Transport Tycoon Forums

My local computer dealer will custom-build me a Windows system with the following specs:

AMD SEMPRON 64 LE-1250 1600FSB 512K AM2
MSI K9A2GM-F V3 A740G AM2+ MATX DDR2
Onboard Radeon HD2100, 8CH HD Audio, GBE, 16x PCIe, 1x PCIe, 2PCI, 2DDR2, SATA2
240PIN 1GB DDR2 800MHZ KINGSTON
80GB WESTERN DIGITAL SATA-II 7.2K RPM 8M
LITEON DVDRW 20X DL IDE B/W BZL
KEYBOARD LABTEC STANDARD PLUS
LOGITECH BF90 OPTICAL SCRL MOUSE PS2 OEM
ENLIGHT 2409 MATX 300 WATT
WINDOWS XP HOME EDITION SP3 OEM

If anyone can understand these, will this setup allow me to run OTTD without problems? (I'm currently running OTTD under win98 emulation from a Mac G3, at about 100 mHz CPU.) Will i need to get or do anything special to keep playing with this setup?

TTD was running on ancient DOS machines, OTTD is significantly more hardware-demanding, but you still don't need high end rig to run it (it runs perfectly on an 900 MHz Celeron notebook). And if you mean, that your machine is too good...one of OTTD's goals is to be able to run on everything that has some processing power - including WinMo phones, iPhone, Nintendo DS (these aren't official targets though) and all PC operating systems you can think of.

I have slightly worser PC that you are getting and it runs OOT nicely.

Still - the better your machine is, the larger maps with more trains etc. you can play

Why don't you run it native on you Mac? That should work with the nightlies, if you have MacOS 10.3 or later.

If the quoted System runs WinXP, it should run OpenTTD. The bigger ressource eater will be your OS then.

That said, it's easy to created games which even todays high end systems have problems with. Just create a huge map and have zillions of ship running and you'll struggle even with a Xeon server machine. So the term "playable" needs a definition of the game sizes and vehicle amounts and types you use you want to play with

You can play a normal sized map with a normal number of trains (eg 512x1024 with 500 trains) with absolutely no problem on an Eee PC with an 800mhz celeron

Point being, your machine will cope fine if you aren't over ambitious.

Thanks, guys! I'm sure most of you are used to the Windows-machine nomenclature, so i wanted to make sure that i wasn't going to lose anything or hafta go get something to continue. Believe it or not, before i spend $500 on even a used setup, OTTD is one of the considerations i make before i upgrade my hardware!!

For all those years I am on this forum ... I never read this question, and it amuses me in so many ways Tnx for making my day

It runs on my vintage PIII so you wont have any problem.
BTW why a Sempron and only 80GB HD? You can get a single core Athlon with less than 35 euro. And with 20 Euro more you can buy a 500GB HD. I suggest you do a search first and buy parts yourself and built it yourself.
http://skroutz.gr: OK this is for Greece, but still you can get an idea of prices.
Also this shop has a good catalog to compare prices: http://e-shop.gr

It does seem awfully expensive, for a standard PC... I'd recommend buying a store bought one if you don't want a fancy graphics card or upgradability.

The one you listed is about 5 years out of date, and the price far too high.

Very good point, I didn't realise you were buying a PC!

For 500$ I would expect:

Athlon 64 x2 or Pentium D
2gb RAM
320GB HDD
Nvidia 7xxx/Ati X1600 or similar

Possibly even with a 19in monitor.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883109023
Plus a monitor, for example, would serve you fine as a standard PC - it would even just about run games such as half life 2 if you don't mind quite a low frame rate and low settings.

You can probably find better than that (I'd go for 2gb RAM if it includes vista), but that's pretty close on just a quick google

The things I've seen in this thread cannot be unseen... and they are atrocious.

