General Performance Issues

[Hessen]

General Gripe:

 

• I have a PC with hardware, software and optimisation that I feel should achieve a smooth frame-rate in this game whilst still enjoying good quality graphics. This includes a stable and decent speed internet connection.
  
• For a few months now I have been continually disappointed with the level of performance I am getting from the game.
  
• I have little issue with any other single player game (solo or online), or other MMOs of similar graphics quality (E.g. Lotro)
  

 

 

Some specifics:

 

• Walking around fleet I will not stay at a steady 60fps, it will quite often drop to 30 and that's before I get on to any planet that has a bit of scenery.
  
• Doing operations needs me to drop all graphics to their lowest.
  
• General server lag on a regular basis, skills not firing, even doing a parse on my personal ship dummy has spikes of server lag during the day/evening
  
• Turning off nameplates and shadows helps a lot in all circumstances, turning down tree and grass quality helps on some planets, turning everything on low helps in all circumstances but still doesn't give a smooth FPS and doesn't address server lag issues
  

 

 

Tech Specs:

 

• I'm running an i7-2600k @ 4.8Ghz, AMD Radeon 6970, 16GB of Corsair 1600mhz RAM, OCZ Agility 3 SSD
  
• I'm running on Windows7 64 bit, and I have no other applications running whilst SWTOR is open (apart from Teamspeak during raids) Drivers are all up to date.
  
• I'm on Sky Broadband - 16mb/s and my average ms is about 60.
  

 

Edited September 23, 2013 by Hessen

[rkjunior]

It's your video card. It's a very graphics-intensive game... Even with my i7-3770k and GTX660Ti FTW+ 3GB, I get slowdowns in exactly the same spots you do. I rarely never drop below 36fps but swapping out the video card will help... While you feel it may be adequate, reading some reviews of it had it having trouble with games in 1920x1080... Turn of AA and see if that helps..

[Alec_Fortescue]

Do I need a Titan to play 16 man hard modes on maxed out graphics and appropriate fps? Or will at least 760 do? I just can't believe what it's like with this game. Graphic quality does not even justify the demands. >_> Edited September 23, 2013 by Alec_Fortescue

[Count_Haake]

It's not graphics intensive. It's just badly optimised with a sub-par engine.

[Arkerus]

The fleet will not stay at 60FPS...so don't worry about it. It doesn't for anyone. If you insist, then transfer to fleet 2 or fleet 3 where you will get less stutter due to less video/network pop-in.

 

Just enjoy the game and understand the engine has some issues.

[captpickles]

General Gripe:

• I have a PC with hardware, software and optimisation that I feel should achieve a smooth frame-rate in this game whilst still enjoying good quality graphics. This includes a stable and decent speed internet connection.
  
• For a few months now I have been continually disappointed with the level of performance I am getting from the game.
  
• I have little issue with any other single player game (solo or online), or other MMOs of similar graphics quality (E.g. Lotro)
  

 

Some specifics:

• Walking around fleet I will not stay at a steady 60fps, it will quite often drop to 30 and that's before I get on to any planet that has a bit of scenery.
  
• Doing operations needs me to drop all graphics to their lowest.
  
• General server lag on a regular basis, skills not firing, even doing a parse on my personal ship dummy has spikes of server lag during the day/evening
  
• Turning off nameplates and shadows helps a lot in all circumstances, turning down tree and grass quality helps on some planets, turning everything on low helps in all circumstances but still doesn't give a smooth FPS and doesn't address server lag issues
  

 

Tech Specs:

• I'm running an i7-2600k @ 4.8Ghz, AMD Radeon 6970, 16GB of Corsair 1600mhz RAM, OCZ Agility 3 SSD
  
• I'm running on Windows7 64 bit, and I have no other applications running whilst SWTOR is open (apart from Teamspeak during raids) Drivers are all up to date.
  
• I'm on Sky Broadband - 16mb/s and my average ms is about 60.
  

 

There is almost nothing you can do to solve this. even with 16 gigs of my own ram running the mod to put most of the player textures in a ram-drive fleet is *AWFUL* .

