SWTOR on Windows 10

[jedidar]

I can also confirm that since the upgrade to WIndows 10, I have had no problems compatibility-wise! The only weird thing though is that when I set my native resolution to fullscreen, a very minor part of the top end of the screen is cut off, whereas "fullscreen windowed" looks perfectly normal.

Not sure what the problem is, but it wasn't there before the upgrade..

Anyhow, this is just a minor thing and other than that the game runs just fine.

Have you upgraded your drivers? It sounds like an issue that drivers would only cause.

[Varium]

I did clean install of Windows 10 and have had zero problems so far. Atleast for me it feels there is also 5-10 fps increase in perfomance.

[jedidar]

I did clean install of Windows 10 and have had zero problems so far. Atleast for me it feels there is also 5-10 fps increase in perfomance.

 

I haven't done a clean install and it feels the same way you just described it, maybe later on i'll clean install.

[NSStember]

Actually, my SWTOR is running smoother on Windows 10. As others have said, just make sure your graphics drivers are up to date.

[Theeko]

Yeah my mumble overlay was conflicting with it somehow, so I just turned it off when I installed Windows 10 for now, kept giving a C++ error

[Kaisernick]

i updated to win 10 and my graphic driver wasn't compatable despite the stupid update.

 

my advice is to wait some like my partner didn't have problems with his pc but i wouldn't risk it yet.

 

in the end i converted back to win 7 which u can do after installing but only for a month.

[Nickious]

I still haven't gotten the download yet, even though I have the Windows 10 box set to reserve.

[jedidar]

I still haven't gotten the download yet, even though I have the Windows 10 box set to reserve.

Well, that's good I guess.

[Kantaso]

Just heard on the news that W-1o had an issue with wifi where your wifi passwords were up for ghrab for anyone around your PC using wifi.

 

Here is the link

 

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/windows-10-may-share-wi-164057617.html

Edited August 2, 2015 by Kantaso

[karmina]

I had c++ error related to the launcher when I tried the launcher today after installing win10 even if the game initially worked on wednesday evening when I tested it. I also ended up reinstalling the game completely since launcher fix included in the game install didn't do anything and now it's working even if it means I have to redownload all the patches...

 

 

edit: nm that... it seems the problem is there again after I shut down the client and loaded it back up.

Edited August 2, 2015 by karmina

[Stoofa]

I still haven't gotten the download yet, even though I have the Windows 10 box set to reserve.

 

You can just download it anyway.

Activation is all different with the free upgrade to Win 10. You don't need a key, so as long as you're entitled to the upgrade you can install it and it will automatically activate.

Should you need to reinstall your PC - it will auto activate again - the activation server contains a "digital fingerprint" of your machine, recognises it and then activates it.

But remember, you MUST perform an upgrade first or else the digital fingerprint isn't taken. Wipe your machine and attempt to install Win 10 fresh without first going through an upgrade and you won't be able to activate it.

Do note however, any significant upgrades to your machine (new motherboard for example) and the activation will no longer work.

Anyway, you can download Windows 10 from here:

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

[NoahRedden]

I run it on Windows 10 and its flawless. Also graphics look very good.

[daftshadow]

No issues here running on Windows 10 either although Bitdefender blocked me access from logging on after updating it to Windows 10 version. Apparently Bitdefender's firewall isn't happy with the game. Had to turn that off opting for Window's firewall and now everything is happy and dandy!!

[Darth_Laker]

No issues here!

[Breae]

I upgraded to 10, and my laptop did not recognize my Nvidia Geforce 745M GPU, the only way to get it to work was to download the Nvidia driver. I optimized my settings and enured my computer was set to run SWTOR on the GPU and not the integrated graphics. Now I cannot even play the game. Load times are super long, there is huge delays in all actions, and it seems like the game is playing in integrated and not the dedicated card. I even dropped my settings to the absolutely lowest they can go, and still the same results. I have re-downloaded Direct X, I have reinstalled the game, and nothing works. I am out of ideas. Suggestions? Also note, the game was running 100% great for me on 8.1. Edited August 4, 2015 by Breae

[Smuglebunny]

I upgraded an old HP laptop with win 10 from 7 and SWTOR ran bad on it before but now its playable.

Boots in 26 seconds, used to take a minute and 10 sec.

 

But I will still be mostly playing on my rock solid win 7 gaming/work at home rig that will be upgraded to 10 when my work says its ok and not before.

