26 replies to this topic

[Greenfury]

I am running windows 8 on HP h8-1414, AMD six-core FX 6120, 10GB DDR3, and AMD Radeon HD 7450. I feel this system should be ok but the game is unplayable at 15 FPS and dropping to single digits when I encounter other players. even in the mechlab my FPS is a steady 16-17. I've tried the repair tool the repatch even a complete remove and replace. all my settings are on low and turned off. My ping is usually around 40 so I don't think that is the problem? help what am I missing.

[Durant Carlyle]

For AMD/ATI GPUs, the second digit determines how game-capable it is. Having a 4 there is NOT a good thing.

My first recommendation is to upgrade to a better GPU. If you want to stay AMD, a 7850 would be a HUGE increase yet wouldn't break the bank. For Nvidia GPUs, the lowest I'd recommend is a 660Ti.

[Greenfury]

so higher second digit is better? Is there any setting or change that would help? I am strapped. having an AMD processor does it matter much if I go to Nvidia? compatibility is good? I'm not tech savvy.

Edited by Greenfury, 07 March 2014 - 04:16 PM.

[Summon3r]

compatibility wont be an issue, 750ti should work for you if you dont need high settings, if you do want high settings then def no lower then a 660ti.

may want to double check your power supply tho

Edited by Summon3r, 07 March 2014 - 04:41 PM.

[Durant Carlyle]

Greenfury, on 07 March 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

so higher second digit is better? Is there any setting or change that would help? I am strapped. having an AMD processor does it matter much if I go to Nvidia? compatibility is good? I'm not tech savvy.

The only thing you can do settings-wise would be to use a lower resolution -- if you play at 1920x1080 now, try 1280x720 or 1024x768. The game really gets ugly at the smaller resolutions though.

And no, having an Nvidia GPU with an AMD CPU wouldn't cause any problems.

[Goose]

Do you know if you have v-sync off in both the game and your video driver?

Do you know how much RAM is on your current video card?

Do you have all your graphics setting on low?

[Greenfury]

I believe it's a 1GB card, not positive and I don't know a lot about V-sync but if it's set to monitor refresh as I understand it then my 16 FPS is much lower then that, no? how do I check V-sync in windows 8? Also all my settings are low or off and resolution is the second lowest option I want to say 1280 / 720 but there was no change at the lower setting, I checked and V-sync is off in the game

Edited by Greenfury, 07 March 2014 - 07:10 PM.

[cSand]

You should have the catalyst control center in the system tray (those icons on the lower right). Double clicking it will open the "control center" . Open it up, click preferences (near the top right). Select advanced mode. Click the gaming tab on the left, and then click 3d application settings.
Make sure your settings are like this:


If your control center doesn't look like that, get the latest driver from AMD:
http://support.amd.c...ws%208%20-%2064

Don't get the beta driver, get the 13.12 version.

In your game, make sure you are on DX9, not DX11.

Unfortunately though, that card isn't really for gaming, and I doubt you;ll get much horsepower out of it

Save your dollars and get an AMD R7 260x for under 200$, like this one for $160:

http://products.ncix...oc-d4-91928.htm

That will get you playing at a decent clip for a decent price!

edit: sorry about the Popup box in my screenshot there. Under it, that option is set to "performance"

Edited by cSand, 07 March 2014 - 07:39 PM.

[Naduk]

wow guys common, new guy is asking for help and the first thing you guys suggest is buy a new video card
csand is the only guy close to helping so far

ok firstly we know, your on windows 8
make sure you are on 64bit windows
press windows key+pause break
this will open basic system information page , see system type entry to determine 64 or 32 bit
(64bit may show as "x64" and 32bit may show as "x86")
if you are on 32bit , seek guidance from a local IT guru on how to be swapped over
do not let idiots sell you a new copy of windows, you 99.9% of the time just need an install disk with 64bit files
your windows cdkey will work just fine, chances are you have both in the disks provided by HP anyway
equal chances are that your already on 64 bit and its fine

ok next up
make sure you have upgraded your install to windows 8.1
desktop view>right click lower right corner of screen>control pannel>windows update
somewhere in here it will say do a ton of updates OR you are up to date with 8.1 installed

after windows has finished updating installing 8.1
drivers are in order

head on over to AMD and grab the latest catalyst driver set
install this
Download>yes>next>next>yes>yes>yes>next>justbloodydoitamd>yesiwantmy3dtoworkjustgo>next>yes>finish>reboot.

