Just put in new gfx card today. PvP still choppy.

[Alkiii]

Or maybe the problem lies within the game's code, like most of us have already figured out.

 

I won't disagree with you here. However, I have fixed a few people's problems just by helping them understand the nature of the problem. Sometimes, it's not Bioware's fault.

 

I have this game rolling on 3 different computers. All 3 are completely different for the most part. Ranging from EPEEN stroking powerful, to really good, to low end.

 

All 3 play the game well. Only the low end machine struggles in Warfronts and the Fleet when it comes to FPS. (around 10-20 FPS). It's largely due to the computer having a core2duo CPU and a GTS450 128-bit GPU.

 

 

But there are plenty of people that do have legitimate issues with the game. For them, I hope a fix is on the way. I just happen to not be one of the ones having the issues. Some are having issues due to their systems just not being up to par to play SWTOR. That's why I ask what system specs people have to hopefully help alleviate the problem if it just happens to be on their end, and not Bioware's.

 

So calm down young one. No harm is trying to be done here.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Alkiii

[Mannic]

I think you're bottle necked someplace else to be honest. I run a i950, GTX460, and 6gb Dominator GT RAM, and I'm 100% maxed out on everything. The only time I ever see the slightest bit of lag in when I first zone into the Imperial Fleet.

 

One thing I've noticed about a lot of people having problems with choppiness or just poor performance, is their RAM. I see it time and time again, with people running some bottom of the barrel 4gb of RAM, so of course you're going to get choppiness.

 

MMO's are massive RAM hogs, and cheaping out on RAM is a big mistake a lot of people do. Just because you can get dirt cheap RAM, doesn't mean it's the right decision.

 

The people who keep claiming they're getting awesome performance from this game either have no idea how to even gauge it properly or else the game simply has issues with specific hardware configurations or drivers which, again, would be a coding issue on Bioware's part and not a hardware issue. If a game is performing worse on a high-end system than on a low-end system, that's not a hardware problem.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Mannic

[miliways]

This game is more CPU-bound than GPU-bound. Sorry bro. Your new GPU will run games like Crysis 2 and Skyrim all kinds of pretty. But this game can't really take advantage of it much.

 

You can try to force like x16 AA in the Nvidia Control Manager, that would make the game look much better, and would be 100% on the GPU.

 

But most of what makes the game choppy is your CPU being overloaded. You're going to need a new processor if you really wanna see changes.

 

And even then, part of it is probably just the Hero engine being unoptimized. This is the first Hero engine game I've played, and definitely pushes the engine to some creative uses.

 

The game doesn't run as smooth as it should on lots of high end PCs, they're working on it.

 

EDIT: just thought I should point out, as many of you don't seem to be aware. This game was built by Bioware, but uses the Hero engine, which is licensed from a third-party software developer. The Source engine (powering Half-life 2 and TF2 and others) could be considered one of the most popular and stable game engines out there right now (although it can be resource heavy, and its getting dated now) but just look at the first few games that tried using the source engine, they had bugs EVERYWHERE. They had CRAZY performance problems. People with the fastest computers around had trouble running games like Vampire Bloodlines, not because of Troika's fault, or the computer hardware's fault. You might not really even be able to blame it on Valve, more just the difficulty of developing software, and the issue of having an engine developed by one team to be multipurpose, and then used by another team to make a game the first team never considered.

Edited January 6, 2012 by miliways

[Frostythefett]

I've noticed a pattern here. Most people that have no problems what so ever usually say they have 8gb ram. Maybe we all need to upgrade it.

[Mannic]

I've noticed a pattern here. Most people that have no problems what so ever usually say they have 8gb ram. Maybe we all need to upgrade it.

 

TOR can't use more than 4GB RAM so, no. Maybe if you only have 2 GB of RAM it could cause issues, but if you've got 4 GB you should be fine.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Mannic

[kimmiekros]

Chances are it's an issue with the Hero engine itself. Bioware makes the assests with the tool set, and do their push. More than likely they're waiting for a bug fix from SC devs, which is why I suspect it's taking so long to resolve.

[JaxonLuxor]

It's not your hardware, and it's not your graphic card.

 

See those thousands of people with the same problem here ?

