Trainsimulator 2012

[arizonachris]

Right now, the performance of RW depends more on hard drive read speeds than the CPU or the video card. I was able to almost get rid of stutter and increase frame rates by running a RAID 0 instead of just a single hard drive. Gonna be interesting, to say the least, to see what RW3 brings to the table.

[Chacal]

Currently, you can set the affinity for the rwproc2 process so that it runs on a specific processor, while other tasks run on another.
This also avoids the overhead of letting the OS switch threads around.

[Shortliner]

Well guys and gals, only 10 more days!

This is exactly like waiting for Christmas!

[UPSD70ACe]

Questions I have noticed that when I load my RW2 take a long tome,Also when I close RW2 when it goes back to my.Desktop takes awhile for it to load my desktop why dose.RW2 do this will RW3 Loading time be faster or the same.

[PapaXpress]

You probably won't see too much performance gain from RW just memory alone if you are past 4 gig. This is because 32bit applications can only access a maximum of 4gb address space (and they need to be written to utilize it). Now... if you are running a x64 OS then this does mean having more will allow all your applications have more "breathing space" so its a good thing.

For those who are interested in the technical side of it, here an article (from 2007 no less) which describes the whole 32 vs 64 bit issue back when it was just getting its legs.
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2007/10/16 ... _the_ram/1

And I completely agree that the video card is where most of your heavy lifting is done. After RW3 comes out I'll be look at if I need to upgrade my Nvidia 460.

[Chessie8638]

I think if you get above about 4GB, you aren't going to get much more umph out of the game as far as memory goes.

That's because there is no game that requires more then 4GB since they are written as 32-bit. When they are made and optimized for 64-bit (probably never) then people will need more then 4GB. Having 6GB is about all one needs strictly for gaming. Putting more then 6GB is, in my opinion a waste of $$$. And in some way is another reason for people to say "Well my PC has 8GB, and that means it's better then yours."

However, if someone was using 64-bit apps like image software, 3d software, video editing, etc. Then 8GB or more is good. For gaming and gaming only 4GB is all you need. 6GB is pushing it.

[SMMDigital]

And in some way is another reason for people to say "Well my PC has 8GB, and that means it's better then yours."

I take exception at that remark, as I never said my PC was better than any other - at four years old, it's actually long past it's prime. I develop for Railworks, so i'm running Railworks, Adobe Photoshop, Infranview, 3DCanvas, and occasionally FRAPS, all at the same time (along with an occasional Netflix movie). No, above four does not improve any single program 32bit performance, but when multi-tasking, it makes a world of difference. And since memory is cheap right now and is forecast to go even lower because of a glut of supply, there is no reason why you shouldn't get as much memory as your system can handle.

[Machinist]

It is worth remembering that even a sound card makes much difference. On my medium profile machine I noticed a significant difference on frps (maybe 30-40%) when I added an SB-EAX sound card instead of using the on-(mother)board sound.

[arizonachris]

I'm still sticking to my original opinion about RW needing fast hard drive reads. For now anyways. RW3 may bring a big change.

Now, the RAM question pops up. No 32 bit Windows can access anything over 3.2Gb. Known fact. 64 bit Windows can access 128Gb or more. But, for RW, the system RAM has nothing to do with load times. Yet.

So, Chessie's right, and SMM is right. (of course I'm right too )

[Chessie8638]

SMMDigital: I was speaking in general, in no way referring to you directly.

[EliteMarksman]

I'm still sticking to my original opinion about RW needing fast hard drive reads. For now anyways. RW3 may bring a big change.

Now, the RAM question pops up. No 32 bit Windows can access anything over 3.2Gb. Known fact. 64 bit Windows can access 128Gb or more. But, for RW, the system RAM has nothing to do with load times. Yet.

So, Chessie's right, and SMM is right. (of course I'm right too )

Yes, HDD reads are likely a large part of the performance for RW, since there is quite a bit that the game has to access to load the next tile. I would bet that the vast majority of stuttering would disappear if you had RW on a modern performance HDD (Caviar Blacks from WD, or even better, Raptors from WD, F3 from Samsung, etc) or a good SSD.

As for the 32 bit thing, its 32 bit ANYTHING, not just Windows, since any program written in 32 bits cannot address more than 4096MiB (4GiB) of memory. The reason Windows reports something less than 4GiB when 4 GiB are installed is that that 4GiB address includes ALL memory present in the system, including and memory built onto video cards, modems, sound cards, and the mobo itself. So if you stick 4GiB of RAM into a 32-bit system, like I currently am, you see somewhere between 3 and 4 GiB of RAM. My desktop reports 3.25GiB, and my laptop, lacking the video card, reports 3.5GiB. But at this point we are arguing semantics...

And not all 64-bit windows are the same. Home Basic (available only in certain South American, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries) supports only 8GiB of RAM; Home Premium (NA, Europe, "Developed" South American, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries) supports 16GiB. Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate support 192GiB. Windows Server 2008 R2 supports 8GiB for Foundation, 32GiB for Standard and Web, 128 GiB for HPC, and 2TiB for Enterprise, Datacenter, and Itanium.

[bpetit]

6 more days. By the way, does anyone know if there will be a trailer showcasing Railworks 3?

[imnew]

bpetit, i was too hoping there would be a video promo for RW, that would be nice, just to wet our apetite

[philmoberg]

James Woodcock has one in preparation, according to his recent post on Facebook.

[imnew]

James Woodcock has one in preparation, according to his recent post on Facebook.

Excellent