Serious FPS performance problems after 64bit upgrade — on a high end machine

[VaticanHaircut]

I've been experiencing some awful FPS dips to as low as 20-50 fps sustained (especially during group content and whenever I open menus such as inventory or character sheet.)

I'm running an i9 10900kf  RTX 3070 32G ram.

I've tried just about every combination of graphics settings, including fullscreen, windowed fullscreen, and windowed.
Different graphics settings, different resolutions, refresh rates, &c.

CPU/GPU usage and temps are well within normal ranges. No thermal throttling is going on or anything.
This machine is only a few months old. I play plenty of other games with zero problems.

Does anyone have any idea what the situation might be? I've been back and forth with customer service, but so far nothing has worked.
I'm starting to think I'm just going to have to unsubscribe and maybe check back in a few patches to see if performance has improved at all.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[OwenBrooks]

sounds normal for the game engine

shouldn't be affecting gameplay though

Edited April 9, 2023 by OwenBrooks

[VaticanHaircut]

The problem isn't so much that it dips but that it stays sustained at about 20fps while I'm doing group content.
Is that really the kind of performance I can expect from the game?

I know the engine is pretty ancient at this point, but I also have an older machine with an i7 6700k  a gtx 980 and 16gb ram, and it runs this game much better overall, especially after the 64-bit upgrade.

This makes me think that something weird is going on with my newer machine that's giving me this performance problem.

 

[OwenBrooks]

make sure the power options on the new system are set to high performance

[Ritsi]

Hi! Some feedback on performance after 7.2.1

System:

MSI GE65 Raider Gaming Laptop

Windows 11

i7-10875H (8 core)

RTX 2080 Super

16GB RAM (2*8)

 

The first week after 7.2.1, 16-man PvP performance was slightly/noticeably worse. But after one week passed, performance dropped substantially. Haven't checked 16-man Ops yet. As far as other areas are concerned, I haven't done any testing because my PC was always playing them very well (except for Crisis on Umbara, infamous low fps on the train section for everybody).

I thought the 64-bit was supposed to finally make the group content perfectly playable. And instead, performance became worse?

Does anybody else suffer from this? This is really disappointing. My CPU usage still stays at 10-20% depending on the instance. If 64 bit cannot properly utilize my hardware (e.g. finally use 4 CPU cores!), then I can't really see performance in this game ever improving...

 

Is it finally time for SWTOR 2?

[Ritsi]

6 hours ago, VaticanHaircut said:

The problem isn't so much that it dips but that it stays sustained at about 20fps while I'm doing group content.
Is that really the kind of performance I can expect from the game?

I know the engine is pretty ancient at this point, but I also have an older machine with an i7 6700k  a gtx 980 and 16gb ram, and it runs this game much better overall, especially after the 64-bit upgrade.

This makes me think that something weird is going on with my newer machine that's giving me this performance problem.

 

Every now and then i get this sustained low 30s-20s issue. Only solution when this happens is to reinstall the game.

 

Even then, PvP performance drops are still there, just not as severe.

[VaticanHaircut]

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions to you both.

I did switch from a balanced power profile to a high-performance power profile as per your suggestion, OwenBrooks. Unfortunately, no effect.

And I certainly am experiencing relatively low CPU usage on my end as well, Ritsi. It is pretty frustrating as we both have machines that should be able to run this game without any performance issues.

I tried repairing the local files via the steam launcher as it was one of the customer service rep's first suggestions, but I'll try a full reinstallation to see if that also gets me anywhere later tonight.

 

[GeneralGyro]

the game since 64 bit hit seems to be slow fps wise like it was hit with a truck. 

[OwenBrooks]

@VaticanHaircut

In preferences / graphics , lower the shadow map resolution if not done so already

[xordevoreaux]

5 hours ago, OwenBrooks said:

@VaticanHaircut

In preferences / graphics , lower the shadow map resolution if not done so already

This. I just learned the other day from one of my guildies that after a patch, graphics settings may default to max.

[Ritsi]

7 minutes ago, xordevoreaux said:

This. I just learned the other day from one of my guildies that after a patch, graphics settings may default to max.

I had settings to max before and it was working pretty fine. Now after 7.2.1, it's garbage.

[MortenJessen]

16 hours ago, GeneralGyro said:

the game since 64 bit hit seems to be slow fps wise like it was hit with a truck. 

