Optimization Truth: It was NEVER my computer?

[Durasturan]

And it's a pretty silly guess.

 

While the guy you're responding to is patently wrong (or lying), there's nothing about his system that would require a 750W PSU. I run a i7-2600K at 4.5GHz, with an extra hard drive, sound card, a few NICs and a full compliment of RAM and the whole thing needs only 350W from the wall while I play SWTOR. Yeah, he's got a 670 instead of my 560Ti, but I promise you that there isn't a 400W difference between the two. It's foolish to try and use manufacturers PSU recommendations like you did up there. In most cases, the 500W requirement is for the system, assuming a same-class CPU. And overclocking modern CPUs and GPUs does not increase overall system (fixed) power consumption by 50%.

 

That's said: The previous poster was, again, very wrong. There have been quite a few improvements that drastically increased performance, very specifically improvements to high-congestion areas like Fleet. Want proof? Watch mobs or other NPCs in the distance. Anyone with decent vision will notice that their animation isn't being updated as frequently as stuff thats closer to you. That was one of the more drastic improvements that increased performance for lower-end systems. There have been plenty of others.

 

At the very least, I can match their "It ALWAYS gets worse" anecdote with two "It's gotten much better" anecdotes: Two of the people I regularly play with were using borderline-gaming laptops and saw significant improvements in framerates and reduced number of framerate drops across a number of patches between 1.2 and 1.3.

 

http://images10.newegg.com/BizIntell/tool/psucalc/index.html

 

ehhh, I've used like three different PSU calcs and I'm getting AT LEAST 700 W floor on that build. My build is almost identical to that, different motherboard, but just about as good, and a different video card, and I have an 800 W PSU...

[Aldael]

http://images10.newegg.com/BizIntell/tool/psucalc/index.html

 

ehhh, I've used like three different PSU calcs and I'm getting AT LEAST 700 W floor on that build. My build is almost identical to that, different motherboard, but just about as good, and a different video card, and I have an 800 W PSU...

 

The conception of getting more and more W on a PSU doesnt really mean you can get some components to work, the important number in a PSU is not that of total potence it can supply, and that is cause they give u potence in 3 or more rails (or at least 3 types), 3.3v, 5v and 12v (this is the most important one, as graphics card get feed by it ).

 

 

Usually when a generic PSU gives u potency it refers to 3,3 and 5 v more than 12v.

 

A good one, will give middlet (or at least peak ones) amperages in each rail (similar to this: http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2338/25466540.jpg )

Edited September 7, 2012 by Aldael

[Krewel]

Oh, wow, seriously? Bioware defense force is now using PSUs as their final defense against performance issues? Yes, I'm sure more watts will bring me 60 fps in 16 man Ops

[redsovereign]

I agree more or less with both parties in this discussion; both those who defends and those who critizise, however I have to add to that yes, indeed SWTOR runs on a bad engine because you have to talk about the game as a MMORPG.

While there are thousands of computer configs and its hard to optimize everything, in comparison to other MMORPGS I've played recently namely; GW2, Tera, Rift, The Secret World and WoW, TOR has the worst performance of them.

 

When you develop a MMORPG you want to aim to get int as much people as possible and you try to slim down the graphics as much as you jsut can while still making them feasible but not amazing so ppl can run the game without lagging.

 

Again ofc there are always hardware/soft config issues and the like but you just can't hide the fact that TOR has framerate problems esp if u compare it to other games which are in the same genre.

There is just something badly optimized, however I truly believe that Bio can fix this issues so I don't think it's a "the engine is crappy" issue I just think it has to be put a lot of work into fixing the engine.

 

This is not a Crysis or a Far Cry benchmarking game, this is a MMORPG with mediocre graphics, and I say that with no hate intended, I just think that the graphics is very mediocre (models and enviroment "tunnel design") and why being mediocre It doesn't affect my gameplay experience but with mediocre graphics I expect good performance.

