PavSalco Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 (edited) I've been struggling with the performance in wide areas where many people are logged in. Every time I travel to the fleet I just want to uninstall SWTOR because how much time I waste on looking at the frozen screen. It freezes every few seconds and when it's not, the screen stutters nonetheless. So not even for a moment I have a smooth drive through the fleet on my mount. I don't have much freezes nor stutters in pvp arenas. However in operations every time a fight starts, I have the screen frozen for 5-6 seconds. This is very strange. What should I improve in my PC to run SWTOR more smoothly with highly populated instances? Is it RAM or hard drive? I haven't formatted my PC for 2 years, so maybe that's the reason too? My PC: i5-3350P Radeon 7790HD RAM 4GB DDR3 Some 10 year old Barracuda hard drive (7200 RPMG, 8MB Cache) Edited July 25, 2015 by PavSalco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johncenaultimate Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 I've been struggling with the performance in wide areas where many people are logged in. Every time I travel to the fleet I just want to uninstall SWTOR because how much time I waste on looking at the frozen screen. It freezes every few seconds and when it's not, the screen stutters nonetheless. So not even for a moment I have a smooth drive through the fleet on my mount. I don't have much freezes nor stutters in pvp arenas. However in operations every time a fight starts, I have the screen frozen for 5-6 seconds. This is very strange. What should I improve in my PC to run SWTOR more smoothly with highly populated instances? Is it RAM or hard drive? I haven't formatted my PC for 2 years, so maybe that's the reason too? My PC: i5-3350P Radeon 7790HD RAM 4GB DDR3 Some 10 year old Barracuda hard drive yeah, try formatting it and see if it helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daewan Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 Before formatting, why don't you go over to the Customer Service forum and search for similar issues there? Or remake your post there and see if someone can help you out. My first suggestion would be: Turn off shadows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EvilNob Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 It sounds like a memory issue. 4GB RAM isn't much nowadays. I've got 16GB and I just checked the Resource Monitor in Task Manager and I've got over 4GB in use just sitting here idle, without even launching SWTOR. Obviously, your OS is going to allocate RAM differently than mine, but even tho SWTOR is known to be more processor intensive it's still gonna eat up a fair bit of memory. That delay could be your memory getting filled and the hard drive being used as virtual memory which would cause stutters and pauses as you describe. Check the Task Manager under the Performance tab, or launch the Resource Monitor from there and you'll get some feedback on your memory usage. You may need to plunk down on some extra RAM, but it'll relatively cheap right now... Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavSalco Posted July 25, 2015 Author Share Posted July 25, 2015 (edited) Before formatting, why don't you go over to the Customer Service forum and search for similar issues there? Every issue I found there was related to either general poor performance or pvp/operation. While mine is solely causedy by the fleet instance and the beginning of the fights. My first suggestion would be: Turn off shadows. Yeah, I know shadows are very demanding in SWTOR. I always have them turned off. It sounds like a memory issue. 4GB RAM isn't much nowadays. I've got 16GB and I just checked the Resource Monitor in Task Manager and I've got over 4GB in use just sitting here idle, without even launching SWTOR. Obviously, your OS is going to allocate RAM differently than mine, but even tho SWTOR is known to be more processor intensive it's still gonna eat up a fair bit of memory. That delay could be your memory getting filled and the hard drive being used as virtual memory which would cause stutters and pauses as you describe. This sounds very plausible. When my SWTOR is launched, the memory usage is about 3.5 GB. I thought free 0.5 GB is enough run without any stutters :/ Edited July 25, 2015 by PavSalco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icestar Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 Some 10 year old Barracuda hard drive Have you tried defragmenting your hard drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wheerlpool Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 THE EVERY F**** DAY I CREATE NEW THREAD ABOUT LAGS LAGS LAGS and all telling me buy core i5 i have 100$ only i poor.. and some peoples play on cpu 30$ AMD And have 30FPS. SO I TODL WRITE THE HELL HERE WORKING PC BUILD no 1 want...MY SPECK PENTIUM 3220 3.0ggz +radeon 7770 + 4 ggb and hdd 1000gb AND BINGO it is 4ggb is lack. DUDE write CTRL ALT DELETE and check how much ram use game and hdd 100% LOAD i have on planet 60-100 fps on fleet 2-5 i fall into HOLE i can go get coffee in time i go from combat area to GTN here video --- this video. damn i hate it need 8ggb and i will play on pentium other thing HDD is slow and 100% load but i have windows 8.1 issue hope u will repair it mate 8 ggb FTw and new hDD but dont buy hhd maybe ur sata port 2 broken on maotherboard be sure GL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddballEasyEight Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 Have you thougt about decreasing the visible players option? