Live-action/CGI battlemech movie from before 2005

Question

The plot involved three pilots, I believe a white guy, white girl, and black guy, belonging to the same team/force being deployed to an area and being unable to leave because their mechs are damaged. A local woman has a valuable artifact that looks like a circuit board with a large hemispherical pearl on it. She ends up selling it in order to buy the team weapons for their mechs they use to win and escape. The mechs are mechwarrior-style cockpits on legs, not humanoid. The people are live-action and the mech combat is 90s-style CGI. One of the weapons is a solid red laser beam. The title might have started with an A.

Answer 1

Might you be thinking of Gunhed (1989)...?

In a cyberpunk future, Kyron-5 supercomputer attempts to exterminate the human race, but Gunhed mechs stop it. In 2038, five thieves break into a condemned island facility to steal Kyron's dead CPU. The place turns out to be a deathtrap.

According to the synopsis, five people venture onto an island to steal a CPU, but the three most prominently positioned on the movie poster -- along with a large mech -- are an Asian man, a white woman, and a black man.

Answer 2

Is it possible that you're remembering the Hypernauts TV show?

Due to its lineage, Hypernauts featured relatively detailed designs of its technology and its aliens, as well as a fairly intricate plot, especially for a Saturday morning children's series. The premise of the series was that three cadets from the Academy of Galactic Exploration become lost in a Hyper Bubble (hyperspace) mid-jump and must band together with an alien named Kulai in order to survive in an unfamiliar part of the galaxy. Kulai (unbeknownst to the cadets) is a Chalim priestess from a planet called Pyria, a planet that was strip-mined by a warlike race called the Triiad, led by the Pyran traitor, Paiyin. The sole purpose of the Triiad is to wipe out intelligent races, and in the process acquire raw materials from their destroyed planets to continually create new war machines using automated self-replicating factory ships called "Makers".

The Hypernauts, as they are called in the academy, cannot match the Triiad's firepower with their own so they must rely on stealth, wits and (occasionally) their modified "mech suits" in order to escape the Triiad. They are based in an ancient abandoned exploration ship called the Star Ranger which is hidden in an asteroid field. The ship's obsolete AI is named Horten. For long-range missions they use a four-person "jump" ship called the Flapjack which is Hyper Bubble capable but has a short range, unlike a full-fledged exploration ship. They use the Star Ranger as a mother ship (with fusion engines) and with its vast database of explored nearby planets, they continue exploring (as they are trained to).

After learning of the Hypernauts (from their first encounter with Paiyin), the Triiad have activated and englobed the central region of the Milky Way Galaxy in a sensor net called "The Sphere of Interception", which can identify any end-to-end destination point for any hyperspace jump passing in and out of it (which includes any form of communication) so returning/calling home would lead the Triiad directly to Earth. The Hypernauts must keep the location of Earth a secret and somehow try to warn Earth of the Triiad's existence.

The ethnicity of the main cast would match.

And, released in 1996, the mech footage was definite 90s CGI, although the rest of the show was live action.