6 replies to this topic

[Azar Javed]

Greetings!
I have just looked around the forums to find out what the *real* minimum hardware specs for MWO are, but I'm not so sure yet.

Thing is, I'd like to get it to work on a very old machine of mine that has a looong backstory. It's nothing critical, just for fun and because I'd like to see how bad it runs.

Here's the specs:

• Intel D850EMVR (that's an i850E Tehama chipset)
  
• Intel Pentium4 HT 3.06GHz
  
• 2GB PC1066-32 ECC RDRAM
  
• ATi Radeon HD3850 512MB AGP @ AGP4x (Catalyst 12.6, last backported AGP driver)
  
• Running on Windows XP SP3 (x86_32)
  
• VCRedists, DX Redist, .NET 4.0 manually and fully updated

Now, this machine is clearly underpowered and the driver is old. But still, it's strange. The launcher comes up, I get the splash screens, then the login. So I log in, and the launcher just closes itself.

Nothing in the system logs, no error message. I have not yet tried the repair tool, as this is a completely fresh install. I'd try that next, but the basic question is: If MWO is undamaged, why wouldn't it run?

Are 512MB VRAM not enough? Or maybe the game requires more modern instruction set extensions than SSE2, like SSE3, SSSE3? Or is it the crappy old Catalyst 12.6 driver?

I have seen people run the game on a Radeon HD4000 series, but well.. Newer drivers, PCIe and all that.

I don't care about frames per second here, I would just like to see it run at all. Maybe there is something that clearly keeps MWO from running? Or is there something I could try, like maybe a debug mode or something?

Thanks!

Edited by Azar Javed, 05 August 2013 - 03:49 AM.

[yamishan]

hi there, I would think it has something to do with the older driver set not being supported properly with this game; as for vram usage usually u run at least 300-350MB Vram usage in the mechlab screen and 800+MB ingame even with just low-med settings i find with radeon cards at least. To be quite honest you need a 2gb version of a card and if radeon something preferably with 600+ as the last 3 numbers for version... a little tip for u with cards .. radeon cards first # is series second is its graphical power 3rd is usually a revision # and also more powerful same with the nvidia gtx cards ...

btw radeon card vendors stopped really producing and marketing anything agp based after the hd4000 series so u may be forced to upgrade to a pci-e based system if your looking to run the game decently

im currently running a fx4100 {3.6GHz quad core} amd cpu with 4gb {ddr3 1333ram} and a radeon hd7770 and i can only really run the game on low-med settings with an avg fps .. of late of around 15-35fps, until i upgrade my system ram to 8-12gb ... in which case i usually get double the fps,{pretested for #s lol} although almost any other cryengine game i can run on high-ultra settings with the extra high end textures packs put in,that being said mwo really isnt optimized yet but they say they are working on improving the low end system performance so u might be fine with a decent 4000 series card. hope i helped some

ps last place i saw any amount of agp radeon hd 4000 series was searching though ebay sadly ...theyre getting hard to find

Edited by yamishan, 05 August 2013 - 04:36 AM.

[yamishan]

if i have to guess my idea of mwo min specs are 2.4 GHz dual core cpu running 3-4 GB ram and radeon hd 4670 or gtx 220 1gig versions

[Azar Javed]

So you think it's the driver version. Well, that would be the worst possible case. Not only is the HD3850 the greatest of AGP cards, the Catalyst 12.6 is also the last driver supporting it. There is a 4000 series Radeon for AGP yes, the HD4670 with 1GB VRAM (128-Bit wide interface though, not 256-Bit like the 3850). But VRAM aside it's not really faster.

My main gaming rig is actually a Core i7 980X with 2 x GTX 580 3GB and XP x64 edition running MWO just fine at 2560x1600, all max.

The Pentium4 is just for the lulz. I guess I'm not going to get MWO to run on that "ancient" box then, even if other CryEngine games do work... Sad, but I can't expect PGI to go and support Catalyst 12.6 and EOL graphics cards I guess.

btw., I do not understand the RAM thing. MWO is 32-Bit anyway, so it can't eat that much.. PAE and 4GB memory addressing windows for 32-Bit Games on 64-bit versions of Windows or not..

4GB I would understand, but 8-12?! How would you need that much memory for just a single 32-Bit game?

