What's my bottleneck?

Actually you could build an exact replica of your work computer and get different performance on each machine. I think that is his point. Even getting the exact same parts, same OS, RAM, ect will run things differently.
Alot of this is the engine. My computer runs it just fine, but people with computers that eat mine for lunch have worse performance.
The logic of " lets emulate the work comp for performance" is flawed at best.
No offense meant and I hope that came across as constructive =)

You are wrong. My office has five identical PCs and two of my coworkers have installed the game. We all quested on Coruscant together and we were all smooth in the same area. That's how I know it works on these specs. So yes, I believe for many seconds that the exact same PC performs exactly the same.

But you're assuming that's the only or the most likely cause of his poor gameplay. Getting better RAM and a better CPU is a good idea for him to improve performance, whether the fps issue is at play here or not.

Different ram gas different freqencies that run slower or fastsr. Think of it like a heavy trafic road with a lier or or higher speed limit. Ifen though u might get 7gb all together the computer may still be utilizing one of the other sticks with a "loer speed lumit" therefore its still archiving and acessing the info more slowly. If you match ur sticks you do away with this problem. Also of ur using 1gb sticks theyre prolly older a.nd slower.

Hmmm, so you think it's a bad idea to get a newer 4gb stick and simply put it in the empty slot?

If the problem is indeed a pure performance bottleneck, I agree that its most likely to be in the amount of ram. With the cost of ram right now, it's a fairly easy upgrade which wouldn't be a bad idea regardless of whether or not you're playing this game.

If it's not a hardware bottleneck, it's probably one of two things: Firmware/driver bugs from device manufacturers, or software bugs in either SWTOR or DirectX (or other APIs in use).

People claiming that it's TOR for sure COULD be correct, but it's not a systemic problem as many don't have problems at all, therefore it's more likely be system based, ie. drivers and firmware. That would explain why "identical" systems have varying results. Even identical machines bought at the same time could have different firmware or bios revisions based on how long they've been sitting in stock whereever they were purchased from.

It's entirely possible that there are driver bugs with ati/nvidia (or even audio devices!) that could have performance implications. Those issues MAY have been fixed in recent driver updates, and may not be fixed until SWTOR devs isolate them and let the chipset vendors know there's an issue.

At least updating drivers and firmware is free. So do that first.

Yes that's a bad idea. You'd be better off getting a 4GB stick and throwing the 3x1GB sticks away.

I can assure you though, you will see no difference in the games performance. I have 4GB, I have the EXACT same problem you have in Black Sun. If it's a RAM problem then why would it work for you and not me?

I am sure it does work fine on those PCs. But the game should work fine for the guys with 16gb RAM, 2x580 in sli and an I7 @ 4.7ghz, ect.
I wish you the best and hope it runs smooth for you.
IMO do a cheap upgrade of RAM, see how that goes. IF you are not satisfied then upgrade other stuff. Having a better computer is never a bad idea, but upgrading for TOR may not yield you the results you desire. Go check out some of the other threads about performance issues.
If nothing else its a good read while at work.

Anyways good luck man

Odd. I have a I7 2600, 10 GB ram and a ATI Radeon 6850 and a slow 5400 rpm drive and I donot experence the "stuttering" you do. Settings on high/mid.

I think the OP's bottle neck at his home computer is his CPU and Low ram...esp if he running something else in the background as he is playing TOR.

You know what. Best Buy is right down the street. I will go pick up some RAM and plug it in. We'll see what happens and I'll update the thread in an hour or two. If it doesn't help then so be it, but I would like to know for certain.