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GPU vs CPU

RevBurt

By RevBurt
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RevBurt

RevBurt

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This topic started at a world boss where my FPS dropped dramatically.

The question:  is SWTOR CPU or GPU intensive?

To get an optimal experience, should I invest in GPU or CPU upgrades?  Seems lowering the graphics setting to nothing really didn't help the FPS issue and many are saying the Swtor is really a CPU driven game.

Any advice or rig specs would be appreciated.

What do the Devs use?

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Nee-Elder

Nee-Elder

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1 minute ago, RevBurt said:

The question:  is SWTOR CPU or GPU intensive?

To get an optimal experience, should I invest in GPU or CPU upgrades?  Seems lowering the graphics setting to nothing really didn't help the FPS issue and many are saying the Swtor is really a CPU driven game.

What do the Devs use?

They (Devs) will never tell you because they rarely ever post on these forums at all , much less about internal  computer specs.  Plus, what they use is irrelevant anyway, since they are mostly connected locally in Austin, TX (where the servers are) .

As to the rest of your question, SWTOR outdated game-engine  doesn't (and can't) take advantage of new multi-cores & such, but these links might help you until other users  reply:

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Nee-Elder

Nee-Elder

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8 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Error.  The gameplay servers are somewhere in Virginia (or maybe West Virginia, not sure) (for SS and SF) or Dublin, Ireland (DM, TL, TH).

You're sort of correct, yes-->  https://swtorista.com/articles/how-to-pick-a-server-in-swtor/ ...  but i meant  their own internal  'Dev environment'  servers (at home office in Austin) .  Hence why i said  "locally" in my post.

However, i should've  also clarified  i wasn't referring to the PUBLIC  servers, so that's on me yep.

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JediQuaker

JediQuaker

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When it comes to World Bosses, 16-man OPs, and/or other times when there are a lot of players on screen, SWTOR is very CPU limited.

SWTOR likes fast single-thread performance. SWTOR only uses 2 'threads' at most, so you only 'need' a dual core CPU, but, of course, having more cores helps for running background OS tasks, browsers, Starparse, etc, while playing. 

This is all somewhat moot these days as any modern CPU will have more than enough 'cores' and high enough clock speed. Basically, you want 4 or more cores at 4+ GHz. The main consideration would be for laptops which still often have somewhat slower clock speeds for energy saving.

If you are running an older system that struggles with FPS in WBs or OPs, there's only so much you can do. Make sure the system is running at 'max performance' in energy settings. If it's a laptop, make sure it's running on 'mains' power and has lots of cooling air flow.

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ThanderSnB

ThanderSnB

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SWTOR is CPU bound. Yeah, you need an okay graphics card to run the game well, but the main thing limiting FPS in large groups is the CPU. Back at launch, it was common knowledge that two core processors at 4 GHz were performing better than quad cores at 3.5 GHz. My guess is there is a bottleneck with the network code or the 2D UI code. Those are things typically handled by the CPU. Well, UI can also be done by the GPU, but I think SWTOR uses a Flash-based UI that might not utilize the GPU very well. So basically, the clock speed is the most important thing. If you can get 4.5 GHz or more (with or without overclocking) with at least 4 cores, you should be able to handle big battles a lot better. For graphics, you can probably get by with a 6 year old GTX 1050. Modern graphics cards won't be using more than 10-20% of their resources playing SWTOR while the CPU is maxed out 100%.

Edited by ThanderSnB
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SteveTheCynic

SteveTheCynic

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7 hours ago, ThanderSnB said:

The game won't use more than two threads.

Will people stop saying this ffs?  It uses at least four, as I saw back in the day with an 8-core hyperthreaded CPU (i.e. 16 execution units capable of running 16 threads in parallel), with Task Manager on the other screen.  The two SWTOR processes used, in total across the two, about 25% of the CPU i.e. four execution units, which requires, across the two processes, at least four threads.

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ThanderSnB

ThanderSnB

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4 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Will people stop saying this ffs?  It uses at least four, as I saw back in the day with an 8-core hyperthreaded CPU (i.e. 16 execution units capable of running 16 threads in parallel), with Task Manager on the other screen.  The two SWTOR processes used, in total across the two, about 25% of the CPU i.e. four execution units, which requires, across the two processes, at least four threads.

Thanks for the correction. Everyone always says threads. I removed the part about processes because I don't know enough how SWTOR uses them or the threads within them. It would be interesting to watch the data during a world boss fight to see if one core is being used more or if they are all maxed out at the same time. Sometimes my guild has two groups of 24 fighting world bosses, and it gets really choppy for me. I'd like to know if it's a bottleneck with a particular thread or if all the cores are being hit equally.

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SteveTheCynic

SteveTheCynic

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6 hours ago, ThanderSnB said:

Thanks for the correction. Everyone always says threads.

No problem, and yes, people do say threads, and probably because they aren't *aware* of the difference between a thread and a process.

6 hours ago, ThanderSnB said:

I removed the part about processes because I don't know enough how SWTOR uses them or the threads within them.

