Upgrading Radeon 5850 for Mechwarrior Online (3x 24")

[Itsacon]

Hi, I'm new here with a question.

My current setup is a 3770K and a Radeon 5850, running three 1920x1200 24" displays.

My gaming consists mostly of Mechwarrior Online at the moment.

On my current rig, running 5760x1200, I manage to scrape in about 30 fps on lowest settings. Playable, but not great.

Originally my upgrade plan (I alternate between upgrading my system and my GPU, hence the generation mismatch between the CPU and graphics card) was to add a second 5850 in crossfire once having one became insufficient. However, Crossfire and SLI support for MWO is very bad. Some people manage to get it working using profiles from other games, but on the whole, it's a lottery with a big chance of one card doing nothing.

So I'm currently looking at the available single-chip options.

My question: with the knowledge that a single 5850 gives me 30fps on low, what kind of improvements can I expect from the current top tier of single-GPU cards on the market?

I have no preference for either AMD or Nvidia. I've used both in the past, I'm currently running Ati because the 5000 series was the first to support triple displays, but seeing as MWO is running Cryengine, I have no problems switching back to Nvidia.

Any advice or experience is appreciated.

[Timobkg]

Your graphics card is clearly your weak link, though performance in Mechwarrior Online has been kinda spotty in general.

Stepping up to a GTX 770 / Radeon 7970 / R9 280X should get you 30+ fps on High and 30-40+ fps on Medium settings, though these figures are based on results from a year ago, so it's very likely that they've further optimized the engine / drivers and should have better performance now. Of these cards, the 7970 / R9 280X seems to offer the best value.

I'll try to find the time to test it on my PC (3570K, GTX 670, 5760x1080) and update.

[Itsacon]

Thank you for the quick reply!

That's actually better performance than I'd expected. Didn't know the 5850 was that outdated

Say I was willing to spend extra, would you hazard a guess at what I could expect from a 780 or a Titan? Would that give a significant increase over a 770?

[Timobkg]

Not really. I'll try to find some benchmarks and extrapolate, but you'll be paying through the noise for a very marginal upgrade. Though I guess when you're around the 30s, a small fps increase could make the unplayable playable.

[Haldi]

a good custom 780 with lot's of OC comes very near to a titan and way ahead of a GTX680, aka 770

[Timobkg]

I can't speak for overclocking potential. From reference clock benchmarks, the GTX 770 is 15% faster than the 680, and the 780 is 19% faster than the 680, while pushing 4 million pixels at ultra high settings in Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, and Metro Last Light. Thus the 780 is about 3.5% faster than 770.

5760x1080 is about 6 million pixels, so the performance difference may be slightly greater, but it's hardly justified by the increase in price. But if you want the best performance, regardless of price, 780 is the way to go. Or I guess the Titan, which is 8% faster than the 780.

[Itsacon]

And when pushing those 7 million pixels, how important is the amount of memory?

I can get the 770 with up to 4GB, while the 780 only comes with 3GB. The Titan comes with 6GB.

Will less memory just influence texture detail, or will it influence fps as well?

[Timobkg]

And when pushing those 7 million pixels, how important is the amount of memory?

I can get the 770 with up to 4GB, while the 780 only comes with 3GB. The Titan comes with 6GB.

Will less memory just influence texture detail, or will it influence fps as well?

Short answer: 3GB is enough, more is better but not necessary.

Long answer: Memory mostly influences AA settings. More memory lets you run higher levels of AA, and higher resolutions require more memory for a given level of AA. However, at single-screen resolutions (1920x1080) 3GB of memory is more than enough for any AA level. At multi-monitor resolutions, you're limited by the GPU before you ever run up against the memory limit.

Possible Exception: If you're running (multiple?) high-res texture mods, such as for the Bethesda Fallout / Elder Scrolls games, it's possible that you would actually need the extra memory. Though, again, I feel that you're more likely to run up against the GPU processing limit before the memory limit.

[Itsacon]

Ok, thank you all for the help.

I think I'll wait to see what the R9 290 release will bring (price and performance wise). If that's in the stratosphere like the Titan, I think the best course of action would be two R9 280s. Even if I don't get crossfire working, one should give me a big boost over my current performance, and if I do get them both working (and for other games that do support crossfire) I should be set for a few years.

Thanks everyone!

[frag85]

@3840x1024 I see 1.3-1.5GB of vmem usage in MWO, most I've seen is ~1.7GB, everything maxed out.

On a single 7970 I get 45-65FPS everything on high. If CF worked right, I see double that. The current state is that CF only scales ~10%, and if you use a different method (1x1, Scissor or tile) or profile (like another cryengine profile, or anything actually) you'll get a horrible flicker, but 100% scaling and I see 100+ FPS.

With my Nvidia cards, SLI always worked fine (since I first played in like May or maybe even earlier 2012). Since you're 5760x1200 and you only want 1 card, you should consider a 780, or wait for the 290/290x, though I'm sure a 760/770 or 7950/7970/280 would be OK if you lower it to Medium.

Medium @3840x1024, Single 7970 I get like 80-90FPS. 5760x1200 is 1.76x the number of pixels I have.

[Itsacon]

Thanks for the info, frag85. Good to hear from someone else running MWO in a multi-screen setup.


Seeing how the R9-290X just hit the stores, all reviews show that it is optimized for large resolutions, and it is pretty affordable (especially compared to a Titan), I just ordered one. Should be here before the weekend... Guess I'll stick with AMD for a few more years.

[frag85]

Nice. Let us know how it goes. I'd sell my cf 7970's for the right price for a 290x or 780.

[Itsacon]

Got the card installed.

The good:
Before: My fps in MWO was between 30 and 40 on lowest settings.

After: It's between 40 and 50, on the highest possible settings, . (On lowest, with vsync off, it's beyond 150 or so )


The bad:
The Catalyst 13.11b7 drivers are definitely still beta. Getting a lot of issues where my system locks up. I also can't switch it back from Eyefinity to extended desktop, one of the screens stays black.

It's not a power issue, since it primarily happens when in normal windows mode (and I run the classic skin, not Aero, so the card is not doing anything)

I really hope that gets resolved soon.


Thanks again for all the advice!

[jovechiere]

I play at a resolution of 4320x900 with a graphics card HD 7770.


I used to have pretty bad FPS, but I found a way to activate the DX11 in the game. Here I leave the link to the manual... It is simple and very grateful.
http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/138527 ... -machines/

The trap is in rename DX11 to DX10, and activate it in the configuration files CFG.
It may be that you have to reset the DLL files when doing a patch of the game.