Railworks America

Among my various hard drives there is a USB3 232GB SSD connected to a USB3 port. At present, my Steam installation resides on my primary (C:) SATA drive. The SSD drive has 230GB free; the C: drive has 462 GB free.

Would moving my Steam installation to the SSD drive (removing everything else, probably) be likely to increase the performance of TSW Beta2?

I understand your SSD is an external drive connected to a USB3 port?

The transfer speed of a SSD connected by SATA is faster than any USB3 and in my experience, USB3 isn't 100% reliable as it is a "removable device" protocol. Check the reputation of the USB3 chipset and drivers on your motherboard first.

You can always try to copy a favourite game from inside Steam to your USB3 device and launch if from there with the Steam client already running. The game should load off the SSD and by playing it thoroughly, should give you an idea of the SSD's performance and reliability.

Running your favourite games off the SSD should give you some degree of portability, but wether the games' settings and achievements are synchronised properly when plugging the SSD into different computers I don't know.

I uninstalled TSW, then reinstalled to my C: drive which is an SSD. You can notice the quickness. Not sure how externals work.

By using an external SSD connected by USB I would thing you are loosing what you have gained due to slower transfer rates. Good for a backup of TSW and TS2017 though.

Tom
I run TSW on an external USB 2.0 7200 rpm drive (HDD read 120Mbps). (waiting to install .m2 SSD)
Loading times are long but once the code is loaded into the working set, running TSW is fine.
Your external SSD should work fine and your loading times will be faster than mine.

All three standards are much, much faster than USB 2.0, which tops out at 480Mbps. eSATA can deliver 6Gbps (older versions deliver 1.5Gbps or 3Gbps), USB 3.0 runs at up to 5Gbps and the incoming USB 3.1 should do 10Gbps.

from http://www.techradar.com/news/computing ... ata-931343.

PeterH

artimrj wrote:I uninstalled TSW, then reinstalled to my C: drive which is an SSD. You can notice the quickness. Not sure how externals work.

In doing this, did you lose your TSW identity (avatar), and related saved personal information. I don't care about achievements and so on, but keeping the record of scenarios, etc. completed would be welcome -- wait a minute, is there such a thing?

If I just copy the TSW folder to my SSD, could I run it from there?

No you won't lose anything. That data (avatar, points, etc.) is stored elsewhere on your computer in Appdata/Low. Just uninstall/delete via Steam and the reinstall. On the install window, at the bottom is a drop down for you pick a hard drive to install to. It will make a folder called SteamLibrary and install TSW or anything else you want move, in to that folder structure.

I *believe* TSW saves here: My Documents\My Games\TS2Prototype\Saved\SaveGames

all files are binary and cannot be edited in cleartext to cheat a little on your progress

So if you intend to use that SSD to play TSW on different computers, resuming from a previous save won't work unless you synchronise My Documents over all your computers using an online service.

_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha wrote:I *believe* TSW saves here: My Documents\My Games\TS2Prototype\Saved\SaveGames

all files are binary and cannot be edited in cleartext to cheat a little on your progress

So if you intend to use that SSD to play TSW on different computers, resuming from a previous save won't work unless you synchronise My Documents over all your computers using an online service.

That's interesting, Ed. My second computer is located in Italy, so when one of my computers is on, the other is not, since I still haven't mastered being in two places at once, and that makes syncing a bit tricky except for cloud services.

I have now moved my TSW installation to my SSD drive, where it occupies 8.65GB. This move, combined with the latest beta from DTG, has brought my fps readings up to 15~ to 22~. That may not sound like much, but it's a definite improvement from my previous high of 12~ to 14~ and, for now at least, I'm putting my notions of buying at the least a new processor or at most a new computer on hold. I'm sure that TSW looks better at higher speeds, but I'll see what more DTG can do to improve performance before shelling out.

Thanks to those who have provided advice!