Thinking about upgrading "something" to get some better performance. TS2020 runs great of course, but TSW could use some help with FPS. I run with 3 monitors at 5760x1080, and average between 25-30 FPS in TSW, honestly surprised it does that well with my current PC. It obviously does better with only running one screen, but to me having the extra view with the 2 screens outweighs the slower frame rate. And the only route I own is CSXHH which I heard is the worst for FPS, I'm just waiting for a good American Freight route to come out before I buy anything else TSW. Do you think just a CPU upgrade would help? That would be a pretty easy upgrade, wouldn't have to reinstall the OS and all my software. If so what CPU would get get, need a socket LGA 1155 Graphics card? How out of date is my card? Or should I just save my money and upgrade everything? Don't really have the extra funds for that at the moment. Here are more detailed specs. Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2550K CPU @ 3.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz Board https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813157304?Item=N82E16813157304 Memory, can't find exactly what I have but it is 16 GB (4x4GB) of DDR3 Graphics Card https://www.newegg.com/pny-geforce-...gpb-oc/p/N82E16814133638?Item=N82E16814133638 System Hard drive https://www.newegg.com/crucial-bx200-240gb/p/N82E16820156066?Item=N82E16820156066 Drives TS and TSW are loaded on, I have two in raid 0 https://www.newegg.com/team-group-l5-lite-3d-240gb/p/N82E16820331048?Item=N82E16820331048 I'm kind of guessing a CPU upgrade wouldn't do all that much for me as I'm going to be limited by my board. Do you think it would be best to just save up and upgrade the board, cpu, and memory first, then do a better graphics card when I can afford it? Will my current graphics card work with current motherboards? This isn't just for TSW as I do photo processing and some video editing as well and wouldn't mind some more speed there. Thanks!
Well, maybe because you posted it in off-topic and not in the PC section of the forum. Your CPU is below minimum spec and quite old with 7 years. Your graphics card is not too old, but on the weak side. It barely scratches the recommended for TSW and so is low fps even on 1920x1080. When you want to run a 3 monitor setup i would recommend to go for a RTX 2070. So i would recommend to replace the CPU and with it the Mainboard and RAM. Just because its the same socket as a newer CPU does not make the mainboard and ram compatible to any new CPUs. As new system and game drives i would recommend https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=SSD+660p+M.2 Those are currently the best value/$ you get in SSDs. Sounds good and yes, it should work on any current mainboards.
And since you are only interested in US-Freight i can recommend Train Sim World®: Northeast Corridor New York if you get it on a discount. Just for the freight part, the passenger services are boring and bugged. It has some nice switching and distribution services.