then head on over to HP's site and grab the newest drivers for your main board
download Audio, Chipset and Network

lastly
before you play the game now, you have likely made some drastic changes
navigate to the games install directory and delete the "Shaders" folder

to find it
right click the shortcut for MWO on your desktop, click "open file location"
you will be in the Mechwarrior\MechWarrior Online\Bin32 folder
press backspace to navigate up one folder
open "USER"
select and delete the "Shaders" folder entirely
do not worry the game will rebuild this folder based on your current GFX driver instructions

open game and launch testing grounds
press F9 to see your current FPS in the top left corner of your screen
if you still suffer terribly attempt in game tests
try everything on ultra and compare FPS to everything on low (record results)
put everything on ultra
then lower each setting individually to low save and test (record and compare results)
its very common for a system to be bottle necked in just one aspect and reducing work in that area will solve issues
(ie many ppl can run it on high with shadows on low and get the same fps as everything on low)

also try changing from DX9 to DX11
this will likely hit your frames even harder, but you might get lucky due to windows 8 factors

after you have exhausted all these options with out success
then consider buying new video card

good luck

[cSand]

On HP's site it says Win 8 64 bit so he should be good in that regard

[Durant Carlyle]

Naduk, on 07 March 2014 - 09:41 PM, said:

wow guys common, new guy is asking for help and the first thing you guys suggest is buy a new video card
csand is the only guy close to helping so far

I've been doing tech support since I graduated from high school. That's 20 years of experience.

First of all, HP wouldn't sell a machine with 10GB of RAM with a 32-bit version of Windows. Maybe years back when Joe User didn't know any better, but not nowadays. No need to check that at all.

Secondly, the upgrade from 8 to 8.1 isn't going to give a boost in performance anyway. It has mobility enhancements, security enhancements, and changes to the Modern UI experience. No mention of performance boosts of any kind. That's direct from Microsoft.

The only useful thing you brought up was driver updates, and those aren't going to miraculously give a weak graphics card playable frame rates in MW:O. Drivers usually don't improve the performance of older graphics cards all that much, because they've already wrung all of the performance out of them. It's only the newer cards that will see performance gains, because they're still finding the best ways to optimize.

Comparison:
The 7450 has 160 Stream Processing Units, 8 Texture Units, 16 Z/Stencil ROP Units, and 4 Color ROP Units.
The 7750 has 512 Stream Processing Units, 32 Texture Units, 64 Z/Stencil ROP Units, and 16 Color ROP Units.
The 7850 has 1024 Stream Processing Units, 64 Texture Units, 128 Z/Stencil ROP Units, and 32 Color ROP Units.

OP's problem is weak hardware, not the software that drives it.

Edited by Durant Carlyle, 08 March 2014 - 08:28 AM.

[Greenfury]

I did the 8.1 and the drivers for GPU settings ect and I did see 5-6 fps overall but I do not have the catalyst control center and or can't find it the display driver is 13.152.0.0 when I search devices the card is there but I do not know how to get the control center up to look at. also thank you in advance for the help thus far I really appreciate it

[cSand]

Ok so you might want to download the latest driver package from AMD then. I posted a link for you earlier.
Otherwise, if you just can find the Control Center, it should be right here:


I do have a feeling that 5-6 FPS gain is probably all your going to get out of that card though...

Edited by cSand, 08 March 2014 - 10:12 AM.