[Ruskaeth]

I upgraded to Windows 10 couple of days ago and I could not have been happier with it and SWTOR working together. I am running 4.5Ghz CPU, 16Gbs of DDR3 and operating system and games from SSD drives. Now, loading times were not that bad before, but now I think the game utilizes CPU in much more efficient way. Everything is faster. The "non latency lag" on 16 man is less of a problem. I think there is something to DX12 being able to utilize resources better even in game not actually using the new features directly.

 

Visible changes:

 

* loading times

* less lag with max details on 16 man

[Malastare]

I upgraded to Windows 10 couple of days ago and I could not have been happier with it and SWTOR working together.

 

I did the upgrade and a bunch of analysis. I have had no problems, short of a required driver update for my GTX 770.

 

I am running 4.5Ghz CPU, 16Gbs of DDR3 and operating system and games from SSD drives. Now, loading times were not that bad before, but now I think the game utilizes CPU in much more efficient way.

 

It doesn't.

 

The OS kernel is very, very similar to Windows 8.1. The major differences between Win8 and Win10 are UI changes and DirectX 12. The rest are mostly reorganizations of apps and distribution models.

 

Everything is faster.

 

This is mostly bias on your part. The best improvement I'm seeing is some more stable framerate numbers. However, that's not due to Windows 10 per se, but driver optimizations from nVidia working with the improved WDDM (the standardized driver model for windows). Some of that might be helped by DirectX 12 integration with the display driver model, but that's the best you can say. Windows 10 isn't really going to improve your CPU performance by any noticeable amount.

 

The "non latency lag" on 16 man is less of a problem. I think there is something to DX12 being able to utilize resources better even in game not actually using the new features directly.

 

1: "non latency lag" isn't lag. Its framerate.

2: DX12 isn't utilizing resources better, its just providing an expanded API that drivers can take advantage of. nVidia and AMD are already taking advantage of that to some degree, but the changes are probably going to be minor until we see actual game support for DX12. Until then, most of the improvement will come from the WDDM improvements.

[Orizuru]

Just heard on the news that W-1o had an issue with wifi where your wifi passwords were up for ghrab for anyone around your PC using wifi.

 

Here is the link

 

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/windows-10-may-share-wi-164057617.html

 

This is one of the new features of Windows 10 that is a bit controversial.

 

It's not just handing your wifi password to anybody and everybody though. By default it only shares the encrypted password with people you have in your Contacts app and only for networks you have indicated can be shared. It only shares with people you are friends with on Facebook if you opt in for that feature. The service is on by default, but the networks are not configured for sharing by default. So even if you do nothing after installing Windows 10, it won't share your WiFi password until the user does some basic setup.

 

It's also important to understand that the way it shares the password actually still maintains some security. It doesn't just hand off the password to your Contacts, it encrypts the password so that the computer used by someone who receives the shared password is able to log into and access your wifi, however, they can not view the password or share it with anyone else.

 

The entire feature can be disabled after installing Windows 10 though, which I recommend doing. The risks this feature presents are manageable if you manage your contacts well, but I feel it assumes too much about how users are already using the Contacts app available in Windows. The WiFi Sense service should be disabled by default instead of enabled, and when it is enabled, there should be something in Contacts to either allow or disallow the password from being shared with individual contacts or groups of individual contacts. These 2 changes would greatly improve the feature and all it to be used with a manageable amount of risk.

 

The biggest risk that comes with this new feature though, is when you allow someone to access your wireless network and they configure the network and WiFi Sense service to share the password with the people in their contacts. Microsoft didn't give users many options on how to control this, but there is a way to configure your wireless routers to be ignored by WiFi Sense.

 

Here is a link to an article that describes how to disable this new feature and also how to configure your router to prevent others from sharing your password after they are given access.

 

http://www.redmondpie.com/disable-wi-fi-sense-password-sharing-in-windows-10-heres-how/

[Ruskaeth]

It doesn't.

Yes. That must be it. It doesn't. You know, because, it doesn't. Because you say so. I claim it uses resources better, resources like multiple cores. You say no. Lets recap: I said that the game after windows 10 (includes DX12) can utilize cores better. I must have been wrong. It was DX12 utlizing things better, not windows 10, the one the DX12 came with. Okay.

 

 

This is mostly bias on your part. The best improvement I'm seeing is some more stable framerate numbers.