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PavSalco Posted July 25, 2015 Author Share Posted July 25, 2015 (edited) this video. damn i hate it need 8ggb and i will play on pentium other thing HDD is slow and 100% load but i have windows 8.1 issue hope u will repair it mate 8 ggb FTw and new hDD but dont buy hhd maybe ur sata port 2 broken on maotherboard be sure GL This is exactly how the fleet looks on my PC, lol. I don't play other MMO RPGs but multiplayer shooters like BF3 or Warframe are working fine without stutters. Have you thougt about decreasing the visible players option? I had it on medium. I will try the lowest option. The amount of people is causing my problem since when I log in in the mornings I get fewer freezes because the instance doesn't have more than 70 people. In the evenings when the population is around 150-170 it looks like the above recording. If decreasing the visible players does not help, my safest bet is to buy more RAM rather than a completely new hard drive, right? My hdd still meets today's standards with 7200RPM and 8MB Cache etc. Edited July 25, 2015 by PavSalco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wheerlpool Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 (edited) This is exactly how the fleet looks on my PC, lol. I don't play other MMO RPGs but multiplayer shooters like BF3 or Warframe are working fine without stutters. I had it on medium. I will try the lowest option. The amount of people is causing my problem since when I log in in the mornings I get fewer freezes because the instance doesn't have more than 70 people. In the evenings when the population is around 150-170 it looks like the above recording. If decreasing the visible players does not help, my safest bet is to buy more RAM rather than a completely new hard drive, right? My hdd still meets today's standards with 7200RPM and 8MB Cache etc. OK! Man i don't know how it work exactly but 1 thing i know this game need more then 4 ggb you can check, i am have atm Kingston 4 ggb ddr3 1333 and my RAM load to 97% all time and freezing at same time as my HDD load to 97-100% so advice about UR PC ALL IS GOOD VIDEOCARD let you play on FULL HD on mid settings CPU too very nice for this game you need try change ur 10 years HHD lol to SSD 128 ggb ( INTEL or SAMSUNG best now ) (Very fast load locations) or if you dont care exactly swtor you can go find some HDD from WESTERN DIGITAL BLACK . + ofc you need change ur ram to 8 gigabites 4 +4 . weird this game 2011 so suffer but you must feel on fleet much better after it + ur HDD is old ( sorry for terrible english) Edited July 26, 2015 by Wheerlpool Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wheerlpool Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 OK! Man i don't know how it work exactly but 1 thing i know this game need more then 4 ggb you can check, i am have atm Kingston 4 ggb ddr3 1333 and my RAM load to 97% all time and freezing at same time as my HDD load to 97-100% so advice about UR PC ALL IS GOOD VIDEOCARD let you play on FULL HD on mid settings CPU too very nice for this game you need try change ur 10 years HHD lol to SSD 128 ggb ( INTEL or SAMSUNG best now ) (Very fast load locations) or if you dont care exactly swtor you can go find some HDD from WESTERN DIGITAL BLACK . + ofc you need change ur ram to 8 gigabites 4 +4 . weird this game 2011 so suffer but you must feel on fleet much better after it + ur HDD is old ( sorry for terrible english) Btw what is ur windows? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lymphangioma Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 It sounds like a memory issue. 4GB RAM isn't much nowadays. I've got 16GB and I just checked the Resource Monitor in Task Manager and I've got over 4GB in use just sitting here idle, without even launching SWTOR. Obviously, your OS is going to allocate RAM differently than mine, but even tho SWTOR is known to be more processor intensive it's still gonna eat up a fair bit of memory. That delay could be your memory getting filled and the hard drive being used as virtual memory which would cause stutters and pauses as you describe. Check the Task Manager under the Performance tab, or launch the Resource Monitor from there and you'll get some feedback on your memory usage. You may need to plunk down on some extra RAM, but it'll relatively cheap right now... Good luck! Agreed. While 4 GB of RAM is enough to run SWTOR half-way decent, this game is known to run significantly better with more memory. Case in point, my last Tower running on a MAME Cabinet was only rockin' 4GB RAM (and while serviceable), left much to be desired whenever I'd fire-up The Old Republic. Anyhow, I'm currently playing SWTOR with a 6GB RAM lap-top and it definitely runs much better than my other system from a few years back. Even still, I'm hoping to again upgrade soon to a better set-up so this game runs flawless with maxxed-out settings. Whatever the case may be, The Fleet is usually a lag-fest most days anyway (at least for me) - regardless of specs and connection. However, during non-peak hours it does calm down considerably. Like another poster mentioned, installing more RAM or even playing during late-night hours will DEFINITELY help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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