Can I Run It? Radeon R5 330 2GB DDR3

[montag]

My trusty crusty old craptop is showing some signs that is about to take a permanent nap. I just ran into an old workmate, and he tells me they have just updated a few of their PC's. Being an all-around good guy, he offered me my old machine if I would like it. It has a new 1TB seagate with Win 10, if I remember correctly the MB is a MSI. I know it has an AMD A10 8850 CPU (3.9 ghz) and a weird Radeon R5 330 2 GB DDR3 GPU (it has an actual card, but the cpu has integrated graphics almost like a laptop - the card seems to just supplement the integrated graphics) It has 16 GB of DDR3-1600 ram (I am sure of this, I installed it, and just dug out the packaging for it)

 

My question is, will it handle TDM? The processor and ram should be fine, but can anyone offer an opinion on that video card? (I have a couple of spare HD's and a legal version of Win 7, so screw Win 10)

Any help would be greatly appreciated, If someone could reassure me about the graphics, I plan on offering them a couple hundred bucks and buy them all lunch on Monday or Tuesday.

 

P.S. This would (hopefully) just be a temporary rig, I know it's crap, but all I care about now is if it will allow me to play TDM missions, so I can save a few dollars for some medical bills I need to cover. On a positive note, I am going to splurge on a new ASUS VP228H 21.5" monitor on Monday, 'cause sale price! Thanks!

[nbohr1more]

The GPU has 320 stream processors. It should work fine for most missions with medium to low settings.

You should check out the 2.05 beta. Performance improvements are coming...

[montag]

Thanks nbohr1more! I have to admit, after lurking here for a long while, I was hoping for a reply from you! Med. to Low is fine, my laptop can only handle very low settings without any slowdowns, so I think I will go for it. (should prolly have mentioned my current laptop has only an AMD M880G w/ATI Mobility Radeon HD4250, and while far from great, it does allow me to enjoy TDM. Every once in a while, I spoil myself by setting them higher, then I just sit and gaze in awe at what I am missing)

 

Edit: Looking forward to 2.05, big thanks to all who work so hard on this mod/game and all the mission authors who do what they do!

Edited November 28, 2016 by montag

[Obsttorte]

TDM does run on much older hardware. I fairly doubt you will run into much problems.

[duzenko]

I would expect R5 330 to be 3+ times as fast as HD4250.

[montag]

I would expect R5 330 to be 3+ times as fast as HD4250.

That sounds promising! Wait, what is 3 times faster than a snail in reverse? Ha! Good news is, I'll have a serviceable case to start a new build. Thanks for the help, guys, will snag it tomorrow.

[montag]

Update: So after picking thru a storeroom full of unused junk, here is what I snagged: A Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 MB (junk) with a FX4300 PCU, 4GB of no-name ram (my 16GB of Crucial was apparently appropriated by their "tech guy"), a GFX 720 1GB GPU (also junk) , and an old full tower case (huge) that belonged to me ages ago. I tossed in an older Coolermaster 500wt PSU I had laying around, and copy/pasted my darkmod folder onto a spanking new Toshiba 1TB with an inactivated (but legal, and now activated) copy of WIN 10. Big surprise, it runs great! Penny Dreadful 3 is running happily with med-high settings and no slowdowns at all. (haven't checked FPS yet, need to find console code for that) Cost for all this tech? lunch for three people, plus me. (less than $60) Turns out they have sold their company (a metal testing lab) to a larger company, so they were going to toss all this old stuff. I have purchased a pretty nice EVGA NovaSomething G2 Gold+ 550wt PSU, and am on the hunt for a GTX 1050ti GPU for the time being. Later I will source a decent MB/CPU and a good GPU, along with 8/16GB of ram and a SSD. I have two more questions, if you don't mind. #1.The 1050ti claims it draws 75wts direct from the PCIe slot, does that raise any flags?( I believe that is max for PCIe ) #2. Am I wrong to assume that there is no AMD PCU that can even come close to the performance of an Intel i7 PCU? (Ideally, my final build would run a few modern games such as Dishonored2, Watchdogs, and Fallout4 with higher settings)

[duzenko]

#1.The 1050ti claims it draws 75wts direct from the PCIe slot, does that raise any flags?( I believe that is max for PCIe ) #2. Am I wrong to assume that there is no AMD PCU that can even come close to the performance of an Intel i7 PCU? (Ideally, my final build would run a few modern games such as Dishonored2, Watchdogs, and Fallout4 with higher settings)

1. AFAIK 99%+ of modern motherboards can feed 75W through a PCIe slot.

2. The last AMD gaming cpu was 45nm Phenom2. Their next bullshitter/crapdriver cpu's are essentially a 4-core Pentium4 on steroids. They claim their next Zen CPU will be better but are you going to wait for that?

Just to compare, Intel has since released two generations of each 32, 22 and 14 nm CPUs.

[montag]

1. I wasn't very clear here, my worry is under load, will the card try to draw more power? That rating is for MAX wattage the card would ever draw? I'm imagining the motherboard exploding into a fantastic display of fireworks, but I have a very vivid imagination!

2. Gotcha, the Zen CPU, if priced the way AMD usually goes, might be a return to the days when a cheapskate like me could build a competitive machine with a substantial savings. The last time I built anything even close to state-of-the-art was a Phenom II rig to play Farcry. It did the job very well, but just a few years later it was way too under powered to handle Crysis on high settings. As far as waiting goes, who knows? A year and a half ago, I was all set to build a somewhat decent system, but my mother fell down a flight of stairs and broke her pelvis. My co-pays amounted to over $6000, so no new toys for me! (lesson learned - next time I push her down the stairs, I'll follow it up with a piano to finish the job!) Barring anymore similar disasters, I should be able to swing a higher end i5 or lower spec i7 sometime this coming spring. Thanks!