 

Reason ? the engine dynamically loads and drops player textures and creature textures and environmental texture to save on ram. It seems to me it drops them from ram pretty quickly after they are not view-able and will force a disk reload after they become view-able again.

 

what you see when it lag spikes.. is disk I/o... not a speed issue. but a i/o spike and the engine loading, uncompressing and porting textures to ram.

 

there is nothing you can do but get 32gigs of ram and doing a "load all" in swtor-unleashed.

Edited September 23, 2013 by captpickles

[Gomla]

It's your video card. It's a very graphics-intensive game..

 

It's really not, it's poorly optimised on an outdated engine.

 

And no, before someone pounces, i'm not "hating" on the game but I do dislike the engine it's built on.

 

Much the same as I curse havok engines. Some people just don't like certain engines and HeroEngine is one I just don't like.

[mmjarec]

It has nothing to do with high end specs that should run the game fine and everything to do with the horrible engine. Booware apologizers are always quick to blame your rig even if its the best and can run every newer game flawlessly

[Andryah]

General Gripe:

• I have a PC with hardware, software and optimisation that I feel should achieve a smooth frame-rate in this game whilst still enjoying good quality graphics. This includes a stable and decent speed internet connection.
  
• For a few months now I have been continually disappointed with the level of performance I am getting from the game.
  
• I have little issue with any other single player game (solo or online), or other MMOs of similar graphics quality (E.g. Lotro)
  

 

Some specifics:

• Walking around fleet I will not stay at a steady 60fps, it will quite often drop to 30 and that's before I get on to any planet that has a bit of scenery.
  
• Doing operations needs me to drop all graphics to their lowest.
  
• General server lag on a regular basis, skills not firing, even doing a parse on my personal ship dummy has spikes of server lag during the day/evening
  
• Turning off nameplates and shadows helps a lot in all circumstances, turning down tree and grass quality helps on some planets, turning everything on low helps in all circumstances but still doesn't give a smooth FPS and doesn't address server lag issues
  

 

Tech Specs:

• I'm running an i7-2600k @ 4.8Ghz, AMD Radeon 6970, 16GB of Corsair 1600mhz RAM, OCZ Agility 3 SSD
  
• I'm running on Windows7 64 bit, and I have no other applications running whilst SWTOR is open (apart from Teamspeak during raids) Drivers are all up to date.
  
• I'm on Sky Broadband - 16mb/s and my average ms is about 60.
  

 

You did not say what graphics settings in game you have selected. Please share that, as that is where real improvements lay. Also, how much video memory? The game likes a lot of video memory IMO.

 

You have plenty of machine, so that's not it. The paradox of this MMO vs many other games is that it is more optimized (for whatever reason) for lower end machines, with poor headroom for high end hardware to "go cheetah".

 

I play this game fine on a two year old laptop (Asus RoG) that has much lower graphics power then your rig. All I had to do was disable shadows and I can run 25-60 on fleet and generally 40+ out on planets. Which is not 60fps.. but who the hell needs 60fps for an MMO? 30 is fine IMO. [my laptop is always frame limited on the graphics, not he processor, which is to be expected.]

Edited September 23, 2013 by Andryah

[captpickles]

You did not say what graphics settings in game you have selected. Please share that, as that is where real improvements lay. Also, how much video memory? The game likes a lot of video memory IMO.

 

You have plenty of machine, so that's not it. The paradox of this MMO vs many other games is that it is more optimized (for whatever reason) for lower end machines, with poor headroom for high end hardware to "go cheetah".

 

I play this game fine on a two year old laptop (Asus RoG) that has much lower graphics power then your rig. All I had to do was disable shadows and I can run 25-60 on fleet and generally 40+ out on planets. Which is not 60fps.. but who the hell needs 60fps for an MMO? 30 is fine IMO. [my laptop is always frame limited on the graphics, not he processor, which is to be expected.]

 

+1 / agree

shadows, lower anti-aliasing, lower player details will help fleet.

[Hessen]

You did not say what graphics settings in game you have selected. Please share that, as that is where real improvements lay. Also, how much video memory? The game likes a lot of video memory IMO.

 

You have plenty of machine, so that's not it. The paradox of this MMO vs many other games is that it is more optimized (for whatever reason) for lower end machines, with poor headroom for high end hardware to "go cheetah".

