The Unofficial TOR and Boot Camp Discussion Thread

[Marctraider]

After installing Windows 7 64-bit into a Native EFI environment (No more Bootcamp) I've discovered some weird behavior with the most recent Nvidia drivers.

 

I'd like to inform some of you, especially 330M GT users that the newer drivers somehow snoop off 32MB~ of dedicated memory and doesn't allocate it. Hence the posts here from 330M users only showing 224MB.

 

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=221638

 

If anyone has a 330M GT in their notebook and using the most recent drivers, check your dedicated memory stats in the Windows Display properties like in the pictures in the thread above. Then try to downgrade to 275.27 or an older version and magically see your dedicated ram back to 256MB (Not sure if it also occurs with 512MB 330M owners)

 

It's NOT a visual bug, I've used different external tools which read out the memory usage directly and you basically have less total dedicated memory which is being mapped/allocated in Windows. Every and all programs (Must be more then 5 different) can all use more memory and my memory usage drops in all of those programs, and the max limits are all increased.

 

Choppyness in the game is totally gone since that extra 32MB is pretty essential if you only have 256MB. Its the difference between having no MSAA x4 and having MSAA x4.

 

Please can anyone confirm this and support my thread?

 

 

Just a note; I've booted into a native EFI environment so there is no Bootcamp BIOS emulation layer that could cause this, obviously. Basicall I shouldnt even be posting here since I'm not running 'under' Bootcamp like most of you

 

In any case, its totally driver related.

 

Here is a short demonstration on how TOR runs on my Macbook Pro 6.2:

 

Edited January 27, 2012 by Marctraider

[daemian]

After installing Windows 7 64-bit into a Native EFI environment (No more Bootcamp) I've discovered some weird behavior with the most recent Nvidia drivers... <snip>

 

Good post, maybe that'll help out some of the players here.

 

I've been having some bad luck installing Windows recently.

 

I installed Win7 64-bit on a 240GB SSD, and used a script to install an AHCI driver. I decided to install the Boot Camp .msi, then CCC, then TOR. It worked great (although Windows won't boot the machine from the SSD using one of the spare SATA connections on the MB, which is what I wanted. The SSD will only boot Windows in the HDD bays, but the SATA ports work fine with an HDD).

 

But then I installed ATI Tray Tools, which gave me an error on reboot. TOR crashed on launch, so I removed it. I was running Catalyst 12.1 beta, so I switched to an earlier driver to see if that would help. After that, TOR looked horrible. Nothing I've done since, including reinstalling the entire game, or reverting drivers, will fix it.

 

It's also showing some weirdness with my other drives, showing several partitions that would normally be invisible and a few other quirks. I'm going to wipe the SSD and start again, when I have time. Sometimes I really miss OS X.

 

In an ideal world I would have 2 SSDs in the second optical bay (1 for Windows, 1 for OS X), which would leave me with all 4 HDD bays for storage and backup.

Edited January 27, 2012 by daemian

[Marctraider]

Good post, maybe that'll help out some of the players here.

 

I've been having some bad luck installing Windows recently.

 

I installed Win7 64-bit on a 240GB SSD, and used a script to install an AHCI driver. I decided to install the Boot Camp .msi, then CCC, then TOR. It worked great (although Windows won't boot the machine from the SSD using one of the spare SATA connections on the MB, which is what I wanted. The SSD will only boot Windows in the HDD bays, but the SATA ports work fine with an HDD).

 

But then I installed ATI Tray Tools, which gave me an error on reboot. TOR crashed on launch, so I removed it. I was running Catalyst 12.1 beta, so I switched to an earlier driver to see if that would help. After that, TOR looked horrible. Nothing I've done since, including reinstalling the entire game, or reverting drivers, will fix it.

 

It's also showing some weirdness with my other drives, showing several partitions that would normally be invisible and a few other quirks. I'm going to wipe the SSD and start again, when I have time. Sometimes I really miss OS X.

 

In an ideal world I would have 2 SSDs in the second optical bay (1 for Windows, 1 for OS X), which would leave me with all 4 HDD bays for storage and backup.

 

 

Mhh I have no practical experience with SSD's yet but you might have better luck with runnin a Native EFI environment, it has native support for AHCI And all other stuffs. You can actually say you don't have 'bootcamp' anymore since 'bootcamp' is well.. the name is probably most applicable to having BIOS emulation layer before Windows starts. The assistant in Mac OS X is merely a tool to help and the drivers/app in Windows are just to support some additional features.

