This game may be a bit more cpu heavy than most, but you really dont need anything close to even 4 GHz to run it properly. Swtor will run on any i-series Intel with more than 3.0 GHZ without issues. It might have more issues on AMD CPUs though, Dunno, never tried it. In any case, GPU performance is still much more important. Up to a certain Point at least. Switching from an R9 290 to a 780TI wont gain you anything but a higher Shadow Map Resolution Setting, both Cards can run the game on Ultra. Low FPS are more engine related than anything else. Like CheaterLL said, Swtor beats current highend hardware handily atm. At max Shadow Map Resolutions at least. @OP You need to find your bottleneck first. Its very easy to do, press "Shift-CTRL F" in game to activate the FPS display in the bottom left of your screen. Check the Color. If its red it means the GPU is the limiting factor, Green and it is the CPU, Yellow for both. I bet its the GPU. If so, i'd suggest a GTX 960 or 970 (depends on your wallet really). Those cards have six to nine times the performance of a GT 640. But if you do, check if you need a new PSU too before comitting to anything.

Your CPU is fine, it is definitely not the bottleneck. I run it on max with a non oc i5 3570k. Yes the game is purely optimized but it was developed over five years ago. A significantly younger top end CPU like yours has no issues with the game whatosever. Keep in mind, while Intel is floating the market with new and shiny CPUs, basically since Sandy Brigde the performance gain with each generation has been unimpresse to say the least. It really is not worth it upgrade your CPU for a game like Swtor (or any game really atm). This wont change with Skylake or Kaby Lake either. GPUs are another thing entirely. From a performance standpoint your card is ancient and even back then it was pretty medicore. So yes, a new GPU will help without a doubt. Judging from my own personal experience however, neither the GTX 960 nor 970 will give you constant 60+ FPS on absolutely max settings. I use a pretty good MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G and I still get FPS drops in heavy populated areas like on the fleet. Also, i havent turned the Shadow Map Resolution to max (just 2/3ish if i recall), its just not worth it. So if you want to play the game completely maxed out, you probably need something like a GTX 980 TI. and even then there are no guarantees, Swtors engine just sucks. If you are not interested in maxing the Shadow Map Resolution and able to live with some slight fps drops here and there, both the GTX 960 and 970 are fine choices. You probably wont see a difference between them save for the Shadow Resolution Setting. So if money is an issue, GTX 960. Another thing... your PSU. The power supply is adequate but its outdated and might have some issues with a new GPU. I'd buy a new one, 500W will be enough. Also, dont cheap out, buy a respectable brand. BTW you can track your bottleneck for Swtor very easily yourself ingame, press Shift-CTRL F to activate the fps display and check the color. Red means your GPU limits FPS, Green for CPU and Yellow would be a mix of both.

Dont bother OP. The white knights are out in full force, rady to decline and refuse everything in conflict with their narrative. It'll always be either 'you dont know anything yet, so shut up' or 'nobody wants to do endgame anyway, so shut up'. Many of them will indeed be in for a rude awakening and it'll be fun to watch.

It'll probably run with good fps on higher than average settings. You'd need a much better GPU to run it on max settings, especially with full Shadow Map Resolutions.

The number of auto attacks and stacking error have a higher Impact than alacrity. 35-36 is fine too, 32-33 is just too low.

In an actual fight your apm will obviously much lower. ~ 37 APM on the Dummy is very doable as long as you stack attacks and use auto attack as filler.

No i'm not going to claim its all good. Dont know why you would get that impression. The post doesnt address the concerns about new operatons. Im still convinced we wont see new ops this year and i still think its very likely we wont see anything before q3 2016. And it still sucks for raiders and will hurt certain portions of the player community. The post might suggest a new and different approach as to why we run operations however. If i had to guess i'd say it might have something to do with the player alliance system they wont talk about yet. Whether or not it would be a good change and provide enough reason for a majority of raiders to run rescaled content - i dont know. We have to wait for more information. For me personally, rescaled content is just not funny. No matter what reward system you put on top of it.

Thanks for addressing this, looking forward to the update. ? The post doesnt say that they are working on ops. I'd guess so, they want to rescale old ones after all. Jury is still out on whether or not there will be new operations. 'We have plans for Operations' might suggest something new. Maybe an entirely different reason to do ops besides gear progression. We'll see.

