Proto Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) See here: Running FRAPS in the background can potentially fix the horrible FPS bug. I can confirm this and it boosted my fps by 15 in places it was much worse prior. For whatever reason, running FRAPS in the background (a program that records your game session in real time) has somehow fixed the problem people have been having with huge FPS drops in random places like Warzones, Fleet, or even on your ship in some cases. Its worth a shot and has worked for a lot of people so far. Hopefully this temporary workaround can give BioWare some head-start into why the problem is happening in the first place so they can fix it permanently. Edited January 15, 2012 by Proto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vandrel-Blitz Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 ISBoxer also increases SWTOR performance and also gets rid of the annoying "loading screen" when alt+tabbed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Proto Posted January 15, 2012 Author Share Posted January 15, 2012 I am so confused as to how these other software programs can have a positive impact on how SWTOR performs?!!??! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drbeat Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 /boggle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ritsi Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 Have to confirm this as well! Fraps removed 95-97% of my FPS stuttering! Still gettin stutterin in the fleet though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnomz Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 If that's true, I will find out in a minute. Let me just que for a Warzone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkusAtticus Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 Have to confirm this as well! Fraps removed 95-97% of my FPS stuttering! Still gettin stutterin in the fleet though... does this program improve performance then? And i noticed you resolution in your sig, if i play lower res does that improve performance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mannic Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 That's pretty amazing if true, when you consider that FRAPS should actually slightly lower your performance overall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnomz Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 If that's true, I will find out in a minute. Let me just que for a Warzone. Still crap, as expected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sol_Taril Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 For me it does not increase FPS, but it seems to remove lags (FPS random drop downs), so the game runs much more smoother. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiron_Raptor Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) ...this makes absolutely no sense unless FRAPS is somehow disabling whatever feature your system is having trouble with. Shadows, perhaps? I've noticed they have a HUGELY disproportionate effect on performance, and have heard rumors they're entirely CPU based and don't use the vidcard at all... Which'd make sense. I got a crappy Quad-core (a glorified athlon II that says it's a Phenom II) with a Radeon HD 6870: the ONLY setting which has any substantial effect on my FPS is shadows: they just slay it at times if they're on. Everything else barely touches it. Edited January 15, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnomz Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 It's the game. I don't know how many times I have to say this. The box of TOR shows minimum specs. With GTX 560, Q6600 and 4 GB RAM I exceed them by far. That means I should be able to play this game with 60 FPS on the lowest settings easily, yet I don't. In fact the game runs more smooth with everything at max. Smooth game everywhere, except the fleet (probably cause it's immense and very graphical) and the Warzones. I remember when Duke Nukem Forever came out the Multiplayer caused people to have bad FPS as well. The difference with Gearbox and Bioware however is that Gearbox fixed the bug, whereas Bioware claims it's not them but the player. Again, if a game runs more smooth at the maximum settings compared to the lowest, something is wrong. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craved Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 wow, this actually works. it almost entirely fixed the performance issues in warzones for me, I am getting around 30 fps and the abilities work 5x smoother. also, I my game no longer stutters randomly. finally! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragnHntr Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 Is it because fraps has a built in framerate limiter? Because there are other ways to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BombaLuigi Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 (edited) i was getting desperate, so i tried this too... and i cant f'in believe it, it works... its not "perfect" and far from beeing so, but it bumped my huttball-fps from 5-10 to a way more playable 25-35... thanks for the tip :> Edited January 15, 2012 by BombaLuigi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaredshun Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 i can confirm this works for me running a new HP ENVY 15 laptop i7 quad 2nd gen 8gb ram ati 7690m same as 6770m 1gb vram 300gb ssd win7 64-pro i do not believe that heat is throttling my performance as many have claimed on laptops, my gpu is never above 75c and FRAPS makes everything smoother, where it should add more load and more heat correct? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pherball Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 I might be able to explain this, but only for Nvidia laptop users. A feature called Powermizer will throttle your clocks depending load, even while gaming. Each time it changes clocks on your card there will be lag, DPC latency. There are weird work-arounds like opening your control panel, and pausing the spinning icon... this might be one of those that forces the card to be 100% clock. You can also just disable it (or disable w/ AC power). I use EVGA Precision to monitor my temps, card %, clocks, fps in-game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auhfel Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 I can explain this-- TOR just wants to look good for fraps, you know, never wanna go out in trashy clothes on a first date. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noctournys Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 (edited) It's the game. I don't know how many times I have to say this. The box of TOR shows minimum specs. With GTX 560, Q6600 and 4 GB RAM I exceed them by far. That means I should be able to play this game with 60 FPS on the lowest settings easily, yet I don't. In fact the game runs more smooth with everything at max. Smooth game everywhere, except the fleet (probably cause it's immense and very graphical) and the Warzones. I remember when Duke Nukem Forever came out the Multiplayer caused people to have bad FPS as well. The difference with Gearbox and Bioware however is that Gearbox fixed the bug, whereas Bioware claims it's not them but the player. Again, if a game runs more smooth at the maximum settings compared to the lowest, something is wrong. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that out. ... no, but it might help you look less foolish. The problem isn't the game. I'm part of a company that provides gaming hardware for conventions, parties, etc. (deadstatedesign.com) We have 16 PCs (soon to be 32), all with *identical* hardware. Same motherboards, same RAM, same video hardware, etc. 2 of them, for whatever reason, have bad performance in SWTOR. We were puzzled as to why... then it occured to me: the owner uses them as his personal gaming/home use machines - one of the perqs - and thereby they have a TON of third party software installed that aren't on the bare rental machines. If you knew ANYTHING about how an application requests resources/uses the hardware on the computer, you would know that it could be something simple, some 3rd party process that is interfering with a GPU, CPU, networking, et al, call that SWTOR uses and causing a performance degredation on a machine that is otherwise far above spec. So i yanked the drive from one of the machines, and put in the drive from one of the machines that didn't have the problems. Guess what? No problems. Game runs flawlessly. Identical hardware, identical install of the game (as they were just propagated across all machines with cybercafe software)... but a performance difference. Because the user installed something that was causing a conflict with SWTOR and degrading performance. (I love my boss, who is great at selling his product and providing one hell of a game room but is nearly computer illiterate). If it was the game itself, it would run poorly universally, not mysteriously work fine for lots of people (some of whom dont even have high end machines) and then poorly for others. As to why FRAPS might stabilize or clear up the problem entirely? FRAPS might be intercepting the DirectX calls before they go to the video card, and therefore before they can conflict with whatever is actually causing the problem, and when it retransmits them to the GPU, it might avoid the conflict. That's just ONE possibility. I mean, if it was truly the game, i wouldnt get 120fps everywhere except fleet. And honestly, in fleet, even when they fix the bug causing the known framerate drop there - you're never going to get amazing performance. At that point, with 200+ people onboard, you're CPU bottlenecked no matter how powerful your machine is. or, the TL:DR version. You mention Sherlock Holmes and how you dont have to be him to "know' that the problem couldnt possibly be you or your hardware or software, but is, in fact the game. Well, since you mention him.. Mr. Holmes was very fond of Occam's Razor. I suggest you investigate. Edited January 16, 2012 by Noctournys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jedikillar Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 (edited) Seems legit Edited January 17, 2012 by Jedikillar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rndmname Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 FYI you get the same performance increase by running windows media player in the background (doing nothing) while playing swtor. I remember wow had the same thing a while back, until they 'integrated' whatever OS settings these apps were doing in the background into the wow client and then you didn't have to run them to get the higher fps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jedikillar Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 wait...whats happening...this cant actually be working can it? i havent tried anything yet, but im getting 100+ fps on cahr selection screen when i usually only get 50+...im scared something *** utterly stupid as this might work, yet id be thrilled if it did... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supahhappy Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 FYI you get the same performance increase by running windows media player in the background (doing nothing) while playing swtor. I remember wow had the same thing a while back, until they 'integrated' whatever OS settings these apps were doing in the background into the wow client and then you didn't have to run them to get the higher fps. Hmmm, I will have to try this next time I get online. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarverX Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 Everything in this game is backwards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tcalusine Posted January 17, 2012 Share Posted January 17, 2012 I have no FPS problems anywhere worth noting so cant really talk about that but.... how does this make sense at all. Im just gonna chalk this up as coincidence or your imagination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts