Has anyone tried running BeamNG drive on a Intel Atom yet?

If not, I have a tablet that has a Intel Atom processor. For some reason this tough guy doesn't give up whatever I throw at it. It always tries to start the program. And most of the times it succeeds.

 

I have an Atom (single core) tablet myself, haven't tried Beam on it yet... but it would probably run very poorly, if it even starts at all.

My old laptop with a 3rd gen i5u (dual core) struggled, my current A12 (quad core) can manage it only marginally better, so I doubt an Atom would perform acceptably.

 

I mean... I have doubts it would run... not so much the physics because you could always just spawn a road cone or something to get around that issue, but the graphics are what I feel will be your main bottleneck.

However... I am not gonna stop you from giving it a go... I would be interested to see if it even does anything at all.

 

my atom is only 32 bit so i can't try it.

 

Don't even hope. Just to put it in perspective: a Core2Quad Q6600 gets around 15 FPS with 1 car on a simple map.
I know it because it's my old PC. And I used to play BeamNG on it.

 

You can launch the 32bit executive file in the bin folder. Named *x86.exe.

 

If you were so inclined, you could also run the techdemo.

I wish you luck, but I don’t think you’ll succeed. I run the techdemo on an intel celeron in a crappy 10 year old email reader, and I get about 10 fps at best, lowest everything. As crappy as my laptop is, I imagine it’s more powerful than a tablet.

 

The techdemo will probably run worse then the normal game.

The techdemo was from 2015 and BeamNG has been optimized to the moon relatively.

 

This is the fact that makes my hope of one day running BeamNG not quite die. I know my laptop won’t run it, but I keep telling myself “the full version has better frames than the techdemo”. Would try it if I had 25 bucks sitting around.

 

the important question: can beamNG run doom?

 

A game, in a bus sign, in a game... what will they think of next...

 

YES, yes it can! turn all settings to lowest, simple physics, 800x600, and you can get 30FPS with ibishu pigeon, I had an Asus T100 and it would be fine no thermal throttling. I would even deem this as playable!
That was on a Z3735F.. the new atoms (Atom X5 or X7) have much stronger GPUs (almost 4x as much) so you might get away with 1024x768 or native res on your tablet. CPU probably weak still though.

Try looking up "throttlestop" you might be able to go into "TPL" and change some parameters, increase the power limit and boost FPS. My T100 had a bug where it would not go above 1.5ghz, it was meant to go to 1.86GHz. GPU was fine at 620MHz. You might also be able to lock the CPU to the highest clock multiplier.


It's all tinkering getting Beam on a tablet, it won't just fire up and work like a dream, unless you have a Core series CPU.

 

If that's a G0 SLACR Q6600 (or the similar Q6700 sister chip), if you have a capable motherboard (ASUS, similar gaming boards), with VRM cooling (the things near the CPU socket that put out power, to the cpu, located on the mother), you can overclock this chip quite well. Expect nvidia chip-sets to take it up to 3.0~3.4ghz, or intel X48 or similar series chip-sets (again with capable motherboard) to take this chip up to 3.7~3.8ghz or possibly even higher. These quad-cores were better chips that due to market demand were down-marketed to cheaper CPU's. I had one of these exact chips about 10 years ago, but my MSI P6N Diamond board refused to take it past 3.3~3.5ghz - due to being an Nvidia chip-set 680i SLI board. Back in those days it was either SLI or overclocking... and if you wanted nice 1080p graphics, you went the SLI route. It wasn't until X58 Nehelam that we got SLI on an intel chip-set board.

However, if you have a basic G41 / G43 or similar series OEM (Dell, HP, Biostar, Pegatron, etc) motherboard, you'll blow the VRM's off the board, let out the magic smoke, or the computer-ending magic FIRE. So yeah, don't increase volts through random hacks or mods on OEM boards (you almost never can from BIOS btw), but using clockgen on that thing might be able to take it from 2.4ghz to 2.8ghz on stock voltage. You'll have to give it the 30 piano test (should be enough to stress the heck out of it), or run your favorite benchmark program on it to make sure it's good for it. Go up about 66~100mhz at a time and see if that helps. You run Clockgen from within Windows, but keep in mind, this is running your old parts beyond spec, so something could blow up. BeamNG team, site, and myself are not liable if your computer PSU or motherboard EXPLODES and dies, but otherwise, the motherboards are pretty cheap now-a-days.
I snagged a bunch of G43 or Q43 Dell m-atx brand-new core 2 boards that support up to 16gb DDR2 ram (4 slots!) 2 years or so ago for the family computers that decide to go to the great PC case in the sky - for 20 bucks shipped a piece! I bought 3

