Upgraded my CPU and am very pleased

I understand that you feel your rig should be able to pull off that scenario at the "highest possible graphic settings," but it's important to realize what a petty complaint this is. On my i5 with 560gtx, I tweak my graphics settings to low for huge Ilum battles and only rarely drop to 25fps. It's very playable.

The point is: a lot of these threads are giving people the wrong impression (I know this because I had the wrong impression before upgrading) --- i.e. that ToR Ilum is going to be a slideshow no matter what you do with your comp. But now I know that's just not true, and that, in fact, even relatively inexpensive ($700) upgrades can make large open world PvP very viable.

These threads need to stop misleading people into thinking ToR WZ and open world are unplayable, when in fact it's just that some people consider anything under 60fps with highest possible settings to be "lag fest".

This is flat-out untrue. Misinformation.

SWTOR is different than any other game I have played, in that it requires a great processor in addition to a wonderful video card. Don't skimp on the CPU.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvu69...ature=youtu.be

could up post a video of this magical experience you have on ilum with your processor?

heres mine.

Which PC would you go with for this game?
Rate in order and why.. (yes I'm shopping and need help)

• Intel® Core™ i7-3820 Processor
• 16GB PC1600 Corsair Vengeance
• AMD HD 7950 3GB Video
• Gigabyte X79 USB3 & SATA3 MB
• OCZ 60GB SATA3 SSD
• 2TB SATA3 7200 RPM HD
• LG 12X Blu-Ray Rewriter

• Intel® Core™ i7-3930K Processor
• 8GB PC1600 Corsair Vengeance
• NVIDIA GTX570 1.2GB Video
• Gigabyte X79 USB3 & SATA3 MB
• Intel 120GB SSD
• 2TB SATA3 7200 RPM HD
• LG 12X Blu-Ray Combo Drive

• Intel® Core™ i7-2600K Processor
• 8GB PC1600 Corsair Vengeance
• 2 x NVIDIA GTX580 1.5GB Video
• Asus Z68 USB3 & SATA3 MB
• OCZ 120GB SATA3 SSD
• 2TB SATA3 7200 RPM HD
• LG 12X Blu-Ray Rewriter

First off, I would always recomend building your own. Computers are great in that as a general rule "if it fits in the hole, it goes there." That said, here's some answers.

If you don't play any other games, I would go with nVidia. This game seems (to me at least) to handle nVidia cards better. If you player other games that handle better with ATI, the choice is up to you. As a personal preference (and professional) I have always preferred nVidia unless I specificly needed ATI for a specific program.

The 560ti is going to be the best performance for the price (typically), in my opinion. It may not be the BEST card, but it is ONE of the best.

There is absolutely no reason to get 2x nVidia or ATI (that would be SLI and Crossfire respectively, I believe) in this game, unless you are absolutely trying to squeek out every drop of performance.

That said, the other system specs mater, too. Doesn't matter if your vid card rocks if your computer can't keep up.

REply to above post: I wouldn't by any of those computers specificly for this game. THey are all way too much machine. If you do other stuff, to, then yay. Otherwise, you can spend half the money and not notice a change in the game's performance.

Do you hate money or is this strictly for boasting? Very few games will take advantage of this setup including SWToR. Most good games these days are console ports and have no way to take advantage of this rig. You are building a machine to play games 2-3 years from now only then this rig will be out of date.

The i5 2500k OC'd is going to return a couple percent less performance than any processor you listed. Few games will see any real benefit from going higher. SLI is a waste here. Some games take advantage of SLI others including the desktop not at all plus buying it out of the box gives your computer little upgrade headroom down the road. More than 8GB is also a waste unless you are a graphics designer, run a lot of VMs, high end developer or similar. Few people will use more than 8GB at least for the foreseeable future.

The places to spend money these days is on an i5, single higher end video card, above average MB and a quality SSD. The rest is just for bragging, enthusiast or for people who wipe their rear with 100s.

BTW if you are dropping this kind of cash might as well look at the 7970. I am not an ATI fan (I actually avoid them when possible) but that card is showing ridiculously good benchmark numbers. It is also cheaper than two 580s and much faster rivaling even two 590s in some benchmarks.

I don't feel like making a video and posting it to youtube, I'm just giving my feelings and experience on performance after my upgrade to an i5 with a 560gtx. I have no reason to lie to you.

No idea how you're getting 5fps on low settings, sorry. That's as bad as my experience on my previous computer, which was an older quad-core and a 5600 (on this setup, I also ran 5fps on all low settings).

I don't know what to tell you man, on my current set up I'm getting 25fps on all low settings in 30v30 size battles. The only tweaks I'm using are ramdisk (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=154568), which probably wouldn't help you much because of your SSD, and various other common W7 optimization methods.

To put in perspective...

i5 2.8ghz
4gb RAM
GTX 460 768mb GDDR5

I play this game in 1080p, with forced 32x AA, and all settings on high. If I turn off desktop composition (which I do because I play full screen anyhow), I rarely dip below 30 FPS. I'm usually just over 40. That's on fleet, and on Ilum.

No OC (don't get me started on why OC is bad in most - not all, but most - cases), all stock, home brewed, nothing fancy except my UV reactive case and UV lights.

Maybe 30fps isn't a beast, but so what? The game is pretty as it can be (granted, not as pretty as the failure that is FF14), and it runs smooth enough that I don't suffer worse in the game play department.

Rig cost me just over 1k after I bought a super nice monitor and second keyboard/mouse.

Well, I was not just buying the PC for THIS game.
I need to clarify that.

I mean as far as use for TODAY... for this game.
But I wanted something that will run the games well that come 2yrs down the road as well.

The reason I asked which of those for this game is just for the current usage of the PC.

So..with that in mind..
Which would you choose?
The PC's are within about 300 dollars of each other.

Go with the first one. Normally I would avoid that brand of video card because of personal preference, however, it has two things going for it.

1.) Lots of RAM. RAM is probably the easiest / cheapest way to upgrade computers.

2.) It doesn't have two video cards. While SLI and Crossfire are nice, if you are looking at a long-term purchase, you want to stay away from specialized technologies that may be significantly deprecated down the line. Games that are not optimized for SLI will definitely see improvement, however, fit they are, they will see even more.

nVidia is constantly putting out driver updates that include specific updates for SLI; in two years if they are using SLI2, or some other new/better technology you are loosing out on what you spent.

There is one thing you need to know though!

SSD's are not good for heavy use. When you get the new rig, make sure that the operating system is installed on the non SSD hard drive. If you don't, you run the risk of burning the drive out all together. SSD's are getting better, but they are still relatively new.

If the operating system comes pre-installed on the SSD, I strongly, strongly, reccomend wiping your hard drives and re-installing on the normal HD.

Go ahead and put your game installs on the SSD, and if you need more performance tweaks, ask in here about moving your App Data to the SSD, or moving your virtual memory to your SSD. BUt make sure you reasearch the brand/model of your SSD to see how it holds up over time, and make sure you understand the risks.

EDIT: If it were -my- computer, I would go with the last one you listed, with the ASUS mother board and nVidia video card. As a personal preference, those are two brands I trust (especially ASUS) in general. But it is also a computer I would expect to upgrade later - especially in the RAM department.