SWTOR a game that is heavily built around instancing performs a lot worse in that category in comparsion to it's competitors it doesn't reduce the enjoyment I get out of the game but it's just something I think about every now and then.

 

I however do believe that those who make offensive remarks claiming that "users simply have bad computers" is very wrong saying so. The whole point of MMORPGs is to get as much ppl in the game as possible.

Unless the game itself is market as a very graphics heavy MMO (like Age of Conan) you as the game developer simply can't state that it's the players rigs, you simply picked a engine that maybe wasn't the optimal engine to use for your project.

 

However you can say something like this : "We know that there have been issues regarding performance bla bla... and we are workin on getting these issues solved ". That is a much better way to say it then saying "95%-5%" because the % isn't important, what is important is to advertise that you are working on trying to improve your game constantly.

 

Edit1: While re-reading through the thread I see that a lot of ppl ask for "- post spec and settings". I fail to see why that is relevant since you can just compare a mediocre looking game (SWTOR) with other games in the same genre. If you can run other MMORPGs with similar graphics just fine then the problem is not so much with the spec you are using.

 

- I also see that some of you are asking about the PSU that the user is equipped with. While I do appreciate that you guys are trying to help out the community in a nice manner, asking ppl to post their PSU and whatnot when they can play other games just fine is just a little insane. Again: This game is not a Crysis game, it's a medicore looking MMORPG and since graphics was simplified you expect average-good performance.

 

While I do have had very few performance issues since the EGA while comparing SWTOR to other MMORPGs the performance differences is very noticeable and esp so in social hub areas even though there have been performance increases after 1.2 and 1.3.

Edited September 7, 2012 by redsovereign

[ripster]

Oh, wow, seriously? Bioware defense force is now using PSUs as their final defense against performance issues? Yes, I'm sure more watts will bring me 60 fps in 16 man Ops

I can see people who can't get 30 fps anywhere in this game (or even worse) having a real complaint somewhere but when the complaint is that there are places in the game where might not get 60 fps that is just nitpicking.

[VarKoE]

Oh, wow, seriously? Bioware defense force is now using PSUs as their final defense against performance issues? Yes, I'm sure more watts will bring me 60 fps in 16 man Ops

 

Absurd. All i see in this thread is folks offering some help or knowledge. Take it or not. But skip the insults.

[Metalmac]

If I remember rightly, this game is single-threaded, meaning all processing for this game will run through a single core on your processor. That is the bottle-neck for most people. It is also the reason why most people don't see a correlation between specs/age of their PC and their performance.

 

Due to single-threaded nature of the game, you will see the best performance if you have a CPU from the end of a previous generation. This is because by the end of a generation, the clock speed per core is quite high. When the next generation comes out with more cores, each core tends to have a lower clock speed.

 

Thats why people with CPU's with only 2 cores but a clock speed of 4 GHz are running the game better than people with 6 cores but a clock speed of only 2.5GHz.

 

To test this, run a CPU monitor whilst playing the game. My and my guildies have done this, and typically one core will reach 70-90% capacity whilst our other cores idle in the 5-15% range.

 

BINGO We have a winner!

My 2.93Ghz Mac Pro runs the game well but a buddy with a multi core NEW computer does not!

[Kubernetic]

If I remember rightly, this game is single-threaded, meaning all processing for this game will run through a single core on your processor. That is the bottle-neck for most people. It is also the reason why most people don't see a correlation between specs/age of their PC and their performance.

 

Due to single-threaded nature of the game, you will see the best performance if you have a CPU from the end of a previous generation. This is because by the end of a generation, the clock speed per core is quite high. When the next generation comes out with more cores, each core tends to have a lower clock speed.

 

Thats why people with CPU's with only 2 cores but a clock speed of 4 GHz are running the game better than people with 6 cores but a clock speed of only 2.5GHz.

 

To test this, run a CPU monitor whilst playing the game. My and my guildies have done this, and typically one core will reach 70-90% capacity whilst our other cores idle in the 5-15% range.

