53 replies to this topic

[Methuselah Honeysuckle]

Your specs didn't mention what GPU you have, but I would venture to guess that it's an integrated AMD/ATi Radeon HD 4250. Even for its time, it wasn't all that decent for gaming. I wouldn't expect more than a 3 FPS bump with their optimizations. If you ever decide to upgrade and choose to stick with laptops, you should consider picking one with a discrete GPU.

[ke3jackson]

Ah, ok i'm just gonna put a useful tip for the laptop users around, and to be precise the Intel i7 series users, because I saw some posts ago that mentioned "heat cycles" , if I may address the "phenomena" as such.
As mainly a laptop gamer (if there is such an animal), I've faced various hurdles with the task of playing favourite games and managing a good balance of performance/graphics. Without further adieu the few tips to have in mind when trying to play games on a laptop:

- Never put the laptop on a surface of such material/texture that it will close up the air outtakes/intakes (most notably any sofa, or furry blanket or ironically your lap). It may sound funny , or outright stupid of a tip , but it's a fundamental. And you'll be surprised how many people ignore that.

- Room temperature usually has a much bigger role in your hmmm "heat efficiency" of a lappy then a PC (see what I did there, but it's still a viable association tbh). If your room is like caustic , or tormaline , well gg XD. Joking aside , even if it's like frozen city it will be kind of bad (well the lappy will be ok if you keep it busy , buuut can't guarantee for your body and body parts). Best will be if it's like forest colony. The human species has developed a number of ways to achieve desirable temperature in it's lairs - use them.

- Keeping your machine clean - well that's common sence for any kind of a.... equipment , so I'll just mention it , but if your fan is struggling with dust , and runnin' like a 40 year professional smoker , it is sure as hell that the menial task of keeping your baby cool , will make him QQ.

- Get a cooling pad. Preferrably with fan/fans (Image of a group of females blowing on your ... lappy comes to mind , but i digress). I won't go in details , there is plenty of stuff to look for , use google , they come in all shapes and sizes... yeah.
P.S. But if you seriosly use your lappy for games DO GET SOMETHING like that, it will prolong it's life , having it run average 70 degress (sometimes more) for hours on end - yea even if those chips go critical at 100 and shut down at 105-115, you do get more life out of your stuff - nothing is eternal (well maybe death is , but I digress again)

- And finally, the really speciallised tip (the one I started writing this post about , and decided to put all the above as a miniature compendium on "getting ready to game in a lappy 101") is about Intel i7 2nd and 3rd generation chips , with the highly acclaimed "turbo boost" technology.
In its core it's a great stock overclock thingy , buuuut currently (and from like forever) overclock is a dirty word on a laptop - why - simple - there is no room , space or capacity (be that physical or theoretical) for a cooling system to manage that thing effectively. Simple as that.
Or, you can go , get yourself something boutique , and send it to even more boutique custom shop, have it pimped-up with 2 gpu's and custom water cooling... and have it cost like 2-3 utra-modern gaming PC (with the latest **** and the neony watercooling to boot) , and cough up monitors for the entire room to top it all. So lets keep it real. The mass lappy's used for gaming go in the range 1000-1500 $ (which is still a nice wad o'money , but you retain 'mobillity).

Aaaanyhwhoo , the solution - cut the "turbo boost" - how - well go to your power plan advanced settings (by default the plan should be "balanced") and put the maximum CPU usage on 99% while plugged in. This should circumvent any demand the system has to use "the boost", which in return will not overclock you CPU's (all of 'em) , which in turn will lead to less, even close to none, overheating cycles , at least for me it did. Works for sure on an i7 2nd gen 2670QM proc with 2.2 GHZ and boost to 2.7 GHZ (wich is effectively cancelled now and runs cool on 2.197 or something GHZ), win7 64 ult , but should be no problem on Vista or win8 (unless intel has come up with a way to "make" us use the boost on the new 3rd gen or win8 , there should be no prob).
Personal note - lets be honest - no game will require you to run more than 4 x 2.2 GHZ proc even now , games are GPU whores so thats the bottleneck for lappys, at least that way we cut a useless feature that only impedes the actual lappy's performance.