I *think* that one of them is the rendering engine, while the other operates the game state.  Task Manager shows one using lots of GPU, while the other uses none.

6 hours ago, ThanderSnB said:

It would be interesting to watch the data during a world boss fight to see if one core is being used more or if they are all maxed out at the same time. Sometimes my guild has two groups of 24 fighting world bosses, and it gets really choppy for me. I'd like to know if it's a bottleneck with a particular thread or if all the cores are being hit equally.

It's probably a bottleneck with a particular thread, the one that manages game state.  It's highly likely there's at least one inefficient algorithm tucked away in there, one that doesn't scale well with the number of active players in the area.

For Warzones, I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that there's a throttle involved that reduces the discrepancy between the player with the worst PC and the player with the best by artificially slowing the best, but I don't see how that's relevant to Operations groups.

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JediQuaker

JediQuaker

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On 11/22/2022 at 3:40 AM, SteveTheCynic said:

Will people stop saying this ffs?  It uses at least four, as I saw back in the day with an 8-core hyperthreaded CPU (i.e. 16 execution units capable of running 16 threads in parallel), with Task Manager on the other screen.  The two SWTOR processes used, in total across the two, about 25% of the CPU i.e. four execution units, which requires, across the two processes, at least four threads.

You are one of the very few people who says that SWTOR uses more than 2 threads. Are you sure that the monitoring  software used by that old 8-core CPU is accurate? 🤔

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SteveTheCynic

SteveTheCynic

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5 hours ago, JediQuaker said:

You are one of the very few people who says that SWTOR uses more than 2 threads. Are you sure that the monitoring  software used by that old 8-core CPU is accurate? 🤔

I see no reason to doubt its accuracy, or at least I don't think it *overestimates* things.  It's effing Task Manager for effing eff's sake, not some dubious random crap from nowhere in particular.  And at the time I made the observation, the CPU wasn't *that* old - an i7-7820X(1) (Skylake-X) in 2018 or maybe early 2019.

In general, Task Manager or equivalent (except the Windows 95 Power Toys "Wintop" utility) tends to *underestimate* the CPU usage of programs.  Wintop derived its figures from actual task switches rather than by periodic probing.  An old friend (also a former colleague) mentioned that his program he developed on his own time would *apparently* burn no CPU time if just one instance was running, but about 35% (of a 2000-generation CPU, mind) if two instances were running, which *he* ascribed to the sampling nature of WinNT 4's Task Manager.  I have good reason to trust his judgment on this subject.

I shall not pass judgment on people's possession or lack thereof of the knowledge necessary to assert the "two threads" thing, except to note, as I noted previously, that plenty of folks aren't aware of the difference between a thread and a process, and as a result they see two processes and say that SWTOR only has two threads.

(1) Released in mid-2017, roughly.

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Nee-Elder

Nee-Elder

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16 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

I see no reason to doubt its accuracy, or at least I don't think it *overestimates* things.  It's effing Task Manager for effing eff's sake, not some dubious random crap from nowhere in particular.

(1) Released in mid-2017, roughly.

Steve , i'm not exactly sure why  THIS particular topic has gotten you all worked up to the point of spewing "eff"  this and "eff" that  worse than Anakin cursing at SAND  :ph_lol:  but i found a few old (related)  forummmm  threads  (easy pun! ) from 2011-2017 ,  for to maybe settle you down a bit:

.... As well as  to provide a bit more historical perspective for other readers here.

Peace. :csw_r2d2:

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SteveTheCynic

SteveTheCynic

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3 hours ago, Nee-Elder said:

Steve , i'm not exactly sure why  THIS particular topic has gotten you all worked up to the point of spewing "eff"  this and "eff" that  worse than Anakin cursing at SAND  :ph_lol:  but i found a few old (related)  forummmm  threads  (easy pun! ) from 2011-2017 ,  for to maybe settle you down a bit:

It certainly isn't just this topic that I complain about this on, and most of those topics were from ten+ years ago, so the current state of the game has probably evolved a bit.  Coupled with a lot of people still apparently confusing threads-vs-process and/or cores-vs-executionunits.  And the ... stressed ... language was more about the casting of doubt on my use of tools.

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JediQuaker

JediQuaker

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20 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

And the ... stressed ... language was more about the casting of doubt on my use of tools.

It's not 'your use' of tools, it's the possible malfunctioning of the tools. Back in the early days of multi-core CPUs there was much discussion about what exactly the 'percentage' of CPU usage (in Task Manager) indicated. 

But, I keep forgetting to check what % Task Manager shows these days. 🙂

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SteveTheCynic

SteveTheCynic

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19 hours ago, JediQuaker said:

It's not 'your use' of tools, it's the possible malfunctioning of the tools. Back in the early days of multi-core CPUs there was much discussion about what exactly the 'percentage' of CPU usage (in Task Manager) indicated. 

But, I keep forgetting to check what % Task Manager shows these days. 🙂

It shows the percentage of the total available CPU, so on a four-core CPU without hyperthreading, no one thread can eat more than 25%.

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