here's why we have FPS slow downs and low res textures

[Catch_TwentyTwo]

Installed latest Nvidia drivers on Thursday and game performance is outstanding, even with a GT430 1Gb.

 

As far as graphics quality, I am bowled over by the improvements.

[Jesmcalli]

Installed latest Nvidia drivers on Thursday and game performance is outstanding, even with a GT430 1Gb.

 

As far as graphics quality, I am bowled over by the improvements.

 

What drivers would those be? I have 285.62 I believe. The performance was markedly different at first, but now it's back to launch levels.

[TheJestersHat]

Installed latest Nvidia drivers on Thursday and game performance is outstanding, even with a GT430 1Gb.

 

As far as graphics quality, I am bowled over by the improvements.

 

Is that in PVE or PVP?

[Lasse_B]

With 32 GB of RAM going, you really should be running most of the operating system and programs from RAM (there's a very detailed thread about running SWTOR from a RAMDrive in this very forum). I'd look into it if I were you.

 

Funny that you mention that.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=143515

 

But unfortunately it only helps to lessen the effects of the underlying problem. It can't remove them completely.

Edited February 18, 2012 by Lasse_B

[zeuseason]

Lets just say for a minute that BW has an insane number of pc hardware statistics for their playerbase as well as the mass majority of MMO gamers out in the world....and then lets just say that 89.67% of the mass majority of gamers out there have really crappy computers with anywhere from 2-4gigs of RAM and given the state of the economy and ever-escalating price of simple random access memory cannot afford to revamp their entire system for a simple RAM upgrade, then logically BW would do what ? Eat the living crap out of players with 64gigs of PC2400 RAM or keep the game within reasonable operating limits of the mass majority of gamers? Yea....ok.

[Catch_TwentyTwo]

Is that in PVE or PVP?

 

MOstly PvE at this point, but been PvPing today (WZ) and had zero issues with lag.

[Catch_TwentyTwo]

What drivers would those be? I have 285.62 I believe. The performance was markedly different at first, but now it's back to launch levels.

That's the ones. Still looking fine to me, but iot has only been 3 days.

[areto]

The not rendering while things load is really noticeable on ilum for me. I can always tell when an enemy player is around because the game freezes for 1 or 2 seconds, but only the first time I see them. And the funny thing is it doesn't seem to take any longer if it's 20 new enemies loading up or 1.

 

So your diagnosis certainly fits the bill for why these little freezes occur (while opening ui panels, on the fleet, etc.)

 

The good thing is this particular issue definitely sounds fixable with some ingenuity on the part of the guys doing the fixing.

 

here's hoping.

[TheJestersHat]

MOstly PvE at this point, but been PvPing today (WZ) and had zero issues with lag.

 

Thanks.

[ImperialSun]

Then you my friend are a star.

 

I can get Battlefield 3 running with anti-ailaising in Directx 11 with full details at a smooth 60 FPS. TOR? Forget it. I find the game running badly with shadows OFF nevermind ON!

 

What has BF3 got to do with anything?

 

I keep seeing people bashing TOR because their rig runs BF3 flawlessly...

 

You do realise that running a single player FPS game takes a minute amount of processing power compared to an MMORPG right?

 

I have a quad core Phenom / 4Gb RAM / 260GTX and I **** you not, this game runs beautifully on my rig with everything set to max.

 

Driz

[Cupelixx]

And the question then becomes--- WHY? Other MMO's with far superior graphics to TOR can handle far more clutter and refresh far more dynamic objects with far less lag on 5-year-old systems. Why is it only TOR has an issue with this?

 

Your answer is simple. Bioware chose not to develop their own engine. They chose an engine that was not tried & true or even FINISHED. The engine is such a POS that they can't even put high-res textures into the game except for cinematics. I have said it before. They could have used the Cryengine, gotten WAY better graphics and better performance. This is destined to become the biggest MMO failure in history.

[Cupelixx]

What has BF3 got to do with anything?

 

I keep seeing people bashing TOR because their rig runs BF3 flawlessly...

 

You do realise that running a single player FPS game takes a minute amount of processing power compared to an MMORPG right?

 

I have a quad core Phenom / 4Gb RAM / 260GTX and I **** you not, this game runs beautifully on my rig with everything set to max.

 

Driz

 

LOL @ "a minute amount of processing power" for BF3.

