What's my bottleneck?

I'm sorry. What is sandybridge? lol. Is that the line of iX processors by intel? Meaning, are both i5 and i7 "sandybridge"?

Okay, but to squeeze out good performance for the least money what should I do? Is there a better AMD CPU that I should grab for this mobo and just call it a day. Or is REALLY a big enough difference that I should switch on over to intel?

If you have the money, sure, switch to Intel. But the difference between them and AMD really isn't as great as some people would have you believe. Plus, I find AMD to be a much better value for the money, as with Intel you're paying an extra $75-$150 for what only amounts to a slight performance gain in the long run.

First things first, I'd say upgrade to 8GB of the fastest RAM your mobo can handle. After that, see how things run and plan your upgrades accordingly.

Oh, and if your computer was a premade system that came with its own copy of Windows, you may have to buy a new copy of that as well if you switch out mobos, depending on if it's an OEM copy or not. That's something else to consider.

Thanks for the advice. I may not be the most technically informed with all this stuff but I do still build my computers. I built this myself a couple years ago so shouldn't be any issues with Windows.

Sandy Bridge is the fabrication process for the latest Intel chips.

If you do upgrade your MoBo, you might want to use sysprep on your system before you shut it down to do the upgrade. This generalizes the system so it's not tied to your hardware ID.

I ended up not having to do it, but I'm using Win 7 Enterprise that I get from my university, so if you have one of the consumer versions you might have problems if you don't use sysprep.

So I'm assuming that both i5 and i7 are sandy bridge then?

That is silly. I know there are areas where the game needs optimized and no matter your hardware configuration but if I can get an area to run great on one PC consistently but not on the other PC then there is a bottleneck. I'm not saying the game is perfect and runs great everywhere. If I played more at work I'm sure I'd find bad areas even though my work machine is pretty beast. But in the meantime I can try to get my home PC to run at least as well as my work PC. It's only logical.

Hey guys, I just had a quick question about my computer setup at home. I have had the opportunity to play SWTOR on my home and work computer. For some reason the game runs a lot faster on my work computer even though my home computer has a better graphics card. However, everything else is slightly worse than my work computer. I'm just curious what you guys think my bottleneck would be.

Here are my specs for both computers:

Work computer

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Intel Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz
8gb RAM

Home computer

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti
AMD® AM2+ Quad-Core
3gb RAM

My home computer really struggles when there are a lot of NPCs in the area. Particularly in the black sun taxi area on Coruscant. I chug so hard there when I'm at home because of all the NPCs fighting below the taxi platform, but that area runs fine at work.

Would my processor be the culprit or would it be my RAM? Or is there something else you think is holding me up?

Thanks for the help!