Simulatortracks Advice desk    
 
 
 
Is your Train Sim running too slow ?
Do you want better graphics?
Which processor do you have to take ?
Which videocard is the best ?
 
  Because many people ask us for advice, we share you our knowledge about this.   
     
  When you decide to buy a new computer, it is worth to spend some extra money to the ultimate graphics adapter.  
 

There are a lot of different fabrics of graphics cards, but their base, the graphics processor, is in most of the cards the same. The graphics processor on the card is: ATI or Nvidia Gforce.

There are a lot of different types of graphics processors for these cards: The most famous are Nvidia Gforce2, Gforce3 or Gforce4 with different types like MX420, MX460, Ti200, Ti500, Ti4200, Ti4400, Ti4600. ATI has the 7500 and the 8500 graphics processor.

The difference in performance between the graphics processors are big. When you buy a low budget card, you miss a lot of things you will see with a more expensive one. For example in Train Simulator the textures are displayed much better on the Gforce4 Ti 4600 than on the Gforce2.

  
     
 

For example: When you want to buy a good performing PC like DELL Dimension 4500, Pentium 4

  
  You can choose between CPUs: The higher speed the higher the price:  
     
 
1.7Ghz
1.8Ghz
1.9 Ghz
2.0Ghz
2.26 Ghz
2.4 Ghz
 + EUR 0,- 
 + EUR 45,- 
 + EUR 75,- 
 +EUR 120,- 
 + EUR 170,- 
 + EUR 370,- 
 
     
 
These prices are for reference only (from June, 12th 2002)
  
     
  Further you can choose between:  
 
16 MB ATI Rage Ultra graphics adapter (+0.00 EUR)
64 MB nVidia Geforce 2 MX 4x AGP graphics adapter (with TV-out) (+55.00 EUR)
64 MB Geforce4 MX420+tv out graphics adapter (+75.00 EUR)
64 MB nVidia GeForce3 Ti 200 graphics adapter (+134.00 EUR)
128 MB NVIDIA GeForce4™ Ti 4600 (+330.00 EUR)
 
     
 
These prices are for reference only (from June, 12th 2002)
  
  You can see, the better the performance, the higher the price.  
     
  Conclusion:  
  When you look at the chart at Tomshardware.com you see that the frames per second rate is a lot higher when you spend some extra bucks to an graphics adapter. That means that instead of buying the fastest CPU it is more worth to spend the bucks to the GeForce Ti 4600.  
     
 
So configure your new Ultimate Train Simulator machine now!!
  
     
 
We have already done research for you in finding the right computer. Here you can find it:
  
     
 
The machine you need : DELL 4500 or the DELL 8200
  
     
 
British Dell site: Go there
Nederlandse Dell site: go there
French Dell site Go there
   
   
 
You can configure it as you want, please note that you take the right graphics card.