My new notebook (i7-4700MQ + GTX 765M) gets about 70 FPS average on a 28 player pub (tested on pl_upward) without any FPS configs yet. I turned on VSYNC and it holds 60 FPS pretty well but frequently dips to 45-50 FPS. The CPU is advertised as a 2.4GHz model but runs all its threads at 3.2GHz most of the time in high performance mode, and the GTX 765M (essentially a GeForce GTX 650 Ti) is barely stressed, so I'm guessing game engine overhead is to blame. My 4770K @ 4.2GHz and HD 7970 with an ASUS VG248QE 144Hz monitor faces the same issues, 144Hz VSYNC is obtainable but there are lots of little random dips along with some big drops to the 80-90 FPS range which is unacceptable IMO.

Save up for something better, TF2 runs rather "badly" on older processors like the Phenoms, even the quad core ones. $300 sounds a little steep for mid-range components that are a couple years old anyway. I've played games that are older than TF2 and literally run much better on a newer Core i5/i7 than they do on say a Core 2 Extreme QX6800. If only those parts listed were included for $300, I would run away from that deal.

In July, I had my main MGE server listed on the TFTV server listings via this thread: http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/10235-server-listing-request. That server went offline on October 28th, so I'd like to have my new MGE servers listed (and I'm a little late doing so, but better late than never).

- DM/MGE/Jump etc. server (servers focused on ability development) MGE servers.

- Provide the server ip:port 74.91.119.93:27015 (MGE V8) and 74.91.119.96:27015 (MGE V8 2v2).

- State the server location Chicago, on an NFO VDS.

Thank you!

You must get at least an AMD A4-4000 APU, the Athlon FM2 chips DO NOT have integrated graphics capabilities if you're sticking with an FM2 build. Please get 2x2GB DDR3 modules, a PSU that won't catch on fire (Corsair, Seasonic, Antec, Enermax, etc.) and you may find a 32GB SSD rather small, especially if the computer accumulates junk and then runs out of disk space eventually. I do have a Win7 installation on a 36GB original WD Raptor and without anything installed it has about 12GB free space right off the bat.

1. It's recommended that you do a clean install of Windows on the SSD. You can unplug your current hard drive while doing so in case you are afraid of deleting stuff or screwing up something, and plug it in later for use as a storage drive.

2. Most SSDs should have a 2.5" to 3.5" conversion bracket included in the box. What SSD did you purchase, and was this included with some screws?

I got ~125 FPS average in the demo from the TF2 benchmarks thread some time ago: http://teamfortress.tv/forum/thread/7598-tf2-benchmarks

It's pretty much been this way from my first i7 (2600K) and my 3770K and now my 4770K with three different ASRock mid-tier Z chipset motherboards and different Win7 and Win8 installs (still using Win7 since January 2013). I play at 120 FPS VSYNC on my ASUS VG236H and get that most of the time, but any kind of action with ~18+ players causes it to creep down into the 100s and even the 90s or 80s in rare cases, and that's with shadows disabled sadly. It's been forever since I messed around with my autoexec but it's based on Chris' max quality configs if I recall, but they didn't seem to make any difference with my FPS.

CPU/GPU temps are great, both have stable overclocks and don't throttle. Maybe MSI Afterburner/HWInfo64/RivaTunerStatisticsServer (to display clock speeds and temperatures in an overlay in-game) are adding some frame latency, but I dunno.

With a Radeon HD 7970 and 4770K @ 4.2GHz, my TF2 framerate in full pubs usually never drops below 85 on max settings. I'd imagine you'll see a nice boost as dual cores can easily be maxed out by games these days, and newer Intel Core processors have gained roughly 10% per-core performance each generation. You have a first generation Core i-series CPU and we are on the fourth as of June, so you should be making a good investment.

450w isn't bad for a modern i7 and single GPU. The TITAN only consumes ~265w absolute maximum at stock clocks and a 4770 at stock consumes well under 100w. A system with a 3770K @ 4.3GHz w/ integrated graphics, a few fans, single HDD and DVD drive with an 80% efficiency PSU only consumes ~125w at the wall with losses.

Has anyone tried V8 Beta4b on the TrashedGamers servers or elsewhere yet? I'm probably going to have CPrice commit this to GitHub tonight as I haven't heard any remarks yet, though it could be too soon to tell. :)

It's your CPU that's holding you back. Any dual core CPU (even a latest generation i5/i7 with the game locked down to two threads) can easily be maxed out by TF2. The HD 5670 really isn't too bad for TF2 which is why you are hardly seeing any FPS gains when you reduce your resolution. My laptop with a Phenom II X4 X920 (equivalent to 2.2GHz Athlon II quad core) with a Mobility Radeon HD 5650 (a slower desktop HD 5670 essentially) easily goes down to 25-30 FPS on lower settings, and in the benchmark demo it only does 50 FPS average when my 4.2GHz i7-4770K (using 4 threads) does ~130. TF2 is just one of those games that is unbalanced resource wise in that it requires a good CPU more than a good GPU.

Alright folks, I have a long overdue maintenance release ready. It contains MGE Training V8 Beta4b with spawns as well as the latest MGEMod 2.0.9 released earlier this week.

Changelog:
-Replaced blands spire with official Valve one, perhaps the old one became corrupt somehow. I have performed limited testing and it seems pretty smooth, but you tell me.
-Divided the number of spectator cameras by 10. If you don't feel like counting, there are two left instead of 20. This was requested by a few people who didn't want to scroll through 20 cameras sometimes to see who was playing in an arena.
-Doubled the height of the BBall skybox, takes two sticks to headbutt it now.
-Partitioned the mandatory spawn/welcome room so light glow from the attributions wall doesn't hit your viewmodel (your screen is now all black aside from crosshair + HUD like in V7).

Please test this and see if I properly fixed the issues listed above. If not, then I have more work to do, but I really hope this much belated version is good.

***WARNING*** Download package contains new MGEMod version and spawns, don't mindlessly upload to your server if you wish to keep your current spawns (you'll need to rename the mge_training_v8_beta4a set to mge_training_v8_beta4b).

Download here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53256537/MGE%20Training%20V8%20Beta4b%20%2B%20MGEMod%202_0_9%209_29_2013.zip

Notice he used the banner for <180 candies which an earlier post proved was different. I'm doubtful the game would allow more than 200 or even 190 for that matter.

http://img.techpowerup.org/130927/fail.png

My highest score is 177.

The official AMD event was today, so now we have some more details about the product stack. Looks like AMD might be re-branding the current products like NVIDIA did, and the new chip competes with NVIDIA's big chip on the 780/TITAN. More details here if you're interested: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=191453

If you reverted to stock settings and are no longer having any issues, it was probably your overclock. Processors and other components can degrade over time at various rates, so it's possible your overclock that used to be stable became borderline unstable after some time, or something could be dying.

Honestly, running a series of different games/benchmarks will be better for stability testing than running Prime95 or IntelBurnTest/LinX/etc. as a processor may be completely stable for that routine yet fall on its face and cause a BSOD very quickly in certain games. Unfortunately, your GPU is a poor match for your CPU (maybe not so much for TF2, as it loves good CPUs but can get by with lower end GPUs) but YMMV (your mileage may vary).

Do you remember what you had it overclocked to originally? I've only owned one first-gen i7 (870) and only got ~3.7GHz out of it with HT enabled, and it took >1.35v to get it stable.