Agreed, you laugh but this old rig is doing just as good or even better than you new hardware geeks
FX-60 (liquid cooled, stock timings)
4 Gig DDR2
9800 GTX SLI (latest drivers)
Windows 7 Ultimate (latest updates - tweaked for performance and remove fluff)
Creative X-Fi Titanium (latest drivers)
Twin Raptor 32Gig drives RAID-0 (OS)
Twin Raptor 150Gig drives RAID-0 (games)
edit: 1K power supply. - this here is the biggest issue for those that have slow frame rates and the most overlooked performance part in a built system. if you are SLI you will need at least an 800 watt PSU to feed those thirst GPUs
Graphic settings via Nvidia ctrl pnl - All ON and set for max quality
Resolution 1680x1050 (restricted by monitor)
Game settings: All maxed and On
steady 80 FPS via FRAPS
turn off shadows, vsync, and Shaders and watch the Frame Rates jump to over 130
this rig cost me $3K back in 2004 and I've only upgraded the sound and video cards since then. OK, i have slower loading times...time to make a drink between worlds
How does your rig compare?
It always out performs my M17X (2 years old).
Intel Core2 Extreme Quad QX9300 2.53GHz (12MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz 2 x 4096MB
SLI Dual 1GB GDDR3 NVIDIA GeForce (NB10E-GTX1)
512GB (256GB x 2) Solid State Drive - RAID 0
Resolution is 1920x1200
Nvidia settings are On and set for quality
What a waste of $6K.
But it does a steady at 60 FPS. Then turn off Shadows, Vsynce, and Shaders and its 110 FPS
my conclusion? if you spent more than a grand on a system to play SWTOR, you wasted it all. for under a grand you could put together old hardware that will run SWTOR just fine.
its funny to read all the complaints from high dollar system owners about poor performance when an FX-60 and 9800 GTX rig can meet or beat your actual gamelay frame rates. Crysis anyone?