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On-topic though, the INTEL ATOM chip lacks fancy AVX supports, fancy FPU support (this helps physics, intel chips from HASWELL and up have 256-bit FPU's), and other added instructions that can sometimes help things immensely like MMX did way back in the original Pentium days. But why?
Well, after Pentium 4 NETBURST's NET FAILURE, intel threw that all in the trash, and took the Pentium III core and added MORE cores to the CPU (dual and quad), enhanced it to run faster on a lesser process (65nm if I remember correctly for Conroe, then 45nm for Wolfdale, which clocked a lot better), and added it's other instructions that help with things - and more cache memory.
The intel ATOM chip series is the closest thing to the old Pentium III core from back in the end of the 90s. It's plenty good for simple tasks though, and paired with a board that has a PCI-E slot of 4x or better, you can actually do casual gaming on it (not really BeamNG.drive, but simple simulations, Cities Skylines would murder it likely, But Simcity 4 would run well, as would old DOS software in DOS BOX app). That CPU is definitely not made for something like this, in this case, a used 3.0ghz dual-core i3 would go clean past an intel ATOM even if it was quad core, due to a better instruction set, more cache, and most of all, CLOCK SPEED. Clock speed is your friend. A 2.0ghz cpu obviously does only half the work of a gaming computer with a 4.0ghz cpu. So next time you grab something, check the all-core turbo speeds on the chip, even if it only has 2~4 cores, that's plenty.
Example, I can run Garfield Heights, spawn a bus, and 60 pianos in a pile to run into, and it'll be playable 30+ FPS, until I hit them anyways, then it goes 15~20fps for a bit because of a BIG heap of mangled pianos with a bus in the middle of it. I did that two nights ago and it was hilarious. It was much better than hauling them around in a truck or pushing them off cliffs/roof-tops, etc.

However, that atom chip would make an excellent DOS BOX machine if it has hardware virtualization or whatever that instruction set is called now/then. I think it's V-pro but I'm not sure that could be AMD.

So I hope this helped someone. Don't blow up your computer with clock gen.

 

I know you are very skeptical about the dell's, but seriously they are better than you think, the optiplex has above average VRMs, and good cooling for them, people have overclocked them to 4GHz using unlocked QX series CPUs, no voltage control sure, but wow that Overclock!

The dell E520 supports up to 135W Pentuim D chips (and shipped with them!!) and I can assure you it can easily take a Q6600, a 95w chip, in its stride, barely lifting the fan above 1200RPM. Oh and its lasted 5 years of near constant use. Had to replace the PSU though as that got tired.

Once again, the VRMs are cooled due to air from the 120mm fan, they designed the heatsink shroud to leak some air onto the VRMs so they stay nice and cool. They won't blow up, the power supply is also above average, granted if you put a GPU in the system it might struggle, so it's best to upgrade PSU.

Yes BeamNG will run on Atom, will you want to is another question, and probably no! 30FPS is possible but it means one pigeon, and nothing else, potato GPU settings and no collisions.

It can run on a Core 2 Quad, I've tried it before, around 24FPS about 3 years ago when it was my main gaming PC. I'm sure BeamNG has progressed since then with optimization etc.

 

"Skeptical" That's putting words into my mouth a bit, but here goes: Dell's are made - especially those at Walmart or similar, to the lowest spec that they can be (as much Walmart's fault as Dell) while still being functional. That PSU you get on a Walmart DELL computer will be comparatively less than if you were to order it from the web site etc, so there isn't always consistency 100% here. I made grocery money in times of need fixing Dells since the mid 90s when they were a good computer - and lots of time in the 2000~2011 era (when I stopped), especially through the capacitor plague and the Pentium 4 era. I mean, there's been many times especially when PCI-Express first came out on consumer PC's - and this isn't just Dell - that specced 25w pci-express slots on motherboards so that they could include a power supply with 50 less max watts and still meet spec. This was mostly consumer, and not business-class PC's. It surely caused a real headache with upgrading the video boards though, as you could never truly put a good video card in there, until manufacturers of video cards wised up and provided auxiliary power connectors even to 75w or less video cards (there as an option, just so).