 

***off to fantasy shop for CPU/MB combos***

[duzenko]

There is this "PCIe certified" thing that is kinda supposed to tell that any extension card is compatible with any extension slot so that consumers don't need to play game of chance with their money.

Also I remember a heated discussion about a particular Radeon sucking _more_ than 75W. One of the arguments was "NVidia does this shit right".

 

LOL check that piano price first

 

[demagogue]

TDM runs fine on my Intel chip graphics laptop, which doesn't run anything else later than maybe 2003/GTA3, and any graphics card that would have been middling for 2005. Might be harder to find a system it won't run on still around these days.

[montag]

Yeah, after doing some research, it would appear that the card should be fine, don't know why I was concerned. As for the cost of the piano, good point!, I will look into the price of an Acme safe ala Roadrunner. @ demagogue, this gtx 720 runs TDM so well that I am not even in a rush to replace it! Once I turned off fps reporting and just stuck to settings I could live with performance wise, I was amazed at how great it looks! ( btw, Patently Dangerous is up next, after Behind Closed Doors!) Thanks for all your help!

[duzenko]

@ demagogue, this gtx 720 runs TDM so well that I am not even in a rush to replace it!

How about the ship deck in Down by the riverside in 1080p?

[montag]

How about the ship deck in Down by the riverside in 1080p?

Well, I just finished doing some hardcore mods to the card. I dug up an old 40mm fan and screwed it into the fins on the card, so it should kick ass now! Also, I added two 140mm fans to the case, unfortunately they had led's in them, so now I have to pull them out and wrap electrical tape around the bulbs. I will load up Down by the Riverside (in a van) and see how it runs, will let you know how it runs! On a serious note, thanks for your time and effort helping me out!

[demagogue]

btw, Patently Dangerous is up next, after Behind Closed Doors!) Thanks for all your help!

Lol! That's a tough act to follow! Just remember the original PD was made as a modest sized/short timeframe contest mission, and BCD is my pick for best and most ambitious TDM FM ever.

I hope you like it anyway.

[montag]

demagogue, Patently Dangerous was already on my (very) short list of favorite fms, the only difference is now I can enjoy it in all it's graphic glory! I keep an old school list (on paper, with ink, 'cause I'm old) of maps that I love, and would replay when I got the chance to enjoy with proper hardware. The difference between what I was playing before and now is such that every map seems new to me, playing with every setting on low/disabled compared to med./high/enabled makes every map seem like it's new, BCD is a GREAT mission, no doubt, but P. Dangerous is also great in it's own way. My only question would be, where is your next installment? Get on the ball, you lazy bastard! (kidding, of course)

[demagogue]

Thanks. I've got something already in the works, most of the geometry is there. Right now it's waiting for a certain new monster which rhymes with swearbeast to get himself some new animations, which fortunately are getting done.

[montag]

How about the ship deck in Down by the riverside in 1080p?

Ok, tested, no problems at all! Looks great, the ripple effects in the water are awesome! Funny thing though, fps on deck is 9-11fps but no stutter at all, my laptop with everything set to very, very low would often turn into a slideshow. I will have to set it up and check fps on it, never bothered to before. (is it possible to have negative fps?) I have been running PD3 to tune my settings, with fps reporting on, I would get 30+ fps indoors, 18 to 20 fps outdoors. I finally turned fps off and just played around with what played well and looked good, but I did keep a log of fps on each new adjustment. I would have assumed that any fps below 30 would have played horrible, but even 8 or 9 fps seems (not seems, it is smooth) to run very smooth. Could FPS be the "horsepower" of the gaming world? My final (for now, may need to tweak for different maps?) settings are :

1920x1080@60hz, V Sync ON, AA-8x, AF-4x, Amb. Rend.-Enhanced, Int. Shader-Enhanced, Post Proc.-Enabled-Slider to far left, LOD-Better, had to set the resolution in my .cfg file as well as seta r_mode (or something) to -1 to make maps/menus nice and clear. I did get this warning on screen when first starting this mission, have never seen this before - "ASS-RAT is out of date", do I need to see a proctologist?

[duzenko]

Hm, if you had 3 fps on HD4250 before then 9 fps on 720 must absolutely feel smooth

[montag]

A fair point, but I'm finished searching for some elusive fps goal for now. I can turn settings down to achieve 50+ fps, but as I said, the difference in playability was nonexistent. On a weird sidenote, fps rise when looking up at the sky from the deck of the ship, counter to my expectations. Perhaps this is due to the river animations being more taxing than the static sky? On my laptop, I made it a point to never look up unless necessary, which lead to a rather severe hunchback appearance and a very stiff neck! I had planned on replacing the 720 asap with a 1050ti, but now I am inclined to wait a bit and build a system that will let me stay current for at least a few years. (famous last words) Of course, I have already purchased a $90 evga SuperNOVA (a rather off-putting moniker for a PS in my opinion) Gold+ 550wt ps, but after doing a little research, (after buying it, cause I'm impulsive like that) it turns out that it is a really nice little unit, and I am not planning on any SLI or X-Fire setups, so it should be ok. At any rate, all this crap will be transferred into another case, so that PS can be used to replace the Apevia PS that it is using now. (then I can use the Apenia as a paperweight, or target practice, depending on the state of my liver)