46 replies to this topic

[Hairy Passion]

Hi guys,

New to rig building, but old school Mechwarrior.

Just bought the parts for the following rig on the cheap and am wondering what I can expect from the gameplay. Objective was to be able to play on low to med settings with perfectly smooth response and no hiccups.


AMD Phenom 8600B Triple-Core @ 2.30 GHz
4GB RAM (considering upgrade to 8GB)
Integrated ATI Radeon 3100 Graphics
Additional Radeon 6670 HD GPU
Windows 7 Pro

Thank you ahead of time for any and all feedback!!

[ninjitsu]

First gen phenom processors weren't all that great. If you'd gone with a better processor I think you would have achieved what you wanted. I hope you got that CPU for cheap! I'm really not sure how well you'll be able to play the game, It's such an old processor, I've never seen anybody report FPS with one of them.

[Lordred]

Hairy Passion, on 05 July 2014 - 08:22 AM, said:

Hi guys,

New to rig building, but old school Mechwarrior.

Just bought the parts for the following rig on the cheap and am wondering what I can expect from the gameplay. Objective was to be able to play on low to med settings with perfectly smooth response and no hiccups.


AMD Phenom 8600B Triple-Core @ 2.30 GHz
4GB RAM (considering upgrade to 8GB)
Integrated ATI Radeon 3100 Graphics
Additional Radeon 6670 HD GPU
Windows 7 Pro

Thank you ahead of time for any and all feedback!!

Sadly you can expect low frame-rates. I would look into finding a Phenom II if possible.

[Hairy Passion]

Thanks Lordred and ninjitsu. I got the whole shebang for 165, figured I would give it a whirl. What FPS do i need to succeed at running the game smoothly on low settings? I think I can overclock slightly, but not really worth the effort. I am trying to figure out if I can slap another CPU on this particular motherboard. It came out of a HP Compaq DC 5850.

I'll let you know what FPS I get, since there's no data as of yet lol.

[Lordred]

On low settings I expect you can pull a solid 25-35fps

[ninjitsu]

There's a list of compatible processors here http://h10010.www1.h...4932.html?dnr=2

Looks like you can go up to a 9600B quad core.

[The Flaxen Yeti]

You'll be able to run it, but expect frames to drop during big cluster engagements. This game leans a lot on the CPU and the GHZ matters here. Some guys I run around with with low specs will literally hit the 10-14 fps range, and get up to 30's when its not too bad, 60 when staring at a wall.

But hell, I get dropped into the 20-30's on Frozen city in the blizzard runing a 9590 at 5ghz with an R9 280x (I have 2, but crossfire really wants DX11 support, and DX11 is sketchy still in this game) Otherwise I cap myself at 60 for smoother gameplay and less power consumption.

What I would suggest you do, is once you get in game, F9 to bring up FPS counter, see what you get on average, then set an FPS cap Create a user.cfg in your mechwarrior online folder and enter line "sys_MaxFPS = 30" or whatever number works in your case based off of your observation. It will give you at least a smoother game, and less load on the CPU so it can handle what gets thrown at it by particles and such when someone gets an arm blown off, or puts up 200 missiles. Then you don't get a sudden drop in frame rate while it tries to figure out where to get those extra cycles from. I'm exaggerating it all a bit here, but it's to get the point across.

That of course is just for starters, there are tons of tweaks you can try, but this is a step in the right direction for what will give you a big impact on perceived smoothness of game play even if overall frame rate is low.

Edited by Larcen Dredi, 05 July 2014 - 10:28 AM.

[Hairy Passion]

You guys rock. Thanks for all the useful information. So 25-35 FPS is good enough to allow me to play on low with no loss of functionality? I will look up that CPU Ninjitsu and get it when I can. I will also change that FPS setting Larcen and go from there. Thanks guys, love the community, love the game.

[ninjitsu]

found the 9600B on ebay http://www.ebay.com/...=item19dbe6f6f5

Has a 30 day warranty, not bad for a used CPU.

[Hairy Passion]

Never installed a CPU, and a little scared of doing it. Don't I need some thermal compund and some kind of cooling device?

[ninjitsu]

Yes you'd need thermal compound. Your computer will already have a heatsink in it.

Get the computer up and running and see how it handles before you look in to upgrades. I just wanted to show you that there are processors out there for you at a good price.

[Hairy Passion]

Thanks Ninjitsu.

[Sky Hawk]

LOW / 20-23 FPS is still smooth... with, near OP build.

Edited by Sky Hawk, 05 July 2014 - 06:33 PM.

[Hairy Passion]

Cool, thanks SkyHawk. Can you tell me what OP build means? Ninjitsu: I found some documentation that says that motherboard will accept a Phenom II X4 805 2.5 Ghz CPU. Found one for 90 bucks on ebay.. Not sure it's worth it, but nice to have options.

[Hougham]

Hairy Passion, on 05 July 2014 - 10:29 PM, said:

Can you tell me what OP build means?

"OP" refers to Original Post. So its the computer you are referring to in your original post

[ninjitsu]

I'm sure you'll need a bios update before you could run a phenom II. I looked up the bios revision for your computer and the last update was in 2012, so it is possible that you can support a newer processor.

Edit: I sound the list of supported processors directly from the manual http://www8.hp.com/h...cname=c04290692 page 7 shows everything that's support. You are correct, the Phenom II 805 is supported.

Edited by ninjitsu, 06 July 2014 - 09:56 AM.

[Hairy Passion]

If I do need to upgrade, I will go for the Phenom II. I found a thread that leads me to believe it can be Oc'ed to around 3.4 if I am lucky. I have read the AMD Phenom 9600b is buggy.

[Napoleon_Blownapart]

my thoughts, that chip looks like its am2 socket, i wouldnt upgrade the chip 1st.looking on newegg (microcenter site is down) what is your 4g of ram?4x1g or 2x2g?you could upgrade with a cheap motherboard like http://www.newegg.co...%2fAM3%2fAM2%2b that supports that chip and am3, am3+ and FX socket chips when you upgrade (up to 8 cores) and has 2 ddr2 ram slots and 2 ddr3 ram slots(you cant use all 4 at once but it allows you to upgrade from ddr2 to ddr3 at a later date)im not saying its a great board but allows you to gradually update hardware as you go.im sure others will chime in but thats my 2cents.i myself just upgraded from a ddr2 mb to ddr3 still using my older cpu but with new ram.

Edited by Gorantir, 09 July 2014 - 02:49 PM.

[Hairy Passion]

The DC 5850 tower is in, up and running. Still waiting on the Radeon 6670. Once I get the download patch completed I will try the unit with just the integrated Radeon 3100 to see how it plays before I install the card just to see what happens. Thanks for the cheap motherboard link too man.

[Hairy Passion]

After several botched download attempts that produced the MD5 hash mismatch, I downloaded the MWO Repair tool. It worked. I am able to log into MWO and mess around in my mech bay, sort of.

Sadly, installation of the Radeon HD 6670 is not going smoothly. I have been banging my head against a brick wall for several days trying to get the GPU to work. When it is installed, the screen is black from both the mobo VGA and the GPU VGA. I have tried to disable the onboard Radeon 3100 through device manager as well as BIOS. I'm at a loss. On the bright side the game looks fantastic in the mech bay. I just don't get the FPS to play. Any help would be freaking awesome.