Anybody still using Core2 Quad cpu?

[Fadmotherbucker]

I have Q6600 @3.3 Ghz and I gotta say I can still play most games decently at medium to high detail with GTX 560Ti. Swtor however gets crushed during certain FPs and all OPs.

 

I just don't have the space or time to put together a new PC right now so I'm wondering if upgrading to a GTX 670 will at least allow me to do OPs at 30+ FPS.

 

If you are playing the game with Q series CPU and get decent performance please let me know your full system specs, thanks.

[Sindorin]

I have Q6600 @3.3 Ghz and I gotta say I can still play most games decently at medium to high detail with GTX 560Ti. Swtor however gets crushed during certain FPs and all OPs.

 

I just don't have the space or time to put together a new PC right now so I'm wondering if upgrading to a GTX 670 will at least allow me to do OPs at 30+ FPS.

 

If you are playing the game with Q series CPU and get decent performance please let me know your full system specs, thanks.

 

Weird that you're posting this. I've got a Q series (Q9550, OC 3.1 GHZ) processor and the exact same graphics card. I've never had any real issues with stability or performance. My guess is that it's either a combination of ram and processor performance, or software issues. My FPS is usually nearing 50 at all times, maybe mid to low 40's in FP's or Open world PvP.

Edited August 7, 2013 by Sindorin

[Toweleeeie]

Turn on your FPS meter. It's like alt shift F or something like that. If the number is red when you lag it's the CPU holding you back. If its green its your GPU.

[NicAX]

I have an old Q9400 on one of my PCs (it is overclocked to 3.6GHz with one of the better CPU coolers though) and it still runs the game very well, not as good as the new chipsets obviously but definitely playable. Usually it sits around 40-60 and 20-35 during 16 mans and very busy areas.

 

Some general things to try to improve FPS,

 

Try SWTOR Unleashed, it can make a huge difference in some cases. (Just don't add to much to the RAM drive.)

 

Make sure all your graphics and sound drivers are up to date.

 

Clean up Windows or better yet reinstall Windows completely, only keep the necessary programs and files, give C drive some free space and go through your startup tasks and programs and remove anything you don't need, keep as much of your RAM as free as possible.

 

Also temperatures are very important to, especially when overclocking. Clean your case, try getting better ventilation and cooling, you'd be surprised that doing this can actually get some more FPS and reliability.

 

Your graphics card is more than capable of handling the game so it would be your other components that are the bottleneck, maybe add more RAM, upgrade your HDD, even try a SSD.

Edited August 7, 2013 by NicAX

[Bilirubin]

I have a Q8200 and a 430 and am happy with its performance with visuals set fairly low. Its not nearly as pretty as the system I am on right now (a laptop workstation with an i7 3610QM and 660M vid card) but the same rendering lag when entering new areas is present on both system. I really wonder about this engine sometimes. Edited August 7, 2013 by Bilirubin

[maryber]

Core Duo 3.2GHz on my desktop PC (6 GB RAM, ATI 6750 GPU) ... one CTD in 6 - 7 hours gameplay after new patch ... may be memory issue due to DiskCasheArena on RAM drive, will check.

[FuriCuri]

I have Q6600 @3.3 Ghz and I gotta say I can still play most games decently at medium to high detail with GTX 560Ti. Swtor however gets crushed during certain FPs and all OPs.

 

I just don't have the space or time to put together a new PC right now so I'm wondering if upgrading to a GTX 670 will at least allow me to do OPs at 30+ FPS.

 

If you are playing the game with Q series CPU and get decent performance please let me know your full system specs, thanks.

 

If you're using Windows 7 - disable Aero.

[Alec_Fortescue]

I have Core 2 Quad cpu and TOR barely runs. What's stupid is that plenty of new games run seriously decent either maxed out or @ very high settings.

[morfius]

I have Core 2 Quad cpu and TOR barely runs. What's stupid is that plenty of new games run seriously decent either maxed out or @ very high settings.

 

What speed your CPU has?

On 3.2 Core Duo it is runs OK ...

[sithgreyguard]

I got the q6700 @2.66ghz and the same card with 64 bit win 7. I have never had any problems. get 4 gigs of ram maybe? could also be your internet. whats your speed? Edited August 7, 2013 by sithgreyguard

[Alec_Fortescue]

If you're using Windows 7 - disable Aero.