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=133037&page=57

 

Thousands huh...I see 62 pages

[DarkSeverance]

OS: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit

BIOS: Ver: 04.06.04 (10/17/11)

Processor: I7-2600 @ 3.40 GHz

Memory: 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 (1333 Mhz)

Video Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Driver Version: 285.62

Resolution: 1920x1080

Hard Drive: 1TB Raid 0 (2x500 GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200 RPM)

Power Supply: 350w

 

My CPU is just a stock CPU, nothing is over clocked. It is brand new, literally only loaded Windows, Adobe CS3, SWtOR, Firefox and Netextender to VPN into work with on it. I have everything maxed, including shadows, trees and ground clutter. I have enabled AAx8 in my ini file and I'm not having any issues. I average 94 FPS, hover around 94-104 typically.

Edited January 6, 2012 by DarkSeverance

[JaxonLuxor]

I think that it's an issue with coding that is mostly affecting Nvidia cards.

 

I have a 2.8 Quad, 8GB and an old ATI 4770 that I pull 50 - 70 FPS @ 1920*1080, max settings with shadows off. The only drop that I get is in some caves and then the lowest that I have ever seen it go was like 32.

[Kryptic]

the imperial fleet is way lagged... there just isnt enough bandwidth for the client><server synch to maintain what more than 20 people are doing all at the same time

[Mannic]

Thousands huh...I see 62 pages

 

Umm... yeah. Read the first reply on that linked thread.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Mannic

[Tamanous]

so much cluelessness in this thread

 

I agree.

[Tamanous]

OS: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit

BIOS: Ver: 04.06.04 (10/17/11)

Processor: I7-2600 @ 3.40 GHz

Memory: 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 (1333 Mhz)

Video Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Driver Version: 285.62

Resolution: 1920x1080

Hard Drive: 1TB Raid 0 (2x500 GB SATA 3Gb/s 7200 RPM)

Power Supply: 350w

 

My CPU is just a stock CPU, nothing is over clocked. It is brand new, literally only loaded Windows, Adobe CS3, SWtOR, Firefox and Netextender to VPN into work with on it. I have everything maxed, including shadows, trees and ground clutter. I have enabled AAx8 in my ini file and I'm not having any issues. I average 94 FPS, hover around 94-104 typically.

 

350W PSU? That doesn't even meet the min specs on the vid card!

[fixit]

i7, 8 gig ram, and a crummy single HD 5850 Radeon; everythings maxed

 

Only time I get stutters is on the fleet when I go around any area that has more than 30 players. Other than that, PvP is super smooth majority of the time.

 

Might want to list your processor, that may be the bottle neck. Also might be because the game is not working with all hardware combinations yet...thankfully it does for mine.

[Snummy]

i play this game on a 5 year old 3850 and i get 0 lag in warzones yo, i just dont get it (not even playing on min setings) Edited January 6, 2012 by Snummy

[Casmaran]

The game assets are all bundled into individual .tor files. Some of the "areas" or planets have asset files larger then others, and you also have some .tor files related to GFX and so on..

 

While playing the game the software has to seek thru each of the .tor files to find what it need at a given moment, preload some content, and so on.

 

You can have the greatest machine in the world BUT if you only have one hard drive, then your system is handicapped. Your hard drive has to swap between running windows operations, swapfiles, and game asset loading.

 

This assets system TOR has is one issue, instead of loading one file after another, it seeks thru multiple .tor asset files that have texture and mesh data fragmented all over the place.

 

The asset files for gear is split up into groups for each body part, each file is around 500KB there is a total of 2.2mb of armor data to "search" thru. in a crowded area with people using all combinations of armor you should see some lag because of this. Add this to the fact that the .tor files are compressed, and have to be decompressed on the fly.

 

 

I can go on and on about using large compressed asset files, but as a short term fix, its best to get a 2nd HD and run SWTOR separate of the operating system. This will speed things up, and save the life of an overworked HD. If you really got the cash buy a Solid State Drive (SSD) I would love to see the performance improvement with one of those.

[Complecs]

I have a gtx 570 with i5 2500k @ 4.7 and get 20fps in the middle of warzones.

 

yeah, it must be my hardware...