- After you "tick" all the above - get the latest drivers - and start fiddlin' with all the slides in a game or GPU contlol software.

TL;DR : Laptop gaming 101
- Be mindful where you put your lappy.
- Keep a good room temp with some air flow.
- Clean your gaming instrument (not that instrument...hmm just keep it clean)>>>lazy puns
- Get a cooling pad or something with the same overall effect.
- FOR THE i7 users - cancel "turbo boost" , by putting the advanced power plan setting for max CPU usage plugged in on 99%. For AMD users - bring the eggs, gonna make me an omlet. (but srsly AMD CPU for lappy and gaming - never again)

P.S. Hope this Wall o' Text helps anyone with a lappy, also I dug up this pic (I hope i'll manage to link/upload it) - 20 min stress test after getting rid of the Turbo boost. FYI before - temps were high 90's , CPU's throttling galore (wich effectively puts the CPU's at 800 MHZ - 1.0 GHZ - yeah effective for gaming, mind ya) Oh and thats 100% load on everythin' - never gonna happen no matter what game you play.


P.P.S. Cheers on my first forum post ..!?!
P.P.S. Oh NVM its my second (where am I looking) guess I forgot to celebrate the actual first one , oh well, Go Stomp Something If You Are Reading This! *edited*

Edited by ke3jackson, 28 March 2013 - 05:07 AM.

[SPencil]

ke3jackson, on 28 March 2013 - 05:02 AM, said:

[REDACTED WALL-O-TEXT, WITH GOOD TIPS]

I've actually done most of that. In terms of cooling, when I noticed my laptop nearly hitting 100 degrees Celsius I put books on the four corners of it to raise it up while I wait for my cooling pad (Soon-tm!), and opened my window up to the nice and chilly weather outside. It still creeps up to 80 though

uckfred, on 28 March 2013 - 04:43 AM, said:

Your specs didn't mention what GPU you have...

The DxDiag did. ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400

[jay35]

Hopefully that refocus on client-side issues will also resolve the prolific HUD bugs most of us experience quite frequently.

[Methuselah Honeysuckle]

SPencil, on 28 March 2013 - 01:25 PM, said:

I've actually done most of that. In terms of cooling, when I noticed my laptop nearly hitting 100 degrees Celsius I put books on the four corners of it to raise it up while I wait for my cooling pad (Soon-tm!), and opened my window up to the nice and chilly weather outside. It still creeps up to 80 though



The DxDiag did. ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400

That's what I get for reading half asleep, apologies!

[SPencil]

jay35, on 28 March 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

Hopefully that refocus on client-side issues will also resolve the prolific HUD bugs most of us experience quite frequently.

Ever since I started deleting the shaders cache every time before I start MW:O, I noticed a decline in said bugs (and a slight FPS gain).

uckfred, on 28 March 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:

That's what I get for reading half asleep, apologies!

Not a problem, I'm guilty of it myself sometimes

[Vividos]

LegoPirate, on 28 March 2013 - 01:42 AM, said:

a refurbished 560 ti is like 200 bucks. a new one is easily 250+. if you see them somewhere for 100 dollars then buy them all and resell them. hell a new 460 costs 150 bucks still.

http://www.microcent...3a-Micro-Center


lol @ your refurbished 560ti @ $200.
^link above will show you a huge selection of $100-$200 video cards that are better than a refurbished 560ti.

get your facts straight before posting made up numbers

Edited by Vividos, 28 March 2013 - 01:56 PM.

[SPencil]

I'm not a big fan of anything refurbished, and I'm not gonna mess around with my laptop's hardware. If it was a desktop I'd have it opened up and have parts switched out already, but I don't usually work with laptops so I'm not gonna chance (no matter how slim) breaking something.

