Gaming Rig Advice?

[Rijii]

http://i.imgur.com/37a94hc.png <-- My current build.

Hey guys! Just a few questions on my PC, my end game is to be able to run Ultra in any scenario meaning Raids Warzones or anything. At the moment, I can run Ultra walking around but when I get into a fight or run into a warzone? I have to switch it to medium or high, preferably medium. I'm not sure what to upgrade in this Rig to achieve that. Please let me know if more information is needed, or if yall got suggestions drop them down there! I appreciate it everyone!

[Alec_Fortescue]

Overclocking your cpu to 4.2 or 4.5 ghz should help in SWTOR. When I switched gpu to gtx 780 ti from r9 290 it barely made any fps difference, maybe 1 or 2? This game is cpu-heavy. Edited June 25, 2015 by Alec_Fortescue

[Rijii]

There an overclock guide or something? I heard that's pc breaking. o.o

[Anesya]

http://tinypic.com/r/a4l7yw/8 Is my rig and I can run swtor on high graphics fine.

[ALaggyGrunt]

Upgrading to Vishera (FX-8370 or 6350) would help a little. Be sure your motherboard can support them first. If you have the choice, though, sending that computer back and getting an Intel PC would be a better idea. The number one bottleneck is single-threaded CPU performance, which AMD's Bulldozer and Piledriver architectures are bad at.

 

Be very careful overclocking: besides overheating things, you might get those cute little single-bit errors in weird places which can really mess things up. My CPU (Phenom II x6 1090T) came with zero headroom: my motherboard's voltage controls could only be adjusted up to 1.3V by hand, and my CPU frequency scaled to 1.4V at max clock. Bumping to 3.4 GHz caused it to fail Prime95 very quickly, and 3.3 GHz caused failure after a few successful tests.

 

Run Prime95 for a while to make sure your CPU isn't doing this, especially if you trust this computer with important things like photos- if you lose them, you can't buy new ones off the shelf.

[CheaterLL]

Currently there is no viable rig that can run SWTOR 16man operations or warzones on High or Ultra with >30 FPS. Viable meaning under 5000$. You could probably do it with a dual-Xeon system and high-end graphics cards but you're well over 10000$ with that.

 

Currently I have an AMD FX-9590 (8 cores @ 4.7GHz), a GTX 970 OC and 24Gig RAM and I can run SWTOR on High at 15-25FPS in 16man Ravagers/ToS.

[Rijii]

Right, I think I'll try my hand at an Overclock. I'm absolutely clueless and I've been reading, it seems a tad risky but I'm willing. Can someone send me a guide they recommend perhaps so I don't screw up?

[kingshaneo]

Right, I think I'll try my hand at an Overclock. I'm absolutely clueless and I've been reading, it seems a tad risky but I'm willing. Can someone send me a guide they recommend perhaps so I don't screw up?

 

look for a program that is going to help you. do some research on which are the best. seriously, if you don't know how, it can destroy your comp.

 

make sure you reallky understand what tweaks you are making, and write down all the original specsto make sure that you can take it back to stock if you mess up.

Edited June 25, 2015 by kingshaneo

[AMightyKnight]

Overclocking your cpu to 4.2 or 4.5 ghz should help in SWTOR. When I switched gpu to gtx 780 ti from r9 290 it barely made any fps difference, maybe 1 or 2? This game is cpu-heavy.

This game may be a bit more cpu heavy than most, but you really dont need anything close to even 4 GHz to run it properly.

Swtor will run on any i-series Intel with more than 3.0 GHZ without issues. It might have more issues on AMD CPUs though, Dunno, never tried it.

 

In any case, GPU performance is still much more important. Up to a certain Point at least. Switching from an R9 290 to a 780TI wont gain you anything but a higher Shadow Map Resolution Setting, both Cards can run the game on Ultra.

Low FPS are more engine related than anything else. Like CheaterLL said, Swtor beats current highend hardware handily atm. At max Shadow Map Resolutions at least.

 

@OP

You need to find your bottleneck first. Its very easy to do, press "Shift-CTRL F" in game to activate the FPS display in the bottom left of your screen.

Check the Color. If its red it means the GPU is the limiting factor, Green and it is the CPU, Yellow for both.

