Question for the technically inclined

[GenesisFan99]

Does anyone know if Train Simulator uses more GPU power, CPU power, or is it balanced?
Also, I see many of you have Intel systems. What do you guys think of AMD's current and upcoming releases?

[BoostedFridge]

Its definitely a balance required. My last computer had an AMD Phenom II x6 @ 2.8Ghz, and a Radeon 6850 GPU originally, I upgraded the graphics card to a R9 270X and saw a minimal gain in FPS. That made me appreciate how much that CPU was holding performance back.

[JohnS]

It's definitely a balancing act. Also the hard drive will play a roll in performance. I saw some benefits of using a solid state drive for the Sim vs a mechanical drive. I had and AMD Phenom x4 965 and a Geforce 760 running the sim for a while and I really only noticed the increased heat from the AMD vs Intel when it comes to this sim. This is probably eight year old stuff and I don't know much about the new AMD stuff other than what reviews I've read. Still mainly heat and the wattage AMD uses.

[buzz456]

My experience is all Intel however it appears to me that the game is more gpu oriented than cpu. As I have improved my video cards performance has gotten much smoother with all the sliders out to the right and more antiaiasing. I have a older slower cpu on my one computer and it seems to run the game just as nice as my newer faster i7. Having 16gigs of RAM is definitely a plus. The solid state drive for a hard drive really helps loading and I think reduces stutter when you go from one tile to another. Some folks on here have giganto monitors or are running double monitors so they have other issues than I do so take that into account. I have a dual monitor on my one rig but the game is only running on one while I can use the other one for other purposes. Some will get on here and say that you need some super hot rod video card and I suppose there is no end game if you are a super geek but most of us either don't have unlimited funds or don't care to spend what we have have. By the way I have GTX1060 3gig vid from MSI in both my machines.

[GenesisFan99]

Thank you for the responses. It would appear that I have nothing to worry about for my CPU choice.
The game being GPU bound makes sense as I was able to get a minimum of 40 FPS with custom maxed settings in Train Simulator 2017 (I have a GTX 1070 SC). My display was an older LG 1080p 60Hz monitor, so nothing special. My old machine had a pretty bad AMD CPU which did in fact eat power and run hot, but that was due to the architecture being poorly designed. AMD also had minimal funds when Bulldozer and its derivatives were released, which is why they sucked. The scariest thing was the temperature sensors were known to be off, which may actually have caused my PC's "death". The processor is now locked to a low idle frequency from what I believe to be thermal damage. Even if the issue could be fixed, the FX-8350 I had loses in single-thread performance to a 2nd generation i3, so it's better to replace it.

Thankfully, AMD's current and upcoming offerings are much better. Performance actually scared Intel enough to rush 2 releases. Thermal and power draw issues are also fixed, and given proper overclocking (both RAM and all cores), an 8-core processor from AMD (Ryzen 1700X) actually beats a 7700K overclocked to 5 GHz with the same RAM overclock settings. These processors are definitely something to watch for if you want to save money.

My next machine will be one of AMD's upcoming Ryzen+ processors releasing in April. I'm building a streaming rig to handle 1440p gaming at custom max settings while simultaneously streaming to YouTube in either 1080p30 or 1080p60. I'm planning on getting rid of my EVGA GTX 1070 SC Black Edition at some point to put money towards a GTX 1080 Ti or whatever its successor may be. A GTX 1070 doesn't cut it for powering a 1440p 144Hz display at custom maxed settings. I hope to have something like 32 GB of RAM, but I'm not sure about SSDs. They're very expensive and I don't mind HDDs so much after having only used them.

[buzz456]

The nice thing about TS2018 is you can put it on a relatively small SSD and run it there. I have my SSD running as a compressed drive and even though I have a ton of TS stuff I'm only using 147 gigs of the 250. The Samsung or Sandisk can be bought for around $80. I have one of each and they both work well.

[GenesisFan99]

The nice thing about TS2018 is you can put it on a relatively small SSD and run it there. I have my SSD running as a compressed drive and even though I have a ton of TS stuff I'm only using 147 gigs of the 250. The Samsung or Sandisk can be bought for around $80. I have one of each and they both work well.

I have seen both of those SSDs before, they're a good deal. However, when I last checked my HDD (1TB Western Digital Caviar Black) I was running out of space, with about 260 GB of TS stuff alone. I'm also not sure how the game would run if on another drive since it would probably be outside the Steam folder. If you could possibly explain how this works I would really appreciate it.

[buzz456]

The key to this is to have the files compressed:

E drive_2.jpg

As you can see my Steam/TS2018 fits easily on here. I have no idea what all you have in your RailWorks however I have dozens and dozens of US and Euro routes and thousands of items of rolling stock and scenery items.

E drive_1.jpg

[JohnS]

I run mine outside the steam folder and have no difference. Steam is only a client portal. The game runs from where ever it sits it only looks to see if Steam is logged in. I actually have Steam and a default install of Railworks on a 1tb drive that I use for storage. My Modded install and a testing install of the Sim on 500gb SSD and the OS and assorted programs on a 120gb SSD.

[JohnS]

The nice thing about TS2018 is you can put it on a relatively small SSD and run it there. I have my SSD running as a compressed drive and even though I have a ton of TS stuff I'm only using 147 gigs of the 250. The Samsung or Sandisk can be bought for around $80. I have one of each and they both work well.

I never thought about running the drive compressed. Does it seem to have any effect on loading the Sim or tiles? I was under the impression that compressing the drive hurts performance but that could have been the older mechanical HD's.

[GenesisFan99]

Thank you both. This really helps my storage choices. I think what I might do is just bite the bullet and plan for an NVME SSD. I do need mass storage for videos/streams though so I'll probably get a 500 GB NVME SSD for Train Sim, reuse my old HDD, and get a Seagate 3TB HDD. I know 500 GB probably seems like a lot, but I have limited PCIE lanes to play with and there are no NVME SSDs of note with a capacity between 250 and 500 GB. I probably don't have as many routes as either of you do but I have had the game since 2011 and I have a moderate amount of repaints. I am also planning on purchasing a very detailed upgrade of the Pacific Surfliner route (done by a 3rd party developer who I will not name), so lots of storage is definitely necessary.

[buzz456]

There is no discernible difference in performance here. I highly recommend it if you need some disk space.

[JohnS]

There is no discernible difference in performance here. I highly recommend it if you need some disk space.

That's really helpful info. After all this talking I found my ram was installed wrong all this time. Not sure if it will make much of a difference but it makes me feel better.

[CArailroader]

There is no discernible difference in performance here. I highly recommend it if you need some disk space.

That's really helpful info. After all this talking I found my ram was installed wrong all this time. Not sure if it will make much of a difference but it makes me feel better.

I didn't know one could install RAM wrong?

[JohnS]

I have two sticks and didn't have it in the correct banks for the interleaving to work.