Calling improvement bias on my part and then basing your own view to what you have seen. My bias is multiple second difference in loading times and significant other improvements. Sure, bias. Keep running your analytics on your system obviously not identical to mine on many parts. Pseudo-geek begone.

 

Nowadays, almost every gaming PC is equipped with four, six or even eight core CPUs (like AMD FX or Intel Core i7), but in DirectX 11 games VGA driver can’t utilize all these cores optimally. The reason for this is DirectX 11 – poorly adapted to break game command buffer into small parallel chunks for processing on all the available CPU cores (and its threads). Apart from weak CPU cores utilization, there is another lack when it comes to DirectX 11 programming model. For most of the time the CPU is consumed by the VGA driver and API interpretation (often called overhead) – so the CPU has got less time for running the game code, thus PC displays lower number of frames per second on the screen.

 

With DirectX 12, command buffer is severely improved in many ways, for example:

 

overhead is much reduced, because it’s moved to any available CPU core or thread

the absolute time required to complete complex CPU tasks is notably reduced

game workloads can be reasonably shared across more than four CPU cores or CPU threads

additional CPU compute power allows for higher peak draw calls number, and allows to create more detailed and addictive game worlds

all CPU cores can communicate with GPU simultaneously

 

http://sapphirenation.net/directx-12-what-it-means-for-pc-gamers/

 

 

Then again, pseudo-geek might not have thought that the improvement is more visible to a player with worse GPU than 770. God forbid, not before saying someone's empirical experience is "bias". Geebus.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Ruskaeth

[Malastare]

Yes. That must be it. It doesn't. You know, because, it doesn't. Because you say so. I claim it uses resources better, resources like multiple cores. You say no. Lets recap: I said that the game after windows 10 (includes DX12) can utilize cores better. I must have been wrong. It was DX12 utlizing things better, not windows 10, the one the DX12 came with. Okay.

 

You missed the point. There is no big change in how SWTOR's resources are being handled. While Windows 10 comes with DirectX 12, SWTOR is written against DirectX 9, and so it doesn't benefit from DirectX 12's better threading model or additional, closer-to-bare-metal API points. The improvements to DirectX 9 on Windows are only seen via the improved efficiency of WDDM 2.0, and that is only a minor improvement. Some of those improvements may come from DX12's implementation of WDDM being used via DX9's API. However, the major improvements of DX12 won't be available to any game until the game specifically implements DX12 support.

 

There seem to be some better improvements which come from the latest nVidia drivers, but again, those are still just minor gains.

 

CPU and I/O utilization isn't all that different between Windows 7/8/8.1/10. Benchmarks show that 10 is slightly faster, mostly due to some trimming of legacy code.

 

Calling improvement bias on my part and then basing your own view to what you have seen. My bias is multiple second difference in loading times and significant other improvements. Sure, bias. Keep running your analytics on your system obviously not identical to mine on many parts. Pseudo-geek begone.

 

I'm not basing my view on what I've seen. I'm basing it on a combination of what I've seen, the benchmarks I've read, the technical discussions over changes in the Win10 kernel/driver-model, and a dozen years of OS performance monitoring.

 

I said that it was bias because you saw improvements (which are likely real), but the reason behind those improvements probably isn't what you conclude it to be. The update to Win10 does include some cleaning and streamlining of the windows registry and (in many reports) a reset to the responsiveness of a newly installed Win8.1 OS. You haven't looked at enough data to say that a fresh Win10 install is snappier than if you simply ran a fresh install of Win8.1.

 

In benchmarks run by actual professionals who are comparing the same system with fresh installs of both Win10 and Win8.1, the raw system performance didn't change much at all. Specific things were improved. Faster boot times (when using UEFI, at least) and WiFi connection times were mentioned. Disk I/O and CPU utilization was not. In fact, benchmark after benchmark reported Win10 outperforming Win8.1, but not beyond the margin of error of the test. (The fact that it kept doing this would actually lower the margin of error in total and result in reasonable evidence).

 

http://sapphirenation.net/directx-12-what-it-means-for-pc-gamers/

 

Did you actually read that article?

