SWTOR Runs Poorly on Phenom II's?

[Fellthar]

You have that backwards, its ATI cards that seem to be having a problem with the game.

 

I have seen a bunch of reports that ATI users do have issues with this game. I've also noticed a lot of threads around the forums with users complaining about bad framerates that own the GTX 580. I see people mention that card probably more often than any other. Perhaps there is an issue with driver support for that nvidia card in particular?

 

I own a Radeon 6970 and I don't have any issues with the game (nothing I consider an issue anyway). My cpu is an i5 2500k. Game runs very well, 100+ fps in most places on all high settings with AA on and Full Shadows on, and 30-40 fps on the fleet (same settings) with 200 or so people there.

 

I do get a drop every now and again to 20 fps for a second or two while the game is loading a lot of new people into view. I have 8 Gigs of ram @ 1600 Mhz (stock), and a OCZ Agility 3 SSD where I run TOR from, so I don't think it is an issue with load speed. I have run it off my Raid 0 array (2 WD Blacks) as well, and it doesn't make any difference.

 

I have noticed in the morning when I play and there is only 50 people on the fleet, the fps on the fleet is around 80-90 fps. In the evening when there is 200+, that is when things start to drop to 30-40.

 

I will say this though: I used to have my Radeon 6970 running in a system with a Core 2 e6750 @ 2.67 Ghz, and the game performed very very poorly on the fleet. I was using my Raid 0 setup on that system, but the ram was only DDR2 @ 800 Mhz. It was fine out in the worlds, 100+ fps in most places the same as now with the new cpu, but when I went to the fleet, I was seeing maybe tops 10 fps, and often lower, with dips as low as 5 fps when loading people into view. The new cpu and ram opened up a lot of performance for me when tons of other people are around. This is not advice though, just a recanting of my experiences since I wanted to upgrade my pc anyway.

 

With regards to the cpu of the OP, my wife runs the game with a Phenom X6 1065t, and she gets pretty decent performance (for her video card which is a Radeon 6770). The fleet usually stays around 20-30 fps, hovering around 20 fps when lots of people are around. She gets better frame rates out in the worlds.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Fellthar

[Chevex]

<While there certainly are problems with some hardware configurations, it's safe to say that 90% of people are experiencing no performance problems (and it was in fact said by Bioware).>

 

You should post in "Old Republic" thread in the Mensa forums, and just forget about the morons saying this is a abysmally-performing game on low-end systems that nonetheless run every other AAA modern game serviceably.

 

Well if it was said by BioWare then it must be true!

[Fellthar]

Well if it was said by BioWare then it must be true!

 

Let's all jump on the conspiracy bandwagon! It's leaving now, huuuurrrrrry!!!

[Darth-Datra]

I have a Phenom II x4 955BE OC'd to 3.4 GHz and 16 gb of Ram, with an EVGA GTX 580 Super Clocked.

 

 

I get some hiccups, but framerate is usually sky high. I just feel it's poorly optimized, and sometimes you can feel it.

 

*Sky high= over 100.

[Quip]

I'm surprised how well this game runs on my old goat of a Phenom II.

 

Hell, I run 2560X1600 with a 1GB video card and frame rates are pretty solid.

 

I get lag on fleet but this is a lobby game so everybody and their monkey is there.

[ackomo]

I run a Phenom II x4 and was getting some unacceptable performance issues.

Optimized my Bios best i could. Made sure my video drivers were up to date. Made sure direct x was up to date. Honestly the biggest boost in performance i gathered was from a program called TLB Disable.

 

found here

 

I was able to get an additional 20+FPS keeping me at a solid 50-60 range unless im in battlegrounds or fleet.

 

I'm not saying this will fix your problems. Nor am i recommending that everyone should use it. I only mention it as there may be something similiar to fix or help make yours more efficient.

[Korrigan]

That TLB disable thing is completely useless on a Phenom II. It helps fixing a bug in the TLB of the first Phenom (aka "I") processors.

[PlaguiesTheWise]

My Fx-4100 runs it amazingly and I'm not even OC'ed but i do also have a radeon 6850.

[ackomo]

Phenom II still has the MSR values of the TLB fix in the CPU registers. Use the same Phenom TLB Disable tool (google it). I can confirm that removing the fix DOES increase performance and lower CPU usage on my Phenom II X4

 

While the TLB Translation Lookaside Buffer) issue was fixed in the Phenom IIs, its an issue with Microsoft windows that causes them the freeze and allocate unnecessary amounts of cpu to fix. In my case it was a marginal amount 5-8% but the difference in performance is very noticable.

Edited January 23, 2012 by ackomo

[siegedeluxe]

I want an answer from BioWare... Does your game support 6x core CPU's? Your game should not run this horrible on my current setup.

[Diremede]

Phenom II here, it runs just fine. I am baffled as to why people immediately jump on the processor as being your problem of "poor performance". It could be a RAM issue, slow HDD issue, poor graphics card issue, poor health of your OS, poor ISP connection.

[siegedeluxe]

Phenom II here, it runs just fine. I am baffled as to why people immediately jump on the processor as being your problem of "poor performance". It could be a RAM issue, slow HDD issue, poor graphics card issue, poor health of your OS, poor ISP connection.

