Will this GPU support RW3?

[Dexter7]

Dex, the 400 series is last gen stuff, and as far as I know, anyone that you buy is used. My GTX470 Super Clocked struggles at times with TSX on. That being said, I don't know first hand about the 500 series except what has been said here.

Well that depends... are you running Railworks high graphics, medium or even low [with TSX on]? Because my current GPU, Radeon 6670, runs at 15-25 [30 if I'm lucky] FPS... That's quite odd, according to this site: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net, My GPU is ranked lower than your GTX 470...
Rankings
GTX 470: 2,968
Radeon 6670: 1252

[arizonachris]

I'm running RW on high detail with TSX on and get about the same performance as you do. 14 to 30 (maybe if I'm lucky on certain routes).

Benchmark score don't mean diddly to me. And, you really can't compare an ATI card to an Nvidia card, what with Nvidia being able to run Physics on the card. ATI has to run Physics on the CPU. The card's archetutre's are totally different. Apples and oranges.

What all this crap boils down to in this game is still, to me anyways, a crap shoot. Some guys spend $2,000 on a new rig and get the same performance with this sim. Me, I wanted another 4Gb RAM, but DDR2 prices are thru the roof. So I'm stuck. SMMDigital bought two new graphics cards to run SLI and it made squat difference. Guys upgrade CPU's and clock the snot out of them with no difference in the game performance.

I guess, it comes down to, are RW going to finally fix the core? Or add more fluff that continues to kill frame rates. I'm just holding on for the time being.

[Kali]

Am about to grab an EVGA 560Ti myself, I think; I'd get a 6950, but the only 2GB one I can put up with is Asus and it needs three slots, so it won't fit :p. Well done Asus. Might also grab a watercooled CPU cooler and overclock hell out of my 920.

I actually have reasonable performance out of my 4890 now; I've been running max quality shadows for a while after being too lazy to turn them off once I took some screenshots, and other than certain areas where I get slowdowns irrespective of graphics settings, it's quite playable, and by that I don't mean "bumps along at 14fps", but more like 25-30. I have done two things since RW3 arrived: installed new catalysts, and finally got round to putting my RAM in XMS mode ( only 2 years after I built the system ... ). I think the last catalysts might have made a bit of a difference.

[ozinoz]

I can now report back on my GTX560Ti experience - wish to hell I had saved the %500+ it cost me.

After my last graphics card experience where "anybody with half a brain can install them, all you do is push them in" and it ended up costing me $2000 when I damaged the MB and of course the tech had moved on and I needed then a new processor, MB and ram I decided to leave it to the experts...

So after paying a deposit for them to order me the card and the $115 min labour charge and then needing up upgrade the power supply from the 400w I had to 500w, I managed to pick up all of about 7fps ! This card should chew this and not break a sweat, yet I can only get about 10fps at medium settings with TSX enabled and unfortunately, trying to swap back to RW2 legacy mode still only brings about 10 fps, yet I could get 20+ with my old GT8600 card. The tech people kept it for an extra day trying to work out just why, tweaking and probing etc and in the end put it down to "faulty developer code" There should be no reason some users can get great results on a lower spec rig and yet others with newer higher spec rigs are struggling with playability.

At this stage, it is unplayable, so I have pulled the plug on the whole thing, awaiting acknowledgement from RSC that they are working on a solution, but I am not holding my breathe. There is no way I would even consider a system upgrade as I am likely to drop another $1500 or so and the chance is there it still wont run.



ps: as the saying goes, this is my individual experience and your mileage may vary

[EliteMarksman]

After my last graphics card experience where "anybody with half a brain can install them, all you do is push them in" and it ended up costing me $2000 when I damaged the MB and of course the tech had moved on and I needed then a new processor, MB and ram I decided to leave it to the experts...
!

Just curious, but how the heck did you manage to do that?

[Chacal]

Reminds me of when I dropped a screwdriver in a running computer.
GE-ZAP!

[ozinoz]

Just curious, but how the heck did you manage to do that?

As the expression goes here - "too much Weet Bix" The instructions from the brains trust were to push it into the seat until it clicks. Well it didn't seem to be seating and I was unsure just what it should sound / feel like, so by the time I had finished, I had microscopically fractured the motherboard

As an aside, I had a call from my It/Tech guys yesterday - what they want to do is get my PC back and keep installing and up specing a GPU until they can find something that runs satisfactorily, just as an experiment as the whole exercise has them baffled. Be interesting to see what they come back with...

Still not happy, but what can you do...

[wacampbell]

- what they want to do is get my PC back and keep installing and up specing a GPU until they can find something that runs satisfactorily, just as an experiment as the whole exercise has them baffled. Be interesting to see what they come back with...

I know it can be frustrating, but its quite possible this method won't deliver results. The system must be properly balanced. Dropping a high power GPU into the computer won't increase frame rates if its starved for data from the CPU. And since RW3 doesn't use multi-core processors well yet, quad core cpu's aren't much help. RW3 needs both a fast GPU, and a the highest possible raw clock speed on the CPU that's driving it.