 

Problem is that the stupid BIOS emulation layer just puts everything on fail safe. Before I used native EFI I used Grub2 before starting Windows to set the PCI registers for the Sata controller, but that didn't work with Stand-by because after resuming the registers would be set back by this BIOS sh*t and Windows just froze. And it was a bit of a hassle. However this native EFI is still experimental and I don't think I should begin to explain here on how to proceed on doing all this successfully on a game forum

 

I have no clue about your ATI/CCC stuff, since I have an Nvidia myself :/

I'm totally against 'bootcamp' since its practically just an emulated BIOS PC with a layer between EFI <-> Windows and brings more problems then good. But since Apple doesn't really approve of having Windows on a Mac at all, you'll know why its borked.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Marctraider

[JediMasterShake]

Posting to rate this very helpful and constructive thread

[Fatbaldandalone]

Problem is that the stupid BIOS emulation layer just puts everything on fail safe. Before I used native EFI I used Grub2 before starting Windows to set the PCI registers for the Sata controller, but that didn't work with Stand-by because after resuming the registers would be set back by this BIOS sh*t and Windows just froze. And it was a bit of a hassle. However this native EFI is still experimental and I don't think I should begin to explain here on how to proceed on doing all this successfully on a game forum

 

Have a link to a source with info?

 

Running a 2.8ghz 8 core mac pro, seperate ssd for osx and windows, 560ti (original ati for osx).

 

For the most part the game runs very well. But watching cpu and gfx utilization while in illum pvping sit at roughly 30% with no core near maxed and getting 5-10 fps is a pretty big downer.

 

Not opposed to dabbling with something new if it may help.

[daemian]

Mhh I have no practical experience with SSD's yet but you might have better luck with runnin a Native EFI environment, it has native support for AHCI And all other stuffs. You can actually say you don't have 'bootcamp' anymore since 'bootcamp' is well.. the name is probably most applicable to having BIOS emulation layer before Windows starts.

 

Problem is that the stupid BIOS emulation layer just puts everything on fail safe. Before I used native EFI I used Grub2 before starting Windows to set the PCI registers for the Sata controller, but that didn't work with Stand-by because after resuming the registers would be set back by this BIOS sh*t. And it was a bit of a hassle. However this native EFI is still experimental and I don't think I should begin to explain here on how to proceed on doing all this successfully.

 

I have no clue about your ATI/CCC stuff, since I have an Nvidia myself :/

I'm totally against 'bootcamp' since its practically just an emulated BIOS PC with a layer between EFI <-> Windows which works like crap.

 

The ATI utilities shouldn't be the issue, the game runs flawlessly on a 1TB HDD.

 

Someone posted a very detailed EFI how-to in an earlier version of this thread. Unfortunately the forums were wiped when the game launched. Any links or info would be great, if you have them.

 

I might just look into it, I have a sneaking suspicion this all stems from forcing the AHCI driver. As I understand it, the SSD won't run at full speed (in Windows) without it and that seems to defeat the purpose.

Edited January 27, 2012 by daemian

[Marctraider]

I can only get you started with this link, but you will have to do the rest yourself (For now)

If all goes well I will make a Wiki post soon on how to proceed with this, but I'm not the one making this possible though. So I deserve no credits

 

Just a reminder;

 

- This is probably not for the average player;

 

- I do not know on how much Mac's this actually works, there is a loader programmed by someone which will enable the GPU for accelerated use, but I'm not sure it works with every Mac yet. I can only say it works great on MBP 6.2

 

- There are some limitations if you even manage to get it working, so far the only real things that the brightness controls do not work. Also the BCD is not accessable but those are the known problems. There could also be some problems with USB so it could require some additional undocumented tricks to get Windows installed in pure EFI.

 

- Since there is a BCD issue, I advice to slipstream SP1 into the installation.

 

Like I said I will make a Wiki How-to and probably post it on this link as well, and you need some required files to even make this work, which cannot be downloaded from a link right now;

 

 

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=696523

Edited January 27, 2012 by Marctraider

[daemian]

Running a 2.8ghz 8 core mac pro, seperate ssd for osx and windows, 560ti (original ati for osx).

