[Mike B]

After some discussion elsewhere, I used the HUD for a little testing. Dynamic shadows had been mentioned as a fps killer, but no data. Here's what I found.

System:
Core2Extreme QX9650 3GHz (quad-core), Gigabyte EP35-DS3R motherboard (Intel P35 chipset)
(in other words, good but several generations back; Tom's rates the CPU as 3rd tier for gaming)
6 GB RAM (DDR2 533 MHz), 7500 rpm hard disks on SATA2
AMD/ATI HD5450 (fanless) video, 1GB on-board RAM, 3.5GB total (including shared RAM), Catalyst 13.12
Windows 7 SP1 Pro 64-bit, patched

Observed Task Manager data while running ORTS during tests (using LAA binary): <20% CPU, <600 MB commit (climbing slowly throughout the 30 minutes or so testing session, starting at about 300 MB - does OR never release memory while running?), maximum physical RAM use (OR and all other processes) < 2GB

ORTS: fps target rate off, curve resistance on, curve speed limit off, view distance 2500m, distant mountains at 20 km, Explore mode. Lowest level of superelevation effect was on; in other testing, it didn't seem to affect the frame rate.

Route: Grand Junction-Glenwood Springs (from trainsim.com)
Train: 3dts 60-car coal train; 3 lead engines, 2 end-train helpers, all SD70M

HUD-reported FPS (after about 5 minutes of running, to stabilize, from a resume point in generally open terrain on straight track; lower figure is when entering a curve or in outside view, or when in a tile with a town)

Baseline (no glass, no dynamic shadows): 46-51 (smooth, no stutter)
Glass, No Dynamic Shadows: 34-38 (smooth, no stutter)
No Glass, Dynamic Shadows: 25-31 (slight stutter especially with a town visible)
Glass and Dynamic Shadows: 16-26 (noticeable stutter under all conditions, worse with town or entering curve)

For the last situation (everything on), in generally open terrain, the HUD process data (% processor usage, apparently) were generally:

Process ..... % on Straight Track ..... % Entering a curve
Render ........... 14-18 ..................... 13 ....... Few bursts; never over about 25
Updater ............ 8 ....................... 21 ....... Brief bursts to 40-50
Loader ........... 0-100 .................... 0-100 ..... Bursts to 100, usually 0
Sound .............. 1 ........................ 1 ....... Basically constant

Frame time was normally < 0.05 sec; brief bursts to near .1 when town was loading.

Does anybody see something sticking out badly in terms of system problems or ORTS glitches here that I can target, other than (probably) a new video card? Actually, I'm not sure that a video upgrade would help; the motherboard is old enough that its manual doesn't even mention the PCIe version (so it's probably 1.x). But would it help a little? Other than needing a SSD boot/ORTS/MSTS disk, does anything else look bad in particular that could be addressed without a new system?

MSTS running this route with the same train under the same (Explore) conditions with the same hardware produces 40-60 fps.

Attaching the ORTS log file for reference.

Cheers!

-Mike B

[captain_bazza]

I'm no technogeek, but the overall impression I get is your performance is what you might expect from those system specs. About the only option left might be [sorry] a complete box upgrade - but you might be lucky and pickup a new video card suitable for your mo'bo graphics card slot - try for 2 gb Ati. You might even find a 2nd hand card but beware of that. also some older card drivers may no longer be spported.

Cheers Bazza.

[James Ross]

 Mike B, on 23 May 2014 - 08:03 PM, said:

After some discussion elsewhere, I used the HUD for a little testing. Dynamic shadows had been mentioned as a fps killer, but no data. Here's what I found.

Dynamic shadows are very dependent on the route, as each shadow-generating item makes things worse.

Anyway, your data seems to suggest you are limited by the GPU (since neither OR's render nor updater processes were maxed out), but you should definitely check out the GPU Load in GPU-Zto confirm/deny that.

[Lindsayts]

A couple of minor comments....

I have found OR is smooth and quite usable down to 30 fps.