As a comparison, I do have a desktop...it's a 7 year old Windows XP box with a single processor and 512 Mb of RAM xD I don't remember it's video card off the top of my head but it is nVidia...either way, my laptop has more power then it When I finally get off my lazy arse I'm thinking of throwing FreeBSD on it. My Laptop already dual-boots between Windows 7 and Debian

Edited by SPencil, 28 March 2013 - 02:57 PM.

[LegoPirate]

Vividos, on 28 March 2013 - 01:51 PM, said:

http://www.microcent...3a-Micro-Center


lol @ your refurbished 560ti @ $200.
^link above will show you a huge selection of $100-$200 video cards that are better than a refurbished 560ti.

get your facts straight before posting made up numbers

the 650 is substantially less powerful then a 560 TI. nice try though. and this is according to nvidas own benchmarks. the 7770 is a pile of poop.

the 570 3/4 of the way down the page is a sweet deal though, id buy that if i was looking for a card atm. not sure how i feel about the zotac brand though. not much experience with them. either way, youre wrong and please learn about graphics cards before posting here again. a 660 for right around 220 is a decent deal as well.

Edited by LegoPirate, 28 March 2013 - 04:52 PM.

[TehSBGX]

OP are you some kind of Wizard? Running this game on comp from 1998 is possibly one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.

[TexAce]

ke3jackson, on 28 March 2013 - 05:02 AM, said:

Ah, ok i'm just gonna put a useful tip for the laptop users around, and to be precise the Intel i7 series users, because I saw some posts ago that mentioned "heat cycles" , if I may address the "phenomena" as such.
As mainly a laptop gamer (if there is such an animal), I've faced various hurdles with the task of playing favourite games and managing a good balance of performance/graphics. Without further adieu the few tips to have in mind when trying to play games on a laptop:

- Never put the laptop on a surface of such material/texture that it will close up the air outtakes/intakes (most notably any sofa, or furry blanket or ironically your lap). It may sound funny , or outright stupid of a tip , but it's a fundamental. And you'll be surprised how many people ignore that.

- Room temperature usually has a much bigger role in your hmmm "heat efficiency" of a lappy then a PC (see what I did there, but it's still a viable association tbh). If your room is like caustic , or tormaline , well gg XD. Joking aside , even if it's like frozen city it will be kind of bad (well the lappy will be ok if you keep it busy , buuut can't guarantee for your body and body parts). Best will be if it's like forest colony. The human species has developed a number of ways to achieve desirable temperature in it's lairs - use them.

- Keeping your machine clean - well that's common sence for any kind of a.... equipment , so I'll just mention it , but if your fan is struggling with dust , and runnin' like a 40 year professional smoker , it is sure as hell that the menial task of keeping your baby cool , will make him QQ.

- Get a cooling pad. Preferrably with fan/fans (Image of a group of females blowing on your ... lappy comes to mind , but i digress). I won't go in details , there is plenty of stuff to look for , use google , they come in all shapes and sizes... yeah.
P.S. But if you seriosly use your lappy for games DO GET SOMETHING like that, it will prolong it's life , having it run average 70 degress (sometimes more) for hours on end - yea even if those chips go critical at 100 and shut down at 105-115, you do get more life out of your stuff - nothing is eternal (well maybe death is , but I digress again)

- And finally, the really speciallised tip (the one I started writing this post about , and decided to put all the above as a miniature compendium on "getting ready to game in a lappy 101") is about Intel i7 2nd and 3rd generation chips , with the highly acclaimed "turbo boost" technology.
In its core it's a great stock overclock thingy , buuuut currently (and from like forever) overclock is a dirty word on a laptop - why - simple - there is no room , space or capacity (be that physical or theoretical) for a cooling system to manage that thing effectively. Simple as that.
Or, you can go , get yourself something boutique , and send it to even more boutique custom shop, have it pimped-up with 2 gpu's and custom water cooling... and have it cost like 2-3 utra-modern gaming PC (with the latest **** and the neony watercooling to boot) , and cough up monitors for the entire room to top it all. So lets keep it real. The mass lappy's used for gaming go in the range 1000-1500 $ (which is still a nice wad o'money , but you retain 'mobillity).

