23 replies to this topic

[Sholes]

Trying to decide if it is cost effective to upgrade or wait. My specs are just over the minimum but I can't find anything showing what to expect with this setup. My original plan was to wait another 6m/1y to get more for my upgrade $$.


OS Version: 64 bit Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
System RAM: 4MB
CPU Name: Intel E8400 Wolfdale @ 3Ghz
Video Card: AMD Radeon™ HD 5770
VRAM: 1024 MB

Playable at decent resolution or too tough?

[Irontygr]

all you need and a huge fan and 2-3 more gb of ram

[xZaOx]

ATM you may suffer a bit due to Dual Core, but it will be optimized eventually.

[CTec]

What make is your mother board? How old is it? Can the processor be upgraded without needed to be replaced?

Do you have any ram slots open? you already have a 64 bit O/S so adding more memory can be accessed by the O/S. If possible added another 4 gigs.

How old is your video card? From what I can see on the card it will do some decent Resolutions and DirectX 11. Hold off on this till you can test.


Power supply? the cards recommendation shows a 600w power supply with a 4/6 pin direct connection.

Anyway my 2 cents.

[Wun]

If you cant play it with a 5770 and a decently fast dual core CPU, there are going to be ALOT of people who are very unhappy about how their machines perform.

I would wait. I think the odds are pretty good you will be satisfied since you are accustomed to how that machine performs in other games. You can always turn off some eye candy or drop the resolution some to boost performance if you need to.

Your next upgrade should be an i5 (2500 or 3570) CPU, 1155 socket motherboard, 8GB DDR3 RAM and $200ish graphics card to be worth doing.

Edited by Wun, 03 August 2012 - 01:11 AM.

[Barbaric Soul]

xChaoSx, on 01 August 2012 - 12:11 PM, said:

ATM you may suffer a bit due to Dual Core, but it will be optimized eventually.

says a man with the same dual core as the OP

[DV McKenna]

5770 was a pretty good card.

You will struggle with that old duel core though.

Potentially if you already have a decent PSU, i would upgrade the Mobo and CPU
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819103727

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813128510

Those are perfectly fine for today, and the next few years later down the line you have room to upgrade into bulldozer If you wanted too, or perhaps piledriver based CPU's (depending on compatibility of the new chips)

After that, 5770's are quite cheap now, you could grab another and Xfire them.

It'll play MWO all day long and not break the bank.

Edited by DV McKenna, 01 August 2012 - 12:38 PM.

[Groovus]

Ignore all the not good enough and so on. If you turn the textures down, you should be fine. 4GB of RAM is enough most likely. To test it, launch MW, get in a battle and hit control alt delete, hit task manager and then check the performance tab. It'll show you if the CPU is pegged, how much RAM you have free and so on. If your motherboard supports it, you can get a pretty decent overclock on the E8400 and it helps a ton. A lot of how-to threads on the net from back in that tech year. Your video card is probably your bottleneck. And yes, I have built systems and done I.T. for a living for over 15 years.

[McHallen]

I have the ATI HD 5770 but a AMD Phenom II x6 1100T CPU (8gigs of DDR3 ram as well), would it work more or less for me? I'm thinking it will, but i wanted to make sure.

[Barbaric Soul]

McHallen, on 01 August 2012 - 12:47 PM, said:

I have the ATI HD 5770 but a AMD Phenom II x6 1100T CPU (8gigs of DDR3 ram as well), would it work more or less for me? I'm thinking it will, but i wanted to make sure.

you will be fine

Groovus, on 01 August 2012 - 12:44 PM, said:

Ignore all the not good enough and so on. If you turn the textures down, you should be fine. 4GB of RAM is enough most likely. To test it, launch MW, get in a battle and hit control alt delete, hit task manager and then check the performance tab. It'll show you if the CPU is pegged, how much RAM you have free and so on. If your motherboard supports it, you can get a pretty decent overclock on the E8400 and it helps a ton. A lot of how-to threads on the net from back in that tech year. Your video card is probably your bottleneck. And yes, I have built systems and done I.T. for a living for over 15 years.

Uh, someone with the same CPU, and a Founders tag, has advised him that dual core may be a issue. Why do you suppose he would say that, huh?

Edited by Barbaric Soul, 01 August 2012 - 12:53 PM.

[DV McKenna]

Barbaric Soul, on 01 August 2012 - 12:51 PM, said:

Uh, someone with the same CPU, and a Founders tag, has advised him that dual core may be a issue. Why do you suppose he would say that, huh?

Choices

A) the Founder runs a dual core and knows first hand.

The Devs had stated in a post that Dual cores are struggling to play the game at this time, hopefully this will be optimized out and work just fine down the line.

C)Quad Core's is just where its at currently.

[McHallen]

DV McKenna, on 01 August 2012 - 12:57 PM, said:

Choices

A) the Founder runs a dual core and knows first hand.

The Devs had stated in a post that Dual cores are struggling to play the game at this time, hopefully this will be optimized out and work just fine down the line.

C)Quad Core's is just where its at currently.

But..but deca-core

[Sholes]

Thank you all. Some more info:

MB: GA-EP35-DS3P
PS: Antec EA-500D (500W)

The Crossfire is an excellent idea--I see 6770 will work with my 5770.
LGA775 socket limits me to a Core 2 Quad. Ebay is selling used for ~$100. Alternative is new i5 ivy bridge + MB + DDR3 for $350.
I could spend the time to get a stable OC.