 

You do realize that BF3 has a 64 person multiplayer component, right? Which has vastly superior graphics, tons of effects and calculations all going at the same time and runs better than 8 on 8 with this game? Not to mention the other MMOs out there with better visuals that manage high FPS on good systems.

Edited February 18, 2012 by Cupelixx

[ArmchairMagpie]

I'm quoting part of your posting as an example for many other similar postings I've seen.

 

While it's true there's no hard limit to 1.3GB RAM usage (I've seen it go up to 1.5GB yesterday), with 32GB RAM, this really isn't a bottleneck on my end and neither are GPU (Radeon 6970) and CPU (2600K @ 4GHz). These two don't have much load on them either when slow downs occur. How could they when they have to wait for the files to be read?

 

Data is read into memory, processed, dismissed and has to be re-read. The game continues to do this in an infinite loop. The more data it has to read, the longer each request takes to be processed and the slower the game runs. If you're used to running your games in lower refresh rates (30, 15, whatever floats your boat), you'll obviously have more of a threshold until you notice slow downs. If you're used to 60FPS or more, this is an easy to spot issue.

 

It's really not rocket science. Everybody can verify this with the tools and methods outlined in the OP. Afraid to do so? Not willing? Not my concern.

 

Your whole OP stands and falls with the theory whether it can utilize more than 1.3 GB.

I am sitting at 1.7 GB right now and you have even proven yourself wrong. It would be a pretty arbitrary number and I think you are basing your theory wrong.

 

I know about ProcMon. In fact I have been using SysInternal tools since they developed tools for Windows NT. So their tools are familiar to me since years. The actually better tool for this issue is ProcExp by the way because it doesn't add to the slowdown by hooking into the I/O subsystem.

ProcMon is for tracking the specific issue, for the rest incl. monitoring traffix ProcExp is better but mostly Windows Vista/7's own resource monitor is enough.

Traffic shows delta reads between less than 8k and peaks around 5.5 MB/s in normal levelling zones, in fleet and longer cutscenes it would peak at 80 MB/s.

That being said most modern harddrives are capable of handling far more than that with ease and most games with seamless areas do pre-load on-the-fly, if you don't believe that try your hand on other games (like WoW), you'd be surprised about how much traffic it generates.

 

Even though a 32 bit Windows could address more than 2GB it would require a special flag in the executable in orderto do so and then it would still cap at 3 GB. Only 64 bit Windows installations do have a bigger address range than that but 32 bit applications would still be limited to 4 GB address range. Naturally.

 

What you are referring to is caching, SW:TOR partially caches data on disk within a file to speed up accesses but it does so via a two-step process (streamed data are not being cached, static data go into cache) which can slow down loading process in extreme cases especially during purging because the game then temporarily stops loading while things are getting removed from the cache file.

It is technically possible to maintain that file within a RAM disk and there's even a guide on these forums instructing people how to do so. Even so there is no telling about whether the game purges data truly as prematurely. It is perfectly possible that its memory footprint is meant to be that small and that all which needs to improved its caching/streaming mechanisms. Whether that leads to increased memory usage in the end or not is another matter. It's possible that it may make use of memory more aggressively. Basically like now but less conservative.

 

PS: Don't assume all of us are technically illiterate, some of us are humble enough to hide their credentials well.

Edited February 18, 2012 by ArmchairMagpie

[Daisai]

What has BF3 got to do with anything?

 

I keep seeing people bashing TOR because their rig runs BF3 flawlessly...

 

You do realise that running a single player FPS game takes a minute amount of processing power compared to an MMORPG right?

 

I have a quad core Phenom / 4Gb RAM / 260GTX and I **** you not, this game runs beautifully on my rig with everything set to max.

 

Driz

 

How is Ilum with 2 full ops groups going for you?

And BF3 is a benchmark for graphics and fps, also it supports directx11 the fact that swtor doesnt support it doesnt help either in trying to improve the fps in the game.

[Arkerus]

Wintergraps in WoW had to call too many draw routines as well. They ran into the same problem and had to cap the zone.

 

They never did figure out a solution and the reality is that a solution may not be possible.

 

Illum will most likely have to be capped to 30-40 per faction.

[Daisai]

Wintergraps in WoW had to call too many draw routines as well. They ran into the same problem and had to cap the zone.

 

They never did figure out a solution and the reality is that a solution may not be possible.

 

Illum will most likely have to be capped to 30-40 per faction.

 

The game in its current state cant even handle 10vs10 in Ilum.