[PapaXpress]

I know it can be frustrating, but its quite possible this method won't deliver results. The system must be properly balanced. Dropping a high power GPU into the computer won't increase frame rates if its starved for data from the CPU. And since RW3 doesn't use multi-core processors well yet, quad core cpu's aren't much help. RW3 needs both a fast GPU, and a the highest possible raw clock speed on the CPU that's driving it.

This is a very interesting statement. It explains why I saw in increase in frame rate (+5~10) when I overclocked my CPU, whereas overclocking my GPU did not make any appreciable difference.

[arizonachris]

As an aside, I had a call from my It/Tech guys yesterday - what they want to do is get my PC back and keep installing and up specing a GPU until they can find something that runs satisfactorily, just as an experiment as the whole exercise has them baffled.

I'm actually amazed that a local shop is that dedicated to their customers. I have a local shop where I'm at, and I give him all the business I can, because if I need something done right away, he's been there for me for going on 10 years now. Most PC stuff I can do myself, but if I don't have time at least I know the shop to go to or recommend a friend to go to. Seems like you found some new friends there, Oz. Let us know if/ what they figure out.

[ozinoz]

Like there, things are a bit quiet here and I have been using this business for both privately and through business for more than a decade, so I guess they are looking upon it as a "fault finding" training exercise

I know i am not running the highest spec machine, but it should be doing better than 10fps in both TSX and legacy RW2 modes. The heart is saying throw more $$ at it and buy a new pc, but there are those with newish higher spec PC's than mine and it still doesnt perform satisfactorily, and I really cant justify another $1000 on what I have already just spent and then find I am possibly no better off and my legacy software doesnt want to run in 64 bit environment, which is the only way to go if upgrading. Word is there are possibly at least one core update due before Xmas (as reported by Derek on the UK board) but no indication of just what that will entail. Would hate it to be just a 2012 update to core rollingstock and no attention to the actual issues of operation, so back to just trawling the boards

[arizonachris]

And the bottom line in all this is that it's still a crap shoot. And that's what really really puzzles me. My PC is not top end any more, an older Phenom II 940 @ 3.6, 2x500Gb WD Black drives in RAID 0, 4Gb RAM, GTX470, Win 7 Ult. 64 bit. And I get 20 to 30 frames average. yeah, sometimes I get below 10 and I get stutter when the game reads from the drives. But guys with uber systems miles above mine, with lower performance? Just don't know.

[ozinoz]

Report back on fps GPU testing and issues.

Well, last week I had my pc in with the tech guys, who offered to have a look and tweak of my PC and keep changing the GPU until RW3 was running satisfactorily and I can now report back on their official findings.

It was a fairly simple fix and I am now getting in excess of 40fps and it only cost me an additional $1100

Basically, poor results are a result of several factors - CPU & GPU processing power, motherboard and front bus speed to actually get the data to the GPU, Ram and HD read / write speed. So, have now updated to a new Core i7 with 8 G Ram, my GTx560TI card, updated the power supply to 650w and couldn't be happier (with the performance, NOT the cost). getting great results with all of the eye candy turned on. It is just disappointing that users need to go through such expense every time there is an upgrade. They still advise that there is poor coding involved in a lot of user running issues and we can only hope that another core upgrade will address these so even better results and longer futureproofing will entail.



G

[buzz456]

Report back on fps GPU testing and issues.

Well, last week I had my pc in with the tech guys, who offered to have a look and tweak of my PC and keep changing the GPU until RW3 was running satisfactorily and I can now report back on their official findings.

It was a fairly simple fix and I am now getting in excess of 40fps and it only cost me an additional $1100

Basically, poor results are a result of several factors - CPU & GPU processing power, motherboard and front bus speed to actually get the data to the GPU, Ram and HD read / write speed. So, have now updated to a new Core i7 with 8 G Ram, my GTx560TI card, updated the power supply to 650w and couldn't be happier (with the performance, NOT the cost). getting great results with all of the eye candy turned on. It is just disappointing that users need to go through such expense every time there is an upgrade. They still advise that there is poor coding involved in a lot of user running issues and we can only hope that another core upgrade will address these so even better results and longer futureproofing will entail.



G

In other words the equivalent of the civilian Cray. What a crock! Just to enjoy a hobby.

[ozinoz]

In other words the equivalent of the civilian Cray. What a crock! Just to enjoy a hobby.

Do agree. We are not, as a group, hardcore gamers with the latest eye watering spec PC's and GPU's, but regular pc users trying to live / relive an aspect of our field of interest. Hopefully this will be the last great tech stretch for RW for some time (apart from multi-player, when ever that materialises, not that I personally have an interest in that) because I for one will not drop this sort of $ again. I just don't get to use it enough to justify it.

I'll get off my soap box now...



G