 

I bet its the GPU. If so, i'd suggest a GTX 960 or 970 (depends on your wallet really). Those cards have six to nine times the performance of a GT 640. But if you do, check if you need a new PSU too before comitting to anything.

Edited June 25, 2015 by AMightyKnight

[HanoverFist]

Right, I think I'll try my hand at an Overclock. I'm absolutely clueless and I've been reading, it seems a tad risky but I'm willing. Can someone send me a guide they recommend perhaps so I don't screw up?

 

Dont overclock anything , unless you are ready to break stuff and spend money. Do all of your homework on your particular hardware set as well. Also make sure you have temp monitoring software installed.

 

You need a top notch CPU heatsink and a good quality power supply before you even utter the words overclock.

The Vishera already runs on the hot side. And you gains will be minimal. I know, I have a 4.5 ghz overclocked CoreI5, I gained on average 3 to 5 fps from stock 3.3 ghz/3.7 turbo.

Edited June 25, 2015 by HanoverFist

[TheWookiee]

Right, I think I'll try my hand at an Overclock. I'm absolutely clueless and I've been reading, it seems a tad risky but I'm willing. Can someone send me a guide they recommend perhaps so I don't screw up?

 

Check out Tom's Hardware website. http://www.tomshardware.com/ Search your motherboard type and manufacturer and overclocking guides and it should pop up.

 

Another good site I use is http://www.overclockers.com/forums/

[Heat-Wave]

Currently there is no viable rig that can run SWTOR 16man operations or warzones on High or Ultra with >30 FPS. Viable meaning under 5000$. You could probably do it with a dual-Xeon system and high-end graphics cards but you're well over 10000$ with that.

 

Currently I have an AMD FX-9590 (8 cores @ 4.7GHz), a GTX 970 OC and 24Gig RAM and I can run SWTOR on High at 15-25FPS in 16man Ravagers/ToS.

 

Sadly, your reply is all too common, from people who don't research the bottleneck.

 

A Xeon CPU won't help because that is a heavily multi-threaded focused CPU. Lots of cores and threads, but not the fastest single core performance.

 

Your current CPU is the problem, you may well have 8 cores, but SWTOR doesn't care nor use them. At best it uses 2 cores, and really only uses one of them heavily.

 

Your CPU has terrible single core performance, but very nice multi-core performance for applications that can use 8 cores.

 

A dual-core Intel Core i3 Haswell would likely play SWTOR faster than your current CPU.

[CheaterLL]

Sadly, your reply is all too common, from people who don't research the bottleneck.

 

A Xeon CPU won't help because that is a heavily multi-threaded focused CPU. Lots of cores and threads, but not the fastest single core performance.

 

Your current CPU is the problem, you may well have 8 cores, but SWTOR doesn't care nor use them. At best it uses 2 cores, and really only uses one of them heavily.

 

Your CPU has terrible single core performance, but very nice multi-core performance for applications that can use 8 cores.

 

A dual-core Intel Core i3 Haswell would likely play SWTOR faster than your current CPU.

There are ways to make a singlecore-software use all cores. If you have the money to buy a Xeon-PC then you should also be able to set up something like this. The problem is it either requires a lot of trial and error or some expensive licensing, so I don't use it myself.

 

The single-core performance of Haswell is just slightly better that Vishera and if I wanted I could negate this difference by overclocking the CPU to >5.0GHz. Without overclocking, I gladly take 5 FPS off SWTOR to be able to run games like GTAV at 1080p60, wich would never be possible with an i3, and for similarly powerful Intel processors (compared to the FX) I would have to spend a lot more money.

[Nazgren]

Got a 3.41 ghz CPU and afaik the most powerful edition of the 780 TI. I play at 4K without any issues.

[Holocron]

You need to ditch the AMD cpu/mobo and go with Intel hands down. Even Intel's cheap cpus will blow the doors off of the BEST CPU AMD has to offer. You will get much better gaming performance for this game by going with Intel, and then overclock. Remember, with the modified Hero Engine you want the fastest base clock speed to start with, so pick clock speed over core count.

[pegasussgc]

Your problem is the AMD cpu. This game needs good single-threaded performance, the kind you can only get with an Intel cpu, at least until AMD releases Zen next year.

I don't know your budget, but here is a good $572 PC build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/wq8DdC

That core i3 will destroy ANY AMD processor in single-threaded performance and can easily be upgraded to an i5-i7 when you get extra money.

