Star Wars: The Old Republic: PC Performance, Benchmarked

[cleeve]

Rarely are MMOs anticipated as hotly as Star Wars: The Old Republic. We take a close look at the offspring of legendary developer Bioware and the larger-than-life Star Wars franchise, then tell you what kind of hardware it needs for smooth performance.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: PC Performance, Benchmarked : Read more

 

[hpglow]

Tom's you get bought out by Best of Media, and now the news is a couple days old and stale, we get anoying pop-ups over what we are reading every 3 pages or so, and there are very few cards in this write up. Why do I keep coming here to read stuff? I'm just going to take you guys out of my queue of reads every day you need to go back to what made you profitable.

 

[Guest]

Looks like my GTX 460 will handle the game fine. Playing in the tester weekend beta really made me look forward to playing the game.

 

[jellico]

Ran the game on very high, max viewing distance with:
i7-2600K
Radeon HD 5850

I played with high settings and a 3/4 viewing distance with:
Core 2 Duo e840
Nvidia GTS 8800

I played with with a mixture of low and medium settings and 40% viewing distance with:
i5 - 750
Radeon HD 4670

So clearly, a better video card (even an older one) is more important than a top-end processor.

This is a great game! Every quest and NPC interaction has voice-overs which greatly add to the dimension of the game. The intro movies are the best I've seen of any game, ever!

 

[hokkdawg]

I just KNEW this game wouldn't live up to the hype. It has a great single player RPG component, but it really doesn't need to be an MMO. It's like LOTRO - that game is great when sold as a single RPG to play offline, or even with P2P multiplayer. But as an MMO? Totally not worth the monthly fees. Time will tell with SW:TOR, but it sounds like the single player is the primary selling point...and the venture into MMO territory is nothing but a ploy to rake in more income from monthly fees...

 

[hardstylerz]

So people were fine about the performance of this game but complained about the performance of crysis? which looks a million times better than this...The game looks worse than world of warcraft and yet runs like absolute crap. I smell another ploy to push up sales for graphics cards. YOu can't be serious about the performance of this game. Even skyrim looks better and plays better despite being a console port.

 

[lunyone]

Well I might be interested, but at $15/month I'm not that interested.

 

[Guest]

As a subscription based game, BioWare can continually add content, and it doesn't hurt to be able to group with people for tough encounters or just because you enjoy it.

 

[SirGCal]

I was on the beta. Thought my system is a bit overkill (OCd 1100T & 6970), it ran like butter with everything maxed and the AA trick activated.

Still, I'm excited for release. I had a lot of fun in the beta and world PVP seems interesting without being annoying (though time will tell when the whole public gets ahold of it). You can solo much of it, but there are mini-raids starting at level 10 (or flashpoints I think they were called)...

The stories were just... wow... Sometimes they went a bit weak but they were always so detailed. I can say that this wouldn't be nearly as good as a single-player RPG. Lots of social aspects going on. But it's also not a grind like any other MMO I've done... Never once did I feel the grind of 'go kill 20 of these, bring the eye. go kill another 20, bring the teeth (why didn't they tell me last time).' Infact, kill X anything was a very rarity accept for a bonus xp aspect of which you nearly always doubled before finishing anyhow.

The big question is; "Will it have a good end-game"... Cause if not (and we didn't get to test that far), then long-term playability will be very limited... But again, we'll see that very soon...

 

[Guest]

Will I lag with a low end graphics card in lets say a city or an instance? What would u recommend the minimum graphics to do such things and have a good experience?

 

[Yargnit]

Perfect timing, I've been trying to decide between a 6950 and 560ti for a new SWTOR rig to get for Xmas. Wish you had tested these specific cards, but this certianly helps still. I've always prefered Nvidia's cause of better drivers, but this makes it real hard to take a 560ti over a 6950.

Just wish you ran a 1gb/2gb card test. I've seen SWTOR eat tons of memory (2.7GB) & I wonder if video RAM is the same way.