My friend, I can PROMISE you a simple and cheap build that will amaze you and your friends - I've made identical builds that play Crysis on High settings at high resolutions and get smooth fluid stable framerates. Overclocking is made easy and does all the work, no experience needed.

Intel E1200 Celeron - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819116064 - 53.99
Gigabyte P35 Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128337 - 84.99
G.Skill 2GB DDR2-800 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231121 - 29.99
Rosewill Case 120mm fan - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811147110 - 26.99
Rosewill 530 Watt PSU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182160 - 49.99
Hitachi 320GB HD 16MB Cache - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145129 - 49.99
GeForce 9600 GT Graphics - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814500019 - 94.99
Asus DVD Burner - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827135169 - 19.99
Keyboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6823233001 - 6.99
Mouse 1600 DPI optical - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6826623004 - 11.99

Total: $429.99, allowing space for changes and shipping and handling, etc.

I'll give a quick explanation for each component since they're not picked out of random, or out of any single specific reason:

I've had experience with most of these components, minus the keyboard and mouse. The Intel CPU is a Core2Duo with less cache (but the same as an AMD dual core) and slower clock & bus speed (which can be cured by overclocking - I took it from 1.6 Ghz to 2.66 Ghz on AIR, and its been stable for over a year now). The RAM overclocks to 1,000 Mhz easily, and gives me no problem. The motherboard is needed to achieve this overclocking easily - its VERY rich in features, and allows you to overclock without any trouble - it'll make most of the adjustments for you. Its highly reliable, and just a great all-around motherboard - it will allow you to upgrade in the future. I benchmarked a rig with the same mobo, RAM, and CPU recently - and it crushed a similar AMD X2 5200 hands down. The 5200 was pretty far behind in overall performance.

The case is mainly by preference, but I picked something with space and a 120mm fan in order to keep everything cool and provide great air flow. The power supply is 530 watts - has a PCI-E connector, and good amperage. It has Active PFC and over-voltage protection. All too often people overlook these things, which is a grave mistake - you cannot overheat components my friend. You also can't afford to rely on some no-name power supply giving poor performance to your components, which results in poor performance in general and also possibly damaging them in the long run.

The hard-drive is a good mid-performance drive - 320 GB of space, and 16 megs of cache. You do NOT want to make the mistake of picking a poor performing hard drive - it will bottleneck the rest of your system. This drive should keep up well with your system, and when you're ready to upgrade in the future you can use it as a backup or secondary drive.

The graphics card isn't top-of-the-line, but it is a good graphics card - if you take some of the leftover cash, you could easily upgrade to an Nvidia 8800 GT 512. The 9600 GT is adequate for this system - it can run games like Crysis on medium-high settings and resolutions, but costs less than 100 bucks.

As for operating system, I'd go with Vista Ultimate x64 - thats what I run on all my rigs and it doesn't disappoint. If you're looking to keep budget though, go ahead with Windows XP Home SP3... good enough to do the basics.

Like I said - I have personal experiences with all these parts - and let me tell you. This machine will PERFORM right out of the box. You'll be able to upgrade for a long time to come, and it'll definitely perform. This I can PROMISE. In fact - if you wanted help with the overclocking, or anythin at all, I'd be willing to give it.

In any case, PLEASE don't buy the garbage that has been mentioned previous to this post - especially the AMD build you posted. Not only will those computers have LESS than HALF the power and performance of this computer, you'll be paying the SAME or MORE for worse performance... its not logical or fair IMO. It pains me to see such things haha - I think everyone should get the most bang for their buck.

why on earth do you spend the time in this silly thread?

why not?

I figure I could possibly help someone out - help them save time, money, hassle.

dihedral wrote:why on earth do you spend the time in this silly thread?

Because he's bored.

justaguest wrote:... garbage...

Only to add that your celeron is the real garbage.

athanasios wrote:

justaguest wrote:... garbage...

Only to add that your celeron is the real garbage.