 

I play this game fine on a two year old laptop (Asus RoG) that has much lower graphics power then your rig. All I had to do was disable shadows and I can run 25-60 on fleet and generally 40+ out on planets. Which is not 60fps.. but who the hell needs 60fps for an MMO? 30 is fine IMO. [my laptop is always frame limited on the graphics, not he processor, which is to be expected.]

 

I'm sorry but in this day and age, but when running on a £1500 PC that's way over the minimum and recommended requirements 30 is not fine. 30 is completely unacceptable when far more graphic intensive games run at 60. 30 is laggy and unresponsive.

 

I'm running 1920x1080 resolution with everything on high. As I said, I get performance improvements from disabling shadows, AA and nameplates. But still not to the standard I expect.

 

I don't believe I have unrealistic expectations (again based on similar performance in other games both single player, online and MMOs).

[captpickles]

I'm sorry but in this day and age, but when running on a £1500 PC that's way over the minimum and recommended requirements 30 is not fine. 30 is completely unacceptable when far more graphic intensive games run at 60. 30 is laggy and unresponsive.

 

I'm running 1920x1080 resolution with everything on high. As I said, I get performance improvements from disabling shadows, AA and nameplates. But still not to the standard I expect.

 

I don't believe I have unrealistic expectations (again based on similar performance in other games both single player, online and MMOs).

 

your argument is with dev friend. nothing/no-one else can fix the engine or change how it loads and unloads textures from disk to memory.

[Andryah]

I'm sorry but in this day and age, but when running on a £1500 PC that's way over the minimum and recommended requirements 30 is not fine. 30 is completely unacceptable when far more graphic intensive games run at 60. 30 is laggy and unresponsive.

 

I'm running 1920x1080 resolution with everything on high. As I said, I get performance improvements from disabling shadows, AA and nameplates. But still not to the standard I expect.

 

I don't believe I have unrealistic expectations (again based on similar performance in other games both single player, online and MMOs).

 

You don't buy a PC to optimize it for one game. You pay the money you do for a PC for the total package performance against the suite of games you play.

 

You are chasing numbers. Which is fine.. if that is more important to you then actually playing the game. Personally, I want to play the game, not epeen my hardware.

 

15fps is generally unacceptable to most players for MMO play

30fps is generally acceptable to most players for MMO play

Some players demand 100fps for their MMO, why.. I have no idea.

 

more fps is not bad, but it's also diminishing returns beyond 30 for an MMO.

 

Generally, players require more fps for acceptable play for twitchy shooter games with very fast movements and transitions of distance in them.

 

http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

 

If you just want to rant that the game is not optimized to take advantage of the headroom in performance offered by the hardware.. have fun. I did not disagree with this.. in fact I pointed it out. My point is that it offers almost no additional play value for the player... it just makes the player feel better for having invested in more hardware then the game needs to play it.

[Hessen]

You don't buy a PC to optimize it for one game. You pay the money you do for a PC for the total package performance against the suite of games you play.

 

You are chasing numbers. Which is fine.. if that is more important to you then actually playing the game. Personally, I want to play the game, not epeen my hardware.

 

15fps is generally unacceptable to most players for MMO play

30fps is generally acceptable to most players for MMO play

Some players demand 100fps for their MMO, why.. I have no idea.

 

more fps is not bad, but it's also diminishing returns beyond 30 for an MMO.

 

Generally, players require more fps for acceptable play for twitchy shooter games with very fast movements and transitions of distance in them.

 

http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

 

If you just want to rant that the game is not optimized to take advantage of the headroom in performance offered by the hardware.. have fun. I did not disagree with this.. in fact I pointed it out. My point is that it offers almost no additional play value for the player... it just makes the player feel better for having invested in more hardware then the game needs to play it.

 

So in short, you think my expectations are unrealistic and I should be happy with FPS that varies between 30-60 because it's an MMO. And me having expectations of having 60 FPS (similar to practically every other modern game including MMOs that I own) is me just wanting to epeen.

