Is SWTOR CPU Or GPU Limited ?

[Dysehunter]

Did a little experiment today, I have an overclock of 1202/3206 on my 780 and 4.60GHZ on my 4770K and run with everything at max, 1920 x 1080 resolution and it is solid as a rock at 110 FPS.

 

Now I then underclocked my GPU to 731/2400 and didn't see a change in FPS at all.

 

So is SWTOR very well coded or is it CPU limited like WoW ?

Edited August 23, 2013 by Dysehunter

[morfius]

Any MMO is CPU limited due to large amount of players that need to be calculated by the engine.

GPU is only to give you shine, this game can be played well on any GPU above middle ground.

[Aries_cz]

Most, if not all MMOs are CPU limited, because you need to calculate several players on screen.

 

EDIT: Darn, late, this will teach me to refresh before answering one of my 20+ panels of topics

[Floix]

Did a little experiment today, I have an overclock of 1202/3206 on my 780 and 4.60GHZ on my 4770K and run with everything at max, 1920 x 1080 resolution and it is solid as a rock at 110 FPS.

 

Now I then underclocked my GPU to 731/2400 and didn't see a change in FPS at all.

 

So is SWTOR very well coded or is it CPU limited like WoW ?

 

What i experience myself is that overclocking CPU does not do well on this game, even with small increases of the cpu capacity. Seems like there are some issues in this game, that do not like this kind of performance tuning. I'd still expect it to be CPU limited, but i'm not sure

[Ephesia]

I have a FX 8350 at 4.6GHz and an overclocked HD 7970 to go with it. The game when I'm alone easily treads past 120+ fps when I'm alone, like when I'm in my personel starship. But go to Republic Fleet and you get dips to 40-50 fps with fps indicator being red clearly showing a processor bottleneck. In 16 man raids this can become even more dramatic with fps around 25-30 at times when there is a lot of stuff going on inbetween the fight.

 

So for MMO's we can pretty much ascertain that you need a strong CPU. AMD is slightly disadvantageous here due to the game not supporting all of it's cores, therefore I expect Intel i5 - i7 variants to do about 20 to 30% better.

[mmjarec]

Its limited by engine quality moreso than cpu or gpu cause no matter how awesome your system the bottlenecked engine will cause issues with more than a warzone worth of ppl

[Malastare]

So is SWTOR very well coded or is it CPU limited like WoW ?

 

I love this question. As if "Well Coded" means that you're GPU limited. For the moment, I'll put aside my annoyance at the people who like to judge coding quality while knowing nothing about good or bad code, and try to address the bigger misunderstanding:

 

As others have pointed out, MMOs generally put proportionally more stress on a CPU than a GPU. The issue at hand is that "MM" part of MMO. For every player on the screen, the CPU needs to keep updating/recalculating the position and current animation to apply. When you are in a warzone, your CPU needs to keep track of up to 15 other players and change things as trivial as the direction they are looking within milliseconds, based on a stream of data pouring in through your network interface.

 

Now, other people have commented about how CoD or MoH or TF2 handle thirty or more players. This is true, but the interactions with those players is less detailed than in an MMO. FPS-style games use a load of tricks generally not available for MMOs. Also, MMOs generally have more animations, more complex animations, more open environments, more abilities to use/animate... it goes on. And because these things need to change at a moments notice, you can't really optimize them the way a single-person game might.

[Malastare]

What i experience myself is that overclocking CPU does not do well on this game, even with small increases of the cpu capacity. Seems like there are some issues in this game, that do not like this kind of performance tuning.

 

This is simply wrong. The game doesn't care about small amounts of overclocking. The game isn't even aware of whether you're overclocking or not.

 

Furthermore: I (and loads of other people) are running on CPUs that are overclocked from 3.3/3.4GHz (stock) to 4.5GHz (The oh-so-popular Sandy Bridge K Overclock). That is an overclock of 32%, which is pretty massive for modern CPUs. And the game is just fine with it. A large number of video cards are sold with factory overclocks. SWTOR is fine with those, two. The last couple generations of Intel chips actually do their own dynamic overclocking based on core load. SWTOR is fine with that, too.

