About the computer upgrade

Now I am going to ask you members of this forum discussion group about the computer upgrade. All I need to get a new motherboard, CPU Processor, memory rams and graphic card and I was not sure about which CPU processor would be more better. Now I was told by one of the computer technician (my son's friend) that AMD Sempron 2400 or 2500 or higher will be an ideal for the computer upgrade and will work with this program of Microsoft Train Simulator. I told him that I prefer to have AMD XP 2500+ or higher like 3200 or Athlon 64 FX if I can afford to get one. He said not worth it because the program of Microsoft Train Simulator did not upgrade very much since their release in 1998 (not sure??) and only with one upgrade to ver 1.2 that all Microsoft did with this. Anyway I told him that there is another company, TrainMaster (PI Engineering) who are in progress to get a new Train Simulator program and probably will have better computer specifications than Microsoft to run their program on the computer. But who knows when will that be available to the public?? I hope that will happen sometime in 2005. Anyway I will take any comments about this CPU processor to see what you have to say about this??ThankyouJohn P. Mackay
Belleville, ON Canada eh!!

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RE: About the computer upgrade, CPR 9100, Dec-30-04, 12:44 PM, (1) RE: About the computer upgrade, Br5an, Dec-30-04, 04:21 PM, (2) RE: About the computer upgrade, dgauci, Jan-01-05, 03:11 PM, (4) RE: About the computer upgrade, derekmorton, Dec-30-04, 09:08 PM, (3) RE: About the computer upgrade, tcain1, Jan-02-05, 11:28 AM, (5) RE: About the computer upgrade, seank97, Jan-02-05, 04:29 PM, (6) RE: About the computer upgrade, Robber Baron, Jan-03-05, 08:54 PM, (7) RE: About the computer upgrade, dgauci, Jan-03-05, 09:59 PM, (8) RE: About the computer upgrade, derekmorton, Jan-04-05, 00:08 AM, (9) RE: About the computer upgrade, tcain1, Jan-04-05, 01:16 AM, (10) RE: About the computer upgrade, buzzbenz, Jan-04-05, 10:18 PM, (11)

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Hello John buy the 64 AMD 3200 big is better the higher the CPU power the better as this will give you higher FPS make sure you get
1gig of DDR ram this will help to. I would make sure to you have a good Vcard to and a big HD will not hurt. I hope this will help you out on this matter.Steve
Blind Bay B.C.EMD SD40-2 The Best Locomotive Ever Biult.

CPR Is The Future Of Rail Roading.

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Hey that's a whole computer if you need to put in a new power supply for all the goodies!I've been looking at Dell Dimension 4700 w/3.0 GHz, 1 year warranty, 512MB ram, no monitor, 128MB PCI Express video, SoundBlaster Live. That tips the scales to the tune of $814.I like the 4700C (slimline case) but it just doesn't work out to the nice bottom line.Ok, sorry to drag your topic down with this but it's really all about having choices.Good Luck and shop wisely,
BK

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>I like the 4700C (slimline case) but it just doesn't work
>out to the nice bottom line. I would stay completely away from that 4700C with the slim case. It offers no room for future expansion.

"Boycott Michael Moore and his friends in France"

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Hi John,I have tested P4 2800's and Athlon XP 2700+ with the same graphics cards (ATI 9600) and the XP gets 5 fps better than the Pentium.
I personally have an Athlon 64 3200+ and it runs about 5 fps higher that the XP 2700+ with the ATI 9600.Go for the Athlon 64 chip.

Derek
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LAST EDITED ON Jan-02-05 AT 11:29 AM (EST)

I just went for a Gateway 7200XL 3.8Ghz P4, 1GB PC3200 Mem ATI 256Mb X800XT Graphics, 250GB HD Drive, No Monitor as I use it with my projector. This is to replace my 2 Ghz P4 that's heading south with HD problems, and now problems with the CDROM/DVD drives. I suspect problems with the ATA controller.

