Should I be able to run this with no FPS lag?

[Paredon]

So I've been having some serious FPS drops in Warzones (15-20 fps) and other high traffic areas. (places with a lot of other players) I have turned the graphics down to the lowest settings - I can play at 60 fps at the highest settings outside of high traffic areas - and still get fps drops into the low 20's.

 

So here are my specs:

 

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 (3.4)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8 GB ( 2 x 4 GB ) DDR3 1600 MHz (9-9-9-24)

PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W Modular

 

This is enough to play most modern games at high setting at or above 60 fps without a problem. So what is the problem here?

[BuriDogshin]

Some games do a lot more in the CPU than others, and are very sensitive to the single-thread performance of the CPU. SWTOR is one of them, IIRC. So the issue may be your Phenom II CPU, none of which have good single-thread performance compared to the 3.4 GHz Intel Core i5-3570K that I run, much less faster Intel CPUs.

 

According to Passmark, your Phenom II X4 965 has only 60% of the single-thread performance of my Core i5-3570K CPU, even though they have the same clock speed. Heck, even a $120 Core-i3 has 50% better single-thread performance at 3.4 GHz than your Phenom II X4 965. Sorry.

 

If you upgrade, which of course requires a motherboard upgrade too since just using a faster AMD chip will not help much, consider the new unlocked Anniversary Edition Pentium processors Intel released recently. They are cheap and overclock nicely. Most of the PC hardware sites have published very positive reviews. For a single-thread game like SWTOR, it may be just the ticket.

Edited July 24, 2014 by BuriDogshin

[Paredon]

Thank you for the detailed answer. That was the only thing I thought the problem might be and I definitely appreciate the confirmation. Needless to say I'll be saving up for a new MoBo and Intel CPU.

[Chowley]

So I've been having some serious FPS drops in Warzones (15-20 fps) and other high traffic areas. (places with a lot of other players) I have turned the graphics down to the lowest settings - I can play at 60 fps at the highest settings outside of high traffic areas - and still get fps drops into the low 20's.

 

So here are my specs:

 

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 (3.4)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8 GB ( 2 x 4 GB ) DDR3 1600 MHz (9-9-9-24)

PSU: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W Modular

 

This is enough to play most modern games at high setting at or above 60 fps without a problem. So what is the problem here?

 

I have a 965 myself and to be honest i run the game absolutely fine 90% of the time. The game has fairly awful optimisation though, so i think no matter what your processor there will be times when the FPS will grind to a halt from what i have read on reddit about this subject.

[Paredon]

I'll be testing some other MMO's to see if the problem persists in those as well, as this is the only MMORPG I have tried on this computer.

[TX_Angel]

CPU power does wonders for this game...

 

AMD CPUs are fine for most games, I don't knock AMD, I use their video cards and am mostly happy with them (drives remain an issue, but NVidia has their issues too).

 

That being said, for a game like SWTOR, you just can't beat the crushing single thread power of the Intel chips.

 

I'm running an Intel i7 4770k and also using DDR3-2400 (rated for that, not overclocked), and frankly everything is smooth as silk, even 16 person ops and warzones.

 

Graphics are turned up to the max for the most part (grass and trees off, personal reasons).

 

Many of my guildies turn the graphics down during ops to keep FPS manageable, but many of them play on older machines or worse, laptops, so I understand why.