19 replies to this topic

[Hougham]

I just tried MWO on a AMD A4-5300 with only on-board graphics and 4gb of DDR3 RAM running at a sedately 1066mhz. Surprisingly it not only worked but worked rather well. Full HD was not so great but 720p with medium settings is perfectly playable but does get a little choppy at times. 720p in low settings is perfect. So to anyone with a slow PC out there thinking of playing MWO I would say give it a go as you may get a pleasant surprise

[Catamount]

That is very interesting. It would be interesting to see how well better RAM for the GPU, say, 1866mhz (which is now about as cheap as DDR3-1600), and an OC on the CPU would help the playability.

[Gremlich Johns]

using an A8 or A10 will be better. And there is little proof that 1866 is any better for your system that 1600 or even 1333..

[Catamount]

Gremlich Johns, on 12 October 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

using an A8 or A10 will be better. And there is little proof that 1866 is any better for your system that 1600 or even 1333..

This is not true with an APU.

For most gaming systems, 1333mhz RAM is just fine. I run it, and my system is high-end. However APUs rely on system RAM for their frame buffer, RAM that typically has far less bandwidth than the GDDR5 used by most video cards, and so the increasingly fast GPUs in APUs bottleneck there. Using faster system RAM alleviates this bottleneck, and makes the GPU perform considerably faster.

[Goose]

Gremlich Johns, on 12 October 2013 - 07:53 AM, said:

using an A8 or A10 will be better. And there is little proof that 1866 is any better for your system that 1600 or even 1333..

Excuse me? http://www.tomshardw...nd,3593-18.html

Tom's Hardware said:

We found that DDR3-2133 performed best on both AMD and Intel platforms …

[Narcissistic Martyr]

Interesting, it used to be that A8 and A10 PCs had trouble with the game due. Maybe things have improved on the low end.

[CooloutAC]

lol so 15 fps is playable for you,  thats nice.  for most people 30 fps isn't even playable.</p>

Edited by CooloutAC, 12 October 2013 - 12:56 PM.

[Hougham]

I did try running the memory faster as it was Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600 but for whatever reason the XMP profile was not stable. I guess that's what you get for getting cheap memory off ebay. Having spent a little more time on the system I would revise my first post a little. I played a few more games on medium and it is a bit more choppy then I first thought. It does play but it gets annoying. Low setting was defiantly fine though (talking from a tv perspective not ultra high top end pc perspective). I suspect if you had time you could turn a few of the effects up and still have it run smoothly.

Edited by Hougham, 12 October 2013 - 02:24 PM.

[Catamount]

Hougham, on 12 October 2013 - 02:21 PM, said:

I did try running the memory faster as it was Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600 but for whatever reason the XMP profile was not stable. I guess that's what you get for getting cheap memory off ebay. Having spent a little more time on the system I would revise my first post a little. I played a few more games on medium and it is a bit more choppy then I first thought. It does play but it gets annoying. Low setting was defiantly fine though. I suspect if you had time you could turn a few of the effects up and still have it run smoothly.

Unfortunately, Corsair memory is notorious for being finicky. I have some, but I got it because it was cheap. It still doesn't always play nicely, especially when I'd like it to be above 1333mhz (rated for 1600, gets temperamental at 1600, go figure). That's one reason G.Skill RAM caught on eventually, not just because it's typically cheap but because they tend to sell RAM that's very tolerant.


Anyways, what kind of framerate are you getting, anyways?

[Hougham]

Catamount, on 12 October 2013 - 02:25 PM, said:

Anyways, what kind of framerate are you getting, anyways?

How do you get it to show frame rate in this game? The system has been dropped off at my sisters now but I could always go back and try if people are interested.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

I would suggest using a combination of GPU logging software like afterburner and CPU logging software like HWinfo to measure GPU and CPU usage at the same time. For a less rigorous value you can push f9 in the game.

[Catamount]

You can also download fraps and use the logging feature in that, which will spit out a nice set of text files showing framerate for the period during which you have it turned on (it's just a toggle to be hit at the beginning and end of your game).

Just hitting F9 in-game works as a quick-and-dirty method though.

[Chavette]

CooloutAC, on 12 October 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

lol so 15 fps is playable for you,  thats nice.  for most people 30 fps isn't even playable.&lt;/p&gt;

To be fair, he didn't say what fps he's getting, but I agree I start missing shots as soon as I dip from 60 to 45ish.