<later on...>

I may be in the crossfire penalty box..I have two PCIe_16 slots but one is x16 and the other x4. Maybe this is not worthwhile. But 5770 cards are cheap...

[Barbaric Soul]

Not really worth it to upgrade to a C2Q unless it's the Q9650 or Q9550, but those sell for considerably more than $100. If you can afford to upgrade to socket 1155, that would be money better spent than buying a C2Q. But then again, if this is the only game you play, a Q9650/9550 is all the CPU this game will ever need.

Quote

The Crossfire is an excellent idea--I see 6770 will work with my 5770.

Wrong. The video cards have to be of the same series to work in crossfire together. You can't crossfire a HD5700 card with a HD6700 card. The HD5770 can only be crossfired with another HD5700 card. You may be able to run a hybrid-crossfire setup with a onboard 6770 chipset and a 5770 video card.

Oh and FYI, with SLI, the cards have to be of the same model. A GTX580 can only be run in SLI with another GTX580. The GTX670 requires a 2nd GTX670. GTX680 the same way. Also, unlike crossfire, if the two cards have different clock speeds, the faster card will be down-clocked to match the speeds of the slower card, ie, running a OC version of a GTX670 with a "vanilla" version of the GTX670. The OC'ed version's overclock will be reduced to the stock clock speeds of the vanilla version.

I've ran 9800gtx SLI, 9800gtx tri-SLI, GTX280 SLI, and currently running two HD5870 cards crossfireX

Edited by Barbaric Soul, 01 August 2012 - 06:45 PM.

[Arnkh]

I don't know much about hardware, so I can't give you an advice on what you need to upgrade.
What I can tell you, though, is that, as a founder, you have beta access, and so you can just run the game and see how it works. Then and only then you'll need to figure out if you need to upgrade.

[Vulpesveritas]

Barbaric Soul, on 01 August 2012 - 06:42 PM, said:

Not really worth it to upgrade to a C2Q unless it's the Q9650 or Q9550, but those sell for considerably more than $100. If you can afford to upgrade to socket 1155, that would be money better spent than buying a C2Q. But then again, if this is the only game you play, a Q9650/9550 is all the CPU this game will ever need.

agreed. Or even an AM3+ motherboard.

Barbaric Soul, on 01 August 2012 - 06:42 PM, said:

Wrong. The video cards have to be of the same series to work in crossfire together. You can't crossfire a HD5700 card with a HD6700 card. The HD5770 can only be crossfired with another HD5700 card. You may be able to run a hybrid-crossfire setup with a onboard 6770 chipset and a 5770 video card.

While true to my knowledge I find it somewhat stupid on AMD's part in this case when the 6770 is a rebranded 5770.

[xZaOx]

Without going into specifics someone i may or may not know had the same cpu and a 9800 GTX with not the best frame rates. The video card was upgraded to a 7850 2gig with no change. Its been said by devs duo cores will be optimized. I hope that vagueness helps.

[Catamount]

OP, I think you're good on the CPU side. The E8400 was a fantastic chip, as fast as a Q6600 yet with only half the cores, and Even if your CPU proved a little weak, you can easily get a "free" overclock just by turning your FSB up to 400mhz (for 3.6ghz CPU clock), and making sure the RAM doesn't go out specification (if it's DDR2-800, you're good, since 800mhz is exactly what the RAM will run at), and calling it a day. Every E8400 I've seen or heard of does this without an issue; the ridiculous OCing is part of why it was such a popular chip. Yes, the stock cooler can handle it; my E8400 barely saw a temperature change.

I'm not saying it'll be absolutely idea, but your system is strong enough that an upgrade is not warranted just to play MWO; your system should run it fine.

[Volume]

The CPU is your bottleneck, but the devs are pretty adamant about the fact that they're gonna try to get this game to run on a core2duo. Your Wolfdale has a lot of headroom if you were going to overclock it, or you can get a C2Q so you have the 'best possible chip for that motherboard' - those are probably the cheapest options.

If you're looking more long-term, I'd have to recommend a CPU upgrade that requires a different socket (1155 or AM3+, specifically). IF you were to do that, you'd also need to get a motherboard with that socket, and RAM that runs on that board, so it could end up being upwards of a couple hundred bucks for high-quality parts. However, it would be a prudent move because it gives you room to upgrade later before switching socket again.

Either way, there's no need to go crazy and buy some incredible rig right now. The game is still being optimized, and there are most likely some ways to turn the graphics down or edit some user.cfg file or something in order to get it to run better on your older chips.

That said, you have one of the best dual-core chips ever created, so kudos to you, my friend. I think MWO would run fine with a simple overclock if you're comfortable doing it. You shouldn't even have to change voltage to get it to 3.6, as Catamount pointed out.

[Wun]

5770 is not the greatest GPU for Crossfire. It has a restricted memory bandwidth and tends to perform poorly in memory heavy situations like hi-res monitors (over 1080p) and/or with anti-alaising. I think you will get more mileage for less from an overclock. Try turning anti-aliasing off, that often helps 5770s performance.

Edited by Wun, 03 August 2012 - 01:15 AM.