 

[SirGCal]

[citation][nom]Ircastillo[/nom]Will I lag with a low end graphics card in lets say a city or an instance? What would u recommend the minimum graphics to do such things and have a good experience?[/citation]
That was a common complaint in cities, not in instances... But tolerable also. I didn't have that problem but... I'm anything but low-end in my case... As for the minimum, it would really depend on what you're running, what res you run, what graphics you 'must have' to enjoy it, etc. But I know a lot of people running full out with half the card I have. If you just get a mid-grade unit from either manufacturer, you'd be capable to go anywhere without video slowdown. Might not be able to turn on the toys (AA, tessellation, etc.) but you should be able to have the rest of the stuff up to max or close... Again, it's all depending on what you're needing and going to do with it. Might be better to make a post in the video-card forum area for this topic with the details you're after to not take this particular thread off-topic.

 

[RazorBurn]

Hope Toms will Review Guild Wars 2.. Guild Wars 2 is much better game in all aspect than SW:TOR and WOW.. And no monthly fees, just buy the Game and its all set.. EPIC GAME in my opinion..

 

[Yargnit]

[citation][nom]RazorBurn[/nom]Hope Toms will Review Guild Wars 2.. Guild Wars 2 is much better game in all aspect than SW:TOR and WOW.. And no monthly fees, just buy the Game and its all set.. EPIC GAME in my opinion..[/citation]

See that's the thing. I (and many other people) see it the opposite way. I won't play a FTP MMO as my main game. I just could never get into at as seriously as a PTP MMO. That's why we need both types available. Just on the fact that Guild Wars (2) is FTP I'll never try it.

I'm not going 2 bash people that like it, whatever works for you. But I am getting tired of everyone trying to push all new MMO's to be FTP. PTP has a dedicated community of it's own just as FTP does.

 

[de5_Roy]

could you add zambezi (fx 4100, 6100, 8120) to the performance analysis articles since amd is slowly phasing phenoms out? i wonder how they perform with mid and high end gfx cards, at stock and overclocked. some llano numbers would also be helpful.

 

[deekie75]

WTF is with all the ads, Tom's? These damn pages are 2/3rds filled with advertising crap, every 15th word is associated with a link that spawns more ad crap, and then to top things off every time I switch pages I get a pop up from CDW. I realize you guys need to pay the bills, but give me a break! This is the first time in like 10 years I have even remotely considered not coming here anymore.

Also, you guys that freak out about $15 a month are either 12 years old, completely incapable of monitoring your finances, or both. I have been playing MMOs since the release of UO back in the day pretty much nonstop. $15 a month is an absolute steal for the amount of entertainment you get. I have quite literally saved myself THOUSANDS of dollars because MMOs keep me from going to the bar, going to the movies 2 or 3 times a week, renting more movies, buying multiple single-player PC titles every month, and all sorts of other crap to keep myself entertained. Maybe I'm in the minority here, I dunno. But from my perspective, MMOs are one of the biggest bargains there is.

Just sayin'.

 

[Maziar]

Looks good;though,I wasn't expecting it to be this much demanding.
Haven't played the game yet but the first time I watched a video of it,I thought a GTX 570/6970 can easily get 60FPS average on 1080p

 

[cmcghee358]

[citation][nom]deekie75[/nom]WTF is with all the ads, Tom's? These damn pages are 2/3rds filled with advertising crap, every 15th word is associated with a link that spawns more ad crap, and then to top things off every time I switch pages I get a pop up from CDW. I realize you guys need to pay the bills, but give me a break! This is the first time in like 10 years I have even remotely considered not coming here anymore.Also, you guys that freak out about $15 a month are either 12 years old, completely incapable of monitoring your finances, or both. I have been playing MMOs since the release of UO back in the day pretty much nonstop. $15 a month is an absolute steal for the amount of entertainment you get. I have quite literally saved myself THOUSANDS of dollars because MMOs keep me from going to the bar, going to the movies 2 or 3 times a week, renting more movies, buying multiple single-player PC titles every month, and all sorts of other crap to keep myself entertained. Maybe I'm in the minority here, I dunno. But from my perspective, MMOs are one of the biggest bargains there is.Just sayin'.[/citation]

What you see as a "waste of thousands" others refer to as a "life"

Food for thought.

