk on that. That way you can get the benefit of really fast memory and use it at full speed without the bottleneck of the SATA bus.

It was quite revealing in the review of the I-Ram that any ram above a certain (very low) performance would be wasted due to the relatively low speed of the SATA interface.

The fact that a four-disk RAID to real drives can compare even closely to the I-Ram shows that it's really not the right interface for a ram drive - *nothing* should be able to come close to a good ram drive.

So get as much ram in your machine as possible, create a ram drive, stick a mini-route install on it and run from that, you'll see MSTS run a lot better

Matt.

45002 · Post by **45002** » Sat May 06, 2006 3:08 am

I had a go at this creating a Ram drive

its Drive B on my set up

only one think puzzing me,it says its only has 30.2mb of space,how can you install msts on 30.2mb of space

Im really puzzed by all this Ram drive anyone help me

MARTIN

Post by **NeutronIC** » Sat May 06, 2006 3:14 am

You can't install it in 30mb of space

Just like a real drive, you need to make it bigger

Likely you'll need a 1+ gig ram drive, which means really you need to have at least 2 gig of memory (if you take up all your memory for the ram drive and make it so that it is constantly swapping out due to lack of memory to actually run the sim, you'll not really feel much benefit

).

Get lots of memory - 2+ gig, then set up a big ram drive still leaving you around 512mb or 768mb of memory left. Copy MSTS to the ram drive, change the registry key and off you go.

Matt.

45002 · Post by **45002** » Sat May 06, 2006 3:23 am

Thanks Matt

i only got 1024mb of ram in my pc

Used the new Ram drive on temorary files for Firefox for now speed that up even more

MARTIN

PS. A bit off Topic,Anyone using Firefox and wants to speed it up more do this

Open IE

Then

To move your IE temp files, do the following: From within IE, choose Tools -> Internet Options -> General -> Settins. Make sure the "Amount of disk space" slider shows fewer MB than your RAM Disk. I wouldn't use a value over 15-20 MB. Choose Move Folder, and your RAM Disk drive letter, click OK.

Then close IE Then go to Firefox,click on files,then Import Setting from IE

Then Click Finsh and restart Firefox and away you go

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Sat May 06, 2006 7:02 am

Im following Matt's path and investigating a bit of software which does it all for you. With 3GB + of RAM in an XP machine it can give you a 2GB RAMdisk in memory, with options to readyload software during the machines boot up procedure. So as XP boots up it should copy the whole MSTS installation with all the routes you need into the RAMdisk ready to play, and delete it all when you shutdown.

It sounds impressive and costs $50 which is peanuts really. After the next two roadshows are done i plan on downloading the trial version to test. Only thing is im not sure if i can get 3GB of memory in my PC or the shuttle

jetgriff · Post by **jetgriff** » Fri May 12, 2006 7:35 am

ok now have an amp sempron 3200 1.8 - 1.5gig ram and ge force 6600 card
Train Sim options all set at 'high'

With the steam loco Tangmere and 12 coaches at 60mph no other A1 or consits i get

10 fpm leaving Waterloo this reduces to 1 or 2 fpm while Vauxall Station, then Battersea Power station and again just outside Clapham Carriage Sdgs. then goes back to 6 through Clapham and 10 12 fpm after Clapham Station.

Not to keen on the new flat screen monitor though

Atomic Systems

Dorset Coast.. video card gets you through Clapham

Dorset Coast.. video card gets you through Clapham

I

Thanks

Frames per minute .. Dorset Coast