Will This Run Railworks Smoothly?

[Necer149]

I plan on building my own desktop, but before I buy everything, I wanted to make sure this will get the job done. Here is the main list of parts...
CPU: AMD Athlon X4 750K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor

GPU: Asus GeForce GTX 650 2GB Video Card

RAM: 4 GB

HDD: 500 GB

Motherboard: MSI A55M-E33 Micro ATX FM2

So would TSX mode be a possibility?

Thanks

Mark

[buzz456]

I have a GTX 650ti which does a marvelous job. Read for yourself if you think think the ti is worth the extra money. The rest of it looks pretty good to me.

[arizonachris]

I would go with 8Gb of RAM instead of just 4Gb, and the Ti version of the GTX650 will make a nice difference as well.

[jwtheiv]

As long as you're running a 64-bit operating system, you _really_ want at least 8, if not more RAM.

Only other recommendation, consider a SSD drive if you can afford it. I haven't made the switch yet myself, but every single person I've talked to that has basically swears that they will never go back.

[buzz456]

It's obvious that you should spend $10,000 and have 32 megs and the ultimate motherboard and and and how about a cray computer? What you are planning will run RW just fine and if you decide to add more RAM later on that's fine.

[peterhayes]

Mark
I would recommend a GTX 750/750TI Maxwell as they run TS 2014 great and do NOT require a separate power supply to run them ie they draw enough power off the PCIE slot, about the same price as the 650 series
pH
Buzz - A Cray would be terrible to run TS2014 - proprietary non-GUI OS - ie it can't even run windows and who could afford a 12 x fentabyte graphics card and 200,000,000GB of RAM? ??

[buzz456]

That's the second time someone told me that. I shall suggest some other over qualified over priced computer the next time someone starts telling someone to get all kinds of goodies much as they might be fun but are unnecessary to run TS2014. The question was will this run Railworks smoothly? The answer is pretty much.

[Ericmopar]

I'm seconding the Maxwell based GTX 750ti. It will run about the same fps as a 650ti but will draw almost half the power while doing it.
I also just finished reading PCGaming magazine, and they are saying if you are building a budget gaming rig, you should stick to a high gig version of an i3 not AMD. (over 3Ghz)
They recommend any i3, i5 that is Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, or Haswell and is rated at 3 gig or higher.
Their tests show that Intel is far more powerful on a single core rating. Think IPS "instructions per second" not multiple cores for gaming.
Less power less heat.
You can get a good non gaming mother board for less than $100. It won't have the flexibility of a gaming board, but will run run the CPU of your choice well.

As a side note: the latest tests show Haswell i5 and i7s to be equal in terms of gaming performance. All other things like clock and model number being equal.
That isn't real news however, that has been the case for several years.

[Ericmopar]

Mark
I would recommend a GTX 750/750TI Maxwell as they run TS 2014 great and do NOT require a separate power supply to run them ie they draw enough power off the PCIE slot, about the same price as the 650 series
pH
Buzz - A Cray would be terrible to run TS2014 - proprietary non-GUI OS - ie it can't even run windows and who could afford a 12 x fentabyte graphics card and 200,000,000GB of RAM? ??

I'm living proof, that even a GTX 780 won't run this sim maxed out anyways...

[buzz456]

I'm seconding the Maxwell based GTX 750ti. It will run about the same fps as a 650ti but will draw almost half the power while doing it.
I also just finished reading PCGaming magazine, and they are saying if you are building a budget gaming rig, you should stick to a high gig version of an i3 not AMD. (over 3Ghz)
They recommend any i3, i5 that is Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, or Haswell and is rated at 3 gig or higher.
Their tests show that Intel is far more powerful on a single core rating. Think IPS "instructions per second" not multiple cores for gaming.
Less power less heat.
You can get a good non gaming mother board for less than $100. It won't have the flexibility of a gaming board, but will run run the CPU of your choice well.

As a side note: the latest tests show Haswell i5 and i7s to be equal in terms of gaming performance. All other things like clock and model number being equal.
That isn't real news however, that has been the case for several years.

Is this some major foreign language or a special dialect? Good grief the guy asked if what he was talking about would run TS2014 not if the frippy or the frappy was what he needed?

[Ericmopar]

I'm seconding the Maxwell based GTX 750ti. It will run about the same fps as a 650ti but will draw almost half the power while doing it.
I also just finished reading PCGaming magazine, and they are saying if you are building a budget gaming rig, you should stick to a high gig version of an i3 not AMD. (over 3Ghz)
They recommend any i3, i5 that is Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, or Haswell and is rated at 3 gig or higher.
Their tests show that Intel is far more powerful on a single core rating. Think IPS "instructions per second" not multiple cores for gaming.
Less power less heat.
You can get a good non gaming mother board for less than $100. It won't have the flexibility of a gaming board, but will run run the CPU of your choice well.

As a side note: the latest tests show Haswell i5 and i7s to be equal in terms of gaming performance. All other things like clock and model number being equal.
That isn't real news however, that has been the case for several years.

Is this some major foreign language or a special dialect? Good grief the guy asked if what he was talking about would run TS2014 not if the frippy or the frappy was what he needed?

It's "Geek Speak" AKA Geekanese, Technospeak, Technojargon

To answer the OP's original question, I mostly doubt the Athalon CPU.
The proposed build will run TSX but will probably have to turn down the settings some.
I'm firmly in the camp, that if you can afford a little better board CPU and Graphics then do it, rather than upgrading.

[peterhayes]

Buzz
In plain speak the OP's system should run TS2014 (not at any great settings) but we have very little info to go on, ie OS 32/64-bit? Win XP, 7, 8, 8.1 ?- Monitor size?, HDD drive(s)?, RAM speed? and so on.
The beauty of the 750/750TI cards is that they only use 55/60 watts so you can use a lower wattage psu - conserving energy and reducing heat.
I can only say that IMHO a $100 cpu (processor) or video card will not give you the same results as say a $250 cpu and/or card and neither will you get 2.5 times the power in the latter.
Its all to do with IPS and tessellation - the only two technical terms that I know anything about!
Regards
pH

[Necer149]

Wow! Thanks for the replies everyone. I have decided that I am just going buy what I have, and if I think I should add more RAM, than I'll add more RAM a later. This may sound crazy to you guys but I think I'll be blown away with the graphics that I'll finally be able use. My old Compaq laptop was trash, I could only have the scenery on medium settings and it still would not get above 20 FPS! So maybe when I get used to the graphics and start to notice the lag, than I'll upgrade it with an extra 4 or 8 GB of RAM.

Thanks again everyone

Mark

[GSkid]

Get 8GBs of RAM cuz it's cheap. It otherwise has little effect with 32-bit programs like Railworks. If you don't get an SSD drive, consider getting a 2nd hard drive and put them in RAID 0 array for maximum speed and data throughput.