Swtor: going from low to med graphics = better fps ?

bruyiell

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Jan 20, 2012
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I'm a noob on tweaking pc's for game performance thats why I never build one from scratch ...but why am I getting better fps on SWTOR from going from low settings (in game) with no shadows to med settings with no shadows?

I went from 20's 30's on cities to 40+ even hitting 70+ fps at some times. Why i'm not getting this better performance in pvp scenarios? still at 22 28 FPS with some stalls (depends on map).

I recently added a 550ti with 2 gigs ( the oc'd one from evga White package one. got it at best buy) to my HP Pavilion Elite KQ498AA m9350f Desktop PC - AMD Phenom X4 9850 2.5 GHz Processor. I had a gt 440 card (horrible card for swtor). I'm surprised how well it plays now ...at medium setting except for pvp.

I have crappy mem sticks .. I have changed nothing exept the cards on the system . I was saving for a 2500k system now I dont kow I feel that the next phenoms (X6) or probably the llanos (A8) will run SWTOR decently at medium settings. What do you all think? I dont want a super system to run SWTOR at high rez just medium will do fine as long as is not lag at pvp. I want to get another 550ti to sli it if i buy a new system ..you all think That will do it no??550

PS: i can get the 550ti card free since i have about 200 dlls from gift cards on best buy ... it just leaves on the system lol ..
 

beltzy

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Jan 25, 2010
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Couple things:

1) It's hard to gauge performance in MMO's because there is a lot of stuff going on that can be misleading. Most games you can lock down what your computer is doing, see a scenario and then run the same scenario again to see the impact of changes in hardware. In MMO's you can be in the same area and just the number of players or internet issues can affect your performance.

2) Given the above, you shouldn't see an increase in performance as you turn up the settings. It may be that when you turned things up, some of those other factors weren't at play. Or, it could just be buggy at lower settings driving performance down.
 

bruyiell

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Jan 20, 2012
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yea i guess i can do that ...I'm just surprised that my current system actually plays swtor ok for leveling purposes (someone needs to list a low end system geared for medium settings for swtor, every single post i see they want nice high/ultra graphics) ....i guess i can save those 200 dlls and wait for the income return and build a low i5 system ( i need to do some reading on that lol noob here) ...that i can upgrade later on ..just going to wait and see what AMD does in the next 3 months ..been a fan of AMD the old chip i have does ok job for my gaming usage (less than 10 hrs a week lol) ..
 

incantus

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Jan 28, 2012
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Swtor is still too new and untested to build a PC specifically for it...it has a memory leak at the moment where it uses your ram and wont free it up for reuse. i am experiencing this problem atm, i have 24gig of ram, an i7 3.07ghz processor, 850w power supply and 2x nvidia gts450 cards sli connected. i start at 110 fps and over the space of 30 mins i drop down to 30-40 fps and occasionally lower...the game slowly uses up my massive amount of ram and doesn't release it back for use-hence my fps drop massively.

wait a few months for them to patch it and see if you still have problems...up until then just run everything in your graphics card controls on performance and reload the game every couple of hours to see a short fps increase. try to bear it i guess, they are still ironing out some major flaws before they get to general performance...it's just sloppy programming.

good luck
 

Houndsteeth

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Jul 14, 2006
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I will have to agree with beltzy.

You are going to find that MMOs have too many variables that can slow your framerate, and quite a few of them have absolutely nothing to do with your system. Take a look at your network latency, the number of other players out there, etc.

One thing to also keep in mind is that the developers might intentionally be "leveling" the client to make PVP more about skill and less about your personal system, latency, etc. It's hard to gauge this, as SW:TOR is a fairly new title from a shop that is new to MMOs in the first place.

This could also be there way of dealing with cheats like tapping or lag switching, which I found to be REAL annoying with PVP in both WoW and Guild Wars.
 

whatsthatnoise

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Dec 7, 2011
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SWTOR has some crazy stuff going on, atm. Still worth playing, though. For isntance, enabling AA increased FPS for me ... makes no sense whatsoever, just like some higher settings seem to work better than lower ones.

Anyway, I hope they will settle this out over time. It's fairly new and as I said, it's still worth playing. For instance, the latest patches improved warzones for me and made them at least playable.
 

Cryosis00

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Dec 19, 2011
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As others have said swtor performance is all over the place at the moment. A lot of it is at the mercy of Bioware.

Currently creating a Ramdisk gives noticeable improvement in load times across the board.

Turning off bloom and turning down shadows gives the best improvement for me but may not be the same for others.