Secondly, I do not know how its done in the XNA toolkit but in opengl shadows are created by rendering all objects that you wish to have shadows twice. The first pass lights the object, the second pass produces the shadow, thats why it eats so much steam, shadows on all objects will come close to the halving the frame rate.

Lindsay

[Mike B]

I got GPU-Z running at the same time as ORTS (same conditions as in my first post above). Had Speedfan running too for an eye on overall system conditions.

GPU-Z shows the GPU & memory clocks and GPU load jumping to 100% and staying there while the simulation is running. They drop back to idle with very brief spikes when exiting back to the menu or to Windows. Temperature for the GPU started out at about 45C, climbed to 58C during testing (about 15 minutes total). Memory usage creeps up to near 140 MB of dedicated (on-card) RAM - nowhere near the limit (1GB on-card) - during the brief test session.

Speedfan indicated total system CPU load normally in the low-mid teens (glass and dynamic shadows off) up to the high teens (both effects on), with occasional peaks to about 25% (of all 4 cores) and no one core going to maximum other than very brief peaks. System temps (other than GPU) stayed in the normal range (cores 1-2 about 43, cores 3-4 around 24). Because of relatively high ambient temps (80-85F in the room in summer) I have a large Zalman cooler on the CPU (needs cleaning - but that's another day), which seems to do a good job. After an hour or so of ORTS running, Speedfan has often shown a GPU temp near 80C.

So given that the ORTS processes themselves seldom seem overworked, nor is the CPU, does this confirm need for better video card? Seems like it.

-Mike

[disc]

HD5450 GPU is meant for HTPC usage, so to render desktop, play videos with hardware decoding, but not for games. It's a low end card.

[James Ross]

 Lindsayts, on 24 May 2014 - 11:19 AM, said:

Secondly, I do not know how its done in the XNA toolkit but in opengl shadows are created by rendering all objects that you wish to have shadows twice. The first pass lights the object, the second pass produces the shadow, thats why it eats so much steam, shadows on all objects will come close to the halving the frame rate.

They are indeed rendered twice: the first pass is simpler but still uses all the geometry and some of the textures to generate the shadow maps, then the second pass is the normal drawing of everything. That's why we default to only rendering shadows of the objects the route creator selected. :)

[Mike B]

Went and got a new video card this afternoon. Based on my recent data and comments here, it can't do anything but improve things. Got a MSI version of the Nvidea 750 ti. It looked like the best compromise of improvements while fitting within the power budget (450W power supply). Also, if I replace the current box in a year or 2, the video will probably still be good enough at that time to keep.

Cheers.

-M

[R H Steele]

 Mike B, on 25 May 2014 - 04:44 PM, said:

Went and got a new video card this afternoon. Based on my recent data and comments here, it can't do anything but improve things. Got a MSI version of the Nvidea 750 ti. It looked like the best compromise of improvements while fitting within the power budget (450W power supply). Also, if I replace the current box in a year or 2, the video will probably still be good enough at that time to keep.

Cheers.

-M

Good choice, I have always liked and used Nvidia. I used http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ (GPU-Z) to track my card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti) and it is always loaded around 90% running OR. (while CPU hardly above 6%). So you should be very happy with performance, using the drivers for WIN7 64 bit. Good Luck

[cyrail]

 Mike B, on 25 May 2014 - 04:44 PM, said:

Went and got a new video card this afternoon. Based on my recent data and comments here, it can't do anything but improve things. Got a MSI version of the Nvidea 750 ti. It looked like the best compromise of improvements while fitting within the power budget (450W power supply). Also, if I replace the current box in a year or 2, the video will probably still be good enough at that time to keep.

Cheers.

-M

Let us know how it works as I am having similar issues using a NVIDIA GEFORCE GT 635 and a 450 Watt power supply. The GPU has worked ok till I run trains on foliage dense Stevens Pass when FPS goes into the basement. The only relief I can get is turning off dynamic shadows and moving Performance\Quality slider for the GPU to a more moderate setting to get my FPS back into the mid 20s