No it does not. I went down from an average above 200 (as high as it could measure) to like 160-170 fps in the most tanky areas like fleet around GTN or pvp or FP's. And my machine is a far cry from being modern, but it DOES have the ability to run 2 cores/4 threads at a flat 5.0GHz. After the 64bit upgrade, I had to set the FPS rate to 200, turn off V-sync and voila, I am again almost permanently above 180 FPS. And since no human can see the difference between 60 fps and 200 fps, I am a happy panda.

[JackieKo]

On 4/8/2023 at 8:40 PM, VaticanHaircut said:

I've been experiencing some awful FPS dips to as low as 20-50 fps sustained (especially during group content and whenever I open menus such as inventory or character sheet.)
 

Hi there, 

A couple notes from the team. The frame rate limiter defaults to 60, so you can try turning it up to the max of 200. Additionally, if you have multiple GPUs, we recommend checking to make sure you have it set to using the installed GPU as opposed to the power saving one. 

If you are having performance issues that are limited by rendering, the FPS will display green. If it's limited by the CPU, the FPS will display red. We would like to know what color you are seeing. Some things to test if it is a graphics issue:

• Turn off AntiAliasing
• Reduce shadow settings
• Update your drivers

Other info we would like to know: 

• Are you on a laptop or a desktop? 
• Please submit a DXDiag and send to support@swtor.com 
  • Be sure to include your account name and use the email address associated with your account name 

Thanks! 

[StrikePrice]

I had about a 25% frame loss with the current update. Make sure you're using the latest NVIDIA drivers and turn off shadows and shadow mapping (turn everything off to do with shadows). That got me back to where I was before all else being equal.

[felleto]

I gave up on pvp after the new patch, which is a shame because I really wanted the samurai looking armor. Game is unplayable period. I have played this game since launch and I have NEVER had such terrible framerates even on my old machine. I could get by just playing solo content if Bioware stopped shoving group content down my throat to complete my seasons. Please FOR THE LOVE OF GOD test your stuff before releasing, and stop using your player base as beta testers and offering a vulptila mount as a reward. This is just ridiculous. We pay for this freaking game it's your responsibility to release things that work. Is it too an outlandish concept to grasp? 

[denavin]

It's funny, all these high end systems are seeing a slowdown in performance. But in my old i7 8700K Coffee Lake CPU and GTX 750Ti system, since going to 64bit. Have seen a vast increase not only to frame rate, but in the reduction of Lag and an over all improvement in general.

Edited April 10, 2023 by denavin

[LD_Little_Dragon]

Well, I was getting like 10fps in 16 man ops and now I"m getting 30 to 40fps which is great by comparison.

The 64 bit upgrade seems like a win for the cheapo low end pcs, and a loss for some high ends.

[Rubmon]

Jakie,

My game has been patching just about every day after the latest update 7.2.1, I know of  couple people in my guild who are having the same issue. The download shows as 30ish gig but finishes in like 3 minutes. One of the other 2 people in my guild encountered an error where it said, the server version did not match. He was able to re-patch right after he powered off his machine.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Rubmon

[Skolops]

I have also seen significantly worse performance since the update, and on a machine that is more than good enough and ran it on maxed out settings before with very few significant frame drops. 

My machine is an i5-9600k overclocked to 3.6 Ghz. I have 32 GB RAM and an overclocked GTX 1660 Ti. 

I used to get FPS up into the mid 100s and above if I had VSync turned off and would see drops to 40 FPS in warzone matches with lots of effects going on. I never really had drops on the fleet.

Now if I go through a populated part of the fleet I get very bad stutters and in a warzone match I'll regularly drop to 20 FPS. This is AFTER turning many of the graphics settings down or off - shaders, shadows, anti-aliasing, anisotropy, grass/tree quality, atlasing, to name a few.

The FPS counter is usually red. 

I also have an admittedly older laptop which used to be able to run the game, but which even turning everything down to the lowest setting only gets 1FPS in a warzone or the fleet. 

[Ardrossan]

I'm on an acer gaming laptop with an i7-8750 @ 2.20GHz, using GTX 1060 Ti. Also experiencing a steep FPS drop in group content, opening inventory and legacy storage etc. My settings were max prior to the update. 

The slowdown was so significant that I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall all my graphics drivers, which helped a little bit but the problem is still there for swtor.