 

GPU ? No.

HDD? No. I use a SSD.

OS? No, it's pretty fresh install.

Drivers? No, got the latest.

RAM? How would I even know?

[lowizi]

Don't mean to steal the thread, but I hope you don't mind asking...

 

Any ideas about how the game handles crossfire?

Got two (crappy) HD5770's in CF.

But SWTOR doesn't seem to benefit from it at all.

Edited January 23, 2012 by lowizi

[Manwitplanz]

I got an Phenom II X6 1090 CPU, and am experiencing poor performance whenever I'm at the fleet or get my daily dose of warzones. Anyone else experiencing this with their Phenom, or other versions of AMD cpu's?

 

Been playing from release and the game is just not smooth, theres so many bugs in the game it should have never been released,

 

everyone lags in WARZONES and on mass pvp in ilum,

[Korrigan]

Phenom II still has the MSR values of the TLB fix in the CPU registers. Use the same Phenom TLB Disable tool (google it). I can confirm that removing the fix DOES increase performance and lower CPU usage on my Phenom II X4

Nope, it doesn't, at least not under Windows 7. All you will do is SLOW DOWN your CPU if you use that tool. Been tested and confirmed by several people including myself (Phenom II 940, Windows 7 64 bit). Edited January 25, 2012 by Korrigan

[Khemizt]

1100T @ 3.84 runs like a champ.

 

"everyone lags in WARZONES and on mass pvp in ilum" <-This is 100% not true.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Khemizt

[Korrigan]

Addendum to the previous post:

 

There's only one reason why the TLB patch COULD give the ILLUSION to work on a Phenom II: if you have an older motherboard which Bios applies it even for a non-bugged CPU. But by patching a non-bugged CPU, you SLOW IT DOWN. Using the patch again then gives the ILLUSION to speed it up again, when it only restores the "normal" speed. Check your Bios for an option to turn the TLB "fix" on/off, and if it's on "auto", turn it off.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Korrigan

[siegedeluxe]

Addendum to the previous post:

 

There's only one reason why the TLB patch COULD give the ILLUSION to work on a Phenom II: if you have an older motherboard which Bios applies it even for a non-bugged CPU. But by patching a non-bugged CPU, you SLOW IT DOWN. Using the patch again then gives the ILLUSION to speed it up again, when it only restores the "normal" speed. Check your Bios for an option to turn the TLB "fix" on/off, and if it's on "auto", turn it off.

 

Thanks for the headsup... I was about to install this fix as suggested above.

[Jeyi]

Starting with the scandalous pulling of the AMD Phenom 9700 from store shelves and the delay of the 9600 and 9500 series CPU, AMD has taken nothing but flak for the TLB errata in its B2 stepping Quad core processors, found in both the Phenom desktop and Opteron server lines. Completely squashing any hopes of a successful launch for the companies first ever Quad CPU , AMD was quick to release a fix to its customers “The Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) errata is an L3 protocol issue causing a system hang when running certain client workload applications independent of platform. AMD is immediately introducing an updated BIOS which will correct the TLB errata”(Statement released Nov 18th 2007); partners received updated code for motherboard BIOS’s and the launch went ahead.

 

However, it was soon discovered that the TLB bandaid had a severe impact on system performance. Users noticed performance losses upwards of 30% in certain applications. As a side note, the TLB “bug”, when not properly patched, runs the chance of causing the system to hang or reset when a combination of certain functions or stressors on the CPU is met. It is not a guaranteed failure, but chances are greatly increased when running above certain clock speeds and all cores fully loaded. While this may pose as a mere nuisance for desktop users, for companies running multiple CPU’s in a server environment, exploiting this bug had the potential to be disastrous. So options were limited - enable the fix and take a hit in performance, or disable and run the risk of crashing at the most inopportune time; either way, at least you had the option.

 

There are two primary ways of which to go about disabling the fix. The first and most common being through the motherboard’s BIOS. Manufacturers generally include an enable or disable feature, commonly found in the hidden options menu of the BIOS. The second is using “AMD OverDrive”, a program provided by AMD to allow users to overclock and monitor their CPU’s from within an OS environment. This includes a “green light” feature. When the TLB patch/fix is enabled the light shows green. In order to disable it (if not done through the BIOS) one merely has to click the light until it shows as green, encircled by a yellow ring. There is also a red ring function, but it is said this status, while disabling the patch, also completely does away with power saving features and forces increased performance; this in turn equates to higher power consumption and higher temperatures. Between these two options, most consumers were able to easily choose the patch state.

 

 

March 18, 2008, heralded the coming of the toted savoir of Microsoft’s Windows Vista. Service Pack 1 was expected to fulfill everyone’s gripes and laments about the perceived “failing” operating system. While it didn’t completely fulfill its expected role, SP1 did include many performance improvements as well as more basic drivers and, for the most part, was a well received patch.