 

So, no: SWTOR is fine with that sort of tuning.

 

Of course, lots of novice overclockers run into problems when they apply overclocks without thinking. If you bump up the speed of a CPU (especially if you need to increase Vcore or other voltages) then your CPU is going go be generating more heat. If your system can't manage the heat well, then you end up in situations where the GPU (or in severe situations: the CPU) starts throttling because of the heat. In other cases, people try to overclock chips that just don't take overclocks well. Or they overclock a CPU on a crappy motherboard, or a cheap PSU. And when it fails they blame their OS, or some game.

[Quraswren]

SWTOR is massively CPU dependent. Most middle ground and above GPU's can handle this game but a middle ground CPU will be a bottleneck to SWTOR sending your frames into the single digits.

 

I've built 3 PC's recently with various internals but the main thing I noticed is that even with a great motherboard, RAM and GPU the CPU has been the hold up in every case when running SWTOR.

 

All 3 PC's can run LOTRO, DCUO, Marvel heroes, GW2 and TSW and do so with great frame rates.

 

Running SWTOR on them and fight 1, 3 pack of mobs and the frames would plummet to 12 FPS and lower from about 25 and thats with settings at medium or lower, no shadows or AA.

[Malastare]

AMD is slightly disadvantageous here due to the game not supporting all of it's cores, therefore I expect Intel i5 - i7 variants to do about 20 to 30% better.

 

To be clear: The game doesn't use all the cores on an i5 or i7, either. It's not multi-core support that keeps AMD from having decent performance in SWTOR and virtually every other game. The issue with the AMD processors is that they simply have noticeably lower performance than the recent Intel processors. This is partly an architectural issue, as the cores used by AMD simply cannot perform nearly as well as Intel's. Even then, there don't seem to be many practical situations where an 8-core Bulldozer chip would outperform a four-core Sandy Bridge chip. Piledriver (new AMD line) looks to be better, but it's still not going to outperform the Intel chips on the majority of games or other situations.

[Floix]

This is simply wrong. The game doesn't care about small amounts of overclocking. The game isn't even aware of whether you're overclocking or not.

 

Well, i'd just be as rude as you are. This is simply wrong :-)

 

I did experience this on my machine, which has no heat problem at all even if i max out overclocking. The thing is, increasing CPU speed by a small amount, decreases the performance on my machine. The more I overclock the more likely the game will crash. This fact only applies to this specify game, any other game is fine with hat. Might be right, that your cpu does not have this issue, but this happened here and is not simply wrong.

 

I might point out to a related topic, Windows 8 has a bug with overclocked CPUs, as their time calculation seems to be based on the cpu frequency. This is of course an OS, with much more priviliged access to your hardware, but it's not that simple, that the game is not aware of your system.

[oaceen]

So is SWTOR very well coded or is it CPU limited like WoW ?

 

i think you'll find very few people who would call SWTOR 'very well coded'

[morfius]

OC is not so simple, there is no only CPU in your PC...

Low cost or bad design MB would give you pretty big headache if you try to OC.

Low power/quality PSU will make your PC unreliable when OC.

Messed OS could crash or became unreliable when you OC.

Bad/buggy driver may show itself when you OC.

& so on.

Heat is just most obvious issue, but not only one.

[Andryah]

SWTOR is massively CPU dependent. Most middle ground and above GPU's can handle this game but a middle ground CPU will be a bottleneck to SWTOR sending your frames into the single digits.

 

Partly true and partly false. I guess it depends on where you set your performance goal and what CPU/GPU you are using.

 

The fps indicator that you can activate in the client.. shows red if you are GPU limited and green if you are CPU limited.