SWTOR has always been a beast to run compared to other games. I very much doubt bioware will do anything to fix the problem; players have been complaining about the FPS since launch and they've done nothing about it, why would it be different now? They will look at their metrics and assume that most players have no issues and for the rest of us it's because we're using laptops or we have older machines or whatever flimsy rationalization comes to mind. The time to fix this problem was in the PTS stage and as usual they ignored feedback. 

 

 

[raikme]

16 hours ago, MortenJessen said:

No it does not. I went down from an average above 200 (as high as it could measure) to like 160-170 fps in the most tanky areas like fleet around GTN or pvp or FP's. And my machine is a far cry from being modern, but it DOES have the ability to run 2 cores/4 threads at a flat 5.0GHz. After the 64bit upgrade, I had to set the FPS rate to 200, turn off V-sync and voila, I am again almost permanently above 180 FPS. And since no human can see the difference between 60 fps and 200 fps, I am a happy panda.

I really REALLY doubt you're playing level 80 16-man warzones at above 160fps at all times. 

[Minisys]

I'm running the i7-8700 (non-K variant) with a EVGA GTX 1080 8GB Super Clock and 32 GB of RAM in my system. As for monitors I use two LG UltraGear's which operates at 165Hz 1080p.

While out and about doing my own thing away from the masses I got no problem getting around 175 FPS. While on the Imperial Fleet Station around the masses I tend to get around 90-130 FPS range. That's playing with default Ultra settings.

    

 

 

 

 

[GeneralGyro]

i fixed my issue i had to change the frame rate and refresh rate and then change them back to max and relaunched the game. smooth as butter now

[MortenJessen]

Not to be a party pooper, but I seem to see a tendency here. Why so many machines that runs on so low core speeds?? Even one that has overclocked to 3.6GHz, that still falls far below the 4.0GHz that was the recommended (not the minimum) before the 64bit update landed. Why would you, well knowing that the game just became far more hungry (aka capable of utilizing more of everything) still be crying that your 2.2GHz system (just barely 0.2 above the minimum requirements before 64bit) can not handle a notoriously clock speed hungry game that likes very fast cpu's. I mean, expecting an 11 year old game that already when it came out felt the need for speed to not improve and put already "slow poke" systems under pressure, was like expecting BW to screw it up. And for once they did not, and people cry. People was angry already in 2010 (yes they was) that SWTOR was not 64bit. Well knowing that 64bit sets some system limits pretty high, back then they opted out because too many people still had 32bit (already potato back then in the western world) to give more players the chance. Now 11 years later, I find it hard to imagine why NOT A ONE of those players who has visual problems (and I do not talk your problems down) was not on PTS and reported back to BW. Why? Because what went live was PRECISELY what was on PTS, so you had all the chance in the world. And why I can not say why BW has not commented on the problem, and any possible solution, I really do find it hard to understand why so many people cry out over a performance improvement all wanted (again, dont ask the genie what it can do for you, unless you want a world of hurt, but make sure your request to the genie is well thought out), when I have also seen more than one thread (also on a certain nasty forum beginning with R) were people dont even know how to use the in-game settings.... WHATS WITH THAT???

Get your cpu to 4.0GHz, turn off V-sync and use full screen window mode, and turn gamma to 100 and turn fps up from 60 to 200. Start there, see if that helps. If not, then report back, with more details than that of how much you hate the devs (at least a few of the worst posts about dev-bodyparts has been removed from that other forum). I lose faith in the players when I read such comments, even though they are not on this forum. And I lash back even though it might not be YOU who make them, because, just because why not? Some of what is written here is also above the limit, but here it is unfortunately on BW to communicate, and I think they should. At least to clear up things and prevent the players getting frustrated. 

[Ardrossan]

5 hours ago, MortenJessen said:

unfortunately on BW to communicate, and I think they should. At least to clear up things and prevent the players getting frustrated. 

Yes it is up to bioware to communicate, it is not up to players to invent excuses or rationalizations for them. Like your preceding textwall which apparently isn't even about comments in this forum lmao. Thanks bro I turned off v sync and relaunched and...it did absolutely nothing. Oh right because that was literally the first thing I tried. bros on this forum who think they're IT experts trotting out these worn out rationalizations all the time. Assume it's not the rig or anything players are doing wrong. Give players the benefit of the doubt instead of the big corporation that is entirely responsible for this change.