 

For the most part the game runs very well. But watching cpu and gfx utilization while in illum pvping sit at roughly 30% with no core near maxed and getting 5-10 fps is a pretty big downer.

 

Out of curiosity, what's your performance like in the game in general (i.e. not Ilum)? I have the same machine, but I'm using a 6970 for Windows, and an 8800GT for OS X.

 

I rarely dip below 45 FPS, even on fleet. Usually it's between 55-60 with Vsync enabled, and 8xAA in Catalyst.

Edited January 27, 2012 by daemian

[Fatbaldandalone]

Out of curiosity, what's your performance like in the game in general (i.e. not Ilum)? I have the same machine, but I'm using a 6970 for Windows, and an 8800GT for OS X.

 

I rarely dip below 45 FPS, even on fleet. Usually it's between 55-60 with Vsync enabled, and 8xAA in Catalyst.

 

Pve is always smooth. Fleet i dip into the high 20s, shadows disabled. Pvp varies from great to less than great.

 

The 560ti was a placeholder (best buy local, no restocking return, ****** move, but i buy a lot there) after my 4890 died couple weeks after launch. Wanted to hold out and see how the 7970 was going to turn out. At this point i'm leaning toward building a new computer for windows, and leaving the older desktop for os x. However theres still a year left to depreciate on this one.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Fatbaldandalone

[daemian]

Pve is always smooth. Fleet i dip into the high 20s, shadows disabled. Pvp varies from great to less than great.

 

The 560ti was a placeholder (best buy local, no restocking return, ****** move, but i buy a lot there) after my 4890 died couple weeks after launch. Wanted to hold out and see how the 7970 was going to turn out. Strongly considering grabbing one, also on the fence about building an i7 for windows and going back to just os x on desktop for business book keeping reasons (records kept on os x, neat receipts doesn't port over).

 

I'm also thinking about a 7970 down the road. The reference card uses only a few watts more than the 6970, and runs cooler. Rumor has it they may be compatible with OS X 10.7.3.

Edited January 27, 2012 by daemian

[Fatbaldandalone]

I'm also thinking about a 7970 down the road. The reference card uses only a few watts more than the 6970, and runs cooler. Rumor has it they may be compatible with OS X 10.7.3.

 

One thing that killed me on the 7970 for now was people here that posted of upgrading to one and still having the same dips

 

horrible optimization is horrible.

 

just looking at utilization tells you something is wrong. I keep meters for the cpu cores and gfx on a secondary screen, rarely if ever do things really push the usage %.

 

A gaming i7 may be nice, really would only have to pick up cpu, ram, mb with the other parts I have here, maybe a ps.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Fatbaldandalone

[daemian]

One thing that killed me on the 7970 for now was people here that posted of upgrading to one and still having the same dips.

 

Yeah, that seems ridiculous for a card that can easily handle Skyrim on triple displays.

 

Every now and then I toy with the idea of building a gaming PC. But I can't justify it when this old clunker runs (almost) every game I own maxed out.

[justahdude]

Personally i have no harsh feelings for mac. Boot camp is one way to go and a good one it is too. dual booting lets the operating system have 100% of the systems resources.

 

another option would be virtual machine, with parallels desktop, which would require the highest end of the mac spectrum.

 

another option would be what is called application compatibility layering. The hardest of options, which in essence is teaching the current operating system how to run applications meant for a different operating system. Linux has a fancy tool that gets most of the work started with something called "WINE". once installed a little more work is necessary to get everything smooth. though many times its not as simple as it seems to be.

 

anyway long story short, in this day and age it really has become all 1's and 0's with a little bit of work and alot of googling, you will likely be able to get anything to run on just about anything.

[daemian]

Personally i have no harsh feelings for mac. Boot camp is one way to go and a good one it is too. dual booting lets the operating system have 100% of the systems resources.

 

another option would be virtual machine, with parallels desktop, which would require the highest end of the mac spectrum.

 

another option would be what is called application compatibility layering. The hardest of options, which in essence is teaching the current operating system how to run applications meant for a different operating system. Linux has a fancy tool that gets most of the work started with something called "WINE". once installed a little more work is necessary to get everything smooth. though many times its not as simple as it seems to be.

 

anyway long story short, in this day and age it really has become all 1's and 0's with a little bit of work and alot of googling, you will likely be able to get anything to run on just about anything.

 

A few people on the forums were working on getting a WINE version of TOR going during the beta. I don't know how that ended up.