 

This is incorrect, from my testing. I'm running a Q6600 quad-core 2.4 GHz system, and at the moment I'm seeing a spread of 34 / 28 / 28 / 35 across the 4 cores.

[Blackardin]

If I remember rightly, this game is single-threaded, meaning all processing for this game will run through a single core on your processor. That is the bottle-neck for most people. It is also the reason why most people don't see a correlation between specs/age of their PC and their performance.

 

Due to single-threaded nature of the game, you will see the best performance if you have a CPU from the end of a previous generation. This is because by the end of a generation, the clock speed per core is quite high. When the next generation comes out with more cores, each core tends to have a lower clock speed.

 

Thats why people with CPU's with only 2 cores but a clock speed of 4 GHz are running the game better than people with 6 cores but a clock speed of only 2.5GHz.

 

To test this, run a CPU monitor whilst playing the game. My and my guildies have done this, and typically one core will reach 70-90% capacity whilst our other cores idle in the 5-15% range.

 

Explains a great many things, and why my five year old, dual core, fast cpu machine is outperforming some of the newer ones.

[BaronV]

Thanks for chiming in on this. I know that the rail set up is important, but am not really technically savvy enough to speak on it. But I did mention in a previous post that the PSUs are not identical, and that it's important to make sure you've got a good brand with a good design.

 

As to the others, it was simple deduction. They say they have a GeForce GTX670. The specifications for that card say it requires a 500W power supply, and this of course is a minimum standard chosen by the manufacturer. I'm pretty sure they didn't just toss a dart at a board, and it hit the "500" mark. They chose it specifically because they feel it's the best amount of power to make sure the card is functional. Going under that amount is at your own risk of performance.

 

Now I may be wrong, but it seems to me that if the minimum power requirements are 500W, and you've overclocked the card, your performance requirements may be different than the manufacturer specified... i.e. greater than what was listed. As they also say they have an overclocked processor, and RAM, and quite possibly the FSB as well, I don't think it's a stretch to say that they should be shooting for a nice quality power supply that is over the 500W rainbow somewhere. Maybe a 600W would do it, maybe a 650W. I chose a 750W just because personally I'd rather have more power than I could use up rather than trying to skirt the minimum requirements.

 

If you're trying to get away with overclocking your system to the maximum and still using the stock supply (or the one specified in the system requirements based on it being run at the proper speed, and not overclocked to hell), you're going to run into trouble, especially in a highly graphics intensive game in the most extreme circumstances.

 

The thing that was most curious to me was that here was yet another poster who knew the stats on every part of the system, and were ready to read them off, yet the power system and its particulars is nowhere in sight...

 

It goes without saying that someone who is overclocking everything knows what they are doing and isnt going to do something as NOOB as OCing without an adequate PSU or cooling system (in case you want to blame that next). If your PSU is inadequate you would be having much worse problems than poor fps in games.

 

Before I start my counter arguments let me just say when I say "you" below I dont mean the person quoted specifically, but rather all the people here who are trying to say things like I have an inadequate PSU or whatever.

 

I have a 650W CoolerMaster GX Bronze power supply and it has only hit the 500W mark when I was doing benchmarking to test the stability of my overclock. You people obviously have no clue about what your talking about for several reasons:

1) If my PSU was inadequate id have system stability isues, hanging, freezing, glitches, shutdowns etc. I have none. My PSU hasnt blown up and I have tested my OC stability and have not found any problems. At any rate not only is my overclock mild, SWTOR doesnt drive my hardware that hard to begin with.

2) Your comments clearly show a lack of understanding in how overclocking in ivy bridge CPUs and Kepler GPUs work. Go study up before you shoot of your mouth. its not just raw FSB or voltage tweaks that lead to massive power draw increases anymore. There is something known as a power target. OCing in Kepler especially is alot more intelligent than the previous versions of geforce.

3) It has been shown time and time again that SWTOR is CPU intensive and not GPU intensive once you have the required hardware to run this game at your graphics settings. Kepler does the toughest DX9 games in its sleep and my GTX670 eats SWTOR for dinner. The increased power target and overclocks dont even kick in according to my EVGA precisionX log...

