How to setup your computer for more....oomph?

[FourEightFour]

I was wondering if I could get a little help setting up my computer for better performance. I have never really messed with my settings of this computer and am wondering if someone knowledgeable could help me?

I run Railworks on a high setting. Feel free to chip in on what I should set up in game too.



Here is my system specs:


Processor AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1100T Processor
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 Motherboard
RAM 8.00 GB
Graphics Radeon HD 6800 Series

I also have liquid cooling set-up on my CPU.

[Cardinal51]

There are also some free utilities availabe, they do it all automatically. They work pretty good on my system. My favourite is Gamefire.

http://www.smartpcutilities.com/gamefire.html

[arizonachris]

"mrennie" had a snapsot in one of his topics with all his in game settings. I'll see if I can find it later. EDIT: found it: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=8067&start=420 scroll down a little.

My system is similar to yours:
Phenom II 970 Quad
GA-990XA-UD3
8Gb G Skill @ 1033Mhz
EVGA GTX670 2Gb
Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit

I don't mess with msconfig. I always shut off the wrong thing or end up asking "now what the heck does this do?". Never tried Gamefire but I read good things. You won't need water cooling with RW, it only uses one core. As far as my in game settings, pretty much as mrennie set his up. For me, even the RW default settings run great. Keep your drivers either up to date, or figure out (like I do) if the new stuff is even worth the pain of upgrading. A lot of times I find the "latest and greatest" ain't quite so.

Now, what issues if any are you having that you want better performance out of RW? Until RSC fixes a lot of core things, like the graphics engine and multi core support, you or I can only get so much out of this sim. *!!wink!!

[mrennie]

The settings I posted for the video drivers are for NVidia cards, so for a Radeon card you'd have to find the equivalents in the Catalyst Control Centre (or whatever it's called now).

I hope one day they'll provide proper support for SLI (or crossfire) so that we can get the game to make use of GPU's on more than one card at a time. That would be a big advance.

[Chacal]

Have you tried using one card for video and one card for physX?
I'd be curious to see a benchmark.

[mrennie]

Have you tried using one card for video and one card for physX?
I'd be curious to see a benchmark.

That's my default - sorry, I forgot to mention it last time:

ScreenShot002.jpg

[arizonachris]

Oops, my bad. He did post that he had an ATI card. I haven't dealt with that CCC for years now, don't even know what it looks like anymore.

I tried a PhysX setup in my main PC, using a GTX560Ti as the PhysX card, can't say it made much difference with RW, but a lot of my other games it was very noticeable. In the end I was risking burning up my power supply so put the 560Ti back into another Folding rig (I have three PC's, two strictly Fold, the main rig Folds and does all my daily stuff along with gaming)

[Whatzizname]

Cardinal51, I Tried to get GameFire up on my PC but the exact error i get is:

C:\Users\Mark\Downloads\gamefire_d330079.exe is not a valid Win32 application

Can you help?

[Cardinal51]

Did you download the correct version ?

[Ericmopar]

I've done some playing around with a dedicated PhysX card. Railworks doesn't use the GPU for PhysX. No matter what, the game forces the CPU to use PhysX.
Very frustrating.
It does explain one thing for me though. I found after I built a new PC back in Feb of this year, I could suddenly run shadows on high. Apparently the shadows are a PhysX thing and the new faster i5 I have can deal with it better. It's the same GPU that was in my old PC so I figure it must be the faster CPU that helped the shadows.
As far as setting up Windows for more "oomph" it's pretty good about stopping background programs etc when some form of media like a game or movie starts these days. It's not like the old days.

[Whatzizname]

I think i have found the problem

Every time i try to download, AVG registers it as a Virus, and then edits the download somehow, How do i get around, Should i disable my internet security for this download? Or Not

[CSX2057]

I think i have found the problem

Every time i try to download, AVG registers it as a Virus, and then edits the download somehow, How do i get around, Should i disable my internet security for this download? Or Not

My best suggestion. Microsoft Essentials for windows 7. Windows Defenders for Windows 8. Both are best against viruses and malware. I have no issues with any of the files I download.

[artimrj]

I think i have found the problem

Every time i try to download, AVG registers it as a Virus, and then edits the download somehow, How do i get around, Should i disable my internet security for this download? Or Not

Cant you exclude that file or web site where your downloading from?

[arizonachris]

I agree with Daniel, switch to Microsoft Essentials. I ditched AVG a while back, it just gave too many false positives. Or, temporarily, just turn off the AVG for this download. Next scan will pick up what you have downloaded and tell you it's a virus. At this point, you can tell AVG to ignore it. But all that was always too much hassle for me. Too many other free Antivirus programs out there that work just fine.

[Chacal]

My best suggestion. Microsoft Essentials for windows 7. Windows Defenders for Windows 8. Both are best against viruses and malware.

Well no, the reviewers seem to disagree.
Perhaps they're better than other free software, but I'd stick with real software.