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Stay away from any chip called "Sempron." They are low budget underpowered Athlon XP's to force the user to upgrade to the Athlon-64 chip. The FSB is slower than Pentium II's on the chip itself. Junk junk junk, not good at any price.SeanK97

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If you're building a Train Sim box, concentrate as much of your budget as you can on a video card...the biggest one you can afford. This will account for most of your performance.I've got an Athlon XP 2500 (32 bit) and a buddy of mine has a 64 bit Athlon. We both have GeForce 6800 GTs and a Gig of RAM and our 3DMark scores are virtually identical. Conclusion: CPU isn't all that critical. I'd also recommend not bothering with PCI-Express as the AGP 8x version of the GeForce card seems to outperform the PCI-Express version. Go figure.One thing I would definitely recommend is go long with RAM, ie: at least a Gig of DDR, with a North/South bridge config. Also get a motherboard that supports SATA. The SATA drives have much better access times and that will increase overall performance as well.

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>I'd also recommend not bothering with PCI-Express as the AGP 8x
version of the GeForce card seems to outperform the PCI-Express version.I would want to see the benchmarks to prove that. The choice on whether to go AGP or PCI-E is totally dependent on the motherboard you get. If it supports PCI-E there won't be an AGP slot and vice versa.

"Boycott Michael Moore and his friends in France"

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>I've got an Athlon XP 2500 (32 bit) and a buddy of mine has a 64 bit Athlon. We both have GeForce 6800 GTs and a Gig of
>RAM and our 3DMark scores are virtually identical. Conclusion: CPU isn't all that critical. I'd also
>recommend not bothering with PCI-Express as the AGP 8x version of the GeForce card seems to outperform the PCI-Express version. Go figure. That is a bad conclusion. Train Sim requires a lot of Co-Processor for the calculations for physics, 3dmark does not test for this.3dmark is for testing your 3d performance, and as you both have 6800's then I would expect your scores to be the same.As far as train sim is concerned, the only benchmark worth considering is a train sim benchmark.>One thing I would definitely recommend is go long with RAM, ie: at least a Gig of DDR, with a North/South bridge config.
> Also get a motherboard that supports SATA. The SATA drives have much better access times and that will increase overall
>performance as well. There is no evidence whatsoever that 'proves' 1Gb is better than 512Mb. What is a North/South bridge config? I expect you mean dual channel.SATA may have better access times, but this does NOT improve the performance of train sim (better fps), it may affect the stuttering though.

Derek
EngMod@sgrail.org
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LAST EDITED ON Jan-04-05 AT 01:22 AM (EST)

There is no evidence whatsoever that 'proves' 1Gb is better than 512Mb. What is a North/South bridge config? I expect you mean dual channel.I upgraded to 1GB from 512MB RDRAM and while I can't say I found an improvement in FPS in MSTS, I have seen an increase in FPS in other Apps, like FS2004. In MSTS though, I do seem to see a reduction in stutters. This is with my old 2.0Ghz P4, This is because with MSTS running, if you look at system resources, you will see most of the physical memory being utilized. This forces the system to page memory much more often. With the extra memory this paging becomes no longer neccessary. I can't wait to see what I get with my new system!

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> What is a North/South bridge config? I expect you mean dual
> channel.Northbridge/Southbridge config is referring to the motherboard chipset. The Northbridge is usually responsible for linking the CPU to the system RAM, AGP slot, and the Southbridge. The Southbridge controls the interfacing with the IDE (HD and CDROM), floppy, PCI slots, Ethernet, etc.Some chipsets have all that integrated into one chip.To the original poster - if you have the $$ for the Athlon64 as well as a really good video card, go with that. One technological advantage not mentioned here is that the system memory is directly linked to the CPU rather than hung off of the Northbridge (or the single chip if you have a single-chipset motherboard). This results in faster memory access than the old Durons, the Semprons, and the previous Athlons.Dual-channel is essentially "two pipelines" (to put it very simply) to the RAM. Some Northbridge's support this, as well as some single-chip chipsets, for the non-64 Athlons (and Semprons). Also, the newer Athlon64's, and all the AthlonFX's, have dual-channel memory access built into the chip (remember, these are the ones that connect directly to the RAM rather than through the Chipset).As for performance....Can't say that the "top of the line" stuff will give you TOO much of an improvement in MSTS over, say, a generation old stuff (AthlonXP, Radeon 9800, etc). Also, 1GB will NOT have ANY advantages for MSTS over 512MB. BUT - just about every other program WILL take advantage of new hardware and tons-o-RAM (FS2004 comes instantly to mind), so if you can afford it, go with it. If nothing else, you won't have to upgrade again quite as soon Hope that helps!! ----------- BUZZ -----------

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