TX_Angel Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 (edited) Intel Core i5-4440 (3.1GHz) Intel HD Graphics 4600 Windows 10 - 64-bit Same test, 8v8 Pylons, but with graphics turned up to ultra, except AA, shadows, and grass, all turned off: Frames - 3994 Time (ms) - 300000 Min - 7 Max - 20 Avg - 13.313 Frankly, it isn't playable... sure, I can click stuff and appear to run around, but you simply can't be competitive in such an environment. Abilities would fail to fire too often, the enemies would jump around and move a lot that couldn't be seen due to the low frame rate. In combat, it was a serious slide show and I was guessing as often as not as to whom I was shooting and where people were. Edited February 2, 2016 by TX_Angel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TX_Angel Posted February 2, 2016 Share Posted February 2, 2016 Well at this point, it is quite possible no one is reading anymore. But, one more for the road... This is back on the Acer V17 Nitro notebook, I double and triple checked that it was running on the NVidia GPU. Both the NVidia activity light and GPU-Z say the GPU was being used. Then again, so do the results. This was again 8v8 Pylons, graphics set to ultra, then AA, shadows, and grass were turned off, 1080p full screen windowed mode, nothing else running in the background. Frames - 8451 Time (ms) - 300000 Min - 13 Max - 57 Avg - 28.17 Overall, it was perfectly playable. It clearly had moments when it slowed down, when it was very busy on screen. Get more than 4 or 5 people on screen blasting away and it really dives down. But compared to the desktop i5 above with Intel graphics, it was miles and miles ahead. It was also far more playable than the Dell machine was. I did leave Task Manager open in the background with CPU updates set to slow, and it held a turbo of between 3.2GHz and 3.3GHz for most of the match, using 25% of the CPU most of the time (which would equal 2 cores on an i7). --- Side note, I then loaded up a heroic on Hoth and ran a 5 min test with that. Again, lots of killing of enemies, but solo this time with a companion out... Frames - 16212 Time (ms) - 300000 Min - 32 Max - 62 Avg - 54.04 So again, the story content, solo content, is no issue... It is all about the 8v8 warzones... I have not benchmarked ops yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TX_Angel Posted February 3, 2016 Share Posted February 3, 2016 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014QVM2KO 6th Generation Intel Core i5-6400 Quad-Core 2.7 GHz processor (turbo to 3.3GHz) 8GB DDR3; 1TB HDD 7200 RPM Intel Integrated 530 HD Graphics 802.11 AC WiFi with Bluetooth 4.0 Windows 10 Home Operating System The above machine is complete stock, including the (gasp) hard drive. It is one of the few machines that I haven't put a SSD into, talk about painful. That being said, it does not appear to matter that the game is installed on a HDD. It loads slower, but it doesn't seem to matter during play. This machine is hooked up to an older Dell 27" monitor that runs at 1920x1200 (rather than the more common 1080p). I didn't even bother with warzones, but instead ran around Hoth killing heroic enemies. At very low graphics settings, at 1920x1200: Frames - 3037 Time (ms) - 125203 Min - 19 Max - 35 Avg - 24.257 Frankly, it was less than impressive, I wouldn't want to suffer through it. But then a thought occoured to me. Some people do in fact play at 720p. What happens when you drop the resolution? Well, since I don't have this on a 1080p, 720p would be all funny looking, but a proper 16:10 ratio is in the game, 1280x800. Graphics at the same setting, very low, 800p: Frames - 10035 Time (ms) - 265672 Min - 24 Max - 62 Avg - 37.772 An impressive jump over the 1200p numbers. It effectively cuts the resolution in half (in terms of number of pixels to render). This is a Skylake system with the new Intel 530 HD graphics, which are supposed to be an improvement over the older Intel HD 4600 graphics in Haswell. Frankly for SWTOR, the difference is minor. Tomorrow I plan to drop a 750 TI card into this machine to see what happens. It is one of the nicer cards that doesn't require a dedicated PCI-E power cable, running only on the power from the motherboard, so it doesn't require a power supply swap. I suspect the difference will be night and day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TX_Angel Posted February 5, 2016 Share Posted February 5, 2016 Just a quick follow up regarding the Dell laptop in the OP. I've done two things. 