[cjakeman]

My Vaio laptop is very good but it struggles with graphics. It runs Open Rails averaging only 25 fps and before long the fan starts going full blast and undermines the sound effects.

Fortunately I've earned enough extra cash building databases that I can treat myself to a new desktop designed for running (and coding) Open Rails. Here's the current specification (for purchase in July) and I would be grateful for your comments.

Biggest feature is the 3 monitors in portrait mode like the arrangement below. I'm proposing some designed for landscape or portrait with a fairly slim bezel - Samsung SyncMaster S22C450BW 22" - 1680 x 1050 These need a graphics card which can drive 3 monitors as one or (when developing code) as 3 independent monitors. I'm going for AMD RADEON rather than Nvidia and the 2GB HD7870 which can run 3 monitors using Eyefinity.

This is all driven by an Intel processor, i5-3470, which has 4 physical cores so it should handle the separate threads in OR readily. I'm ordering 16GB of DUAL-DDR3 RAM and a 1TB disk at 7,200 rpm.

Hope that will give me a good experience straight away and some headroom for the future too.

Is there anything I should watch out for? Has anyone tried 3 screens on a single graphics card already?

[Lindsayts]

Consider a single 2560x1600 monitor, although it will be a good deal more expensive than the three 22 Samsungs. OR is AWESOME on a 30 inch 2560x1600 and I have had no issues with these monitors (I have two a HP ZR30w and a much older Samsung 30 inch).

They are expensive though.

The Radeon 7870 2 Gb is a good card I have had little problems with it on OR using Catalyst version 13.1. I have a suspicion that the NVidia cards are slightly better, A GTX 680 should be arriving today for my second work station (its to replace a GTX 560). There's an issue with OR on a Radeon that if one cranks up the 3D anti-aliasing and such some objects become transparent, this does happen on the 7870. I do not regard this as a major issue certainly on the 30 inch monitors as I do not use any but the default card settings.

Another point (its of course more money down the drain) is you may consider installing an SSD as a second drive and put MSTS and OR on it, that is what I have done. I have used both an intel (I think 500 series, XP reports as an Intel SSDSC2W120A3 and my other machine has a OCZ Vertex 4 128gig drive.

The proposed system as is though should give no problems.

Lindsay

[cjakeman]

Hi Lindsay,

 Lindsayts, on 14 May 2013 - 02:47 PM, said:

The proposed system as is though should give no problems.

That's good news.

My budget won't stretch much further, so the £1,000 monster monitor is out I'm afraid. I'll look into the SSD.

Thanks very much for the feedback,

[Lindsayts]

You have not mentioned a case preference. On a gaming system you do need good airflow and preferably a bit of elbow room to ensure there is no part of the case inside that is sheilded from air flow. A sugestion is a Corsair 650D.

This case is a medium sized tower of execellent quality at a mid range price. It does have an onboard fan speed control although I have not used this feature. The case does have air filters on all inputs.

Be warned about cheap cases (or in computers cheap anything, particularly power supplies), such cases have very poor fans which will require replacing with decent items, at great cost in a few years time.

You have to be carefull of the fans supplied with cases some even good manufacturers use sleeve bearing fans, such fans simply will __NOT__ last. Rememeber the system that has been specified will be removeing around 350 to 400 watts of heat energy from the case with OR in full blast.

The current cases I use are.....

A Lian Li PC V2120
Corsair 650D
Corsair 800

The pick of the bunch is the Lian Li but it is dreadfully expensive, the Corsair 800 is not far behind in both quality and price. I intend these cases to have a life of a MINIMUM of 8 years. my firewall has a Lian LI case thats over 10 years old, the fan system in this case has been modified.

Lindsay

[cjakeman]

 Lindsayts, on 17 May 2013 - 02:10 PM, said:

You have not mentioned a case preference.

Thanks, Lindsay.

I don't know anything about cases or fans so this is welcome advice.

[disc]

 Lindsayts, on 14 May 2013 - 02:47 PM, said:

There's an issue with OR on a Radeon that if one cranks up the 3D anti-aliasing and such some objects become transparent, this does happen on the 7870.

It happens nearly every games, that's why no one uses the adaptive anti aliasing (which causing this), but use the normal anti aliasing, which doesn't have this problem.

[scottb613]

Hi Chris,

I believe the i5 processor sounds a little weak for what you want to do... I'm not sure how many folks utilize them on the MSTS side - but - with MSFS we've really needed substantial power rigs for years... If you want to run MSFS well - you definitely need a rig that can be over clocked... For a processor - I believe that means you need a "K" in the nomenclature... The Sandy Bridges are being replaced by the Ivy Bridge processors but the i2700k is known to be extremely reliable and an excellent over clocker - the last of the line... The following rig runs well at 4.5 Ghz on air but I did swap the CPU and case fans for Noctua models... As mentioned above - its all about the temperatures... If you choose not to over clock - I'm sure the stock fans would be fine and you don't have to pay extra for the "K" model CPU... My rig below runs OR at the 100 or so FPS mark and has no trouble running the Feather River route - with Derek's fine Mallet and 90 freight cars in tow - smooth as silk... The only thing I'm not setup for are the triple monitors... You may want to look at the "Triple Head 2 Go" product as MSFS users have been utilizing them for years...

I'm not sure if all motherboard manufacturers include them - but - Gigabyte has a utility that makes over clocking a snap for those with less experience... You can over clock with a few simple mouse clicks... While you may be able to get better performance by tweaking by hand - it offers a simple solution with substantial performance gains for those not familiar...

OBTW: That's an excellent idea running the triple monitors in portrait mode - never thought of that before... I've never been a fan of the wide screen monitors - only good for watching movies - IMHO... The setup you posted above - while a huge display - seems pretty close to my favored 4:3 aspect ratio...

Quote

SANDY BRIDGE

Intel Core i7-2700K Sandy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 3000 BX80623i72700K

GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9

EVGA 025-P3-1579-AR GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) HD 2560MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Noctua NH-C12P SE14 140mm SSO CPU Cooler

PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk II 750W High Performance 80PLUS Silver SLI CrossFire ready Power Supply

(2) SAMSUNG 830 Series MZ-7PC256B/WW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit

Regards,
Scott

[disc]

For msfs the best is a dual core cpu with extreme high clock rate, as it uses mostly a single core. OR can use multiple cores, but it's performance always limited by the render thread, which runs on single core. For OR the best would be an assymmetric clocked quad core. One core on extreme high clock, another one on high clock rate, two cores on low. But there are no CPU-s such these, so a simple quad core does the trick. i7 is not better in task such like this, as what the i7 is better with a lot of threads, but as i wrote these games isn't so good at multithreading.

[copperpen]

The main difference between an i5 and an i7 Ivybridge is hyperthreading which the i5 does not have. For OR an i5 3750K should be more than adequate, especially if OR is on an SSD.

[Lindsayts]

I have run OR on the following quad core cpu's Q8400, i7 700 series, I7 940 and i7 950

The motherboards being Gigabyte G-P35-SO32, ASUS P7P55D-E Deluxe, and a pair of ASUS P6X58D premium's, both lists according to age oldest first.

The Q8400 and i7 700 series performed almost identically, the latter two would be around 20 to 30 percent faster in frame rate on OR. I have nor experience with the i5 series but the main differnce appears to be is that the i7 has Hyperthreading and some hardware virualisation support neither of which will do any good on OR.

Its likely most latter quad core cpu's around 3 ghz or faster core speed would be OK.

Lindsay