Aaaanyhwhoo , the solution - cut the "turbo boost" - how - well go to your power plan advanced settings (by default the plan should be "balanced") and put the maximum CPU usage on 99% while plugged in. This should circumvent any demand the system has to use "the boost", which in return will not overclock you CPU's (all of 'em) , which in turn will lead to less, even close to none, overheating cycles , at least for me it did. Works for sure on an i7 2nd gen 2670QM proc with 2.2 GHZ and boost to 2.7 GHZ (wich is effectively cancelled now and runs cool on 2.197 or something GHZ), win7 64 ult , but should be no problem on Vista or win8 (unless intel has come up with a way to "make" us use the boost on the new 3rd gen or win8 , there should be no prob).
Personal note - lets be honest - no game will require you to run more than 4 x 2.2 GHZ proc even now , games are GPU whores so thats the bottleneck for lappys, at least that way we cut a useless feature that only impedes the actual lappy's performance.

- After you "tick" all the above - get the latest drivers - and start fiddlin' with all the slides in a game or GPU contlol software.

TL;DR : Laptop gaming 101
- Be mindful where you put your lappy.
- Keep a good room temp with some air flow.
- Clean your gaming instrument (not that instrument...hmm just keep it clean)>>>lazy puns
- Get a cooling pad or something with the same overall effect.
- FOR THE i7 users - cancel "turbo boost" , by putting the advanced power plan setting for max CPU usage plugged in on 99%. For AMD users - bring the eggs, gonna make me an omlet. (but srsly AMD CPU for lappy and gaming - never again)

P.S. Hope this Wall o' Text helps anyone with a lappy, also I dug up this pic (I hope i'll manage to link/upload it) - 20 min stress test after getting rid of the Turbo boost. FYI before - temps were high 90's , CPU's throttling galore (wich effectively puts the CPU's at 800 MHZ - 1.0 GHZ - yeah effective for gaming, mind ya) Oh and thats 100% load on everythin' - never gonna happen no matter what game you play.


P.P.S. Cheers on my first forum post ..!?!
P.P.S. Oh NVM its my second (where am I looking) guess I forgot to celebrate the actual first one , oh well, Go Stomp Something If You Are Reading This! *edited*

I have the same CPU and if this works you are my hero

Edited by TexAss, 28 March 2013 - 04:53 PM.

[Pater Mors]

Picked up a custom built gaming tower from my local computer whiz for $800. Can't remember the exact specs but they are roughly:

3.2ghz Dual (quad?) core processor.
8Gb Ram
Nvidia 1GB graphics card. The lowest priced 'top tier range' nvidia card, whatever that is.

Runs everything I've thrown at it so far flawlessly. Obviously though I already had a monitor, keyboard, mouse etc.

[Lorcan Lladd]

And to think, I once thought I had it hard with my 5-year old budget PC and 18-30fps...
No great advice from me other than reducing the virtual screen resolution in your attributes.xml file to further increase performance; high resolutions aren't essential unless you intend to snipe, anyway, at least in my opinion.

I usually play at 640x400 or 1024x640 though I've gone as low as 480x300 during performance tests.

[Jim Dean]

I figure this might as well be the thread to ask in.
On average i get ~30 fps outside of combat, 60+ at startup, and gain between 20 and 30 frames when i shut the HUD off.
I realize that the HUD for MWO is pretty impressive, but does it really have to swallow 20 of my precious frames? What exactly is going on in there that causes such a severe drop?