4) The attacks on my hardware still does'nt justify why anyone should requiere such high hardware as mine to have good playback quality when this game is running on a DX9 engine from 2006 with so-so graphics that look like they are from 2009. A good PC from 2009 should be able to make this game fly.

 

And no this is a fully built custom rig with quality parts not some cheap knock-off by Dell or HP or whoever. I know what Im doing.

 

What truly amazes me is that after all of this evidence by so many people (not just my own) you ostriches still refuse to get your freakking heads out of the sand. Make no mistake about it im not really complaining about the 65fps im experiencing now. Its VERY playable.

 

But the question you should be asking is WHY after the latest update someone like me with all the computing power is suddenly getting 65fps on a very low pop world and in a place where there arent any NPCs or players? (just a few tauntauns). This especially after I mentioned I was getting 112fps before that in a heavy fleet. This after I mentioned how I saw a marked drop in fps on my old laptop as time went by from November 2011 - June 2012 (when I got my new rig).

 

At any rate I dont expect to convince anyone. I just wanted to chip in my two cents supporting the OP since people as usual were trying to attack him and his hardware. I just laugh when people accuse me of lying about fps drops with the patches. So you got better fps as time went by...well whoop-dee-do! good for you. I had the exact opposite. After 1.2 I started watching fps very closely because it was negatively affecting my gameplay. In beta I was pleasantly surprised to get decent fps with high graphics settings because I knew then that my hardware was a little dated by then. However I saw the performance drop as the patches rolled by. You can accuse me of lying all you want but it wont change the fact that it was my personal experience (and a lot of people out there have had a similar experience)

 

At any rate you people have been successful at derailing this topic (which was probably your objective to begin with) Carefully reading the OPs post will show you that THIS TOPIC IS NOT ABOUT HIS PERSONAL FPS ISSUES

 

This topic is about how Bioware LIED to us right in our faces. Its about how they insulted our intelligence by blaming our hardware when they knew right from the start that the Hero Engine was problematic

[BaronV]

Just wanted to chime in.

 

Higher wattage doesnt guarantee it will work better. PSU's also some with rail ratings. There are a great deal of 750w+ PSUs that will not perform better than say a 600w PSU, and in a shocking high number of cases will perform worse.

 

This is where ratings coming in. Wattage alone only tells you that they can provide x amount of juice to any particular component. It doesnt tell you if they are going to do so consistently, even when all components are under load. Many PSU manufacturers include either a percentage or bronze, silver, gold, platinum style rating indicating that their PSU with X wattage will deliver that wattage with Y consistency.

 

9/10 times your prebuilt namebrand PC has the absolute cheapest components in it the company can find. Especially when it comes to PSUs. Its how they increase their bottom line. The result is that those specs they sold you on are beyond deceptive and often wont be delivering 1/3 of the performance you would expect.

 

LOL. Bronze, silver gold and platinum DO NOT tell you about how consistent or clean the power supply is. They are the various grades of the 80PLUS PSU efficiency standard. Having a platinum PSU just means that its more power efficient than a Bronze PSU.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS

[LaVolpex]

look guys its this simple...

 

when i can run guild wars 2 and similar looking games RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE maxed out with zero performance issues on my ole phenom....it pretty much invalidates any and all arguments against " my hardware" from the bioware defense force...

 

fact of life is this, most average joes WILL NOT put with the hassle of tweaking their machines and installing drivers, making ramdisks, isntalling dx9 and god knows what other trick to get this game to run smooth when there will be TONS of f2p games out there that run with 100 percent less hassle to set up and play..

 

when i can do wvwvw in gw2 @ 1080 resolutions with just the occasional hitching with a whole bunch of people and stuff happening on screen ....yea idc what you dingleberries keep regurgitating , its the ****** engine , period

[MajikMyst]

look guys its this simple...