[DigitalDreamz]

Wintergraps in WoW had to call too many draw routines as well. They ran into the same problem and had to cap the zone.

 

They never did figure out a solution and the reality is that a solution may not be possible.

 

Illum will most likely have to be capped to 30-40 per faction.

 

There were at times 200 - 300 in Wintergrasp. Ilum with 20 people blows up. Hardly the same.

[Lasse_B]

(...)

You're mostly right with what you're saying but are slightly missing the point in one particular case.

 

That point is in most cases the game has more RAM available for itself to use than it actually makes use of. It all comes down to one question: Why does the game prefer reading the same assets files over and over again when it could just put that stuff into RAM? Grab Filemon and take a look.

 

You're probably right to assume it's designed with a small memory footprint in mind. I call this a faulty design. Of course it should run well even on old machines, but isn't it part of accomplishing that to have as little as possible to do with the even slower storage devices if there's enough RAM available?

[Urko]

I think it's more a case of you are looking too hard. I play the game. I notice textures, especially on characters, to be quite good, in most cases. Sure there are exceptions to the case in such a large MMO. I have even seen broken textures while out exploring. Those are bugs that will eventually get flushed out.

 

Gear textures are absolute sh*t even at the so called "high" (low as far as im concerned)setting at the moment.

 

An MMO (of todays standard) needs better gear textures at least.

[RickRedOne]

Dude. Come on.

Turn shadow quality to max and my system is begging me to shut it down. There are FPS spikes, jitters and lag. Mix that with ability delay/animation bugs and its just one whole barrel of monkies.

 

Then I suggest you get a better computer. I run everything at max with the exception of "grass", (I can't stand trying to find things covered up). And I have none of those problems.

 

Also lag (if you mean sever lag), is determined by internet connection and has nothing to due with your processor or GPU.

[Tiam]

Three months in guys why is everyone acting 'surprised' that this game runs like garbage? It's amateur hour at Bioware. They can't nor will they restructure the game code. Not going to happen so stop asking. This is as good as it gets.

 

Everyone is asking for code optimization c'mon don't make me laugh! They didn't know why their own damn game had an ability delay, can't get Ilum to work with more than 10 people and STILL don't have high res textures.

 

Alterac Valley up to 80 people in the warzone, runs beautiful! Even during Vanilla it ran flawless. Ilum with 20 people and your computer grows legs, unplugs itself and runs away.

 

I agree, Illum is rediculous when you have 2 ops groups on screen together. BW have no clue what they're doing and it shows.

[Arkerus]

The game in its current state cant even handle 10vs10 in Ilum.

 

100% NOT TRUE.

 

 

I literally just finished some fighting on illum and it was about 12 vs 15. It ran just fine on my computer and I have an "avg" computer with an ati 6770.

 

You don't start seeing issues till about 25 vs 25. If your computer can't handle even that level it sounds like yoru hardware may have an issue.

 

Beyond 50 people things start to choke up.

Edited February 18, 2012 by Arkerus

[Shivetya]

I think it's more a case of you are looking too hard. I play the game. I notice textures, especially on characters, to be quite good, in most cases. Sure there are exceptions to the case in such a large MMO. I have even seen broken textures while out exploring. Those are bugs that will eventually get flushed out.

 

LOL. The textures are crap. The high resolution textures, when visible the brief second you click on the holo terminal are passable - for a game five years old. Perhaps that is why they won't enable high resolution textures? Because they look like so bad compared to games even a few years old?

[Fentz]

100% NOT TRUE.

 

 

I literally just finished some fighting on illum and it was about 12 vs 15. It ran just fine on my computer and I have an "avg" computer with an ati 6770.

 

You don't start seeing issues till about 25 vs 25. If your computer can't handle even that level it sounds like yoru hardware may have an issue.

 

Beyond 50 people things start to choke up.

 

what's fine to you? below 30 and this game starts getting choppy, below 20 and iot's not really playable

 

was on Ilum for the first time since I rerolled and it was ~35v35 and I had 5 fps, putting everything to lowest and changing resolution to 800x600 did nothing :/

Edited February 18, 2012 by Fentz

[Arkerus]

what's fine to you? below 30 and this game starts getting choppy, below 20 and iot's not really playable

 

was on Ilum for the first time since I rerolled and it was ~35v35 and I had 5 fps, putting everything to lowest and changing resolution to 800x600 did nothing :/

 

Yes. Thats what I said.

 

 

2 full raids is choppy. 10vs10 or 20vs20 is fine for me.