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What can I do to make SWTOR run faster?

brbvideotapes

By brbvideotapes
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brbvideotapes

brbvideotapes

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Posted (edited)

Long(ish?) time player, first time poster, so, hello!

 

I bought SWTOR almost at launch, but before I did, I checked to see if I had the system requirements, so I went to canyourunit.com, which told me (basically) I could run it super well. The bar went all the way up. I had a way better driver than needed, way more video memory than needed, etc. Just, everything. But since I've started playing, I've had to run it on ultra low settings. All the bars set to the lowest, and everything that can be turned off, is off. Even so, it's very choppy unless I'm in really tiny buildings.

 

Oh, and I'm constantly doing 8-10 FPS on PvP.

 

tl;dl: My system requirements faaar exceed those needed to run the game, yet I'm still doing 17-20 FPS on super low settings, and 9 FPS on PvP.

 

I've tried defragging the game, installing Game Booster so the CPU usage is going all to the game, etc. Nothing works. Can anyone please tell me what the hell's going on?

 

Thanks in advance.

Edited by brbvideotapes
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LTCThunder

LTCThunder

Posted
Posted
Long(ish?) time player, first time poster, so, hello!

 

I bought SWTOR almost at launch, but before I did, I checked to see if I had the system requirements, so I went to canyourunit.com, which told me (basically) I could run it super well. The bar went all the way up. I had a way better driver than needed, way more video memory than needed, etc. Just, everything. But since I've started playing, I've had to run it on ultra low settings. All the bars set to the lowest, and everything that can be turned off, is off. Even so, it's very choppy unless I'm in really tiny buildings.

 

Oh, and I'm constantly doing 8-10 FPS on PvP.

 

tl;dl: My system requirements faaar exceed those needed to run the game, yet I'm still doing 17-20 FPS on super low settings, and 9 FPS on PvP.

 

I've tried defragging the game, installing Game Booster so the CPU usage is going all to the game, etc. Nothing works. Can anyone please tell me what the hell's going on?

 

Thanks in advance.

List some of the components for your machine.

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Acherom

Acherom

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Posted

Dig down into the depths of the General board.

 

There is a guide for drastically increasing the performance of the game (especially on Windows 7 systems).

 

Using this guide I took my friends older machine from 12-15 fps on Drumund Kaas: to a stable 50-60 fps.

 

Your mileage may vary.

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brbvideotapes

brbvideotapes

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List some of the components for your machine.

 

Sure:

Intel® Core i5 CPU M 460 @ 2.53GHz

6 gigs o' RAM

Windows 7 64bit

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 550v with

Pix Shader version 4.1,

Vertex shader version 4.1

1GB dedicated vid. RAM

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brbvideotapes

brbvideotapes

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Dig down into the depths of the General board.

 

There is a guide for drastically increasing the performance of the game (especially on Windows 7 systems).

 

Using this guide I took my friends older machine from 12-15 fps on Drumund Kaas: to a stable 50-60 fps.

 

Your mileage may vary.

 

Thanks a ton, I'll start lurkin', but is there no way you can link it to me? :o

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ADPowah

ADPowah

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Posted (edited)

I have an older laptop with 1st gen i5 dual core and a POS 310m graphics card but I can get 25-40+fps by doing a few things. I also have AA and some of the graphics on high.

 

  • Run 800 x 600 resolution (this one is HUGE for performance, I see a lot of people trying to run at 1080p and having performance issues)
  • Turn grass and the other slider next to it to 0 in the Graphics Preferences (this was the second biggest)
  • Force SWTOR to run under NVidia graphics rather than try and run as Intel 3000HD graphics (this was the biggest, but such a no brainer, no idea why my system tried to default to CPU graphics the first few times I played)
  • Run in full screen rather than windowed mode (this was 10fps itself, you'll notice in the above linked that some people argue that running full screen turns off windows Aereo itself, ymmv)
  • Run SWTOR as Admin
  • Run win compatibility mode for XP SP3
  • Stop the Steam32.exe process before startup (if you have steam that is, I dunno why but it seems to cause conflicts and hitching a little more)
  • Downloaded the most recent drivers and made sure I had DX9 so that DX10 wasn't doing emulation

 

That all being said, I still hitch/stutter every once in a while, my load times are huge and the game certainly isn't super pretty at 800 x 600 (though AA on high helps a lot). To get what i felt was decent performance I tried each graphics setting individually and noted the FPS change with my character both staring at a wall and a more congested area. Then i found a balance on the looks of the game and the performance, again ymmv and no we shouldn't have to do this for a game, but alas...

 

Things I haven't tried that might work for you.

Best wishes.

Edited by ADPowah
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mightylawngnome

mightylawngnome

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Posted

Performance has been an ongoing issue for some people. While I haven't experienced any real issues myself, aside from video cards wantin to explode in a ball of flame for no apparent reason, I have tried a number of tweaks becuase I'm always looking to tinker a bit. Why run at 100 fps when you can run at 103?!?!

 

So here's a break down of a couple;

 

I've tinkered with the settings ini file (google should give instructions on finding it). There are various threads on these forums that explain what it all does and where you can steal some performance. One thing I did was then off blob shadows, since the game draws both blob and stencil(?) if you're set on high.

 

Some peoe have suggested that installing the latest version of directX 9 has helped them regardless of what you currently have. Something about dx11 have poor reverse comparability.