 

I have that, and i get 100+ in warzones

[Sikbik]

heh, im running a 2006 core 2 duo, old *** EVGA motherboard, 4gigs of DDR2 ram, and a Geforce 560gtx TI 2gig model. And im able to run the game on high everywhere*including warzones* only place i get a little jump here and there is imperial fleet and the city in alderaan....I play in nvidia 3d, so my frames are cut in half, and still seem to be fine. Oh also only have 8gigs free on a 120gig HD, and a 600w corsair PSU...

 

*im using my old comp with a new GFX, because when building my i5 2500k comp, the mboard was fried upon arrival., the new ram, and processor werent compatible with my old comp, but gfx was*

 

ingame fps seems perfectly fine, but loading screens can take up to 2-3 mins, especially for tatoinne and alderaan.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Sikbik

[Kanharn]

A video card can only be as strong as the other parts in your PC. Meaning if your processor is weak and your ram is lacking, then it's totally choking that new graphics card from performing. You want at least 4gb of Ram in your PC if you're playing this game - My machine is commonly utilizing 4.2gb of ram while I'm playing and have chrome/vent open in the background.

 

Agreed, Bottle necking is a major issue for people who just update one bit of tec every so often.

[PunisherAS]

i7 950,

2x GTX 580's

24gb DDR3 Ram 1600

1500 watt PSU

 

I get lag in-game.

Poorly optimized.

 

Especially on the fleet it can sometimes drop to 14fps.

Pretty sad.

Edited January 6, 2012 by PunisherAS

[Malkosha]

Phenom II X2 555BE, GTX460, 4G RAM

 

I have Vsync on so it never gets above 60FPS but it never drops below 30 either.

 

Of course, I'm running WinXP ... a VERY CLEAN .. WinXP. I use Linux as my main OS and only use windows for gaming. There is nothing loaded except what is needed to play a game and thats it.

 

You would be surprised at how poorly configured most system are. Unlike the early days of gaming where you had to be tech savvy enough to switch between expanded or extended memory to play some games, most people these days are clueless.

 

When I see systems posted that are a thousand times better than mine having performance problems I have to wonder if the people using them have any clue as to what is really slowing them down.

 

I would be shocked if TOR was fully optimized .. very few MMORPG's are ... but I highly doubt that the game engine discriminates against high-end systems. It doesn't make sense at any level.

 

Then again its a computer + Software. Anything is possible ....

[derkiederk]

i7 950,

2x GTX 580's

24gb DDR3 Ram 1600

1500 watt PSU

 

I get lag in-game.

Poorly optimized.

 

Especially on the fleet it can sometimes drop to 14fps.

Pretty sad.

 

Disable SLI if you haven't already. This game isn't properly supported yet anyway and SLI always has issues with low min frame rates even when it is "working". A high max doesn't mean a lot when you're hitting lows of 14 regularly as you say.

[DarkSeverance]

350W PSU? That doesn't even meet the min specs on the vid card!

That's because the min specs account for overclocking and using the hardware to its fullest. Most software doesn't even begin to utilize hardware at its fullest. You actually don't need anything more than 400W PSU although most companies will make you think otherwise. Now if you are overclocking, running SLI then that is a different story but most base systems don't require them. Just check most base systems at most stores Dells, HPs, etc don't come with very big PSU. It isn't the Watts that is important it is the Amps.

[Daemonjax]

i7, 8 gig ram, and a crummy single HD 5850 Radeon; everythings maxed

 

Only time I get stutters is on the fleet when I go around any area that has more than 30 players. Other than that, PvP is super smooth majority of the time.

 

Might want to list your processor, that may be the bottle neck. Also might be because the game is not working with all hardware combinations yet...thankfully it does for mine.

 

Same specs as yours, except I have an older e6750 oc'd to 3.4ghz... at 3.2ghz I was pegged at 100% cpu usage... at 3.4ghz, it's around 90%... much smoother and higher fps.

 

 

@OP: Gotta profile cpu and gpu usage while the game's running to see where the bottleneck is... other people on the forum can't do that for you.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Daemonjax

[IBJammin]

TOR can't use more than 4GB RAM so, no. Maybe if you only have 2 GB of RAM it could cause issues, but if you've got 4 GB you should be fine.

 

My system performed much better with 8 over 4 in this game. Just because the game doesn't use that much doesn't mean that folks don't realize how much other stuff is actually happening in the background.