[recondelta]

Quite franking, Macs are horrible at gaming, they perform like a PC twice as old. Running in OS X versus bootcamp would likely hurt FPS even more as the drivers would be better optimized in Windows.

 

Anyone want to buy a barely used 2011 MBP? Never buying another Mac, thats for sure.

 

$1800 for my MBP and it runs worse than my 2 year old ACER laptop. It has nothing to do with running in bootcamp, everything to do with Mac releasing garbarge wrapped up in a pretty aluminum case.

[daemian]

Quite franking, Macs are horrible at gaming, they perform like a PC twice as old. Running in OS X versus bootcamp would likely hurt FPS even more as the drivers would be better optimized in Windows.

 

Anyone want to buy a barely used 2011 MBP? Never buying another Mac, thats for sure.

 

$1800 for my MBP and it runs worse than my 2 year old ACER laptop. It has nothing to do with running in bootcamp, everything to do with Mac releasing garbarge wrapped up in a pretty aluminum case.

 

Well, my Mac is over 4 years old, and I don't know of too many 8 year old PCs that can run modern games on max settings. Your experience is obviously different.

 

My experience is that every game I've played runs at exactly the expected quality and framerate on a Mac running Windows as it would on any computer with the same specs.

 

An i5 processor or a 6750m don't stop being what they are because of the logo on the box they came in.

 

If you post your specs someone might be able to help you out. It's possible you can improve your performance by looking at things like drivers, for starters. Worth a try anyway.

Edited January 27, 2012 by daemian

[Marctraider]

Quite franking, Macs are horrible at gaming, they perform like a PC twice as old. Running in OS X versus bootcamp would likely hurt FPS even more as the drivers would be better optimized in Windows.

 

Anyone want to buy a barely used 2011 MBP? Never buying another Mac, thats for sure.

 

$1800 for my MBP and it runs worse than my 2 year old ACER laptop. It has nothing to do with running in bootcamp, everything to do with Mac releasing garbarge wrapped up in a pretty aluminum case.

 

Like I said before, if you correctly setup your Mac WITHOUT bootcamp (Excluding Bootcamp app/drivers because thats not really bootcamp where I'm talking about) you will have the same performance as any other laptop/PC with exactly the same specs.

 

However, its true that Apple does not keep themselves to industry standards and they use modified versions of almost everything, and implemented some additional functions/chips for their own use.

 

So don't say things like that if you dont know what you're talking about.

My MBP runs so good that it outperforms every other laptop with the same GPU chip.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Marctraider

[Atamosk]

rocking a 2008 pre unibody version 3 15 inch macbook pro, with 4 gigs of ram

 

anything i can do to increase the performance of this guys? or do you think it is just to old of a computer to be able to do anything?

 

i can run the game, at times it can be annoying but for pve story its fine.

 

hoth outside has good frame rate hahaa

Edited January 27, 2012 by Atamosk

[daemian]

rocking a 2008 pre unibody version 3 15 inch macbook pro, with 4 gigs of ram

 

anything i can do to increase the performance of this guys? or do you think it is just to old of a computer to be able to do anything?

 

i can run the game, at times it can be annoying but for pve story its fine.

 

hoth outside has good frame rate hahaa

 

Do you know what video card and CPU you have?

[EvilZeppelin]

I'm running a 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro with a ATI 5870 and I'm playing the game in boot camp with Windows 7 64 bit. Everything runs great max out but when it's on fullscreen it doesn't show correctly like the resolution isn't in full resolution but when I have it on window mode everything looks fine. Has anyone experience this problem?

[daemian]

I'm running a 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro with a ATI 5870 and I'm playing the game in boot camp with Windows 7 64 bit. Everything runs great max out but when it's on fullscreen it doesn't show correctly like the resolution isn't in full resolution but when I have it on window mode everything looks fine. Has anyone experience this problem?

 

Are you saying it's a lower resolution in fullscreen mode, or is it stretched? What driver are you using? If it's the Boot Camp driver you could try replacing it with the latest Catalyst.

Edited January 28, 2012 by daemian

[mono-olli]

Greetings!

 

First, thanks for this thread. It pretty much gave me the courage to buy the game and play it on Boot Camp

 

I've been playing for two weeks now with vanilla Boot Camp drivers on Windows XP SP3. My mac is MacBookPro 17" with Nvidia 9600M GT. The performance is ok'ish, but I've started to wonder if I could make it better.

