Mysterious observations from KRS

[Retro]

Hi,
I have been building a Route and completed texturing the area round the tracks. Since then I cannot run the Route without constant stops and stutters. It is better on areas where the track area is still default green. I am on medium settings with the slider on 6 no detailed shadows no proc flora. But the route is now unplayable. I have done a tests on my 7600 GS 512mb GPU and most notably a stress test which it passed with no problem. I have tested my Dual Core 3.2 mhz CPU with diagnostic programs, also tested the 2 gig of memory and my hard drives all of which are behaving normally, have run check disk in Dos on my C drive and no errors and it passed all Smart diagnostics.
In short on a relatively new machine under 2 years old. Rail Simulator will not run to a degree which is acceptable to enjoy the game on the Route I am building. So my only choice is to abandon the project until I can afford to buy a new machine.
Very Disappointed
Regards James

[atpyatt]

That's strange because I run RailSim on medium settings with a PC that has a worse spec than yours (Its got a radeon 9800 Pro in it, about 4 years old) and it runs OK. It does stutter a bit when in areas of very dense scenery, lots of ai trains etc but nothing bad enough to spoil the game. What screen resolution are you running it at?

[keber]

Actually Radon 9800Pro is much faster graphic card than nVidia 7600 GS. Better to invest about 100 pounds for a very good graphic card (like nVidia 9600GT), which could be at least 5 times faster than this 7600GS.

[godabyc]

If your 7600 GS is the passively cooled version with DDR2 memory, thats probably your problem. The 512Mb might sound good but it's 512Mb of slow memory by todays standards. As keber says, a new gfx card would be worth considering, rather than a new machine.

[AndiS]

You need to play with the "texture quality" settings. I seem to remember that there is more than one, for different things. Could well be that you do not even perceive much degradation of you go for medium or even less. Just test what it is that your graphics card does not congest at the required speed. Locate a well-defined area or game sequence (scenario run), and do a cold-blooded test series, changing one thing at a time by one notch.

If you find you cannot have painted textures, it will be easy to get rid of them. Long ago, Jim Ward (sniper) did a test which found that the terrain painting is stored in a folder of its own. I do not remember which, but I can dig out the post if you don't find it when you decide that they have to go. It was at ts.com, title was like "ripping KRS into bits" and it was some time last autumn.

And in case a hardware upgrade is an option, only consider the graphics card, like others say. I have about the same machine, but a 8600GTS (passively cooled, btw.) and it runs great with all sliders up.

[CaptScarlet]

Going on what you said in your other thread it would seem that something other than RS is amiss if as you say that it runs better on your old pc with a old fx5200 graphics card. The thing I would question is, have you installed ( or changed ) anything recently, have you tried updating or reinstalling your graphics drivers , have you done a defrag recently, is your anti virus program interfering with RS etc etc.
If you want to see what is happening software wise when you are running RS you could download from Microsoft the program "Process Monitor" and run that at the same time you are running RS in a window and see what is happening when the problems occur ( it might give you a better idea what's running at least ).

John

[Shadders]

May I suggest something? It’s possible your route files are scattered all over your drive and the stuttering is being caused by your drive having to spend a lot of time finding your route files rather than loading them.

You mention you have hard drives, plural.
If you have the space, backup your install of RS to another drive in case things go wrong.
Then delete your route folder from your installed version using Windows Explorer (hold down the shift key, right click and click Delete with the shift key still held down). Now defrag your drive. Copy your route folder from your backup and try playing your route again.

The above could help, since I see that the routes that come with RS range from ~1500 to ~3100 files in the route folder. There is a lot of potential for these files to get scattered all over the place.

I hope you find this useful,

Shadders.

[Retro]

Hi and thanks for the replies.
I am running at 1024x768. I did try it last night with everything set to low and the slider to 0 and it seemed to make no difference at all. I think I re started the program but I was getting rather tired and fed up at this stage. Before I got Rail Simulator I got a few BSOD's that said the GPU was stuck in a loop and the computer was shutting down to avoid damage. this was with FS9. I uninstalled the card using the device manager and restarted the machine and then reinstalled the drivers. It seemed to be ok from then. The only other thing I am a little puzzled about was when looking in the Bios setup where I just done checks on the Smart System that the GPU was using a PCI slot ticked and the PCIE option was unticked. I was under the impression when I bought the machine that it had a PCI express slot on the motherboard. But rather than mess something up I left it as it was. What I can't get my head round is why does it run to much the same standard with the same settings on a 128mb Fx5200 with 512mb of Ram and a Pentium Four 2.8ghz single CPU. On all the lowest settings it ran slightly better on this old machine. When I lower the settings on my newer machine it seems to make no difference. I am really puzzled as the why painting some gravel and track grass gravel on either side of the track can cause such a problem. Near detailed Folliage at the track side has always caused a slowdown and I can understand this and only have limited amounts on the Route.
Thanks for your time on my behalf it is much appreciated.
I would love to get back to continuing this Route but cannot justify the time spent if it runs like it is doing ATM.
Kind Regards James.