Edited June 25, 2015 by pegasussgc

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Overclocking your cpu to 4.2 or 4.5 ghz should help in SWTOR. When I switched gpu to gtx 780 ti from r9 290 it barely made any fps difference, maybe 1 or 2? This game is cpu-heavy.

 

Probably because a r9 290 to GTX 780 TI isn't really much of an upgrade to begin with, certianly nothing you are going to see blazing FPS increases with anyway.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

You need to ditch the AMD cpu/mobo and go with Intel hands down. Even Intel's cheap cpus will blow the doors off of the BEST CPU AMD has to offer. You will get much better gaming performance for this game by going with Intel, and then overclock. Remember, with the modified Hero Engine you want the fastest base clock speed to start with, so pick clock speed over core count.

 

Yup what he said OP.

Ignore anyone telling you to upgrade your GPU or comments like "In any case, GPU performance is still much more important" as they are very poorly informed opinions

 

As to which setup you should go fir depends on what your budget is, let us know that and you can get some more educated advice.

 

Also if you could put your current build up in txt form it would help, I can't view those image sites from work.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

There are ways to make a singlecore-software use all cores. If you have the money to buy a Xeon-PC then you should also be able to set up something like this. The problem is it either requires a lot of trial and error or some expensive licensing, so I don't use it myself.

 

The single-core performance of Haswell is just slightly better that Vishera and if I wanted I could negate this difference by overclocking the CPU to >5.0GHz. Without overclocking, I gladly take 5 FPS off SWTOR to be able to run games like GTAV at 1080p60, wich would never be possible with an i3, and for similarly powerful Intel processors (compared to the FX) I would have to spend a lot more money.

 

ORLY?

 

Paint me interested. Can you please link up on how one would be able to amke SWToR perform using all cores and likewise ideally perform better? Regardless of cost I want to see this as it's nothing I've heard of before.

 

Also that is quite a claim about Halswell only being "slightly" better than Vishera for single core performance and flies in the face of everything I've read and seen over the interwebs and these very forums from users of Vishera chips.

 

Also I don't think the i5 4690K is that much more pricey than it's equivalent ( what, the 8350 I guess? 9590? NOt using AMd chips and there are tons so don't follow them too closely ) and I would wager it gets better performance in GTA V too.

 

Infact I found some benchmarks for this:

 

http://www.techspot.com/review/991-gta-5-pc-benchmarks/page6.html

 

I assume that's the 4690K running at turbo though ( so 3.9 ) compared to the 9590 running at 4.5 and it still 7 FPS behind.

 

This tend to back up what I know of the general crappiness of AMD CPU's or any form of gaming.

[AMightyKnight]

Yup what he said OP.

Ignore anyone telling you to upgrade your GPU or comments like "In any case, GPU performance is still much more important" as they are very poorly informed opinions

 

As to which setup you should go fir depends on what your budget is, let us know that and you can get some more educated advice.

 

Also if you could put your current build up in txt form it would help, I can't view those image sites from work.

He uses a FX-6100 and a GT640 with 16GB RAM.

 

No matter what he does with his CPU, he will just run into a GPU bottleneck. The GT640 is not adequate to run the game properly on higher settings.

As said, i dont know how good or bad Swtor runs with his specific CPU - hence my advise to check the FPS display first - but just a new CPU definitely wont solve his problem.

 

And no, he really doesnt need a highehdn 4690k to run it either. Pretty much any i series CPU and a good GPU will do.

[Nazgren]

Anyone saying that CPU is important for this game is utterly delusional. My AMD 3.41 ghz has no issues running this game, even versus world bosses in full ops on max graphics at 4K. GPU is almost always the limiting factor in gaming.

[JediSnaps]

Anyone saying that CPU is important for this game is utterly delusional. My AMD 3.41 ghz has no issues running this game, even versus world bosses in full ops on max graphics at 4K. GPU is almost always the limiting factor in gaming.

 

Screenshot please and what amd cpu are you using? Just out of curiosity

 

This game is definitely cpu dependent, and the 6100 is bulldozer I think. AMD did not have really solid single core performance at all with that first line of fx cpus. I had a 4170 oc to 4.6 and it stuttered all over the place, although I think I also had a 1gb 6870 at the time as well. Point is, the first run of the fx series seriously lacked a lot of single core pretty fire gaming and upset many a good number of amd fans.