 

*hearty chuckle*

 

Also given your recent rantings in other threads about people posting and speaking on behalf of others, you might want to stay away from lines such as "30fps is generally acceptable to most players for MMO play"

Edited September 23, 2013 by Hessen

[Andryah]

So in short, you think my expectations are unrealistic and I should be happy with FPS that varies between 30-60 because it's an MMO. And me having expectations of having 60 FPS (similar to practically every other modern game including MMOs that I own) is me just wanting to epeen.

 

*hearty chuckle*

 

No, in short ----> you spent more money for more hardware then the game can/will take advantage of and you are upset about that choice on your part IMO.

 

You are free to have any expectations you like. I'm free to disagree with them and explain why.

 

Simply put.. if you expect and must have more fps then you get... what? what are you going to do about it?

 

Also given your recent rantings in other threads about people posting and speaking on behalf of others, you might want to stay away from lines such as "30fps is generally acceptable to most players for MMO play"

 

The difference being... there is ample scientific evidence that supports 30fps being acceptable for playing an MMO for most players. Of course we always have special people who perceive themselves better then others and demand more for being better.

Edited September 23, 2013 by Andryah

[Hessen]

No, in short ----> you spent more money for more hardware then the game can/will take advantage of and you are upset about that choice on your part IMO.

 

You are free to have any expectations you like. I'm free to disagree with them and explain why.

 

Simply put.. if you expect and must have more fps then you get... what? what are you going to do about it?

 

 

 

The difference being... there is ample scientific evidence that supports 30fps being acceptable for playing an MMO for most players. Of course we always have special people who perceive themselves better then others and demand more for being better.

 

My points still stand, this post doesn't argue against any of it. There isn't scientific evidence that an MMO base is happy with varying levels of FPS. You can speak for yourself, and only yourself if that's what you are happy with.

 

You are disagreeing with my expectations (despite me justifying the validity of them by comparison to other games).

 

And you are still trying to make my point look like I'm some epeen person who bought way over the odds just to try and get too much out of a game that doesn't support it.

[Andryah]

There isn't scientific evidence that an MMO base is happy with varying levels of FPS. You can speak for yourself, and only yourself if that's what you are happy with.

 

Actually, there is. There has been a good amount of research on the topic, both for MMOs and for fps shooters.

 

And while some players are content with frame rates below 30 in an MMO, they are very much in the minority. By the same token, players that demand/require a frame rate greater then 30fps is also a minority of players. And to summarize the results of this research ------ most (not all, but most) players of MMOs are quite happy with the play performance presented by 30fps. This same research also shows that most players are more concerned about frame rate variations then average frame rates. Frame rates peaking and dipping all over the place is more noticeable and more of an issue in player perception then average frame rate.... even if the range of peaks/dips never goes below 60fps.

 

FPS shooters generally require closer to 60fps because of the rapid panning and movement that drives core game play.

 

As for you.. again.. you made it clear that your issue is that you spent a lot of money on a PC and this game does not use the headroom your rig offers. That's all about you and your wallet and your perceptions on value for your wallet, rather then any actual statement of what is acceptable frame rate (for play purposes).

 

You are presenting a numbers based complaint. Nothing more, nothing less. Thing is.. other games will use the headroom you paid for in your rig.. so I'm not sure why you are so bent about it that this game does not.

Edited September 23, 2013 by Andryah

[Hessen]

Again you're beating the same drum with nothing new to add. You still only have your opinion that 30FPS is fine for gaming. You still don't speak for anyone else, but bless you for trying.

 

In this day and age, and given the performance I get from other MMOs and other games, I disagree.

Edited September 23, 2013 by Hessen

[gorstram]

Again you're beating the same drum with nothing new to add. You still only have your opinion that 30FPS is fine for gaming. You still don't speak for anyone else, but bless you for trying.

 

In this day and age, and given the performance I get from other MMOs and other games, I disagree.

 

OP, I understand your frustration, but here is something you should keep in mind. The human eye cannot differentiate anything over 35 frames per second. Or put more simply, the human eye views anything past 35 frames per second as fluid motion. The reason why card manufacturers push their FPS rates so high, is so they can keep at least 35 frames per second under the most demanding situations. If you're able to maintain this figure while doing heavy PvP, 16 man ops, etc, then your machine is working at a level on par with your biological machinery.

