Spec for a Train Simulator...

Devlish · 6 May 2015 at 10:10

OK

A pal wants to get into PC Gaming for one reason, and one reason only - Train Simulator 2015 on his 47 inch TV.

Can anyone recommend the cheapest way this will be possible? I have no idea about this game. He has an OS, Keyboard and Mouse, but that is about it I think.

Cheers!

stulid · 6 May 2015 at 10:34

Youtube is always a nice way to judge how a game plays and even better if they put the PC specs in the info box that they used.

Just watched a few and they used an i5 with a GTX660 power card.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4460 3.20GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £154.99
1 x MSI GeForce GTX 750 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (N750-1GD5/OC) £85.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £41.99
1 x Gigabyte H81M-D2V Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £40.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) HDD £36.95
1 x EVGA 430W 80 Plus Power Supply (100-W1-0430-KR) £29.99
1 x Zalman T1 Plus Mini-Tower USB 3.0 - Black £19.99
Total : £424.39 (includes shipping : £11.25 Ex.VAT).

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4460 3.20GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £154.99
1 x HIS AMD Radeon R9 285 IceQ X2 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.95
1 x EVGA 500W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply (100-B1-0500-KR) £43.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD38G1600HC11DC01) £41.99
1 x Gigabyte H81M-D2V Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £40.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) HDD £36.95
1 x Xigmatek Echo Midi-Tower - Black £23.99
Total : £456.35 (includes shipping : £11.25 Ex.VAT).

Would a 128Gb sized SSD be sufficient? is it just this one game?

Or look through the members market for roughly equivalent items.

Devlish · 6 May 2015 at 12:43

Stulid, you are most definitely the man, many thanks. Just the one game believe it or not! Although he may get hooked...

pastymuncher · 6 May 2015 at 14:11

I would want more than a 1GB GTX 750 to run it smoothly with any graphics options turned up and a SSD helps a great deal as well. Using just a mechanical hdd will mean stuttering and a SSD helps with that a lot. Ideally you want a Nvidia card as it seems to run smoother on them. A card with at least 2GB of vram and high memory bandwidth is a must. Some of the routes, especially the more busier, graphic intensive ones can reduce lesser machines to a crawl. It's not particularly well threaded so a higher clocked cpu does better than one with more cores. I have spent 100's of hours (and pounds) on this sim and I can run it with everything turned up to maximum at 1920x1200 and it looks great and is smooth. The forums at UKTrainsim are a wealth of information on this sim and others.

Devlish · 6 May 2015 at 15:15

pastymuncher said:
I would want more than a 1GB GTX 750 to run it smoothly with any graphics options turned up and a SSD helps a great deal as well. Using just a mechanical hdd will mean stuttering and a SSD helps with that a lot. Ideally you want a Nvidia card as it seems to run smoother on them. A card with at least 2GB of vram and high memory bandwidth is a must. Some of the routes, especially the more busier, graphic intensive ones can reduce lesser machines to a crawl. It's not particularly well threaded so a higher clocked cpu does better than one with more cores. I have spent 100's of hours (and pounds) on this sim and I can run it with everything turned up to maximum at 1920x1200 and it looks great and is smooth. The forums at UKTrainsim are a wealth of information on this sim and others.

Cheers matey, will be checking that out.

jp7152 · 7 May 2015 at 03:26

Single core performance is very very important on this game. You want the fastest possible CPU turbo speed (if not overclocking) to get a good framerate. On some routes I get 100% CPU usage on 1 core of a 3930k, even if overclocked to 4.8ghz.

Going from standard speed of 3.8 turbo to 4.8 overclocked takes the framerate (in busy sections) from high 30s to mid 50s.

It doesn't require that much graphics power but it also runs way better on Nvidia cards than on AMD cards. Also a SSD is essential or you will get major stuttering when going quickly.

In saying all that though, they are making a new Train sim with a new engine, so in a year time the requirements could have changed quite a lot.