You can always reach a conclusion based on a logic and realistic examination of the facts at hand. - BWs resources are finite - they are likely already working at full capacity wihout new ops - they said they are concentrating on story this year - in the future they want to do less MMO and more SP RPG - in the past, without focus on story, we already had to wait forever - they are not advertising new ops - they are resacling old content - story chapters will run through mid of 2016 - no NM for current Ops suggest the change is already happening Based on this i can only conclude we will get no new ops this year. New ops in Q1 2016 are highly unlikely as well while for Q2 2016 it may be possible but not likely. I expect them to release in Q3 2016. Yes thats just my guess. Based on the information we have. Of course you can hope for a better outcome. But hope wiith anything to back it up is just that, hope.

Its not an 'assumption'. Its called reaching a logical conclusion. BW has finite resources. Judging from what they were able to deliver in the past, KotFE will already stretch them to the limit, even if we include an increase in funding and developers. The fact that we finally get Togruta (they announced it overa year ago) or that they found time to build a comparatively small map for a new stronghold doesnt mean ops will miraculously appear. Your are hoping against reason. Thumbs up for Bush/Cheney. Thats very funny. I dont have an agenda. I just like to talk about a new expansion for the game i pay for. Operations just happens to be the main reason why i pay for this game. And obviously i'm concered about the very real possibility of not getting anything new for the forseeable future. So i take it, Zorz, Imperium and whoever started 'progressing' level 55 content by running storymodes for Arkanian/Black Market gear? Like in, you run it once or twice the first day and had enough gear with the lvl 50 DreadGuard stuff to do Harmode Asation/S&V? What an awesome and well thought out gear progression... I really see why you want to do it again. Arkanian was never BIS for Level 55. It was actually pretty irrelevant. We started out with Verpine/Underworld, got Kell Dragon with S&V Nightmare and later Dread Forged/Master with DF/DP. As a seasoned raider there was no need to progress story ops for gear. It has always beenn the case, if you have nightmare gear from the previous tier, you are good to go for hardmodes of the next tier if you know what you are doing. Why should they. They never had four new ops within a year. Nor is it needed. I was just saying that you need four mainhands at most if you switch them around with legacy gear. Obviously the average raider needs far less. As in one, maybe two. Thats not grindy to get at all. Hell, 21 times is not grindy. I played it about ten times within 3 weeks on 4 Mando/Merc toons. Doesnt take that long if the group is competent. An hour tops. Should really be a non issue for someone who will glady do 2-4 ops a day... Considering i just copy posted dulfys post, this accusation is again pretty funny.

I wouldnt bet on that...

You did get Ziost, didnt you? Monolith is very much an op. Check the tooltip of the mount... Jokes on all of us. Haha no. More like too optimistic. January 2016 is very funny. More like August 2016 if we are lucky. KotFE comes with 16 story chapters, only 9 will be released in October. We'll get the remaining 7 on a monthly basis beginning in early 2016. So the first half of next year will just be story too. For us to get new ops in January they would need to develop them now. They dont have the ressources for that, they are producing story content and rescaling old stuff. Oh there will be. They are rescaling old operations to 65. Which they wouldnt do if there were new ops.

In the polygon article. No new ops this year and nothing before q3 next year if you think it through

We wont get new endgame content Q1 2016 since they will be releasing story chapters x through XII then. They dont even have to say it, their ressources are finite. Consider what they are working on atm: New Class Story. KotFE will go form a 12 week content cycle to 4 weeks. New worlds to explore. New level cap with new abilities for each class. New companions. Rescaling old operations/flashpoints. Revamp of crafting. etc. They will literally work to the very last minute on this before it goes live in October. Then they focus on the story chapters they need to launch in early 2016. After this they close down for the holidays (two weeks if the last years are an indication). At best they start working on new endgame content in the beginning of 2016. Producing Operations does take time, you cant haul it out within a month or two. Q3 2016, after the story chapters are done is a much more realistic outlook. If we would get new operations in Q1 2016 they would need to start developing them now. This is just impossible with all the other stuff they are working on. Their teams are not that big. KotFE as is will already stretch them to the limit. You dont understand progession. How a new player farms the gear neccessary at any given time is totally irrelevant for endgame raiding. Also BIS Arkanian, wut??? Monolith was part of the reason why Zorz quit. As in one of the final nails in the coffin. You cant put 204 Mods/Enhancements into anything but a Mainhand. So essentially you need one mainhand per base class if you swap them around with Legacy Gear. Not grindy at all. Especially since the boss was a joke up until after their second attemp to fix it. DF/DP HM droped Dread Forged/Oriconian [180] Gear. S&V/TfB NM dropped Kell Dragon/Shadowed [174] , other ops dropped underworld/Verpine [168] or Arkanian/Black Market [162]. Dread Forged from HM was BIS until Dread Master [186] Gear from DF/DP NM. If you wanted to be reasnoably geared you only had DF/DP to run. Just like it has always been. You have two ops in the current highest difficulty to get the best gear in game. Oh who doesnt want more ops. I want more ops too. Yet i realize it is unrealistic to expect more than two. What i dont want to do is play old content i already completed again rescaled to level 65. I have been around when the rescaled Asation. It wasnt pretty then, now it'll be a desaster. People run DF/DP for more than a year and Ravagers/ToS just as long. Many wont bother progressing it again. Doing 2-4 ops a day is not hardcore raiding. Its called not having a life I dont see just two ops as a problem. Its just the right amount of content for the average raider these days.