 

Fast forward a couple weeks, AMD users applying the patch have noticed severe slow downs in their systems. For a patch that was intended to improve performance – this sure isn’t doing it, in fact it has almost made it worse. One person in particular (yours truly) had tried virtually every method possible after installing Windows Vista Ultimate X64 with slipstreamed SP1 update to get the system to achieve gaming frame rates above an aging Intel E4300 with a single ATI 3870 video card. As a note, the system in question is a fresh build

AMD Phenom 9600BE,

Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe,

4GB of Ram

ATI Radeon 3870 512MB in Crossfire.

Hours of scouring the empty space of the internet revealed nothing. Tips, tricks and tweaks are all applied: manually setting timings and voltages for every option in the BIOS, forcing PCI-E slots to 16X speed, testing with two alternate 790FX motherboards, different ATI and nVidia based graphics card, numerous reinstalls, driver rollbacks, the works.

 

 

After the 16th reworking of Google keywords, by fluke I happened upon a discussion between AMD enthusiast who had deduced a rather startling fact – Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom and without informing users, had chosen with Vista SP1, to arbitrarily over ride user’s BIOS settings in regards to the TLB fix. Manually disabled or not, SP1 WILL set the TLB fix to enabled on your system dramatically hurting performance. This is also true of the AOD (AMD OverDrive) utility, even when set to disabled (yellow ring), the TLB fix setting is forced to enabled by SP1 code.

 

This was quickly confirmed by getting my hands on an original Windows Vista Ultimate CD and reinstalling from scratch. Both shocked and relieved, I found that scores and frames were completely on par with what was expected and re-enabling the TLB Patch in the bios showed scores in conjunction with what was being seen with SP1.

 

Now that the problem had been revealed, the question was; how to solve it? Fortunately as the forum discussion progressed a solution was found that had worked for a few members. The rescuer was “Sam2008” of “The Rebels Haven” who had earlier developed a program that worked jointly with CrystalCPUID, a popular system CPU utility which shows processor information, in order to quickly and easily disable the TLB Fix for those who were not given a BIOS option to do so. This fix also functioned with Vista’s SP1 and as luck would have it has been the only method I have found which has the ability to override the override. A quick 20 second launch, benchmarks and games soared. While admittedly it is an annoyance, having to launch the program at startup every time (it does not permanently fix the code), a small addition of the program to your automatic system startup routine resolves the grievance and makes the disabling virtually seamless. Now the question remains as to why? Conspiracies have been thrown around about the close relationship between Microsoft and Intel out to destroy AMD in their currently wavering state. However, the more logical explanation may be that perhaps Microsoft was concerned about the lockups and hang-ups being blamed on faulty code within it’s OS rather than the true source – AMD and chose to proactively eliminate the chance for any potential problems. However it seems to have been done in a very hush manner without Microsoft or AMD informing end users about the move and thus leading to some very frustrated users. It has also been rumored that the upcoming release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 may also have this lock embedded, but this has been neither confirmed nor denied, still however, one may want to be a little wary.

 

Soooooooooo...pretty much after applying this TLB disable patch, I instantly got Warzone playability and no longer lag out of them due to my CPU not processing fast enough. Also gives you an incredible boost in overall FPS and CPU efficiency. Why this hasn't been resolved through AMD or Windows is a mystery to me. But at least I can finally play what i paid for. If this helps even ONE more person, I am glad. Someone's post helped me... Feel free to get in touch with me if you have a Phenome Processor based setup and I will help as best I can.

 

You will need these two programs:

TLB disable

CrystalCPUID(the 32bit version, for some reason 64bit doesn't work even on 64 running systems)

 

With any sort of Google search you should be able to find these programs and like I said if you get in touch with me I will be glad to help.

[Rodanth_The_Wise]

What kind of hard-drive and GPU are you running? Your processor isn't responsible for everything. How much system ram? Cache?

[Rodanth_The_Wise]

Don't mean to steal the thread, but I hope you don't mind asking...

 

Any ideas about how the game handles crossfire?

Got two (crappy) HD5770's in CF.

But SWTOR doesn't seem to benefit from it at all.

 

I THINK I read somewhere that in it's current state, tor is not optimized to benefit from Xfire or SLI.

 

Don't quote me on it though, because I'm not 100% certain. I may be mixing that up with another game.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Rodanth_The_Wise

[Putok]

965BE @ 3.7ghz, no issues, and rarely more than 25% CPU utilization.

[Karnyvor]

I got an Phenom II X6 1090 CPU, and am experiencing poor performance whenever I'm at the fleet or get my daily dose of warzones. Anyone else experiencing this with their Phenom, or other versions of AMD cpu's?

 

I think you're being unfair...

 

SWTOR runs poorly on most client computers, not just yours. If you search these forums, you will find many posts from posters with up to date gaming rigs that are frustrated at how poorly the zero engine Tor uses runs on their machines.

[raptured]

I got an Phenom II X6 1090 CPU, and am experiencing poor performance whenever I'm at the fleet or get my daily dose of warzones. Anyone else experiencing this with their Phenom, or other versions of AMD cpu's?

 

 

It doesnt matter what kind of cpu you are going to get a massive fps drop when you go into the fleet. Every character takes up memory and takes resources from your PC.. Not to mention companion characters as well. Its normal to get performance issues in the Fleet.