[Hougham]

That surprises me. I found my laptop that runs around 25fps (f9 key) to be smooth. But then height definition cinema film and even the new ultra high definition 4K cinema projectors all run at 24fps, so I suspect I'm probably just used to that. At a guess the A4 on low settings would be getting around this number. But I will hopefully get a chance to go test it next weekend.

Edited by Hougham, 13 October 2013 - 02:39 AM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Hougham, on 13 October 2013 - 02:29 AM, said:

That surprises me. I found my laptop that runs around 25fps (f9 key) to be smooth. But then height definition cinema film and even the new ultra high definition 4K cinema projectors all run at 24fps, so I suspect I'm probably just used to that. At a guess the A4 on low settings would be getting around this number. But I will hopefully get a chance to go test it next weekend.

Have you seen it played on a system running at 60+? If not wait til ya see it played on a system that can... On the other hand, the smaller the screen/resolution it may very well be less noticeable. One question would be, have you played other FPS games? If so, how would you compare MWO responsiveness/smoothness to it?

[ArmageddonKnight]

OP, define 'playable.

MWo is 'trying' to be a competative FPS game, meaning u need 60 FPS constant. Now granted the game itself cant sustain 60FPS in some casses. I've personaly seen instances where FPS is around 50 and nether my CPU(going by individual thread usuage (not overall core usuage)) nor my GPU are having any issues, in those casses its a software issue within the game itself. It may be becouse im downsampling and putting extra strain on the game, who knows, but it happens.
Note that i run Aida64 custom keyboard LCD display so i can always see my rig stats, and also use EVGA PrecisionX OSD overlay aswell.

So for MWO the best u could ask for constantly is 50FPS, at what ever graphical settings u use, 50FPS as a 'minimum' (not an average) is what u want to get.

So, thats 'playable' for MWO for those that want a competative experiance.

Anything less is 'playable' but not in the competative sense, its more in the literal sense.

[Dirkdaring]

Thats pretty darn good for an A4. Did you turn all the graphics options down?

I had playing in the 20-30s until I got a new video card, went from a 4670 to a 7770. Wow what a difference. I play in the 40-50s now with everything on high. I should probably turn a few things down to be in the 60s. I have a Dell XPS 8300 I bought 2 years ago for $430.

[Hougham]

Tarl Cabot, on 13 October 2013 - 07:00 AM, said:

Have you seen it played on a system running at 60+? If not wait til ya see it played on a system that can... On the other hand, the smaller the screen/resolution it may very well be less noticeable. One question would be, have you played other FPS games? If so, how would you compare MWO responsiveness/smoothness to it?

I have tried MWO on a AMD Phenom II 1100T with ATI HD4870. I tried it on a few settings from low 720 to very high 1080. It would show around 100fps in low but you had to rain it back to 60fps with vsync to stop the choppiness. It worked well in medium and high settings as well in 720 but 1080 it did struggle. Perhaps the 512mb graphics memory was not enough or I was just reaching the general limit of such a old card. I have played many other fps games but mostly on consoles. So I am used to lower frame rates. MWO has a lot of action but is quite a slow in movement speed compared to many fps so its hard to compare.

Edited by Hougham, 13 October 2013 - 10:13 AM.

[Hougham]

ArmageddonKnight, on 13 October 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

OP, define 'playable.

Playable on the A4 in Medium and 720 was it worked and you could play the game but you where at a notable disadvantage. This was that when it got busy the frame rate would drop to such a rate that it would become hard to track and shoot smaller faster mechs in close. So not really worth playing. Then there was playable with the A4 on low in 720 where the game ran good enough that the game not only ran but ran good enough that you where able to do anything that was required as part of the game playing experience. It may not have looked good but it worked, it was a just though.

[Hougham]

Dirkdaring, on 13 October 2013 - 08:59 AM, said:

Thats pretty darn good for an A4. Did you turn all the graphics options down?

I did. To get best results I set all the in game options to low, dropped the resolution to 720 and turned off anti aliasing. It ran surpassingly well after I did this. I only posted to encourage people to give the game a try like you did. If you get the bug you can always upgrade like you and have even more enjoyment