1. I upgraded the RAM to 16GB. Why? Because it comes with 8GB of DDR3L in single channel configuration, I added another 8GB of DDR3L to put it into dual channel config. SWTOR doesn't need 16GB of RAM, that was just the easiest solution to get to dual channel RAM, which of course will double the memory transfer rate (but not do anything for latency or access speed). 2. I made sure nothing was running in the background, I closed Steam, Origin, Chrome, etc. and make sure that all that was running was FRAPS, SWTOR, GPU-Z, and Task Manager. I used GPU-Z to make sure the NVidia GPU was being used, and Task Manager to make sure the CPU usage was proper for this game. I ran two warzones, one was the turrets (Alderaan) and the other was Novara Coast (the shielded bunkers). The first run (Alderaan): Frames - 8457 Time (ms) - 300000 Min - 16 Max - 61 Avg - 28.19 The second run (Novara coast) Frames - 9132 Time (ms) - 300000 Min - 13 Max - 59 Avg - 30.44 So between 28 and 30 fps average, with dips quite low during heavy combat and smooth as silk 60 fps outside of combat (when guarding). CPU usage was what I would expect, at about 50% the entire time, give or take. I do not know what caused the higher usage last time I tested it on this notebook, but it didn't happen this time. NVidia drivers are the latest (Jan 27th). Running 1080p Full Screen Windowed At Ultra preset, then AA, shadows, and grass were all turned off, all else left at ultra defaults. No extra changes to Windows or NVidia driver control panel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eltohan Posted February 5, 2016 Share Posted February 5, 2016 (edited) Looking to run on highest quality possible and get best FPS in warzones. My laptop is also an ASUS, with an i7 @2.4GHz 4700HQ & GTX 950M (2GB GDDR3 VRAM) + 2x4GB DDR3 @1920x1080p 17" Can run GTAV, Skyrim, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Batman Arkham Asylum, Divinity Original Sin etc on a mix of high and very high (with the most costly video settings being off ofc) settings and still get 60FPS. Even easier if you overclock the GPU a bit. Welp. In SWTOR though... on maxed out settings or the lowest, firstly the game barely looks better (aside for shadows & high shaders which both cost quite some perf though in some areas) , secondly, even if you can keep (and you will) 60+ FPS in the wild questing one vs A.I. mobs ... Once you drop in a warzone in a 8vs8 environment, once the action is started and everyone uses skills to buff up or fight, your framerate will tank to an averaged 18-23 FPS lol. Can rises up back to 40 ish or so when alone afking defending a node ... But as soon as you'll fight you'll see 7-15 fps So give it up, at least you'll be able to run better looking and more modern games at very high or maxed settings & btw on my desktop I got an i5 6600k @ 4.2 GHz & a nvidia GTX 980 Ti 6GB GDDR4 @1250 MHz, game still runs horribly in PvP (like it still drops down to 15 fps in heavy combat before going back up towards 40-60 when doing nothing (like respawning or the 1min warzone intros). It's like the game gets bottlenecked by the server or the file swapping process (as the game is actually TWO 32 BITS PROCESSES thus with the usual 32 bits limitations) in addition to being poorly coded (*ahem* unfinished second hand bough Hero Engine * ahem*)). And having an i7 with 4 physical cores + 4 hyperthreads @100 higher HMz compared to an i5's 4 physical cores (no hyper threading) is barely gonna be noticeable on a laptop anyway since the game isn't coded to use more cpu powers with more cores, it just splits the damn load on each core accordingly. So dual core, core2duo, i5 or i7 it won't change much. As said even with a top 5 desktop cpu with overclocking too (still runs at 40°C and not even at more than 30% load lol) game still runs like a bad slideshow in warzones. It's a bit better in 4vs4 matches, But not by much.. Even with a 4820 crazy 1300$ CPU overclocked to heavens the game WILL NOT RUN AT 60+ FPS IN WARZONES, EVER, NEVER Edited February 6, 2016 by Eltohan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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