 

when i can run guild wars 2 and similar looking games RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE maxed out with zero performance issues on my ole phenom....it pretty much invalidates any and all arguments against " my hardware" from the bioware defense force...

 

Your right it is simple.. But it isn't that simple.. Making the claim that my computer runs this game will so it should run SWTOR, is comparing apples to oranges at the very least.. You have also not invalidated a single point..

 

GW2 and this game run on completely different game engines.. Neither of which do the same thing or use the same methods to get things done.. So it is useless and lame to say my computer runs GW2 good so it should run SWTOR good.. That is simply the facts..

 

Now I am not going to sit here and get into a debate over what game engine is better.. That would be a useless effort.. I will say, and I have said it before.. There are people that are currently playing SWTOR that get excellent game performance.. Perhaps you should look at what is different between their computer and yours.. QQ about Bioware or any other gaming manufacturer and demanding that they fix your problems isn't going to get anything solved.. We all run the same version of the game.. Why do some people have performance issues, while others do not??

 

How about we spend less time trying to compare apples and oranges.. That should be simple enough..

Edited September 8, 2012 by MajikMyst

[LaVolpex]

Your right it is simple..

GW2 and this game run on completely different game engines.. Neither of which do the same thing or use the same methods to get things done.. So it is useless and lame to say my computer runs GW2 good so it should run SWTOR good.. That is simply the facts..

 

.

 

lol oh the irony....

 

thats EXACTLY my point, its not the hardware , its the software

 

now you can defend swtor and their hero engine till you are blue in your face, but if ALL my other games run great , and this one doesnt , it doesnt take a rocket scientist nor complicated arguments to see the problem is THIS engine, wich was my original point........hows that for irony?

 

i love swtor , i really do, but how is it that i have one flawless huuuuuuuuge world on one mmo, and i have to take 2 loading screens everytime i wipe in an instance or raid, one to rez, one to walk back inside ffs...

 

why do you think they have to split people into instances?

the engine cannot handle more than a certain amount of people together in one place, it simply cant..

 

to me , as a gamer, i want to experience the game as it was meant to without having to hassle myself figuring out how to make it run smoothly or whatnot, and this is coming from a guy that knows his way around computers, i can promise you that the average joe will not put himself thru the hassle nor stutter along for very long without moving on to one of the other 121442342343534 gazillion f2p games out there....

 

if you want swtor to succeed its in your best interest that it runs, no problems no questions asked on as many possible systems out there

 

kinda like every other successful game franchise and mmo has done in the past...one of the reasons blizzard games where so popular is that it ran on pretty much any system you would install it on without problems

[Metalmac]

This is incorrect, from my testing. I'm running a Q6600 quad-core 2.4 GHz system, and at the moment I'm seeing a spread of 34 / 28 / 28 / 35 across the 4 cores.

 

That is virtually impossible with a single threaded game. It will only run the game on 1 (ONE) processor.

 

So either your testing is wrong or you have a processor that does what no one else's can do. (I doubt this)

[turjake]

That is virtually impossible with a single threaded game. It will only run the game on 1 (ONE) processor.

 

So either your testing is wrong or you have a processor that does what no one else's can do. (I doubt this)

 

I think you forgot few other possibilities: 1. you are wrong when you claim it is impossible (even virtually). 2. It is not single threaded.

[Metalmac]

Your right it is simple.. But it isn't that simple.. Making the claim that my computer runs this game will so it should run SWTOR, is comparing apples to oranges at the very least.. You have also not invalidated a single point..

 

GW2 and this game run on completely different game engines.. Neither of which do the same thing or use the same methods to get things done.. So it is useless and lame to say my computer runs GW2 good so it should run SWTOR good.. That is simply the facts..

 

Now I am not going to sit here and get into a debate over what game engine is better.. That would be a useless effort.. I will say, and I have said it before.. There are people that are currently playing SWTOR that get excellent game performance.. Perhaps you should look at what is different between their computer and yours.. QQ about Bioware or any other gaming manufacturer and demanding that they fix your problems isn't going to get anything solved.. We all run the same version of the game.. Why do some people have performance issues, while others do not??