 

On my system (which is about 2 years old and has a top end CPU for the time and a mid range GPU) is almost always GPU bound. The exception being on the log-in screen or when loading an instance. Further... on my system, the load on the CPU never goes above 35% and it runs consistently at 30-40fps. Interestingly.. I rarely see wide fps variations either.. which leads me to believe that people with very high end machines are in fact struggling with CPU throttling leading to their performance swings. Which may well explain why some mid-range systems actually perform better over all.

 

There are also server side throttlings that none of us can do anything about.

 

Like many things with this game.. blanket statements about performance are generally false generalizations.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Andryah

[morfius]

SWTOR is massively CPU dependent. Most middle ground and above GPU's can handle this game but a middle ground CPU will be a bottleneck to SWTOR sending your frames into the single digits.

 

I've built 3 PC's recently with various internals but the main thing I noticed is that even with a great motherboard, RAM and GPU the CPU has been the hold up in every case when running SWTOR.

 

All 3 PC's can run LOTRO, DCUO, Marvel heroes, GW2 and TSW and do so with great frame rates.

 

Running SWTOR on them and fight 1, 3 pack of mobs and the frames would plummet to 12 FPS and lower from about 25 and thats with settings at medium or lower, no shadows or AA.

 

If Core duo on 3.1 is not bellow middle ground ... I have no word.

Game runs smoothly, 16 man OPS - above 30 FPS.

Only if there is more than 30 - 40 players goes bellow 25 FPS.

So there is something you miss in your PCs - software or hardware.

[Dysehunter]

I have a FX 8350 at 4.6GHz and an overclocked HD 7970 to go with it. The game when I'm alone easily treads past 120+ fps when I'm alone, like when I'm in my personel starship. But go to Republic Fleet and you get dips to 40-50 fps with fps indicator being red clearly showing a processor bottleneck. In 16 man raids this can become even more dramatic with fps around 25-30 at times when there is a lot of stuff going on inbetween the fight.

 

So for MMO's we can pretty much ascertain that you need a strong CPU. AMD is slightly disadvantageous here due to the game not supporting all of it's cores, therefore I expect Intel i5 - i7 variants to do about 20 to 30% better.

 

Are you sure on 120fps as I read the game has a hard coded cap of roughly 112 fps so no matter how good your hardware is anything over 112 is not possible.

[Malastare]

I did experience this on my machine, which has no heat problem at all even if i max out overclocking. The thing is, increasing CPU speed by a small amount, decreases the performance on my machine. The more I overclock the more likely the game will crash.

 

If you see in increase in game (or full system) crashes after adjusting your overclock, then the problem is almost always with your hardware. I'll assume that you ran an hour-or-so memtest86 on the system after your overclock, yes? And of course you ran a stress test for at least 30m to ensure a stable overclock. Right? You didn't skip those steps, did you?

 

Because it sounds a lot like you've got an unstable overclock. I'll take your word that its not overheating. That would simply mean that you either need more voltage, or that your motherboard isn't handling that overclock gracefully... or that you bought a cheap/bad PSU that has too much ripple on its 12v line. No matter what the cause, if you change your clock speed and the game starts crashing, the problem is not in the game, its in your hardware... or the person setting that hardware up.

 

I might point out to a related topic, Windows 8 has a bug with overclocked CPUs, as their time calculation seems to be based on the cpu frequency.

 

No.

 

I'm no Win8 fan, but if you're going to report bugs like this, then you have a responsibility to be accurate (and yes, I hate it when the media does this, too).

 

Windows 8 does not have a bug with overclocked CPUs.

 

That's as accurate as saying that Florida has a problem with malaria. Windows 8 has a bug that affects systems which have their BCLK adjusted via-software after booting. The vast majority of overclocking is done via BIOS/UEFI, and thus... doesn't trigger the bug. Of the overclocking that is done via software, the vast majority is done by adjusting the multiplier, not the BCLK, and thus... doesn't trigger the bug. In fact, even among the overclocking crowd, BCLK overclocking is frowned upon, because of its negative effects on stability with current-gen hardware. So, the end result here is that the number of people who are actually affected by this bug are very, very small, and almost exclusive to very technical benchmarking situations or the odd cybersport of overclocking. Very, very few ordinary users --even assuming those users are gamers-- are going to have a chance of being affected by this bug.