 

[de5_Roy]

......

use firefox with noscript, ghostery and adblock plus.
i don't see any ads on this page.

 

[Guest]

Please and IGP performance numbers. This MMO+Star will be played be many people who are running older systems such as a Core2 MacBook Pro (not a 2nd gen Core... Intel + Marketing = Fail). I'm most interested in I3 and AMD Llano performance numbers for those who are budget conscious upgraders.

 

[buzznut]

Another PC game that actually uses the hardware. With BF3 and Skyrim, it looks like we can really look forward to the next gen of video cards. I hope more devs are working on pushing the hardware with their software. Also games seem to be scaling well also, which is great for folks on a budget that can't upgrade right now.

 

[deekie75]

[citation][nom]cmcghee358[/nom]What you see as a "waste of thousands" others refer to as a "life"Food for thought.[/citation]

Food for thought what? You're assuming all I do is sit in front of my PC for 16 hours a day playing games. In actuality, I work full time, I'm in college going for my 2nd degree, I'm married and and have a beautiful daughter, have a nice home and 2 cars in the garage. We still go out, we still see movies, but we do it in moderation. MMOs give me a very cheap outlet for "me time".

Your food for thought sounds more like a cheeseburger off the Dollar Menu.

 

[hardstylerz]

Whatever not my money...You guys can waste money on the subscribing to this game.[citation][nom]buzznut[/nom]Another PC game that actually uses the hardware. With BF3 and Skyrim, it looks like we can really look forward to the next gen of video cards. I hope more devs are working on pushing the hardware with their software. Also games seem to be scaling well also, which is great for folks on a budget that can't upgrade right now.[/citation]

This game pushes the hardware by being a massive resource hog. People bitched about GTA4 running like crap even on high end PCs. The only game that manages to make good use of a high end PC is crysis. The rest are either ports or poorly optimized.

How is this any different and okay? It's not. The game looks like pure garbage. Also, star wars isn't sci-fi...don't know why people continue to call it a "sci-fi" game.

 

[Guest]

This whole article seems more than a bit premature. Whatever they tested on was far from the final build, first off. No doubt there are graphical optimizations yet to be implemented that will likely be in the final build. Not to mention what driver level optimizations graphic card vendors have yet to make. Hell, even in the last publicly tested beta build it is a known that high res textures were not properly activating with the high settings turned on. With high res textures properly activated, those higher resolution benchmarks would look dramatically different. This ”article” is misleading, disingenuous and a mark against THG's at one time, stellar reputation. They do themselves a disservice publishing this now.

 

[giovanni86]

[citation][nom]hardstylerz[/nom]Whatever not my money...You guys can waste money on the subscribing to this game.This game pushes the hardware by being a massive resource hog. People bitched about GTA4 running like crap even on high end PCs. The only game that manages to make good use of a high end PC is crysis. The rest are either ports or poorly optimized.How is this any different and okay? It's not. The game looks like pure garbage. Also, star wars isn't sci-fi...don't know why people continue to call it a "sci-fi" game.[/citation]

Not hating or anything, but crysis was poorly optimized, and you can see that it was when you play Crysis 2. And Star Wars is Science Fiction. I have yet to see a actual working lightsaber that cuts through anything, or a X-wing or millennium falcon that flys in space that does the castle run in 12 parsites. Or even the fact you can go into hyper-space into a whole another galaxy like nothing.. Just saying totally Sci-fi if you ask me. Those were only a few of the many things that make Star Wars sci-fi. I've seen games hog resources and others that don't, but for the most part most games within the last few years have become big resource hogs requiring beefer machines to run them. Poorly optimized perhaps, but its a different developer using a different engine. The game isn't out yet, they are talking beta, and lets not forget beta BF3 to release BF3 it was a train wreck. But today it works almost flawless. Back to the game itself, i may or may not buy it depends if i know anyone who gets it. Graphically, i was hoping for a bit more and the world wise i didn't like the art direction when i first saw it, the first trailer i saw really hyped it up for me. It seems more of a hit or miss, i will let the final product launch and let the reviews of critics and users really push my decision.