On any Pentium D 8xx / 9xx series board that supports the high-watt chips, putting a low-watt chip and running it above spec, but still below the watts of the max CPU supported, shouldn't blow it up if it's truly made to handle (and not constantly throttle) when running the higher-clocked, higher-wattage chips. Intel chip-sets will prove much superior to VIA chip-sets here, too (found on cheap Biostar-sourced boards).
Yes unless it's a business class machine and/or you have perfect line power *and* never upgrade it, the PSU can and will get tired after a while. Also, most consumer-class machines don't have power-factory correction so hooking it to a power-backup unit can do harm to the PSU and depending on the quality of the PSU, the rest of the components, too. MOST all PSU's lose up to 20~25% of their capacity after the first three years of service. A cheaper brand PSU may lose 30~35% of it's capacity in that time, while a top-tier SeaSonic gem might lose 5% max.

VRM's should always have some air blowing over them, and don't even need a special heat-sink provided you have good clean power and good consistent airflow. Some very cheap heat sinks can actually BLOCK airflow and do more harm than good.
Even a cheap EVGA 430w/450w PSU is better than the ones that pack in with *consumer* Dell computers. I have opened them up, and I have opened up cheaper name-brand PSU's from various companies. The cheap consumer Dell power supplies, are, not surprisingly, not very good, with the business-class machine ones (Especially those specced with a nice Quadro or Fire-Pro card from the factory) being a good healthy step up. One must be careful though, recommending upgrades to Dell computer power supplies, especially older Dells, as if you're a tech of any marked experience, you'll know that some manufacturers deliberately re-wired the 24-pin plug and socket on the board, so only DELL (or computer manufacturer) supplies could be used! Using regular ATX would blow out the board. They mostly stopped doing this due to consumer backlash and losing market share.

If a machine can do 20fps or above, BeamNG will run full speed, it will not be nearly as much fun though.

If you sunk a lot of cash into a tower when you first specced it from the factory, of course it will be a good machine, but if it's the cheapest of the cheap, well, then you get what you pay for. If it's a 1000$ business-class work-station, expect to get quite a few years out of it, where you'd go through at-least two 400~600$ consumer-grade computer towers or laptops in that time-frame.
You get what you pay for here, normally. I'm not critical of Dell, but they won't be as good as a computer built of ASUS parts, nor nearly as upgradeable due to planned obsolescence. But for all those people who don't know how to, or can't be bothered with, building their own PC tower to last many years, there's a market for it. Being business minded, I can't blame people who want to make money, now can I? That would be silly.
Just be mindful to keep the tower clean and cool and it should run BeamNG to the best of it's ability. For those older machines not as nicely maintained and not as long on life, it may be enough to murder it though, especially with an overclock. A good indication is air temp coming out of the fan at the back of the case (for the power supply especially). If it's really hot, it's really stressed. It should be warm to toasty on an OEM computer when gaming, that's expected, but not burning fingers (or close) hot. Don't get this confused for the CPU fan exhaust, as that's expected to be warm/hot especially on an older machine.

 

Yeah i get what you mean about their consumer grade, i forgot the stuff i use is business, the consumer stuff has probably all failed tbh and chucked in the bin, i remember their cheaper business laptops were sub-par, and the consumer ones yuck.

Also tbh it's better to be precautious than slapping a top of the line CPU and power hungry GPU onto a machine with a PSU that's barely keeping up with the load of the stock configuration, that could cause a fire, or data loss or whatever. I think i got lucky with my model, it had full power delivery to the PCIE slots, a stock 24 pin motherboard connector for the PSU, and it has a big fan and VRM cooling.
Off topic but the original PSU that the machine had was sooo quiet, but the PSU got quite warm to hot, not happy with it so eventually i got another one, Antec Earthwatts, and wow that has thermal sensor inside i think and the fan does respond quite a lot to usage changes.

Sorry @dempixels for hi-jacking your thread, hope you learned something anyway

 

well, I did. But it's a completely different product. Just a tablet that I already specifically set-up to run games. The chances are extremely big that it'll run just fine... except no 60 fps.. obviously

 

I don't know if quoting is the way to answer multiple replies... but.

I recorded my tablet running this game.. finally. here's the link to the post:

https://www.beamng.com/threads/beamng-running-on-a-intel-atom-tablet.59154/

 

knowing my dual core 4 threads atom can't run minecraft with more than 25 fps, i don't think these can run beamng. I even tried CS GO, the game wasn't even able to finish loading in less than 10 minutes and then, as expected, 1 fps