 

I did download the Nvidia driver 266.58_notebook_winxp_32bit_international_whql from their site, but the installer said that there isn't hardware which supports these drivers. At the moment I'm in process of installing NVidia MobilityModder which might help.

 

If somebody has a easy and hassle-free way to update your Nvidia drivers for MacBookPro, I'd really love to know that for future updates!

 

Cheers!

[ChunkCohen]

Quite franking, Macs are horrible at gaming, they perform like a PC twice as old. Running in OS X versus bootcamp would likely hurt FPS even more as the drivers would be better optimized in Windows.

 

Anyone want to buy a barely used 2011 MBP? Never buying another Mac, thats for sure.

 

$1800 for my MBP and it runs worse than my 2 year old ACER laptop. It has nothing to do with running in bootcamp, everything to do with Mac releasing garbarge wrapped up in a pretty aluminum case.

 

I think you may be exaggerating a bit. Macs (at least the notebooks and iMacs) generally do keep up pretty well with modern CPUs, but they have always been at least a generation behind on GPUs. Apple never uses high-end notebook GPUs. They've always used midrange parts at best. But also consider that high-end GPUs are generally only found on the heaviest PC notebooks with ginormous 200W+ power bricks.

 

Really, it's design decision more than anything else. Apple wants to make notebooks under an inch thick that can run up to 8 hours on a battery charge. You can't really get those numbers with a power-hungry GPU. This logic even applies to PCs. A laptop with comparable GPU performance to a midrange gaming PC is going to be big, brash and weigh a ton.

 

I did download the Nvidia driver 266.58_notebook_winxp_32bit_international_whql from their site, but the installer said that there isn't hardware which supports these drivers. At the moment I'm in process of installing NVidia MobilityModder which might help.

 

That's mostly because notebook GPU drivers are more often than not, specific to the make of the notebook. Other factors are in play such as the notebook's native display, power management, etc.

 

 

The beta SWTOR client ran decently on my 2008 MacBook Pro (2.6GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, 8600M GT 512MB) using the latest Boot Camp drivers on Win 7 x64, but the release client just doesn't run acceptably anymore. I'm not sure exactly what changed. Now I just avoid playing on the MBP altogether.

 

The game actually runs pretty well on my 2008 Mac Pro (2.8GHz Xeon 8-core, 16GB RAM, 8800 GT 512MB) at 1920x1200 at medium settings. Again, Win 7 x64. I'm getting 35-40 fps average, with occasional dips to 20 fps. Thinking about a new GPU though to turn more eye candy on...

Edited January 28, 2012 by ChunkCohen

[EvilZeppelin]

Are you saying it's a lower resolution in fullscreen mode, or is it stretched? What driver are you using? If it's the Boot Camp driver you could try replacing it with the latest Catalyst.

 

I think I ran the latest Catalyst. It's kinda hard to explain actually like if it's in fullscreen it's sorta pixelated.

[Sylin]

I'm running an iMac 11,3 (late 2010):

 

• Intel i7 Quad Core 2.93GHz
  
• 16GB RAM
  
• 1TB HDD @ 7200 RPM (w/ 300GB devoted to BootCamp)
  
• ATI (Mobility) Radeon HD 5800 w/ 1GB DDR5
  
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
  
• Catalyst 12.1
  

 

Looking for tips on improving performance. By all rights, this is still a monster of a machine (although somewhat dated GPU), but I tend to only get around 14-30 FPS in the Fleet and 23-33 FPS during play, on Low settings, with Shadows off. Note: I also play in a Window, so I can bounce to TORhead.com or check IMs easily.

 

(Conversely, I can play WoW on Ultra and get 50 FPS even in raids.)

 

Any tips will do! I am curious about running Win7 in native resolution (2560x1440) but the game is running in 1920x1080. Should they be the same, for performance-sake (ie. dumb down Windows res to 1920x1080, or up SWTOR to 2560x1440)?

 

Also, should I disable Aero?

 

Oddly, a few weeks ago, I was getting around 50 FPS, so something in the recent patches changed--or something in the Catalyst settings changed. I'm just anxious to find a good equilibrium between Catalyst and SWTOR that gives me smoother performance.

 

Thanks!

Edited January 28, 2012 by Sylin