In-game movies very slow at times - slow frame rate...

[JediOfTheNorth]

I'm finding that, at times, the in-game "movies", especially in the Knights of the Fallen Empire series, can bog down a lot going from a high frame rate (30 frames per second) to as low as 9 fps. When watching one of these "movies" one scene can be just fine then when it switches to another scene it's real slow. Then when it goes back to the previous scene it's fine again. Anyone else having this problem? I have Windows 7 professional (64bit) with a very good video card.

 

Thanks!

 

Mike

[Mubrak]

I'm finding that, at times, the in-game "movies", especially in the Knights of the Fallen Empire series, can bog down a lot going from a high frame rate (30 frames per second) to as low as 9 fps.

 

I assume that's perceived fps not actually the fps displayed with Ctrl+Shift+F.

 

Studdering in animations during cutscenes can be seen in many gameplay videos. In my experience, it helps to disable vertical sync ingame and force it in the driver settings (including triple buffering). This also helps when high grass settings cause studdering on grassy planets like Belsavis or Alderaan although you have constant high FPS.

Edited September 15, 2016 by Mubrak

[JediOfTheNorth]

Thanks for your help on this but you're a bit over my head technically, sorry. Can you explain this a bit more - "it helps to disable vertical sync ingame and force it in the driver settings (including triple buffering)" and how to disable vertical sync along with the driver settings? Do you mean the driver settings in my video card? I wonder if I need to update the card's drivers...

[Mubrak]

Vertical Syncronisation is used to synchronize your FPS rate with the actual refreshing rate of your monitor. If you have a 60hz monitor and your graphic card manages 100FPs for example, the image would change while the monitor is still in the progress of displaying it, causing a tear trough the image. (The upper half of the screen shows the old frame, and the lower half the new one.)

 

When SWTOR has control over v-sync, the game sometimes skips a frame which is then noticable as a sudden low FPS studdering. To disable this in SWTOR go to preferences/graphics and disable "Vertical Sync" on top.

 

Now you have traded the studdering for screen tearing. To get the vertical synchronisation back, go to your graphic driver settings (right click on desktop, NVIDIA or Radeon Settings) there you have options to change the 3D settings globally or for each progamm. (Best do the changes only for SWTOR)

 

There are two settings that are relevant here:

 

1. Set Vertical Sync to "On" or "Force On" instead of "Use the 3D-Applications setting"

 

2. Activate "Triple Buffering" if it isn't already on. (When a fast graphic card has a frame ready to be displayed, while the monitor is still busy with the previous one, the card would usually sit idle when v-sync is active; triple buffering allows the card to continue working with the next the frame, giving it a lead in case the next frame is more complex and would cause a performance drop otherwise.)

[JediOfTheNorth]

Hey Mubrak, sorry it took me so long to get back to you but thanks a bunch for the information you supplied here. I'm going to give it a try tonight and see if that will help.

 

Thanks again and I'll let you know how it worked out.