I think I know what's causing poor FPS for some users (no fix yet)

It's shoddy coding combined with a subpar engine. All the phasing and sharding should have been red flags.

No, its shoddy coded particles effects, and no option to adjust them!

Lots of errors in the OPs post. Just the fact that it's a 32bit client which can only use 4gb by itself (which it even doesn't) is missing.

Lots of ppl on the fleet = CPU load not GPU load. This due to Dx9. Your HD won't affect your steady FPS.

Rinse and do again.

i upgraded to 2 brand new SATA 3.0 6gb/s recently.

one for windows, the other for games.

only games installed is SWTOR and LoL.

the FPS increase in SWTOR was minimal, running at 35 fps in WZ with stuttering.

They won't reply to this thread. If they do, it would only prove that they made a mistake and they need to fix it. Currently, Bioware has taken a stance that nothing is wrong with the game and it's 'working as intended'. So as much as it pains me to admit, don't expect a response from Bioware anytime soon on any of their FPS issues.

Yoda goes to visit Blizz -

Yoda - "Not so good, the Engine is"

Blizz - "Really ?, that's a shame, you could always join us, your short, your green, we could fit you in somewhere"

Yoda - "Very tempted, I am"

Blizz - "Do you like Panda's ?"

Yoda - "The force is strong I sense, in all thing's fluffy"

Blizz - "Yeah, we pritty much got all bases covered"

Yoda - "f$$ked we are"

Blizz - "Well, it's not looking good, ours is ten years old, still works fine, we've layered expansions on it, patched it to hell n back, still works a treat, even on old junk PC's"

Blizz - "Can I ask, did you make it yourself ?"

Yoda - "Young Padawan, he was, trusted.........."

Blizz - "Trusted you say !?, did he offer it cheap ?"

Yoda - "Cheap as f$$king chips"

Blizz - "ROFL"

Bummer, do you have any other bottlenecks in your system? Would be good to see dxdiag output...

Memory would be the next problem, followed by CPU and GPU if this is correct ^^

Wrong. Got a new i7-870. Just upgraded to maximum power my board offers. Together with 12 GB RAM and a 550 GTX Ti (not the fastest thing on the world, but reasonable) I am running at 13-16 fps on the fleet, and 9 fps on Alderaan. Ilum battles 15 vs. 30 give me 4 fps.

Bringing up the character window in a WZ, the fleet or a flashpoint gives me a drop to 2-4 fps for a second.

This all on low settings, DirectX 9.0c installed, shadows off, bloom off, AA off.

I guess I'm going to hold off on trying this RAM drive fix, since nobody's saying it totally revolutionizes the FPS.

Basically I get 10-20 FPS on heroics (which is almost manageable), but the bigger instances and PvP are totally unplayable.

That's Bioware's liability, since poor framerate overlaps with the activities of level 50 continuous subscribers.

What I'd like is robust options to gimp the graphics--like 640x480 resolution (offered in Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3, incidentally, and "looking good" is more important there than in an MMO)--make particle effects totally bad-looking, don't render particle effects in the distance, option run in 16 color EGA, use 1990 PC internal speaker for bleeps and bloops.

That is incorrect. Since you either want to just keep trolling this thread, or failed to READ, I will spell it out for you. The game only having a 32-bit client is mentioned in the OP! I didn't do a full tech breakdown but it's covered.

My problem on the fleet is having 'good' FPS, followed by a huge drop, followed by 'good' again. If my CPU wasn't up to par, I would expect to hit an FPS ceiling well below 100. Even in highly populated areas on the fleet I hit 60 FPS+. The problem is the jarring drops down to the teens, and then FPS rising back to where it was. Care to provide an explanation of how this is something other than mismanagement of game assets? Care to explain how no core on my CPU even comes close to maxed when playing this game, yet the issue stil happens? Care to explain why other MMOs have this problem just because they use DX9?

I have evidence to back up my theories. Where is yours? If you are going to attempt to discredit my theories, bring some evidence to support your claims.