The Best way to get Best Performance in Train Simulator

[trev123]

Computer specs would be handy ?

[drivertime61]

..."I have had some frustrating times with trying to wrestle back control of my PC from Microsoft...."

Which is exactly why I'm not bailing on 8.1 until I have no other choice.

Respectfully, you may wish to re-post this in the Geek Speak thread. I'm sure you'll get responses here, but you may do better there.

[AmericanSteam]

I had a big improvement moving to a 500 Gb SSD for the OS. The game still runs on this drive because I use Train Maps Live and this cannot be used if the game is not in the X86 folder. The second big improvement is when I installed the ASUS Strix GTX 960 with 4 Gb of memory. I play with most settings at maximum except the AA settings that I run at FXAA + 2 X 3 SSAA . I adjust these down on the most demanding routes. I have an older I7 that is overclocked and this helps a lot with stuttering. I did try running TS on a separate drive but I did not notice a significant change in stuttering if any at all. Yes I do get a little and that is also route dependent.Overall game play is good.I am happy with what I have and upgrading further will not give me any more improvements that are cost effective if any at all. Not much you can do with an old game.

[buzz456]

My rig runs with almost no stutters. Occasionally in a area of very dense scenery or activity I'll get a small stutter when going from one tile to another. I pay little or no attention to frame rates. All I know is the action is very smooth. I am running a 250GB Samsung 850 and the only thing on there is my Steam folder. The file is compressed (the experts say this slow it down) so my whole Steam folder is 231 gigs but compressed is 139 gigs.
From reading a lot of issues it seems there are bottle necks in the computers that seem mysterious to some. They are running far faster systems than mine yet seem to have serious stuttering and FPS issues.
My rig does have 16MB of ram which I think helps because even though TS2016 doesn't use more than 4 megs there is sometimes a lot of other stuff going on. I have the iobit monitor (http://www.iobit.com/en/advancedsystemcarefree.php)running all the time and ram never seems to go much above 30-35%. My cpu runs at about 45-65% with TS in full motion running. That monitor is available even in the free version of the software.

[NStrains]

The only thing I can help with here is this...

SHIFT + Z will display FPS in-game.

[NYWhiskey]

It seems you play other games so lose the 32bit OS before you do anything else.

[peterhayes]

SD40OZ

Does NTCORE 4GB Patch make any difference?

only if you are using a 32-bit OS - its already set in Windows 64-bit.

What makes a difference?
Windows 64-bit OS
RAM 16Gb of fastest - allows overhead so that windows rarely uses the PF.
SSD - faster loading and less tile boundary stutters. Dedicated disk if possible.
Balanced system from the case to the power supply.
Intel/NVidia combination
GSync/FreeSync Monitors.

pH

[buzz456]

Two things, to get better performance quickly is you four gigs of ram is barely enough since I see my using over that regularly when running TS. As you know that means your liable to be running off of the main disk. Very bad for performance. Second is your video card. My experience again from actual experience is the 550ti is not up to the task. A GTX750ti will do nicely and a 760 better and well you know....... It's all about the money. Oh yeah and 2 gigs on the card is much much better than 1 gig.

I have two machines running TS and have one running Panda Free and the other running AVG free with windows defender disabled. They both work fine. No e-mail on either so that probably reduces virus potential problems significantly.

[peterhayes]

SD40Aus
I have a spare GTX750TI if you want it and I'll post it to you gratis if you send me a PM with your postal address (I live in OZ too).

This is a $350 card - see if it performs any better than a $200 one.

You definitely need to increase your RAM to at least 8GB - on my rigs Windows 10 Pro 64-bit uses a baseline 2.4GB on its own, - and on some routes/scenarios TS2016 uses another nearly 4GB - 6.4GB total - (which means that even with 8GB RAM installed Windows will still need to use the very slow Paging File to swap out code - that's why 16GB is an even better option). Now if you have a low RAM install, eg 4GB it could mean that you have very little left for the TS2016 working set to access - major slow downs. With high RAM install it does not matter what resources windows uses in the background, MSE, Updates, etc , they are all taken care of, as if set up correctly their use of cpu resources is not significant.

Do I still see stutters - Yes and No. On some routes I see none or very few but on other routes I see a fair few (WCML Trent), but they are usually at tile boundaries and are well known (Just out of Philly on the NEC at the 50mph speed marker is the "longest" one that I know). Does a SSD make a difference -YES - well if the stutter is due to the fact that the OS/VAS has not loaded the code needed by the cpu and it has to be fetched from the HDD, if you use a SSD the slowest SSD will retrieve the data around 40 x faster than a HDD, making many "stutters" imperceptible. So a 1 second stutter drops to around 1/40th of a second.

All my rigs are balanced from psu, mainboard, cooling, case, cpu, RAM, Video card, SSD's, but the cheapest and slowest does not perform as well as the more potent one. In computing you get what you pay for.

"Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi"

pH

[NYWhiskey]

I don't know what kind of motherboard you have but I have a i-7 960 3.2GHz running at 4GHz for years with liquid cooling. Before you buy a new CPU crank up the volts and the clock on the old one. What have you got to lose?

[NYWhiskey]

That's cool. Just don't expect magic. Your're gonna want to bump up that weak 3.1. Burn it up!!!

It's all about balance.

[Coloneltapper15]

I have, definitely, noticed a difference in far less stutter since I replaced my HDD with a Samsung EVO 850 SSD. Jumping from an external view to a in cab view now is completely smooth whereas before there would be a slight lag. Recently I increased my memory from 8 to 16 but have noticed no improvement whatsoever with FPS.