 

Yes, the op could use a little bit beefier gpu and that would help some with being able to turn up some of the graphic detail.

 

Get you a decent cooler, you can get a 212 evo for about 30$ I think, haven't checked in awhile. As another poster stated, I always used overclockers.com. Lots of good, knowledgeable and helpful folks over there, as well as some really good guides to get you started overclocking.

 

You'll want to download prime 95 for stress testing, a hardware monitor of some sort to keep an eye on your temps and familiarize yourself with your BIOS so when you are reading through the guides, you will know what your are looking for.

 

That 6100 should oc decently, but you may our may not get the results you are looking for. It's true that Intel cpus are better for this type of gaming. However, amd has Zen coming down the pipeline, and if looking to upgrade, I'd say wait and see how it performs. If you want to upgrade now, might as well look at Intel, you are probably going to need a new mobo either way. (I can't remember the socket amd is using for zen)

[CheaterLL]

ORLY?

 

Paint me interested. Can you please link up on how one would be able to amke SWToR perform using all cores and likewise ideally perform better? Regardless of cost I want to see this as it's nothing I've heard of before.

 

Also that is quite a claim about Halswell only being "slightly" better than Vishera for single core performance and flies in the face of everything I've read and seen over the interwebs and these very forums from users of Vishera chips.

 

Also I don't think the i5 4690K is that much more pricey than it's equivalent ( what, the 8350 I guess? 9590? NOt using AMd chips and there are tons so don't follow them too closely ) and I would wager it gets better performance in GTA V too.

 

Infact I found some benchmarks for this:

 

http://www.techspot.com/review/991-gta-5-pc-benchmarks/page6.html

 

I assume that's the 4690K running at turbo though ( so 3.9 ) compared to the 9590 running at 4.5 and it still 7 FPS behind.

 

This tend to back up what I know of the general crappiness of AMD CPU's or any form of gaming.

 

Wine (a software for running Windows programs on Linux systems) does it (Friend of mine can play SoaSE under Linux on 8 cores, although the game itself can only use one core).

With a decent Virtual Machine Software you can get the same results. (I believe MS Hyper-V also does it, not sure though)

 

Both platforms are known to slow down games because of the additional software layer, but with decent hardware it can boost singlecore games.

 

As you see in the link you posted, OCing the i7 won't increase your framerate, but OCing the FX does. With 5.2 GHZ (maximum stable frequency for a watercooled FX-9590) you will get close to 80 PFS, so just 5 less than the i7.

 

Also, I am using a 970, not a Titan X, and my CPU barely goes over 75% when running GTA plus firefox, thunderbird and some other stuff, so the bottleneck for GTA is the GPU on my system.

[Nazgren]

Screenshot please and what amd cpu are you using? Just out of curiosity

http://i1240.photobucket.com/albums/gg498/nazgren/cpu%20and%20graphics_zpscjvigrpy.png~original

If u cant read the DxDiag (4k dsr scaling in game but not on desktop causes scaling issues) then its an AMD Phenom II x4 3.4ghz. Bios says 3.41, but whatever. No overclocking done on my part, stock cooler.

[Holocron]

Anyone saying that CPU is important for this game is utterly delusional. My AMD 3.41 ghz has no issues running this game, even versus world bosses in full ops on max graphics at 4K. GPU is almost always the limiting factor in gaming.

 

So you obviously don't know jack about what you are talking about. Plus the devs took the alpha version of the Hero Engine which was not even finished being optimized for cpu performance either.

 

 

Here is an excerpt from Hero Engine's own website:

 

The two key parts that affect frameRate: CPU and GPU

 

CPU Side: All FPS boils down to two main aspects, the CPU and the video card (GPU). HeroBlade runs on the CPU side of the equation. It sets up graphical data and feeds it to the video card. It also runs scripts, animations and a few other things.

 

and this

 

CPU-Bound This term is used when the CPU side of the equation can no longer process and present data to the GPU at an FPS that's considered acceptable. It also applies to CPUs that cannot keep up with the GPU. That is, the GPU can process its data faster than the CPU can present it to the GPU (even if FPS is fine).

 

 

A lot of info about the FPS issues and the related CPU impacts - Hero Engine

 

 

Next time do at least a little research before spouting out junk you know nothing about.

Edited June 26, 2015 by Holocron