 

Should you expect more performance? Sure, but can BW deliver it? No. I've been here since Beta, and they've optimized this game about as much as it's going to get. A total game engine overhaul would be required to optimize it anymore, and that's not something we'll ever see in this game's lifetime. (I'm sure of it).

[ZETA_SCORPII]

I still enjoy this game when it drops below 60 fps but only because I'm a fanboy, anything less nowadays with a decent machine is unacceptable IMO.

[gorstram]

I still enjoy this game when it drops below 60 fps but only because I'm a fanboy, anything less nowadays with a decent machine is unacceptable IMO.

 

Unless you had netgraph up (shift-ctrl-f), you wouldn't even know if you dipped below 60, you would only know if you dipped below 30-35 frames per second. That's when the eye can pick up the tearing in the motion. Past 35, and you can't tell the difference. You meat betrays you, young Zeta_Scorpii.

[cashogy_reborn]

60 FPS is generally the golden number, as that is the most commonly used refresh rate for monitors (>60 FPS on a 60hz monitor looks the same as 60hz, hence the point of v-sync).

 

There is a huge difference between 60 and 30 and below. At 60 things are completely smooth. At 30 things are generally smooth but there is noticeable jitter and stuttering. Below 30 is constant stuttering.

 

The rig I play on runs BF3 @ 6040x1080 (triple monitor res) on Ultra at 35 FPS. I turn the general graphics settings down to medium to achieve an almost constant 60 FPS (will drop to ~45 in super crazy action).

 

When I play SWTOR @ 1920x1080 (I use windowed mode, I like having browser, music player, etc on the other monitors), I usually have at least 60 FPS outside of Warzones. In Warzones tho, it is entirely common to drop to 40-30 FPS. This is with the graphics set to max; setting them to the lowest settings increases that FPS minimum by ~15%.

 

So I can play BF3 on Ultra at an insane resolution at 35 FPS, but for some reason will see 35 FPS all too often at 1920x1080 in SWTOR. BF3 is immensely more demanding on both CPU and GPU.

 

SWTOR has terrible hardware optimization. In almost 2 years of playing this game, I dont think I have ever seen my CPU break 40% usage in this game. Also, something I have noticed more of late, is that my GPUs will go to >90% load during periods of inaction (the pre-game part of WZs is where I notice this the most), but as soon as I enter combat the GPU usage will drop to ~70-80% (sometimes even lower). Bottomline, this game just has atrocious optimization.

Edited September 24, 2013 by cashogy_reborn

[Groncho]

some people haz PERCEPTION PROBLEMS

10 FPS is acceptable due to the TONS of scientific evidence (lol) that i know exists somewhere in someplace

move along

[Marb]

Unless you had netgraph up (shift-ctrl-f), you wouldn't even know if you dipped below 60, you would only know if you dipped below 30-35 frames per second. That's when the eye can pick up the tearing in the motion. Past 35, and you can't tell the difference. You meat betrays you, young Zeta_Scorpii.

 

Utterly false, the human eye can perceive differences in fps well above 30. This is a misconception going back to the decision to run with the 24fps limit for films.

 

Technically, the eye doesn't have an fps "limit" to how many frames it can perceive, because the human eye doesn't see "in frames". http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/ If you can't perceive differences in these examples, you have brain damage.

Edited September 24, 2013 by Marb

[-Silver-]

It's mainly GPU dependent (especially shadows). Nameplates are also a big performance hit, because for some reason the engine can't display text well. It's the main reason we don't have and (sorry to those of you still hoping) never will have chat bubbles. The game will implode in populated areas like the Fleet.

 

Some tricks I applied to my game for improvements in these two areas:

 

1) With SWTOR running, open your task manager and set the priority for both swtor.exe programs to high.

2) In Nvidia control panel (I'm sure there's an AMD equivalent) change the maximum frames to render ahead to 1.

 

It doesn't do much to help with framerate, but it's almost completely eliminated micro stutter for me, so the whole game feels a lot smoother. I play with a 2GB GTX 560 Ti (two of them in SLI) and get between 30-60 fps. Populated areas bring me down to the 30s. It was never the framerate that annoyed me much, but the stutter. Hope this helps