I listened to the podcast, but i dont remember any e-mail stating what you described. I think he specifically said they had no idea when new ops will be released? But anyway, just look at what they revealed. There will be 16 story chapters in KotFE in total, 9 will be released in October and the rest on a montly basis beginning in early 2016. This means we are looking on 7 months of stroy updates which gets us to July 2016. So Hickamnn said no endgame content 'this year', but it effectivley means no endgame content before q3 2016. Uhm no? With 3.0 things were like they have always been. The old ops are a thing of the past and dont matter anymore for progession. We had two raids to get equiped, the gear grind was actually much easier than before, since we had BIS enhancements from random drops and reliable drop rates for Implants/Relis/Earpieces. Then came Monolith and changed things a little. Zorz quit over it (well in part), but its actually not that bad. It only drops a 204 Mainhand which can only be used as a mainhand. Meaning you cant switch Mods and Enhancements to another set piece, so you can equip your raid rather fast. Yes, there need to be new ops. We had to run DF/DP for too long before too and it stopped being fun way before 3.0 launched. The answer however is not to rescale old content. I finished EV/KP and Denova years ago. Nightmare Timerun and all when it was still relevant. I'm still sick of Asation (it only got rescaled once) and S&V is done as well. Why should i want to go back? Rescaled content you beat ages ago is not fun. Its actually more entertaining to run it for the lols on the current difficulty. If they simply release 2 more ops all would be well. Gear progression is not broken, even with Monotlih. The issue here is not guilds like Zorz quitting. This is about the hole raiding community. The players who are on fleet day after day , paying subs for years on end keeping servers busy. If you think they will stay around if there is no new op content for a year, you havent been paying attention to what happened after launch.

The article proofs the exact opposite. They are focusing on story now and endgame will be in maintenance mode until they are done with the current chapters. So we'll get nothing before q3 2016. If they would work operations, they would have said so and not talk about rescaling old content to 60+.

Starparse should show ~37 APM. Whether or not this means a lot of button mashing depends entirely on your playstyle.

Yeah keep telling yourself, maybe you'll start believing at some point. I have seen what happened to this game when they run out of fresh endgame content. Things wont be much different this time around.

Why? They are not lying, they are not holding it back. Some here are just incapable of accepting the truth. Endgame is in maintenance mode, story is their way forward. Take it or unsub, we'll see if the game survives this change.

Yes, translation: Of course Swtor is still an MMO. Only it isnt anymore going Forward. Please stay. We really need our sbs. SOR was a story driven expansion but it also advertised new Operations and Flashpoints. KotFE is advertised as having more story than ever before and rescaled old PvE Endgame content. So why should i assume they are keeping their work on new ops a secret? Why?? They never had anything more in an expansion than they advertised. It would be total bs to sell the expansion on rescaled content while they are releasing new Endgame Content.

There wont be any new raids until q3 1016 at the earliest. Thats why they are rescaling old content to 65. Jeff Hickmann flat out said it in the polygon article: "We just have a focus right now on the story. We're doing lots of stuff around flashpoints and operations and raid bosses and PvP and that stuff. But it's all about story this year." And yes, it will be the death of raiding and of the endgame as we now it. Swtor will become an Single Player Online RPG.

Actually afair, BW Austin made the decision to scrap Shadow Realms, not the EA mangement.

No way, it'll be Hero Engine all the way.