[Greenfury]

I did the link you had it said it's downloaded ect it simply isn't there or in programs menu or anywhere else I can think what am I doing wrong? not sure if it matters but this card came wit this computer?

Edited by Greenfury, 08 March 2014 - 10:37 AM.

[cSand]

Greenfury, on 08 March 2014 - 10:26 AM, said:

I did the link you had it said it's downloaded ect it simply isn't there or in programs menu or anywhere else I can think what am I doing wrong? not sure if it matters but this card came wit this computer?

Did you run the installer after you downloaded it?

Would probably be in your downloads folder.

Edited by cSand, 08 March 2014 - 11:00 AM.

[Greenfury]

yeah I ran it, when I went to downloads the installer wasn't there, but when I rightclicked it showed up in the popup? I was able to get catalyst control into the tray and turned off triple buffer (another 3-4 fps) but catalyst control isn't showing in programs directory just the installer. I am starting to think there is something wrong with windows and my reload from scratch hate to do that but nothing is working correctly.

[Greenfury]

managed to double my FPS thanks! I need to upgrade guess I wont be eating next week lol thanks again for the help in spite of my computer incompetence.

[cSand]

Hey as long as it's in the tray then it's all good. That's how it is normally accessed (it starts up when Windows does) Glad to see you got some better FPS!

If you plan on upgrading, that card I mentioned earlier is a good bet if you have to keep it on a reasonable budget. Your processor and RAM are good so a new graphics card will do wonders for you.

Who needs food, right?

PS Feel free to add me to your friends list in MWO if you wanna do some drops!

Edited by cSand, 08 March 2014 - 04:45 PM.

[Domenoth]

Just a heads up, cSand suggested an R7 260. I just bought one and am slightly disappointed in its MWO performance.

I replaced an HD 4870. Back in closed-beta the game ran great with my current processor and the 4870. I ended up getting a laptop that plays MWO quite well so I stopped using my AMD rig.

At some point between open-beta and now, I think the game got too intensive or something. My R7 260 is bordering on playable but it has frequent dips into sub-20 fps. To back up my assertion, I'll mention that to keep my 4870 from roasting itself, I had to downclock it and I still had 30-40 fps. Now I can't even get consistently playable frames at full clock on my R7 260.

PHI might just have a lot of optimising it needs to do before we can see any improvement.

... posted on my phone so my sincerest apologies for whatever auto correct did that i didn't notice.

Editing now that I have an actual keyboard

A few clarifications:

• My new card is an R7 260X, sorry for the omission. I couldn't remember if I saw 260's alongside 260X's while I was comparing/deciding so I thought 260 might be synonymous with 260X.
  
• As Goose points out below me, the CPU may be my bottleneck. I'm pretty sure I tried 12 v 12 on my AMD rig when it came out just because I was curious. But the most recent concrete memory I have is for sure playing Tourmaline (which was several months before 12 v 12 so not able to corroborate my belief that I tried 12 v 12 with my HD 4870 with no performance issues).
  
• I've had more of a chance to actually play using this new card and I may have been a tiny bit too harsh. I said it was bordering on playable but actually I think it earns a solid playable instead. It's workable for sure when every setting is on low. 30-40 fps pretty consistently.
  
• I finally managed to get my second monitor up and running so I was able to leave Catalyst Control Center and Task Manager Performance Tab up where I could see them while playing. I'm not really sure what to make of the results. Three of my CPUs sit at about 50%-60% and the last one stays at around 70%-85%. My R7 260X usage fluctuates wildly when I turn off vsync but definitely doesn't stay pegged. I don't think the 260X is the bottleneck, but I got the impression I should expect to see higher CPU usage in general if my CPU was my bottleneck.

Anyway. I am happy with my 260X purchase but I wanted to offer a word of caution that a 260X might not be a silver bullet for FPS issues in MWO.

Edited by Domenoth, 09 March 2014 - 02:55 PM.

[Goose]

The switch to 12 per team made any given CPU bottleneck worse, so I wouldn't blame any given video card in a then-and-now comparison …