Optimization Truth: It was NEVER my computer?

it may not need 750 however, you wall measurement is an average draw. It should deliberstely filter millisecond spikes out. The reason you want higher power than average draw is to limit the instance of the rails being saturated which creates heat. (Technically a square wave) same thing introduces distortion in sound equipment.

So while your right, it can be detrimental to your system to be underpowered and can result in some performance loss. How quantifiable that is....no idea.

Just wanted to chime in.

Higher wattage doesnt guarantee it will work better. PSU's also some with rail ratings. There are a great deal of 750w+ PSUs that will not perform better than say a 600w PSU, and in a shocking high number of cases will perform worse.

This is where ratings coming in. Wattage alone only tells you that they can provide x amount of juice to any particular component. It doesnt tell you if they are going to do so consistently, even when all components are under load. Many PSU manufacturers include either a percentage or bronze, silver, gold, platinum style rating indicating that their PSU with X wattage will deliver that wattage with Y consistency.

9/10 times your prebuilt namebrand PC has the absolute cheapest components in it the company can find. Especially when it comes to PSUs. Its how they increase their bottom line. The result is that those specs they sold you on are beyond deceptive and often wont be delivering 1/3 of the performance you would expect.

Edited to remove a duplicate post - not sure how that happened.

Thanks for chiming in on this. I know that the rail set up is important, but am not really technically savvy enough to speak on it. But I did mention in a previous post that the PSUs are not identical, and that it's important to make sure you've got a good brand with a good design.

As to the others, it was simple deduction. They say they have a GeForce GTX670. The specifications for that card say it requires a 500W power supply, and this of course is a minimum standard chosen by the manufacturer. I'm pretty sure they didn't just toss a dart at a board, and it hit the "500" mark. They chose it specifically because they feel it's the best amount of power to make sure the card is functional. Going under that amount is at your own risk of performance.

Now I may be wrong, but it seems to me that if the minimum power requirements are 500W, and you've overclocked the card, your performance requirements may be different than the manufacturer specified... i.e. greater than what was listed. As they also say they have an overclocked processor, and RAM, and quite possibly the FSB as well, I don't think it's a stretch to say that they should be shooting for a nice quality power supply that is over the 500W rainbow somewhere. Maybe a 600W would do it, maybe a 650W. I chose a 750W just because personally I'd rather have more power than I could use up rather than trying to skirt the minimum requirements.

If you're trying to get away with overclocking your system to the maximum and still using the stock supply (or the one specified in the system requirements based on it being run at the proper speed, and not overclocked to hell), you're going to run into trouble, especially in a highly graphics intensive game in the most extreme circumstances.

The thing that was most curious to me was that here was yet another poster who knew the stats on every part of the system, and were ready to read them off, yet the power system and its particulars is nowhere in sight...

Apologies if what I said seemed directed. Just meant to show that just because something says it will work on someones piece of paper, doesnt mean it will.

http://images10.newegg.com/BizIntell...alc/index.html

ehhh, I've used like three different PSU calcs and I'm getting AT LEAST 700 W floor on that build. My build is almost identical to that, different motherboard, but just about as good, and a different video card, and I have an 800 W PSU...

The conception of getting more and more W on a PSU doesnt really mean you can get some components to work, the important number in a PSU is not that of total potence it can supply, and that is cause they give u potence in 3 or more rails (or at least 3 types), 3.3v, 5v and 12v (this is the most important one, as graphics card get feed by it ).


Usually when a generic PSU gives u potency it refers to 3,3 and 5 v more than 12v.

A good one, will give middlet (or at least peak ones) amperages in each rail (similar to this: http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2338/25466540.jpg )

Oh, wow, seriously? Bioware defense force is now using PSUs as their final defense against performance issues? Yes, I'm sure more watts will bring me 60 fps in 16 man Ops

I agree more or less with both parties in this discussion; both those who defends and those who critizise, however I have to add to that yes, indeed SWTOR runs on a bad engine because you have to talk about the game as a MMORPG.
While there are thousands of computer configs and its hard to optimize everything, in comparison to other MMORPGS I've played recently namely; GW2, Tera, Rift, The Secret World and WoW, TOR has the worst performance of them.

When you develop a MMORPG you want to aim to get int as much people as possible and you try to slim down the graphics as much as you jsut can while still making them feasible but not amazing so ppl can run the game without lagging.

Again ofc there are always hardware/soft config issues and the like but you just can't hide the fact that TOR has framerate problems esp if u compare it to other games which are in the same genre.
There is just something badly optimized, however I truly believe that Bio can fix this issues so I don't think it's a "the engine is crappy" issue I just think it has to be put a lot of work into fixing the engine.

This is not a Crysis or a Far Cry benchmarking game, this is a MMORPG with mediocre graphics, and I say that with no hate intended, I just think that the graphics is very mediocre (models and enviroment "tunnel design") and why being mediocre It doesn't affect my gameplay experience but with mediocre graphics I expect good performance.
SWTOR a game that is heavily built around instancing performs a lot worse in that category in comparsion to it's competitors it doesn't reduce the enjoyment I get out of the game but it's just something I think about every now and then.

I however do believe that those who make offensive remarks claiming that "users simply have bad computers" is very wrong saying so. The whole point of MMORPGs is to get as much ppl in the game as possible.
Unless the game itself is market as a very graphics heavy MMO (like Age of Conan) you as the game developer simply can't state that it's the players rigs, you simply picked a engine that maybe wasn't the optimal engine to use for your project.

However you can say something like this : "We know that there have been issues regarding performance bla bla... and we are workin on getting these issues solved ". That is a much better way to say it then saying "95%-5%" because the % isn't important, what is important is to advertise that you are working on trying to improve your game constantly.

Edit1: While re-reading through the thread I see that a lot of ppl ask for "- post spec and settings". I fail to see why that is relevant since you can just compare a mediocre looking game (SWTOR) with other games in the same genre. If you can run other MMORPGs with similar graphics just fine then the problem is not so much with the spec you are using.

- I also see that some of you are asking about the PSU that the user is equipped with. While I do appreciate that you guys are trying to help out the community in a nice manner, asking ppl to post their PSU and whatnot when they can play other games just fine is just a little insane. Again: This game is not a Crysis game, it's a medicore looking MMORPG and since graphics was simplified you expect average-good performance.

While I do have had very few performance issues since the EGA while comparing SWTOR to other MMORPGs the performance differences is very noticeable and esp so in social hub areas even though there have been performance increases after 1.2 and 1.3.

I can see people who can't get 30 fps anywhere in this game (or even worse) having a real complaint somewhere but when the complaint is that there are places in the game where might not get 60 fps that is just nitpicking.