 

Specifically, this part at the end:

 

DirectX 12 included in Windows 10 seems to be very promising for PC gamers. Almost all gaming systems equipped with four, six and eight core CPUs will get performance boost and probably more detailed worlds in DirectX 12-supported games. And (as mentioned before) – this relates only to DirectX 12 supported games. Those are not yet available on the market – but by the end of the year we will most certainly see some of them, e.g. Gears Ultimate, Fable Legends, Elite Dangerous or Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Some other titles should also get patches with DirectX 12 support such as Batman: Arkham Knight or Witcher 3. I can’t wait to see The Witcher 3 with increased view distance and with more detailed world!

 

The big improvements from DX12 won't be seen in SWTOR any time soon (if ever). Bioware would need to make some large changes to the codebase in order to support DX12, and those changes wouldn't be able to be used by anyone not running Win10 (loads of games have dual mode DX9/DX11, and that could work here, too).

 

Big point here: If the game isn't specifically coded to take advantage of the new DX12 API, then the benefits to DX12 are minor at best. The new threading system cannot worth with the DX9 API, and that's the API SWTOR uses.

 

Then again, pseudo-geek might not have thought that the improvement is more visible to a player with worse GPU than 770. God forbid, not before saying someone's empirical experience is "bias". Geebus.

 

None of the benchmarks have shown any favoritism toward high or low-end hardware. Win10 does use slightly less RAM, but not enough to really affect CPU or graphics performance in any but the very lowest-end configurations. Now, if you're on the low end of hardware ability, or are pushing your hardware to a particularly stressful degree, you might see abnormally large improvements due to simple efficiency improvements. However, if that were true, you should at least know enough to characterize that and recognize that your significant gains are very unlikely to match general experience.

 

But... I'm sure a real geek like you already knows all that.

[Orizuru]

Yes. That must be it. It doesn't. You know, because, it doesn't. Because you say so. I claim it uses resources better, resources like multiple cores. You say no. Lets recap: I said that the game after windows 10 (includes DX12) can utilize cores better. I must have been wrong. It was DX12 utlizing things better, not windows 10, the one the DX12 came with. Okay.

 

 

 

Calling improvement bias on my part and then basing your own view to what you have seen. My bias is multiple second difference in loading times and significant other improvements. Sure, bias. Keep running your analytics on your system obviously not identical to mine on many parts. Pseudo-geek begone.

 

 

 

http://sapphirenation.net/directx-12-what-it-means-for-pc-gamers/

 

 

Then again, pseudo-geek might not have thought that the improvement is more visible to a player with worse GPU than 770. God forbid, not before saying someone's empirical experience is "bias". Geebus.

 

There isn't a single game on the market right now that benefits one iota from DX12. In order for DX12 to have any impact upon any game, the game must support the DX12 API. A game that only supports earlier versions of DirectX receives zero improvements from having the DX12 API available on your computer.

 

The following is a quote directly from the same article you linked.

 

DirectX 12 included in Windows 10 seems to be very promising for PC gamers. Almost all gaming systems equipped with four, six and eight core CPUs will get performance boost and probably more detailed worlds in DirectX 12-supported games. And (as mentioned before) – this relates only to DirectX 12 supported games.

 

Now I won't try to tell you that you didn't notice a performance increase after upgrading to Windows 10, but I can assure you, DX12 had absolutely nothing to do with it.

 

For the type of improvements you are claiming to have observed, I would suspect you had some file fragmentation or possibly even non-critical data corruption within your windows installation that was causing loading screens and other processes to take longer than they should have prior to your OS upgrade. The upgrade simply repaired those issues.

 

Windows 10 is faster than it's predecessors in many ways, but not remarkably so. Most of the improvements the new OS provides can really only be observed when analyzing benchmark data.

Edited August 5, 2015 by Orizuru

[Fudgethegreat]

So I haven't played since I downloaded Windows 10. Then yesterday I logged in and it took me to the picture that shows the characters from the Shadow of Revan DLC, which is the screen before you get to your character screen. But the cog in the lower right hand corner is not spinning and it just stays on this screen. I tried uninstalling, then reinstalling, but nothing is working. Anyone have any ideas?

[Wagnus]

I will just say when I first started up swtor on windows 10 my sound was not working, I opened up the launcher and repaired my installation and it's working fine now, faster than it did on windows 7 infact.

[MasterRey]

I will just say when I first started up swtor on windows 10 my sound was not working, I opened up the launcher and repaired my installation and it's working fine now, faster than it did on windows 7 infact.

 

I might try that too , after playing it for the first time on windows 10 , i seem to have lost some frames here and there , even tho , I did install drivers for win 10