10 replies to this topic

[Samson23]

Hey guys. I tried googling with no success. I'm running MWO on a mid 2011 MacBook Pro, bootcamped w Windows 8 and am AMD 6750M video card.

I was wondering if there are a list of performance settings that are CPU-dependent and a list that are GPU-dependent? The machine has powerful CPUs and lots of ram but not the best video card, obviously. I'm hoping to be able to pump up the CPU-heavy settings and leave the GPU-heavy ones at medium.

Any advice appreciated.

[Gremlich Johns]

Doesn't work like that. If I remember correctly, the game currently is CPU heavy (with no player available selections for where you want stuff to be processed) and until the game is optimized for DX11, we are all underperforming. Your video card is okay and is DX11 capable, but 480 shaders at 600MHz, I suggest trying to overclock a little and use a cooling pad under the laptop until you can get a Sager notebook (if you only want a laptop). Laptops really are not the best choice. Some work, most do not.

anybody else wanna weigh in?

[Catamount]

Not much; that basically covers it. Graphical settings only generally affect the GPU, while the game is presently CPU-bottlenecked on most systems, so there's really nothing to be done. Decreasing everything down might help a little (except FXAA, keep that on because it's not taxing), but not much. Even decreasing resolution isn't going to help much.

As far as what settings are least graphically intensive, again, FXAA is up there, and turning up textures is something one can do without worries. The real GPU killers are lighting/shadows, shaders (big VRAM bandwidth killer, iirc) and tessellation (which won't matter until DX11). Anti-aliasing used to be a massive drain, but since post-processing AA has basically obsoleted everything by not being taxing, that no longer counts. That's more to keep in mind when DX11 comes though, and we're finally GPU bound.

Edited by Catamount, 18 December 2012 - 07:55 PM.

[Samson23]

Thanks guys, appreciated.

[Sen]

Due to an absolutely insane 72 hours, I just happened to buy and return a 15" retina macbook pro. I can tell you it didn't make any difference if I ran the game at 1920 x 1080 or 1024 x 768, as soon as there was any decent action on the screen I got 15 FPS.

That was with a 650m with afterburner maxed.

[In general I just hope y'all respect my "don't ask" but no: I DID NOT buy the stupid thing for MwO. I had another purpose for it which kinda . . fell through. Getting to test MwO on it gave me a benchmark tho, so i can't complain]

and because someone will ask, I averaged 5FPS @ 2880 x 1440

Edited by Sen, 18 December 2012 - 09:42 PM.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Catamount, on 18 December 2012 - 07:54 PM, said:

Not much; that basically covers it. Graphical settings only generally affect the GPU, while the game is presently CPU-bottlenecked on most systems, so there's really nothing to be done. Decreasing everything down might help a little (except FXAA, keep that on because it's not taxing), but not much. Even decreasing resolution isn't going to help much.

As far as what settings are least graphically intensive, again, FXAA is up there, and turning up textures is something one can do without worries. The real GPU killers are lighting/shadows, shaders (big VRAM bandwidth killer, iirc) and tessellation (which won't matter until DX11). Anti-aliasing used to be a massive drain, but since post-processing AA has basically obsoleted everything by not being taxing, that no longer counts. That's more to keep in mind when DX11 comes though, and we're finally GPU bound.

Huh. I had no idea that post processing had rectified anti aliasing's nature of being a burden. All in all, your info has me curious to play around with the settings in MW:O though. Much appreciated.

Sen, on 18 December 2012 - 09:42 PM, said:

Due to an absolutely insane 72 hours, I just happened to buy and return a 15" retina macbook pro. I can tell you it didn't make any difference if I ran the game at 1920 x 1080 or 1024 x 768, as soon as there was any decent action on the screen I got 15 FPS.

That was with a 650m with afterburner maxed.

[In general I just hope y'all respect my "don't ask" but no: I DID NOT buy the stupid thing for MwO. I had another purpose for it which kinda . . fell through. Getting to test MwO on it gave me a benchmark tho, so i can't complain]

and because someone will ask, I averaged 5FPS @ 2880 x 1440

Bah, as of August or September I was still stuck on a single core Athlon 64 / Nvidia 8800Gt. So I will not, and can not, judge.

Besides that Macbook ran MW:O relatively decent, my ancient one couldn't even manage that much! (yes I did try it - once. lol)

[KerenskyClone]

Just a quick reply. This game is heavily CPU dependent, regardless of the graphics card you have it taxes the CPU very heavily and none of the settings you can change in setup (which are all GPU dependent anyway) will affect your FPS drops in this game.

I have recently had the chance to test this out firsthand. I build a new gaming rig yesterday, went from a Q8400 @ 3,01 Ghz to an i53570K @ 3.6 Ghz, but I KEPT my old graphics card which I still consider very capable. ATI HD 6870...

The difference is night and day, I have DOUBLED my average FPS and it never dips below a very playable 30FPS, even in very heavy action. This is on 1080p, everything maxed.

Also you have to consider that laptops (even those equipped with an i7) run in efficient power saving modes which will affect performance drastically...

A laptop is not a gaming solution especially for a CPU intensive (badly optimized) game like this...

Edited by KerenskyClone, 19 December 2012 - 04:46 AM.

[Sen]

Quote

A MAINSTREAM laptop is not a gaming solution

Fixed that for ya.

Oh, I'm sorry, you want examples?

http://www.xoticpc.com/

About everything this place sells over $1200. It's not CHEAP, but I've played MwO on ultra high 1920 x 1080 with an i7 and a 570m, and with 45-60 FPS, I can assure you it's doable.

You just have to know where to go and what to get

And they're not called "laptops" anymore. . and for that very reason. nobody wanted any "hot coffee" lawsuits, so they're all notebooks, or ultraportables, etc.

Edited by Sen, 19 December 2012 - 05:22 AM.

[Catamount]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 18 December 2012 - 10:14 PM, said:

Huh. I had no idea that post processing had rectified anti aliasing's nature of being a burden. All in all, your info has me curious to play around with the settings in MW:O though. Much appreciated.

Yeah, while MSAA has to chunk through all the polygons on the screen looking for edges (and SSAA is even sillier), FXAA just looks at the final image, and sees what pixels make edges. It's massively, massively less expensive. That's why in some games, it's literally the only option. In Guild Wars 2 and Battlefield3, it has no measurable effect on performance on my machine. In Skyrim, it's almost that good. I haven't ever played MWO without FXAA.

A slightly better explanation of the technology is here

http://www.codinghor...asing-fxaa.html

Edited by Catamount, 19 December 2012 - 05:11 PM.

[Samson23]

Interesting stuff. And no, I recognize my mac isn't ideally suited to gaming but its what I have and I've been happy to have it work at all with bootcamp. Right now I'm at a mix of medium and high settings with decent performance. I did have to reinstall the client once due to mystery performance degradation and its back to normal now.

[MavRCK]

Sen, on 18 December 2012 - 09:42 PM, said:

Due to an absolutely insane 72 hours, I just happened to buy and return a 15" retina macbook pro. I can tell you it didn't make any difference if I ran the game at 1920 x 1080 or 1024 x 768, as soon as there was any decent action on the screen I got 15 FPS.

That was with a 650m with afterburner maxed.

[In general I just hope y'all respect my "don't ask" but no: I DID NOT buy the stupid thing for MwO. I had another purpose for it which kinda . . fell through. Getting to test MwO on it gave me a benchmark tho, so i can't complain]

and because someone will ask, I averaged 5FPS @ 2880 x 1440

I get that on my imac in bootcamp win 7 - 3.4g i7 with 680mx gtx