Hi Guys,

What sort of spec PC is needed to make SWTOR run with high FPS with absolutely every graphics setting switched on and into top mode?

Cheers

Blakey

Processor:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ or better

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz or better

Operating System:

Windows XP Service Pack 3 or later

RAM:

Windows XP: 1.5GB RAM

Windows Vista and Windows 7: 2GB RAM

Note: PCs using a built-in graphical chipset are recommended to have 2GB of RAM.

Star Wars: The Old Republic requires a video card that has a minimum of 256MB of on-board RAM as well as support for Shader 3.0 or better. Examples include:

ATI X1800 or better

nVidia 7800 or better

Intel 4100 Integrated Graphics or better

http://www.swtor.com/info/faq

With 4gb undedicated on my vid card and 16gb in my system, I play on ultra and maintain 60+ FPS, until I hit fleet, then I dip to 45.

What was the point in quoting the Minimum Requirements for someone who is asking for maximum performance?

So... ignoring the not-even-trustworthy minimums, here is about where you want to shoot for the best performance:

CPU: i5-3570 (especially a K-version which is overclocked to 4+GHz)

Memory: 16GB

Video Card: nVidia GTX-770 (single screen)

Storage: Recent non-budget SSD (optional)

You can get good performance for much, much less than this, but if you insist on having maximum FPS you need to have a strong (Intel) CPU with plenty of RAM. A 770 (or even a 760 Ti) should be able to pull off 60fps with High shadows in almost any situation, even with antialiasing. However, you wouldn't go wrong with a 780 if you're going to be super-sensitive to FPS drops. Hope you have a thick wallet. The extra RAM and SSD would only help in planet loading and the semi-rare occasions when you show up in a new area and resources are still loading. The SSD and a RAM disk for cached files will speed up that loading and prevent some FPS drops while resources are pulled into memory.

Note, then, that a system with these components will need a non-budget motherboard, a good quality PSU, and some thought (though not necessarily a lot of money) put into cooling. I haven't priced it out, but I'd expect it to get up to $1600 or so.

This is the build I have (minus optical drive/OS), I have no trouble running the game with everything maxed ... slight dips in high pop areas, but otherwise 60+ FPS.

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3IB2h

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3IB2h/by_merchant/

Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3IB2h/benchmarks/

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($224.99 @ Amazon)

CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Frio 101.6 CFM CPU Cooler ($58.98 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($118.48 @ OutletPC)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($149.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Samsung 830 Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($125.45 @ SuperBiiz)

Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($383.98 @ SuperBiiz)

Case: Rosewill THOR V2-W ATX Full Tower Case ($139.99 @ Amazon)

Power Supply: Rosewill Lightning 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($201.29 @ Newegg)

Total: $1403.15

(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-05-12 12:41 EDT-0400)

What was the point in quoting the Minimum Requirements for someone who is asking for maximum performance?

Just trying to offer a baseline for comparison.

Wow. That's surprisingly close to my suggestion. And my price estimate was pretty close, considering I was estimating a 256GB SSD rather than 128GB and Amazon's price for the 3570K was quite a bit cheaper than I expected.

I feel like I actually know stuff.

And that's a fairly reasonable price for your build, though 1000W is way more than you need and it sort of ruined the point of a 80+Gold PSU. You'd get better power quality and efficiency off a 650W PSU, but that doesn't really matter all that much in the end.

TBH, you can save money on the GPU. The game is mostly limited by

1. RAM: IME you feel improvements from FS cache up to about 8GB, maybe a bit more if you have other heavy applications running
   
2. disk: it loads a lot, put it on an SSD
   
3. then CPU, and there you rather want a fast, say, 4-core than a slower 6 or 8, and you want a lot of cache. You'd actually rather want an even higher clocked 3-core, but those are kinda hard to get.
   

As for graphics, you'll only see incremental improvements from something like a Radeon HD6950 up.

All in all, if you want to optimise for this game, I'd look at a 4-core i7-3770, 8 or 16 GB RAM depending on your needs, something like a Samsung 840 EVO for storage, and a "high mid-range" GPU. You can get a roughly similar experience at lower cost with AMD parts in the same marketing range.

(And wrt the PSU, that sucker will probably run from a good 500W unit.)

 

1. 
    
   
2. then CPU, and there you rather want a fast, say, 4-core than a slower 6 or 8, and you want a lot of cache. You'd actually rather want an even higher clocked 3-core, but those are kinda hard to get.
   

The game is heavily single threaded, yes I know there are two instances of the game but that's related to the fact the game is 32 bit and there is a 2gb limit (including reserve) on instances in windows (only one of the two instances starts eating up CPU usage when you are playing). Any CPU who is faster in single threaded applications will beat a 4-core who is slower in them.

This tops it:

Chip: AMD 7850k 3.5 Mghz

Ram: 2-6Gbs

Motherboard: Gygabyte F2A78M-D3H

Graphics Card: None (Included in Chip)

SSD: choose any brand, with this setup anything is intantaneous.

Software:

Win 8 x64

Driver update for AMD 7850k

Java Runtime Enviroment Latests

port forwarded if you have 2-6 Mb connection, if higher its no problem.

Thats all.

I cannot say what the min config to max the settings is, but this works for me:

i5-3570K 3.4 GHz (not overclocked)

8GB DRAM

GTX760

Windows 7 64b

SSDs

The game is heavily single threaded, yes I know there are two instances of the game but that's related to the fact the game is 32 bit and there is a 2gb limit (including reserve) on instances in windows (only one of the two instances starts eating up CPU usage when you are playing). Any CPU who is faster in single threaded applications will beat a 4-core who is slower in them.

You usually have the graphics driver doing stuff in a thread of its own on the side, and some other stuff is kicking in every now and then (youtube idling around in a browser tab, virus scanner, that kind of background load). With three proper cores you shouldn't see too much interference between the game and those.

The RAM is really just so disk accesses approach zero after some time, as long as you don't hop between planets like mad. With 8GB and a "normal" background load, e.g., browser, mail client, etc., you should see disk cache top it out; I rarely have it exceed maybe 10GB, and I have to "stress" the game for that, really visiting a lot of places in a row.

You usually have the graphics driver doing stuff in a thread of its own on the side, and some other stuff is kicking in every now and then (youtube idling around in a browser tab, virus scanner, that kind of background load). With three proper cores you shouldn't see too much interference between the game and those.

 

The RAM is really just so disk accesses approach zero after some time, as long as you don't hop between planets like mad. With 8GB and a "normal" background load, e.g., browser, mail client, etc., you should see disk cache top it out; I rarely have it exceed maybe 10GB, and I have to "stress" the game for that, really visiting a lot of places in a row.

AMD chips have more cache than Intel, hence better at gaming and cheaper.

Intel produces over-priced chips not aimed at gaming.

This may sound backwards, but based on the experience with my setup, if your budget is squeezed, you can skimp a little on the GPU (especially since it is so easy to upgrade), but do not skimp on the CPU. I believe there have been others that have talked about this game being very CPU heavy.

I run the game on an i7-4930k (totally wasted on this game) with 16 GB of RAM, but using an older Nvidia 660Ti graphics card. Even on fleet I almost never see it drop below 50 FPS and 16 man raids are at 60-70 FPS. All graphic setting at maximum.

 

I feel like I actually know stuff.

 

.

Oh no, it went right to his head! I almost want to put that ion my sig!