 

Of course make sure you have as many background programs as possible turned off. If you use win7 there's a thread on these forums alon the lines of "ultimate win7 performance guide".

 

I have also tried out the ram disc solution if you have a minimum of 6mb of ram. The thread is also on these forums, search ram disk or swtor unleashed. It was really noticeable for combat more than anywhere else.

 

Make sure you're running in full screen.

 

My buddy was using the client he had downloaded in beta, and found that reinstalling from the retail made a world of difference for him.

 

On your own end make sure all your drivers are up to date, and your system is nicely defragged, free of bloat ware etc.

 

There are quite a few options out there, though sometimes the "numbers" aren't as important as the names when it comes to hardware. An intel on board video with the same "spec" as an nvidia

 

Good luck.

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Valkirus

Valkirus

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Posted
Turn off Shadow (even with 1.2 turning off shadow is a BIG change)

 

Yeah..that does seem to help some. But odd the shadows still suck even with them set to high. Rift on the other hand has great shadows, high AA, along with high textures and plays smooth. Now if you could take thier graphics and incorporate them into TOR...wow.

 

For the OP...part of your issue is your mobile GPU I think. To play the game the best, you need to meet or even exceed the recommended specs.

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llesna

llesna

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Posted (edited)

The real problem is that graphics card. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 550v isn't exactly a powerhouse, I'm afraid. It's the real issue that's keeping you back. All you can do is turn all the settings to lowest, turn down the grass and tree distances, reduce the shader complexity and lower the game resolution.

 

The site you visited might be saying you exceed the specifications, but trust me when I say that SWTOR requires a heck of a lot of graphical muscle to play with fancy settings at a decent resolution. Even I get slow down in denser places in the game (at highest detail with 4xAA EQ) on my AMD 6950.

Edited by llesna
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Malastare

Malastare

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Posted
I bought SWTOR almost at launch, but before I did, I checked to see if I had the system requirements, so I went to canyourunit.com...

 

Ah... I see your problem. You actually trusted canyourunit (Can-Your-Unit?).

 

I admire the intent behind CYRI, but it just fails so often that you can never trust it. When I bought Civ5, it said I could barely handle it, because it interpreted my 8800 GTS(G92) as an 8800GT. Of course, it thought I had 4GB of video memory because it didn't know how to interpret the unused reserved video memory that Vista/7 uses. It also said I didn't have a soundcard or DVD drive. Other people had PentiumD CPUs passing CPU checks that required 2GHz Core2's. I've even seen IntelHD graphics getting the green light for intense 3D games.

 

In short, your results from CYRI are pretty unreliable. Yes, I know its a valuable tool and ordinary people don't have the time or desire to keep up to date about the abilities of PC hardware. I understand and I sympathize. However, CYRI is a bad tool and using a bad tool is worse than using no tool at all.

 

The biggest issue you have here is that CYRI totally failed to qualify your video card. Your 550v is barely better than the Intel 4100 and worse than the 7800 and X1800. Any human would have known to ignore the Intel 4100 and say that your mobility chip wasn't going to meet the performance of the minimum spec. It will run, and CYRI was right about that, but you shouldn't have ever expected anything more than minumum performance.

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RachelAnne

RachelAnne

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If you buy one of the newest and strongest models of the Alienware PCs, you might be able to run this game on Low settings.

That, or buy a satellite xD

This game is demanding : (

 

Not sure if you are sarcastic or not :D

 

But to make sure people dont understand it wrong a few basics

 

1. Get an intel CPU, even the newer 2 cores run better than the AMD 4 / 6 cores if it comes to MMO´s without 4 core optimization (pretty much all).

My advice the 2500 but 2400 works as well, but the price difference is not big so pick the 2500

 

2. Have 8 gig of ram (2x4GB) let it run in dual channel mode

 

3. Have a not too old graphics card, my advice is ATI as they have the best "price / performance" but an Nvidia is just as good.

 

4. Have a good HDD, I recommend WD caviar blue - an SSD is fine too but overpriced in my opinion.

 

5. Have a good mainboard, its really worth it to spend 10-20 bucks more on this . Asus and Asrock are good there, make sure to pick B3 stepping

 

6. Have a good brand PSU, dont buy cheap ones they kill your pc.

 

7. Build your pc yourself or let it build in a shop. Dont buy premade PC´s, they are too expensive and stay cheap at very important parts like the HDD, Mainboard or PSU

 

You can get a pc for around 500-600 euro that can run pretty much every game on max details.

 

Pc´s are no witchcraft ;)

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Mashy

Mashy

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Posted
I looked at your specs and noticed the ATI Video card. I know they weren't playing nice when the game released but I am not sure if they fixed that for ATI cards. Anyone confirm? It may just be his problem.
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  • 1 year later...
orangepoptart

orangepoptart

Posted
Posted

If you are using a Windows 7 laptop,

1. Click the battery icon

2. Click "more power options"

3.Click "show additional plans"

4. Click "High Performance" or "Power4Gear High Performance"

 

This greatly improved my playing experience. I went from playing on very low graphics to medium graphics with no problem! Hope this helps.

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reclipsed

reclipsed

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Posted
If you buy one of the newest and strongest models of the Alienware PCs, you might be able to run this game on Low settings.

That, or buy a satellite xD

This game is demanding : (

 

>alienware

haha

 

I hope you're trying to be funny, I just spent $450 on a OoB desktop from a box store and it runs everything on max settings smoothly

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