 

How about we spend less time trying to compare apples and oranges.. That should be simple enough..

 

You clearly do not understand software and hardware.

If any game or software does not live up to performance expected even though using a older OS (XP) yet the only thing that is different is people using newer OS (Windows 7) but the game is running better on older computers then clearly the software or game is the issue.

SWTOR is a single threaded game in a Windows 7 multi-threaded world.

The game engine is exactly what is wrong with the game. This is a non-issue to fix as it is a out dated engine.

 

Apple and Oranges are that it runs worse on new multi-core systems with slower clock speeds then single-core systems with higher clock speeds. Thus why older system work better as single threads can run faster.

[Metalmac]

I think you forgot few other possibilities: 1. you are wrong when you claim it is impossible (even virtually). 2. It is not single threaded.

 

Really how much software have you written?

I am a retired programmer. Mostly drivers and device access in machine language.

[Metalmac]

I should add that you can very quickly confirm it is single threaded by downloading simple tools to check this fact.

[Superawesomerman]

Lol, SWTOR already runs two instances... They could just run more! Walah! Multithreading.

 

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, and open up task manager while playing.

 

Specifically, playing SWTOR.

[Metalmac]

Lol, SWTOR already runs two instances... They could just run more! Walah! Multithreading.

 

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, and open up task manager while playing.

 

Specifically, playing SWTOR.

 

This was done to speed up a very slow game. It is known as the poor mans way to fake multi-thread design.

 

You can not add a third or forth thread as then you would get thrashing between threads or conflicts as to which one has priority over the other.

 

If the game was multi threaded in the first place then this would not be a problem as it is predetermined.

 

(This also explains those really slow loading screens)

Edited September 8, 2012 by Metalmac

[turjake]

Really how much software have you written?

I am a retired programmer. Mostly drivers and device access in machine language.

 

A bit, and still am.

 

You said:

" That is virtually impossible with a single threaded game. It will only run the game on 1 (ONE) processor.

"

I said:

"So either your testing is wrong or you have a processor that does what no one else's can do. (I doubt this)

I think you forgot few other possibilities: 1. you are wrong when you claim it is impossible (even virtually). 2. It is not single threaded. "

 

I am sure you know what a context switch is. In a multi processor system the os should make sure the context stays in one processor, on the other hand it can switch to another. So it is possible that because of some driver (or whatever) bug the os switches the game between all 4 processors and you will see even load in all of them when you play, even if the game is singlethreaded. Ofcourse you shouldnt see a good performance in that case.

Edited September 8, 2012 by turjake

[BaronV]

That is virtually impossible with a single threaded game. It will only run the game on 1 (ONE) processor.

 

So either your testing is wrong or you have a processor that does what no one else's can do. (I doubt this)

 

This game is not single threaded. its dual threaded.more than 2 cores is supposedly wasted on SWTOR, but im not sure how much Windows 7 cpu load balancing helps for more than 2 cores

[BaronV]

Oh and I just logged in to a low lvl smuggler alt on Ord Mantel. 35FPS:eek: with only 32 people online.

 

Tell me its my hardware again! I DARE YOU!

[Yogol]

Well, I'm lucky. I have a computer that runs this game very well. It is a high end system with dual graphics etc. etc. I'm also running the game on my laptop and older system not designed for gaming and it runs fine after I tweaked down the graphics a bit (turn off grass, tress etc.)

 

So before we start discussing specs, I'd like to know the specs of your system OP. It is highly relevant to this discussion.

 

Well... I got Windows 7, OS & SWTOR on a dedicated SSD disk, 8GB RAM, i7 processors.

 

Beta went fine, pre-launch went fine, playing went fine... then cam the patch last wednesday. BOOM, FPS was dead. Now, I can not even start the game, it says ''error C7, your system is incompatible'', lol.

 

You can stick your head in the sand and say ''it's you'', but it's really, really not, lol.

Edited September 8, 2012 by Yogol