Oh really? I bet my celeron rigs would crush whatever you might bring... not to mention: like I said, my overclocked celeron boxes completely destroy the AMD X2 lineup with the possible exception of the X2 6000 and X2 6400.. and thats only because I haven't had the chance to benchmark them. It also crushes most Intel stock Core2Duos....

Anyone who says the E1200 celeron is garbage is smokin somethin strong, because the architecure and everything inside the die - the whole processor, in fact - is IDENTICAL to the core2duo... and the core2quad.

So keep hatin if you want, I was only offerin intelligent advice and experience in order to save someone time and money.

Gimme some benchmarks, I'll run 'em on stock Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2.66 GHz - x86-64 preferably. Celeron was designed as a cheap processor, it has no way to beat the Core 2 line. Comparing performance of overclocked vs stock is a stupid thing to do - I can cool my CPU with Nitrogen Oxide and overclock it three times (though it might terminate the CPU).

Both processors will run OTTD perfectly well, and offer broadly similar performance per $. Unless the OP wants to play Fallout 3 or something it really isn't going to make all that much difference.

I agree, comparison is valid only between non overclocked processors of the same price (+ MoBo to be more accurate).
I wouldn't overclock more than 20%. It is pretty risky. You may fry the CPU. Unless you do it intentionally before the guarantee expires to get a new one for free. Pretty immoral though.

Madassasin wrote:Gimme some benchmarks, I'll run 'em on stock Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2.66 GHz - x86-64 preferably. Celeron was designed as a cheap processor, it has no way to beat the Core 2 line. Comparing performance of overclocked vs stock is a stupid thing to do - I can cool my CPU with Nitrogen Oxide and overclock it three times (though it might terminate the CPU).

No doubt a stock E8200 would beat the E1200 OC... but not by as large of a margin as you insinuate... and while the celeron is a budget model, it still has identical architecture - which, like I said is what truly matters... the ONLY difference between a stock E8200 and a E1220 OC to the same clock speed is the CACHE.... which, while the Core2 generation does rely heavily on cache - its still an amazing price performance ratio - probably one of the highest on the market.

and while trying to sound intelligent, you probably meant you'd cool the CPU with liquid nitrogen, theres no oxygen in the atomic makeup.

I wouldn't overclock more than 20%. It is pretty risky. You may fry the CPU. Unless you do it intentionally before the guarantee expires to get a new one for free. Pretty immoral though.

this statement is simply ignorant. YOU might not, but the rest of the people in this world that know that, as long as you keep voltage and temperatures in place, overclocking is completely fine and will not damage your setup. if you don't overvolt significantly (which, for everyones information, the core2 line (which includes the E1200 celeron) has a fairly good reputation for overlclocking AND undervolting.... my Q6600 is running at 3 Ghz on AIR, typically around 35-45 C, at around 1.28 V... stock cooling, stock everything).

so don't let stupidity like this discourage anyone from overclocking ... sure, the barriers of overclocking are voltage and heat... but when done properly, and on the right chip, overclocking is a FREE and useful tool to squeeze that much more power out of your system.

You are right - in theory anyway. I'm not going to argue specifics, simply because my knowledge isn't that good

However, considering the original post, I wouldn't class the OP as particularly tech-savvy. While overclocking may seem simple to you, you pretty much made the point in your last post that things can go bad if you don't atleast have some understanding of what you're doing. Coupled with the fact that overclocking can cause a system to be more unstable (which is the last thing you want for someone with limited troubleshooting skills), and (I'm pretty sure) will void your warranty, its certainly not the perfect solution.

While shopping around seems like the logical thing to do given the responses here, keep in mind that hes buying local, and that the price may include more than just the raw components (such as on-site repairs, tech support etc).

Also, calling people stupid and ignorant for pointing out the potential dangers of overclocking - especially when you concede they do exist - will probably have people putting you in that same category. The fact is, they do exist. Its like telling people its perfectly safe to drive faster than the speed limit.... just don't hit anything!