[Kilora]

its in your hardware... or the person setting that hardware up.

 

Based on many things, this certainly appears to be a PEBKAC issue, and I don't know why you aren't taking it more seriously!

 

[paowee]

I am using a phenom X4 ~3ghz (something..) amd processor, 4gb ram and radeon 6700 and i get 15 FPS in 16-man raids. Please help! I do not know which one to ugprade first. I was thinking of getting a gtx66ti but after reading this... should i stick to my videocard and maybe get a new processor instead?

 

Thanks,

paowee

[chuixupu]

I am using a phenom X4 ~3ghz (something..) amd processor, 4gb ram and radeon 6700 and i get 15 FPS in 16-man raids. Please help! I do not know which one to ugprade first. I was thinking of getting a gtx66ti but after reading this... should i stick to my videocard and maybe get a new processor instead?

 

Thanks,

paowee

 

I don't know a lot about AMD and how that compares to i5-i7. This might be good for comparing your CPU http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

 

4gb RAM sounds a bit low, though.

 

Personally, I have an i5-2500k and a Geoforce 650ti. and my FPS is usually decent, even in 16-man. A friend of mine in the guild just upgraded his video card, might have been the one you mentioned, but it had zero effect on his FPS because his CPU is crap (just a dual core).

[paowee]

I don't know a lot about AMD and how that compares to i5-i7. This might be good for comparing your CPU http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

 

4gb RAM sounds a bit low, though.

 

Personally, I have an i5-2500k and a Geoforce 650ti. and my FPS is usually decent, even in 16-man. A friend of mine in the guild just upgraded his video card, might have been the one you mentioned, but it had zero effect on his FPS because his CPU is crap (just a dual core).

 

650ti! That is like just one tier below 660ti! Can you run the game in 1920 res, all on high with bloom, AA and shadows on? I caught a video / glimpse of SWTOR in max settings and boy it looks beautiful (if only one's PC can handle ti).

[paowee]

Personally, I have an i5-2500k and a Geoforce 650ti. and my FPS is usually decent, even in 16-man. A friend of mine in the guild just upgraded his video card, might have been the one you mentioned, but it had zero effect on his FPS because his CPU is crap (just a dual core).

 

Thanks for the link. I'm looking at it and i just have a quick question. you are using it-2500k. Does the 2500k stand for the text in red or the one in yellow? (Ghz)

 

Intel Core i5-3330S @ 2.70GHz

Edited August 23, 2013 by paowee

[chuixupu]

I typically have shadows on low in instances, I don't trust those shadows....next time I do a 16-man I'll turn everything up and see exactly what my FPS is. There are some fights where they spike down a bit (there's a lot of effects with the sandstorm on Dash'rood and everyone's bunched up AOE'ing). I don't recall it normally being choppy, though.

 

Thanks for the link. I'm looking at it and i just have a quick question. you are using it-2500k. Does the 2500k stand for the text in red or the one in yellow? (Ghz)

 

Intel Core i5-3330S @ 2.70GHz

 

I assume red....the actual listing on my computer is Intel i5-2500k @ 3.30 GHz

Edited August 23, 2013 by chuixupu

[Hockaday]

Thanks for the link. I'm looking at it and i just have a quick question. you are using it-2500k. Does the 2500k stand for the text in red or the one in yellow? (Ghz)

 

Intel Core i5-3330S @ 2.70GHz

 

Red. I use an i5 2500k as well. it's 3.3 ghz with 3.7 turbo boost. Mine gets close to 3.8 while running SW:TOR. Stock speeds.

Edited August 23, 2013 by Hockaday

[paowee]

Ok thanks. i'll ahve to wait to get home to see which amd phenom x4 i got. i just want to upgrade so i can see this game with everything on and max at 1920. i thought a 660ti and 8gb ram would do it but now i'm concerned about my processor after reading this thread -_- Edited August 23, 2013 by paowee