Are these PC specs good enough?

[sbmarauderman03]

My current PC is 6 years old; I've been planning on buying a new PC for a couple of months now, but my budget is somewhat tight so I need to make sure what PC I get can handle this game and also be easily upgraded down the road, if needed. I found a great deal on TANE a couple weeks ago and jumped on it, knowing my PC probably wouldn't be able to handle it; this was confirmed when I fired it up and managed to get 5 fps at best, even with all the settings on low and/or off.

Below is a list of PCs I'm interested in, but unsure if they have the 'juice' to handle running TANE:

1) HP - GTX 1050 Ti (4GB VRAM), 1TB, Intel Q9400 2.66Ghz, 8GB RAM
2) HP - GTX 1050 TI, Intel Core i5 (3.4Ghz), 8 GB RAM (DDR3), 1TB
3) Lenovo 90H7007AUS - i5 7th Gen 7400 (3.00 GHz), 8 GB DDR4, 1 TB HDD, GTX 1050 Ti (4GB GDDR5)
4) HP - Core i7, GTX 1050 Ti, 12GB RAM (DDR3), 256GB SSD + HDD (500GB)

1 and 2 are priced within $30 of each other. 3 and 4 are roughly $100 more than 1 and 2 and also just a bit out of my budget range (by approx $50-60), but if either of those are really good PCs to have, I'd be willing to spend above my budget.

Thanks for your help/input.

[ZecRail]

Hi sbmarauderman03
IMO, the best of these will be #4. Both for Trainz, and general usage, thanks to the SSD. The extra RAM will also provide some advantage as well.

#1 is unlikely to run Trainz well, as the CPU is below the minimum requirements (Trainz requires an Intel i series, or AMD equivalent, at minimum).

2, 3, and 4 are all going to be decent machines, going off the specs, so should all run Trainz. You will need to tweak the performance and detail settings to best suit them though (I'd you should be able to run most settings around mid level, as that's about what I had on my last machine with similar but somewhat older hardware).

Different routes or content may perform differently as well, so you may need to adjust your settings for different routes. The easiest is to simply change the draw distance if necessary; you can do this by pressing Shift and = (to increase) or Shift and - (to decrease) on your keyboard.

[sbmarauderman03]

Originally posted by ZecRail:

Hi sbmarauderman03
IMO, the best of these will be #4. Both for Trainz, and general usage, thanks to the SSD. The extra RAM will also provide some advantage as well.

#1 is unlikely to run Trainz well, as the CPU is below the minimum requirements (Trainz requires an Intel i series, or AMD equivalent, at minimum).

2, 3, and 4 are all going to be decent machines, going off the specs, so should all run Trainz. You will need to tweak the performance and detail settings to best suit them though (I'd you should be able to run most settings around mid level, as that's about what I had on my last machine with similar but somewhat older hardware).

Different routes or content may perform differently as well, so you may need to adjust your settings for different routes. The easiest is to simply change the draw distance if necessary; you can do this by pressing Shift and = (to increase) or Shift and - (to decrease) on your keyboard.

Thanks for your reply. I gather having a SSD is somewhat important, but don't know HOW important. I bring this up because I found another CPU with the following specs:

Dell - GTX 1050Ti, Core i5 (3.4GHz), 120GB SSD + 1TB HDD, 16GB RAM (DDR3)

Is having 120GB SSD vs 256GB SSD a huge deal? This CPU is $30 cheaper than #4 on my list, which would bring me very close to my budget goal (within $25). I would also get double the HDD GB and gain 4GB of RAM compared to #4 on my list.

Thanks again...

[ZecRail]

Hi sbmarauderman03
The SSD for your 'main' drive will make your computer start faster, and load any programs that are on the SSD faster.

The biggest the SSD the better, it means you can fit more on it. If you do go for a computer with an SSD, I would definitely suggest looking at a 256GB one, rather than a 120GB. The 256GB should give you enough space to install essential software (or software that needs the speed) as well as Trainz.

If you intend to have a lot of games installed though, then you may be better to go for a smaller SSD and install all of the games on the 1TB HDD. This will mean they'll be slower, but you won't over fill your SSD :)

The specs you have posted for the Dell machine look quite comparable to #4 in your first post; the main thing I'm not sure of is the speed of the i7 in #4 so can't say for certain exactly what difference there may be.

[sbmarauderman03]

Originally posted by ZecRail:

Hi sbmarauderman03
The SSD for your 'main' drive will make your computer start faster, and load any programs that are on the SSD faster.

The biggest the SSD the better, it means you can fit more on it. If you do go for a computer with an SSD, I would definitely suggest looking at a 256GB one, rather than a 120GB. The 256GB should give you enough space to install essential software (or software that needs the speed) as well as Trainz.

If you intend to have a lot of games installed though, then you may be better to go for a smaller SSD and install all of the games on the 1TB HDD. This will mean they'll be slower, but you won't over fill your SSD :)

The specs you have posted for the Dell machine look quite comparable to #4 in your first post; the main thing I'm not sure of is the speed of the i7 in #4 so can't say for certain exactly what difference there may be.

Thanks again for your help. The speed is the same (3.4GHz). 6 years ago when I bought the PC I have now, I was not into PC gaming that much except for playing the occasional CD-ROM game. That all changed when Cities:Skylines came out. I was a HUGE fan of the Sim City series for a while (mid 90s until 2005ish), but most of the games I played were via console. C:S is what lead me to the Steam platform and now 5 years later I own a dozen games, half of which were bought for my son to play before he created his own Steam account and a couple for my daughter to play.

I can't play C:S at all on this PC anymore...it is soooo laggy; I think i get 5-10 spf...yes, I really mean seconds per frame, not fps...lol. It wasn't that bad at first, but as I've bought more games and more memory was being taken by those games, C:S came to a screeching halt. I've been wanting to upgrade for a couple years now, but at the same time is when prices on GPUs went through the roof.

Right now the games I play the most are Rimworld (which isn't that hard on my current PC) and TS201x. I know when I get a better CPU I will most likely start playing C:S again in addition to T:ANE, so I need to make sure I get a CPU that can handle those games.

I appreciate your help...looks like I'm gonna pull the trigger and buy the CPU I just found the other day.