How do I fix MechWarrior 3's rubber-banding framerate and get it running perfectly?

So I've seen this topic danced around a lot but if anyone has a solid fix, you'd cement your place as a patron saint of Mechwarriors.

It seems to me the only, final hitch in getting Mechwarrior 3 operational is the bizarre rubber-banding framerate, most notable when you actually try to get anywhere - you'll slow to a crawl before eventually rocketing off, only to slow once more and the cycle continues. And the really aggravating thing is I /KNOW/ I got it working once by some fluke years ago, but the results have been thus far unreproducible.

The problem is it appears to me to be rendering at a constant, good smooth framerate but the actual game itself has weird time fluctuations. It could simply be that because the game slows down along WITH the framerate it only appears smooth but it's hard to say. Looking at the mission clock it becomes extremely apparent, and the speed of the moving overcast sky texture is another good indicator. The physics meanwhile tend to get upset by this rubberbanding time, and anyone familiar with trying to get this game to work will already know all about the 'bouncing APC' problem.

For my part, I'm running Windows 7-64bit with an NVidia GeForce GTX 680 under the hood, and I've tried with what feels like every possible permutation of compatibility modes, running it with/without the oft-touted loader, etc. Here's the current Nvidia settings;

The closest I've yet achieved has been using the Nvidia Inspector to limit the framerate to 30fps, but there MUST be a definitive solution.

So I implore you, if you think you've got the answer, bring it on.

There are many known issues with running MW3 on newer versions of windows, I would suggest installing the patch specifically released for this reason. 1.2 and do the following.

• Install 1.2 patch
• Set mech3.exe to combatibility mode "Windows 98/ME
• Through your graphics card's control panel, enable "Vertical sync" and "Triple buffering"
• Run the game

This has fixed the issue for me on Windows 8.1 and should work for Windows 7. Beyond that you could also look at game booster software like Razor's Game booster which will boost your fps and performance for you.