[SPencil]

TehSBGX, on 28 March 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

OP are you some kind of Wizard? Running this game on comp from 1998 is possibly one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.

lmao no, the comp is not from 1998, it's just a comment at how the graphics look like a game from the last decade. It was one of my corps mates that made the joke that my MW:O looks like MW4 I'm almost afraid to try on my 7 year old PC, poor thing would probably burst into flame

Lorcan Lladd, on 28 March 2013 - 05:04 PM, said:

And to think, I once thought I had it hard with my 5-year old budget PC and 18-30fps...
No great advice from me other than reducing the virtual screen resolution in your attributes.xml file to further increase performance; high resolutions aren't essential unless you intend to snipe, anyway, at least in my opinion.

I usually play at 640x400 or 1024x640 though I've gone as low as 480x300 during performance tests.

I actually set my resolution to 800x600 today and I'm getting about 30 FPS now, which is a huge boost for me. I might go lower but it seems to be a good place for it at the moment.

Jim Dean, on 28 March 2013 - 05:18 PM, said:

I figure this might as well be the thread to ask in.
On average i get ~30 fps outside of combat, 60+ at startup, and gain between 20 and 30 frames when i shut the HUD off.
I realize that the HUD for MWO is pretty impressive, but does it really have to swallow 20 of my precious frames? What exactly is going on in there that causes such a severe drop?

I wish I could give you a specific answer but I can not. Turning off the HUD would mean less stuff for the engine to draw and less calculations to do, so the FPS boost is not unexpected. I have a feeling it's to do with the amount of floating point operations the engine does.

[TehSBGX]

Oddly I like the "Oldschool" look better I'm gonna check and see if any of these workarounds could work for my desktop. Plus it looks like you bypassed the film grain really well. The film grain takes away from the games Prettyfullness for me.

[CompproB237]

AMD Turion II P540 is a little hair better than the Desktop version of Intel's Core 2 Duo E6600 (released in 2006).
AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5470 (Found specific model by searching Device Key) is on par with a Nvidia GeForce 6800 (released in late 2004), Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS (released in 2006) or an ATI Radeon X1650 Pro (released in 2006, I have an AGP version sitting in a box ).

I'd say the system is on par with something mid-range (GPU is slow) from 2006.

Not bad getting MWO to run on that. I used to torture my old 2003/2004 system (P4 Northwood 2.4GHz + Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT AGP) with Crysis. The thought never even crossed my mind to attempt to play MWO on it. Now I'm curious.

Also, for reference for a previous post. A "High End" Computer from 1998 had the following:
Intel Penitum II 450 MHz
768MB PC 100 SD Ram
16GB 5,400 RPM Hard Drive
2x Voodoo2 using SLI with a supporting AGP Card (Preferably an Nvidia Riva TNT) for 2D Rendering (desktop).

This system would have cost quite a pretty penny.

Oh and last thing I wanted to mention:
ATI Radeon HD 7770 < Nvidia Geforce GTX 650 < Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti (not even close match to GTX 650) < Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 ≈ Nvidia GeForce GTX 660

Edited by CompproB237, 28 March 2013 - 10:42 PM.

[SPencil]

I like the 'oldschool' look too, less distraction by all the prettiness, although I would like to have some prettiness sometimes...It's definitely not good for those who want to snipe more, but when your primary goal is to be close to the enemy it doesn't matter too much

[shihku7]

how do i use your User.cfg ? How do I install it?

Personally I wouldn't mind stripping the game of all its textures, and reducing polygon count to Mechwarrior 2 levels, if that meant I could get 60 frames per second

[Fishbulb333]

I've tried asking the following question before, a couple of times, going to try and tag it on here, since it's relevant and theres already been a dev response to this thread..

In the "known issues" thread theres a thread called -

100% Grade-A Bugs

And within this thread there is 1 line that really grabbed my attention -

Integrated GPU is used rather than Graphic Card GPU when running on a laptop

So..what's the deal with this? Anyone? I'm running a reasonably high end gaming laptop, but still struggle to top 40fps, when I can run games like planetside 2 near maxed out at higher frame rates.. Which graphics card is MWO actually using? The crappy on-board card, or my 680m? Is there any way to tell?