[AndiS]

I hope you have some local computer guru who can look at your box and tell you something about your graphics card and the BIOS settings and all that. Your description sounds like a latent problem, but don't ask me about it. My PC tells me from time to time that Windows is corrupted and on rebooting it forgets about this -- if I am lucky. Or it freezes during hardware initialisation. Or it freezes at completely random times (very rarely, luckily). There is a lot of stuff that few understand which interacts in complex manners and only an expert can help.

I also fully support Sly's theory, because the painted textures are stored in separate files for each tile, and these files are not exactly big. So the chances are considerable that the system saw this as a rare chance to reuse all the unused fragments on the disk for your texture information, and now the harddisk has a busy time.

[CaptScarlet]

Hi and thanks for the replies.
Before I got Rail Simulator I got a few BSOD's that said the GPU was stuck in a loop and the computer was shutting down to avoid damage. this was with FS9. I uninstalled the card using the device manager and restarted the machine and then reinstalled the drivers. It seemed to be ok from then.

Thats not really a good way to fix graphics driver issues. The best way and most recommened method is to uninstall the drivers, run a program like driver cleaner ( http://downloads.guru3d.com/Guru3D---Dr ... -1655.html ) to get rid of any left over parts of the driver ,reboot and then install the new drivers. I would recommend that you do this seeing you are having a problem and to eliminate that as a cause.

The only other thing I am a little puzzled about was when looking in the Bios setup where I just done checks on the Smart System that the GPU was using a PCI slot ticked and the PCIE option was unticked. I was under the impression when I bought the machine that it had a PCI express slot on the motherboard. But rather than mess something up I left it as it was. What I can't get my head round is why does it run to much the same standard with the same settings on a 128mb Fx5200 with 512mb of Ram and a Pentium Four 2.8ghz single CPU. On all the lowest settings it ran slightly better on this old machine. When I lower the settings on my newer machine it seems to make no difference. I am really puzzled as the why painting some gravel and track grass gravel on either side of the track can cause such a problem. Near detailed Folliage at the track side has always caused a slowdown and I can understand this and only have limited amounts on the Route.

What motherboard do you have ? What operating system and is it updated ? what graphics drivers are you using and what is the version.
RS should be running better on your new PC when compared to the old one and that is why I believe its not necessarily a problem with RS. Its just a matter of eliminating the possibilities.

John

[tads1970]

Just out of interest do you have any Multisampling or Anti Alaiasing or Antisotropic filtering enabled?,having these enabled can effect performance in a big way,unless you have a high end graphics card.

Daz

[overmarze]

Dont worry about it I have a 8800gts 328mb yea and a Amd 5.0 266ghz and 4 gig of ram and i get the same jumping.

Take a look here on performance tips
http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 15&t=74848

Hope that helps.

[RSAdam]

Hi All,

It is interesting to note this discussion, but both my home and work systems (thats RSDL development machines) are lower spec than these and neither suffer stuttering at all. Many people are quick to balme Rail Simulator for all sorts, but the immensly varied hardware available out there and massively different setups each and every user has means t its more than possible just as many dont suffer stuttering as there are that do.

[overmarze]

Its not the stuttering i get its the loading up of tiles think thats the name of it.

Adam can you give us the exact spec of this machines

At the end of the day RS gives me the best fps better than Trainz and Msts.

[Sly401]

Retro

Firstly someone needs to go through the bios on your machine and set it up sweet.

Ram timings is no.1 cause of BSOD

Can't help if you are running Vista

See my numerous posts reference page file.. setting it up manually

Slots that you use for cards.. pick carefully some /most are shared IRQ

System restore, anti virus and evertything else all off

Defragging... even better if in safe mode

If using a sound card make sure onboard is turned off in the bios(along with things like serial , parallel ,midi ports etc)

Possibly turn down hardware acceleration on sound card


Its not your vid card that is specced too low,
I have 3 rigs the lowest of which is a 2500 Athlon with a Fx5900 card and 1 gig RAM... It runs fine no stutters or missing sounds at everything maxed (always on 14 fps mind) slow ... but its still smooth and everything is there.
Incidently putting in a 6800 Ultra didn't make the slightest difference (its the biggest AGP card I have )

CPU, Memory (incl page file) and data transfer are the limiting factors for most


Hope you get sorted OK

Sly