Video Card

[Hawk]

It's my understanding that RailWorks is not SLI compliant.

[ca2kjet]

Technically speaking, any game is SLI compliant (with the exception of super old stuff which may actually kill framerates or not work at all). Whether it's been optimized or not falls primarily upon nVidia as their drivers will carry the necessary profiles to use. Some games will come with the necessary profile to run the game already which is what you get when the game says it's SLI ready/compliant/optimized. If neither the driver nor game provide the profile you can manually set one up within nVidia's graphics settings. One of the most powerful aspects of SLI is running very high resolutions such as multi-monitor setups. It's great stuff to have and doesn't cost an arm and a leg anymore.

[Hawk]

Thanks for clarifying that.
I would like to comment on one thing you said though.

One of the most powerful aspects of SLI is running very high resolutions such as multi-monitor setups.

That only applies to newer video cards and drivers. I have 3 monitors set up on 2 GeForce 7600 GT KO cards but they're not set up for SLI because multi-monitors will not work on the old cards I have if SLI'd. I know! I've tried.

[arizonachris]

We had this SLI topic over on the Steam RW Forum, I kinda took a beat down on my reply: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... ?t=2149112

[ca2kjet]

That only applies to newer video cards and drivers. I have 3 monitors set up on 2 GeForce 7600 GT KO cards but they're not set up for SLI because multi-monitors will not work on the old cards I have if SLI'd. I know! I've tried.

Ouch! I never realized how limited the early SLI cards were. Do you at least get some good performance out of them?

[ca2kjet]

We had this SLI topic over on the Steam RW Forum, I kinda took a beat down on my reply: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... ?t=2149112

Eep! Why must everyone take things so personally on the web. It's as if one comment about something someone thinks gets turned into a snarky personal attack. I read through that thread and saw no issue with anything you stated or how it was stated. I guess some people are just too uptight.

I'm always afraid I will say something that ticks someone off without the context of how I'm actually speaking in my head, but there's only so much one can do to prevent it from being taken the wrong way.

[Hawk]

Ouch! I never realized how limited the early SLI cards were. Do you at least get some good performance out of them?

The only thing I've noticed I get out of the two cards is the 3 monitor set up. Any games I play are done on the main monitor, which is plugged into the top card (the fastest slot) and the other two monitors are plugged into the second card.

[zdierkes]

Ok, heres my deal: My system is as follows--Alienware Aurora with Win 7 64 bit. Intel core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz (I thought it was a quad-core...but looking at my device manager under CPU's, its showing 8???), 9 GHz DDR3 memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 graphics card, and finally a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme sound card (complimented with a set of Logitech Z-5500 5.1 500watt speaker system )
Now, as the game plays fine in general, with all this high-end hardware, my frame rates (although I dont know how to get it to see the actual numbers) seem sluggish when Im driving...especially when other AI trains are present in the scene. I have the graphics settings for the game set to the highest as well as followed the advice from the thread regarding optimum performance. That said, I am not too willing to give up much video quality for smoother performance, yet as I drive along I see the scenery going by somewhat hesitantly. My resolution on the RW3 settings tab is set to 1920x1080 as the 1920x 1200 was deemed unusable by the application when I tried starting the game. After some adjustments to my graphics card itself, the signal gantries appear solid grey:

phpHiHMIUPM.jpg

I dont recall this looking like that. But then I upped the anti-aliasing to the 3rd notch from zero and the gantries came back to normal, as did the distant scenery became better. I suppose the settings thread adheres to the posters specific PC components, as my performance is better with the anti-aliasing tuned up a bit farther than suggested. BTW, what the heck does "anti-aliasing" mean? And what is anisotropic filtering?

[arizonachris]

The i7 quad core has "hyperthreading" meaning each core is treated as two. Hence Device Manager telling you that.

Antialising : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antialiasing

Anisotropic Filtering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_filtering

[GaryG]

BTW, what the heck does "anti-aliasing" mean? And what is anisotropic filtering?

Google search (or another search engine) can be your friend, answering questions like these. Learning the correct words to search for will narrow the responses to close on to what you're requesting. In this case, a simple "what is antialiasing" and "what is anisotropic filtering" will probably give you lots of help.

GaryG

[MugHug]

It's my understanding that RailWorks is not SLI compliant.

But seems to run using SLI if you select mode 2 in the SLI settings of the game profile in Nvidia Control Panel. The end result shows no visual issues and works well.

Monitoring the workload placed on both cards, I see approx. 60% average on each card. Peaks of 95% which seem to be when the view is of a closeup of the high detailed rolling stock moving and not the long distance views with all the objects in the distance, which surprises me a little.

On the whole, it seems to work, but does not fully utilize the power of SLI, so in some cases it might just be as good as one card if using a more powerful one then my GTX 460s. My cards are o/c GTX 460s using latest official drivers and monitoring tool is EVGA Precision..

Much of this is so open to interpretation really.

[PapaXpress]

MugHug, I have the EVGA 460 o/c and whenever I try to use the overlay from Precision I get SBHH from RW. Is this happening to you?

[MadMike1024]

I gave up on SLI for now, and have set my second 8800GT to be a Physx processor. It works very well with all the settings on high.

The 8800GT are a great card, although a little long in the tooth, but it is working out for me.

[arizonachris]

MugHug, I have the EVGA 460 o/c and whenever I try to use the overlay from Precision I get SBHH from RW. Is this happening to you?

Papa, what do you mean the overlay? All I've ever had to do is open Precision (with no games running) make my settings, test, save and close the UI. All the settings are saved.

[PapaXpress]

I am getting terrible system lockups when I try to use Precision with RW. Now its happening with the overclocking utility.

A bit of history here. This was all working at one time before I installed SP1 for Win 7. I already bugged it with RSC support and they took my system specs down, but nothing after that.

Precision has another utility where it can overlay your video card information on top of your game. One of the more useful features you get from this is true frames per second since its getting straight from the card. I have already done the rounds of uninstall/reinstall, newer vs older versions, but it just doesn't want to behave with RW.