 

Disabling aero is causing my font to go weird and harder to read.

[Alec_Fortescue]

What speed your CPU has?

On 3.2 Core Duo it is runs OK ...

 

I dunno what conflicts so hard with TOR. Game doesn't like my pc. I got w7 upgrade + 2gb more ram. Most of the new games run really well on max settings and tor gets choppy in the starting areas and 16 man raids are not playable.

 

dunno what's the speed but what my dxdiag says is Intel Core 2 Quad Cpu @ 2.40ghz (4 cpus), - 2.4 ghz :l

[morfius]

I dunno what conflicts so hard with TOR. Game doesn't like my pc. I got w7 upgrade + 2gb more ram. Most of the new games run really well on max settings and tor gets choppy in the starting areas and 16 man raids are not playable.

 

dunno what's the speed but what my dxdiag says is Intel Core 2 Quad Cpu @ 2.40ghz (4 cpus), - 2.4 ghz :l

 

Bellow 3GHz ... not well ... my old CD2 was on 2.3 or something like that ... it was just giving up in populated area.

Got this one (3.2 GHz) wery cheap + 2 GB RAM (6 total) and have no issues in 16 man ops (only drops bellow 30 FPS are where there are much more players around - fleet or new dailies - but has some other thing to sort before dropping $$ for new PC ... this even upgraded is somehow 7 years old (MB and data HDDs are 7 y. old) and will go down some day).

 

Best CPU for this game is Intel above 3 GHz ... AMD doesn't work well also.

(Core Duo for same MB on 3.1-3.4 will be very cheap upgrade, and only place when 4 cores mean something realy is virtual machines or databases, otherwise 2 real cores are enough for everything).

Edited August 7, 2013 by morfius

[Malastare]

Best CPU for this game is Intel above 3 GHz ... AMD doesn't work well also.

 

Measuring CPU effectiveness by clock rate is next to useless. A 2GHz Ivy Bridge will smoke the pants off a 3GHz Core2 Q6600. If you want to talk about CPU effectiveness, you need to be a bit more specific:

 

The best CPUs for the game are Sandy Bridge i5s or better (thus: Sandy Bridge i7s, Ivy Bridge i5s, Ivy Bridge i7s). A good Sandy/Ivy Bridge i3 is better than the Core2 series. The old Core i5s and i7s should be fine. In the Core2's you want something in the latter part of the series, 8000s or 9000s. You'd probably be better off with a faster dual-core than a quad-core.

 

(Core Duo for same MB on 3.1-3.4 will be very cheap upgrade, and only place when 4 cores mean something realy is virtual machines or databases, otherwise 2 real cores are enough for everything).

 

This is also short-sighted advice. When dual cores came out, people quickly said: "No reason to get a dual. You only need them for [insert random processing task]. One core is good enough for everything."

 

There are plenty of other uses for quad-core processors, and the future of CPUs involves adding more cores, rather than pushing clock speeds higher. Operating systems are already being designed to operate on this idea (not just using it, but optimized with the assumption of multiple cores). More and more games are being structured to use multiple cores. The most recent DirectX versions will use multiple cores for rendering. Just as important, the interaction between games, operating systems, and other apps will see more and more benefits from multiple cores in the future.

[morfius]

Measuring CPU effectiveness by clock rate is next to useless. A 2GHz Ivy Bridge will smoke the pants off a 3GHz Core2 Q6600. If you want to talk about CPU effectiveness, you need to be a bit more specific:

 

The best CPUs for the game are Sandy Bridge i5s or better (thus: Sandy Bridge i7s, Ivy Bridge i5s, Ivy Bridge i7s). A good Sandy/Ivy Bridge i3 is better than the Core2 series. The old Core i5s and i7s should be fine. In the Core2's you want something in the latter part of the series, 8000s or 9000s. You'd probably be better off with a faster dual-core than a quad-core.

 

 

 

This is also short-sighted advice. When dual cores came out, people quickly said: "No reason to get a dual. You only need them for [insert random processing task]. One core is good enough for everything."

 

There are plenty of other uses for quad-core processors, and the future of CPUs involves adding more cores, rather than pushing clock speeds higher. Operating systems are already being designed to operate on this idea (not just using it, but optimized with the assumption of multiple cores). More and more games are being structured to use multiple cores. The most recent DirectX versions will use multiple cores for rendering. Just as important, the interaction between games, operating systems, and other apps will see more and more benefits from multiple cores in the future.

 

1 - Any Intel after Core Duo above 3 GHz tends to work well with game, anything bellow and most of AMD not.

Short and clear... tested on many PCs.

As we speak for Core Duo / Core Quad compatible PCs here ... this is most usable advice... other one is to buy a whole new PC... and last - forget about SWTOR.

Which is most usable in this tread?

 

2 - Tested again, no significant performance increase on daily tasks between CD / CQ with same frequency, on same MB & RAM.

Again, do we going to tell everyone - go buy new PC or forget about SWTOR?

 

3 - If we speak about new PCs ... it is whole different story (with one similarity AMD CPUs still fail epically with SWTOR), but for those that tend to use their existing ones to the end with small upgrades here and there best advise is still above.

As matter of facts same CD on 3.2 perform better in SWTOR than SB i5 on 2.5 (GPUs tuned for performance and FPS indicator on CPU) ... had both PCs at home in one moment.

[Fadmotherbucker]

Toweleeeie nice tip about the FPS meter color, however I don't know how accurate this is...it is red all the time, however it is red a lot of the time on my laptop which has an i5 cpu.

 

I'll try disabling Aero if it doesn't mess up my fonts but I wouldn't expect that to help. Like myself and others have mentioned, something about ToR that just doesn't like our PCs.

 

I added 2GB of RAM for a total of 6GB and did notice some performance increase however mostly with loading and alt-tabbing out of the game. DDR2 is hella expensive these days because it's no longer in production and the RAM I have is extremely difficult to find.

 

My problem definitely isn't a connection issue, I have 20mbit connection and normally around 19-25ms ping.

 

Any areas with a lot of activity or OPs just because of all the people it will crawl, I've gotten as low as 5fps. Another good example is beginning of Red Reaper, horrible FPS. Also anytime a Mara has their fury on it seems my FPS gets cut in half.

 

Don't know if there's much else for me to try other than new vidcard...maybe I should even try Radeon this time. Also wondering if there's maybe a common factor between those of us having issues. Alec what kind of motherboard do you have? Mine is Gigabyte P35-DS3L.

Edited August 7, 2013 by Fadmotherbucker

[morfius]

About FPS indicator colors BW post here:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4741512#post4748197

 

Greetings All,

 

So the actual explanation of the FPS display colors:

 

Red = Rendering bound/Video Card

Green = Simulation bound/CPU

Yellow = Mix of both

Current FPS (Lowest FPS over the last 10 seconds or so)

 

Just played a little with mount/dismount in populated area ... GPU (Nvidia 670 gts mobile) load at 70% flat ... FPS drops in half and turn red.

CPU (i7 mobile on 3.3 TB) load goes from 15% to 22% (first core almost at 95%)

Going to search for monitoring software with graphs that can be put over the game...

Edited August 7, 2013 by morfius

[Cernow]

I run a Q6600 at stock 2.4 Ghz with a GTX 660, 8GB ram, Win 7 64-bit, 7200rpm hard disks, dual monitors each at 1600x1200 resolution.

 

I have all graphics settings set to max and I don't have any FPS problems in levelling zones, flashpoints or operations (even 16-man). I do get a bit of lag sometimes in warzones, but nothing unmanageable. Where I mainly suffer is when there's a large number of players clustered together, such as the new CZ-198 zone. But I don't think I'm alone in that and the lag seems to be more server side than client side anyway in that situation.

 

My previous graphics card was a GT 260 and this worked fine too. The GTX 660 hasn't really added that much FPS (nor did I expect it to, my CPU is the bottleneck) but it does allow me to turn on all the bells and whistles like anti-aliasing, full shadows, high quality textures etc without any FPS hit.

 

I tried overclocking my Q6600 and found that whilst I achieved higher benchmarks, in real world applications I often saw no Improvement or in a few cases actually less performance. Have you tried reverting yours to stock speeds? You might be surprised.

 

I have found I get better performance in most games when running in fullscreen windowed mode, rather than fullscreen mode. Not sure why, but that's how it is with my system.

 

Also, the CPU is only part of the story. It's about having a system in balance - plenty of ram, fast hard disk (or SSD), not too much junk running in your Windows taskbar while gaming etc.

 

Bottom line - a GTX 670 will help you, but not as much as you might hope.

[morfius]

Toweleeeie nice tip about the FPS meter color, however I don't know how accurate this is...it is red all the time, however it is red a lot of the time on my laptop which has an i5 cpu.

 

I'll try disabling Aero if it doesn't mess up my fonts but I wouldn't expect that to help. Like myself and others have mentioned, something about ToR that just doesn't like our PCs.

 

I added 2GB of RAM for a total of 6GB and did notice some performance increase however mostly with loading and alt-tabbing out of the game. DDR2 is hella expensive these days because it's no longer in production and the RAM I have is extremely difficult to find.

 

My problem definitely isn't a connection issue, I have 20mbit connection and normally around 19-25ms ping.

 

Any areas with a lot of activity or OPs just because of all the people it will crawl, I've gotten as low as 5fps. Another good example is beginning of Red Reaper, horrible FPS. Also anytime a Mara has their fury on it seems my FPS gets cut in half.

 

Don't know if there's much else for me to try other than new vidcard...maybe I should even try Radeon this time. Also wondering if there's maybe a common factor between those of us having issues. Alec what kind of motherboard do you have? Mine is Gigabyte P35-DS3L.

 

If aero mess with fonts... there is another issue with this Windows.

What video card do you have (on ATI 6750 I had to tune game and driver to get it working well)?

[Malastare]

1 - Any Intel after Core Duo above 3 GHz tends to work well with game, anything bellow and most of AMD not.

Short and clear... tested on many PCs.

 

...and ignoring the fact that there are many sub-3GHz CPUs that will work better than a Core2 @ 3GHz. Also, it perpetuates the increasingly-damaging lie that clock speed is a direct measurement of CPU performance.

 

2 - Tested again, no significant performance increase on daily tasks between CD / CQ with same frequency, on same MB & RAM.

 

As we should expect. SWTOR is only going to heavily load 2 cores. However, actual benchmarks by actual experts who actually know what they are doing have showed that there is a modest improvement at higher detail when using a quad core CPU.

 

Again, do we going to tell everyone - go buy new PC or forget about SWTOR?

 

Do you need a quad core? No. You need a dual core for any reasonable performance on SWTOR. So say that. Don't tell people that they only ever need a quad if they're running databases. That's false and short sighted.

 

As matter of facts same CD on 3.2 perform better in SWTOR than SB i5 on 2.5 (GPUs tuned for performance and FPS indicator on CPU) ... had both PCs at home in one moment.

 

If your Core Duo at 3.2GHz beat an i5-2500, then you did something horribly wrong to the i5-2500. My first guess would be a failed installation, since the i5-2500's non-boosted clock speed is 3.2GHz, not 2.5GHz.

 

Also, there is no Core Duo that runs at 3.2GHz. There are a few Core2's near that, in particular the popular E8500 and E8600. However, those are a few generations behind the Sandy Bridge chips, and their performance is much, much lower than i5-2500. This is actually an excellent example of how clock speed does not indicate performance. The E8600 actually has a higher clock speed than the i5-2500, but the i5 has 30-50% better performance, even in single-threaded applications.

 

If your i5 wasn't outperforming the Core2 Duo, then you set something up horribly wrong.

[morfius]

...and ignoring the fact that there are many sub-3GHz CPUs that will work better than a Core2 @ 3GHz. Also, it perpetuates the increasingly-damaging lie that clock speed is a direct measurement of CPU performance.

 

As we should expect. SWTOR is only going to heavily load 2 cores. However, actual benchmarks by actual experts who actually know what they are doing have showed that there is a modest improvement at higher detail when using a quad core CPU.

 

Do you need a quad core? No. You need a dual core for any reasonable performance on SWTOR. So say that. Don't tell people that they only ever need a quad if they're running databases. That's false and short sighted.

 

If your Core Duo at 3.2GHz beat an i5-2500, then you did something horribly wrong to the i5-2500. My first guess would be a failed installation, since the i5-2500's non-boosted clock speed is 3.2GHz, not 2.5GHz.

 

Also, there is no Core Duo that runs at 3.2GHz. There are a few Core2's near that, in particular the popular E8500 and E8600. However, those are a few generations behind the Sandy Bridge chips, and their performance is much, much lower than i5-2500. This is actually an excellent example of how clock speed does not indicate performance. The E8600 actually has a higher clock speed than the i5-2500, but the i5 has 30-50% better performance, even in single-threaded applications.

 

If your i5 wasn't outperforming the Core2 Duo, then you set something up horribly wrong.

 

i5-430m not i5-2500... 2.53 with Turbo Boost... didn't you say that any i5 will do it, mobile i5 cannot.

I cannot remember exact model of laptop ... it was sold some time ago.

Tuned to the end still was not able to perform as CD 3.2 (it is listed as 3.06 but on my MB it works on 3.204)

No overheating issues, no throttling, no GPU related issues on both PCs.

Now you will say that laptop CPU cannot compare to desktop one... and still be very out of tread.

 

Clock speed is measure if you measure same line of CPUs... thread was about QC / DC and my reply was related to that. QC or DQ above 3 GHz can handle this game, those bellow 3 GHz have struggles.

 

And in particular compartment quad core CPUs to Dual Core CPUs ... QC didn't provide more performance above QD except some not often seen in home use situation... we have been testing those at work and know when they were better and where almost same.

Same is with new i5 and i7 ... if you going to do home media/gaming station faster i5 is better choice than slower i7 for same price.

 

I was not able to find any bellow 3 GHz one that will handle SWTOR well in populated area, may you enlighten me?

Edited August 7, 2013 by morfius

[Malastare]

i5-430m not i5-2500... 2.53 with Turbo Boost...

 

You said:

 

SB i5 on 2.5

 

An i5-430m is not a Sandy Bridge chip. It is the lowest of the Arrandale series, which was the weakest of the mobile chips for the Core i5 series.

 

didn't you say that any i5 will do it, mobile i5 cannot.

 

I said:

 

The best CPUs for the game are Sandy Bridge i5s or better... A good Sandy/Ivy Bridge i3 is better than the Core2 series. The old Core i5s and i7s should be fine.

 

Emphasis added by me.

 

Most Sandy Bridge mobile i5's are sufficient to run the game. I never said "all i5's" nor "all SB i5's". Intel usually makes low-power versions of most of their chips, and they have notably lower game performance. Even then, the i5-2430, one of the more common low-end mobile Sandy Bridge i5's still outperforms the desktop E8600. It's close, but the Sandy Bridge mobile chip is still better.

 

Clock speed is measure if you measure same line of CPUs... thread was about QC / DC and my reply was related to that. QC or DQ above 3 GHz can handle this game, those bellow 3 GHz have struggles.

 

And you're still wrong. A Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge dual-core, such as the i5-2430m mentioned above, has enough power to run the game, with just two cores at 2.4GHz. That 2.4GHz chip outperforms a desktop Core2 Duo which is running at 3.3GHz.

 

Now, neither the i5-2430m nor the E8600 would be my recommendation for playing the game, but both are suitable. You'll likely get some stutter in crowded areas, but the game will be playable. What I take issue with is your unsupported declaration that there is something special about the 3GHz clock speed, implying that an E8600 (2008 @ 3.3GHz, CPUMark: 2424) would have good performance while an i5-4570S (2012 @ 2.9GHz, CPUMark 6625) would struggle.

[Sindorin]

The best CPUs for the game are Sandy Bridge i5s or better (thus: Sandy Bridge i7s, Ivy Bridge i5s, Ivy Bridge i7s). A good Sandy/Ivy Bridge i3 is better than the Core2 series

 

I dispute this, and although it's anecdotal evidence, it seems to suggest something contrary to your assertion. I've got a computer with a newer model i7, and it seems to load levels, run the patcher and login to the game slower than my Q9550 computer does. In terms of in game performance, they both run virtually identically. No issues with either, even in high population areas. IF you have a decent GFX card, plenty of RAM and a decent late series Core2 processor, you'll be fine. I had a Core2 Duo that ran great also.

