[Jovet]

Rigo, on 01 April 2018 - 04:32 PM, said:

If I may piggyback onto this thread, what is a decent FPS value?

30 FPS. Thirty frames per second should provide smooth and unstuttery gameplay without consciously noticing the frame rate. Anything less than that and you will "notice" the frame rate.

Ideally, you want the game's FPS to meet or exceed your monitor's refresh rate. Most modern computer monitors have a 60FPS refresh rate. Technically, any additional frames rendered faster than your monitor can display are wasted. But there's no harm in that.

[jonInMaine]

I had a similar problem to rigo, running an old refurb Dell Optiples 755 with the onboard GPU Chipset. Running the UK LTS route coming out of London with lots of scenery would bring frame rates down to 4 and below. I recently obtained a NVidia Geforce 710, one I knew would work with the Dell and was only ~$45 at Amazon, I now get acceptable frame rates in the 30s - 40s with detailed scenery and over 60 in the country. The 710 is by no means a high performance card but still cheap even today. It also enables me to run TSRE5 now as the onboard chip did not support OpenGl 3 but the 710 does.

[edwardk]

Video card prices are indeed outrageous, but it depends where you buy it. In my case I bought the EVGA 1060 SC with 6GB of memory directly from EVGA. Compared to newegg and other places, their price is not that bad.

Edward K.

[btrs]

jonInMaine, on 03 April 2018 - 10:29 AM, said:

I had a similar problem to rigo, running an old refurb Dell Optiples 755 with the onboard GPU Chipset. Running the UK LTS route coming out of London with lots of scenery would bring frame rates down to 4 and below. I recently obtained a NVidia Geforce 710, one I knew would work with the Dell and was only ~$45 at Amazon, I now get acceptable frame rates in the 30s - 40s with detailed scenery and over 60 in the country. The 710 is by no means a high performance card but still cheap even today. It also enables me to run TSRE5 now as the onboard chip did not support OpenGl 3 but the 710 does.

A GT 710/730/1030 is a waste of money IMHO in this situation. For me these kinds of cards are only suitable as multi-monitor cards when you need more than the 2 or 3 digital outputs from your integrated graphics. Or as a silent, economical accelerator card for H264/265 decoding/encoding if you're using it in a HTPC.

The sweet spot would be the GTX 750 (or 750 Ti if you're willing to stretch your budget a bit): due to the max TDP of 75W it doesn't need the additional 6-pin connector which is absent in most HP/Dell/other A-brand (SFF) pcs. With pricing between 60-90 Euro (70-105 USD) it's about half what you would be spending on a GTX 1050. You do lose some performance vs. the 1050, but since we're still stuck with the single GPU thread due to XNA limitations, it will be negligable in ORTS in the end. Unless you also play other games on the same machine, in that case the 1050/Ti is the better choice.

The GTX 950 could also be interesting, but this card also needs a 6 pin-connector due to the 90W TDP. So this won't work in a SFF pc or a tower with a low-wattage PSU.

[btrs]

Hamza97, on 02 April 2018 - 04:10 AM, said:

Due to recent uprising of AMD in form of Ryzen & Threadripper processors, Intel`s 8th Gen Coffee Lake Core i3 now feature 4 real cores, i5 6 real cores and i7 6 cores with hyper threading... The good contender for an OpenRails CPU might be the Core i3 8100 (3.2Ghz 4C/4T) or 8350K if someone`s interested in overclocking, unfortunately these newer CPU requires the new 370 series chipset mobo, which are currently only available in form of high end Z370 chipset. Though B & H series are expected later this year.... I actually have the Core i3 8100 in my mind when I will be upgrading later this year, but the increased GPU prices derailed the whole plan... :furious:

Well, the B and H-series motherboards are here now, and they're certainly more interesting than the Z370 boards, unless you intend to overclock (and therefore limited to the Z370 or the upcoming Z390). For my new build I am more looking towards the i5-8500 or its 9th generation successor later this year. It hits the sweet spot with 6 real cores, high enough base clock (3 GHz) and moderate TDP (65W). The i3-8350K has a way higher TDP (91W), and I don't know if its higher base frequency (4 GHz) and 2 less real cores offset the performance gained with overclocking. Not speaking of the fact that you need a Z-series motherboard if you are really going to overclock it (and therefore adding $$$).

[Lindsayts]

I have 2 systems that will run OpenRails both use ASUS Sabertooth X79 motherboards, one has an 4 core i7 3820 at 3.6ghz, the other a 6 core i7 3930. The first has an AMD Radeon 7870 the second an Nvidia GTX 680. Both systems would be around 4 years old and run OR well. I find the limit for OR on both systems is the CPU, a single render thread being unable to give these older GPU's enough data.

Note: both video cards were highish end GPU's at the time, An AMD technical person stated at the time I purchased the 7870, that it was over kill on a system with only a single render thread as it takes a good deal more than a single thread to keep the GPU busy. This is currently a common problem for the higher end GPU's

Both will run the freeware Bernina Bahn with a 4000 metre viewing distance at frame rates 30fps or higher, this is quite good going.

From the above observations it seems quite obvious to me a real high end system is currently not required for OR.

Lindsay

[Mike B]

My elderly desktop (probably need to be looking for a new AMD/Ryzen motherboard soon for Spectre family mitigation and general updating...no more Intel!) has a Core2 Extreme X9650 (4 real cores, 3GHz with no "turbo" clocking), 8GB RAM, and a nVidia 750ti (bought back when it came out, for about $100). Win10 Pro 64-bit. Current OR experimental (weekly) builds run most routes at 50-80fps if the monitor frequency capping is disabled (normally run capped at 75Hz for the CRT monitor). I'm not sure if a newer system will do significantly better with OR, but it probably will in terms of other usage.

BTW, the 750/750ti are actually rated at 65W maximum, well within the PCIe bus power spec even if overclocked slightly. As the original "Maxwell" GPU part, they're kind of old and while still getting driver support it's very possible that they'll hit "legacy" status soon. 1050/1050ti are 75W in reference form, and are just about at the PCIe limit - would be safer if a card with a separate p/s plug were used, especially if other cards (say, a network card and/or SSD) are on the bus too.

[Hamza97]

I am intending to get a Core i3 8100, Any reasonable H310M based motherboard, 8GB of 2400Mhz DDR4 RAM a GTX 1050ti/Gtx 2150Ti (based on when it gets launched) and a good IPS 1920x1080 24in monitor, this would be enough for time being I think. Originally I was going to get a Pentium G4560, but based on recommendations of some folks here at ET, I have changed to a Core i3 8100 having 4 real cores (vs the HT of G4560)...