Edited by Azar Javed, 05 August 2013 - 07:48 AM.

[yamishan]

its based on how the os and the card use system ram they use a % of available ram up until a maximum size its rather simple typically its around 5-10% of the total ram which in my case is 4GB and then using the hdd paging file to swap out only whats being used that instant which causes speed drops due to the paging file and ram constantly swapping info to keep something running as files being accessed change based on your actions compared to when that 10% is enough to hold the entire programs running files so there is no slowdown caused by page file swapping
win7 will use 1GB-1.5GB of system ram for os files when u have 4GB max placing the rest of the files in the paging file section of your HDD which means when u access something diff it needs to switch it out to acess it thus reducing the speed of the action your attempting but if u have 8GB of ram it will then use approx 2-3GB of system ram thus requiring less paging file size for swap at max win 7 for os files uses about 4GB max when u have 12GB+ system ram for it to access if u leave your pc on for any amount of time which with a desktop tends to be for multiple days more often then not


the hd radeon 7770 card for example factory settings is actually set to use 1.7GB of system ram to augment and boost the speed of its own Vram (which is actually where its running at its designed 100% speed) but it will only use about 5-10% max of your system ram however big that may be which means to actually let it access the full amount it wants to have u would have to have a system with about 16GB of ram
with only 4GB of ram its actually using its 1GB of Vram then another 300MB of system ram for the games texture files
which means things being displayed can only be doen trough that available space while with 16GB of system ram it actually uses its 1GB of Vram and another 1.7GB of system ram for texture files which translates to less time needed for loading things which means times taken to load get smaller with more system ram to access ofc you could use a program to access the bios of the gpu and tell it to use a higher % of system ram all the time but that can then cause conflicts with anything running in the background which wants that ramspace which is one of the factors in such an action causing system instability

to put it in a rather simple form though with only 4GB total system ram and without trying to risk system instability for more performance my card while running at its highest speeds as it constantly switches through files is actually only running my game at aproxx 50-60% of its full possible speed due ot the time the gpu spends telling the cpu to swap files from its Vram and its allocation of system ram from the swap file; which also causes it to work harder thus reducing its total lifespan as lifespan of computer components is measured in the amount of calc it can make before it burns out. With 12GB of ram or by accessing and rewriting the bios i can achieve 80-100% of its intended performance although im am one of those people who tends to not want to spend $2000+ on a pc every few years due to overclocking it to get performance and reducing lifespan when i can just use what the designers of the chipset made it to run with and have it last twice to 4 times longer and still do the same amount as a fair amount of people who do "acceptable levels" of overclocking typically in the range of 10-30% extra.
the % basis is done so cards can run on low end systems so the average joe can spend some time doing things without having to spend tons of money to get a machine that can be used to check his email fb and the like while giving them the opportunity to play a few games without needing to go buy the latest and greatest....btw the gtx220 was one of the most perfectly done gpu chipsets of its time and in an appropriate system can still run games like crysis on med-low settings without stressing the card terribly



also im very sorry for the format of my response ive never been very good with forming proper paragraphs so please forgive me for not wording and revising this as best as is possible im not an english major or anything but i manage well enough for the work i do

Edited by yamishan, 06 August 2013 - 01:34 AM.

[yamishan]

and that sounds like an awesome system you have i would love to be using it when they finally add multiple gpu support for the game for improving performance.

[yamishan]

as to the differences between the 3850 and the 4670 yes it uses a narrower bandwidth and isnt really superior in performance and they use the same catalyst version but they do use a few different individual drivers and use some of the shared ones slightly differently, there are a few drivers that do a great deal to streamlining and speed up handling of different compiling and rendering processes that the 3850 doesnt use as nativly and as fully as the 4670 does which is why while being the same catalyst version they really do have some differences that can be the diff between running a high power game engine like mwo does and something simpler like the old unreal engines were before they figured that particular tangle out
its rather like comparing some of the core programming based differences bewteen win7 and win8 sure they look a lot different and do some stuff diff but win8 isnt all that much more then a new front-end to 7 until u notice some of the streamlining and multifunction processes that are used by 8 to achieve greater performance with the same hardware available that being said i still dont like win 8 myself all that much XD

Edited by yamishan, 06 August 2013 - 01:51 AM.