 

Don't buy into these "techies" too much. They generally make a lot of assertions based upon numbers, but anecdotal evidence is more useful when making purchasing decisions, used alongside tech numbers. Just like movie critics. They say that Movie X isn't any good because of a certain set of criterion they have. If it fails that, they grade it poorly. It doesn't matter if it sells like crazy and people actually love it.

 

AS a side note, I noticed you referenced the E series, 8600. I'm reasonably certain this was the Core2 Duo I had. Ran the game fine. Again, anecdotal evidence...

Edited August 7, 2013 by Sindorin

[Malastare]

I dispute this, and although it's anecdotal evidence, it seems to suggest something contrary to your assertion. I've got a computer with a newer model i7, and it seems to load levels, run the patcher and login to the game slower than my Q9550 computer does.

 

Lesson #2: A computer's performance is not solely controlled by the speed of the processor.

 

All of those things you mentioned... loading levels, patching, and initial login (including application loading) are not CPU-intensive tasks. They involve quite a bit of memory access and, more importantly, quite a bit of disk I/O. While you might not be aware of the specifications of your storage devices, hard drives are not identical commodities and there is quite a bit of performance difference depending on models, even from the same manufacturer.

 

Some hard drives (ignoring SSDs for now) can give you transfer rates of up to 150MB/s. However, that's an idealized situation. In more common situations, the transfer rates are much lower, and the amount that they drop is even more dependent on the drive design. Even among drives released at the same time the transfer rates in a gaming situation can vary by more than 100% between the lowest and highest drives. For instance, you'd see quite a difference in load times between the rather popular Western Digital Blue AAKS drive and the also-popular Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 drive, however, the differences to a buyer might not be evident.

 

Beyond that, things like fragmentation, directory structure, motherboard model/drivers, and even the physical location of the files on the disk can change the performance of the drive.

 

And none of that can be fixed or even affected (in any appreciable way) by a faster CPU.

 

Don't buy into these "techies" too much. They generally make a lot of assertions based upon numbers, but anecdotal evidence is more usual.

 

<eyeroll> Yes, don't listen to people with experience and training. Listen to novices and people who get their information from CNN.

[Eraan]

I dispute this, and although it's anecdotal evidence, it seems to suggest something contrary to your assertion. I've got a computer with a newer model i7, and it seems to load levels, run the patcher and login to the game slower than my Q9550 computer does. In terms of in game performance, they both run virtually identically. No issues with either, even in high population areas. IF you have a decent GFX card, plenty of RAM and a decent late series Core2 processor, you'll be fine. I had a Core2 Duo that ran great also.

 

Don't buy into these "techies" too much. They generally make a lot of assertions based upon numbers, but anecdotal evidence is more useful when making purchasing decisions, used alongside tech numbers. Just like movie critics. They say that Movie X isn't any good because of a certain set of criterion they have. If it fails that, they grade it poorly. It doesn't matter if it sells like crazy and people actually love it.

 

AS a side note, I noticed you referenced the E series, 8600. I'm reasonably certain this was the Core2 Duo I had. Ran the game fine. Again, anecdotal evidence...

It sounds more like your i7 has some 5400rpm "eco friendly" HDD. Honestly, everything from Sandy Bridge (i5 and better) and newer will smoke Core 2 architecture processors. I had Core 2 Duo E8400 before I upgraded to SB 2600K @ 4,3 GHz (now have 3770K @ 4,3 GHz though) and it's probably needless to say E8400 offered half the performance in many games. It also just couldn't cope when capturing gameplay video and in pure number crunching (video encoding) the speed difference was staggering. GTX 570 at that time was seriously bottlenecked by it. Obviously though, quad core Core 2 would have done better. You shouldn't underestimate the speed difference between dual and quad core unit these days.

 

This game isn't optimised at all for quad core CPUs, I have feeling that it's barely multi threaded judging by the cpu usage. This game also hates SLI, enabling it will only degrade performance. Not quite sure who to blame, NVIDIA, BioWare or both...