So, welcome to the millionth thread about bad warzone performance. Much has been said about this topic already, and probably much more will be said. This topic is not so much about complaining about bad FPS, but more about understanding why and how this is occurring. I'll start off with some observations from my end.

My setup is the following:

Core i3 2100T (2.5 GHz Dual core with HT)

HD7750 2GB DDR500

4GB DDR3-1333

7200RPM SATA HDD

60 Mbit up / 6 MBit down / 10-15ms ping.

This PC is hooked up to my living room TV (I play from the couch) via my A/V receiver over HDMI. I play at 1360x768 (enough for the distance I sit from the TV).

I get good to excellent FPS on not-so-busy areas, but at the fleet (actually only the GTN area or other areas with a lot of players), or in Warzones, my FPS drops to sub-30 and when it gets really busy, sub-20. In other words: not so good.

Of course, the first thing that crossed my mind was graphics settings, so I turned those down completely: no effect whatsoever. Second thing that crossed my mind: maybe memory is low and I'm swapping a lot. Checked the memory usage during playing: 3GB out of 4GB physical memory used. Also no HDD activity worth mentioning. Suspect number three: CPU is having a hard time. To verify this I made the following change:

I decided to switch to full-screen windowed mode and opened up Task Manager as well as Catalyst Control Center, to monitor both CPU and GPU usage. Much to my surprise, my CPU and GPU are both utilized well under 50%! Check FPS: sucks. Hmmm, okay, what's going on here? Changing graphics settings does impact this, but this only means that at the lowest settings, my GPU utilization is at 20%, LOL. CPU utilization rarely comes above 60-70%.

So, this leaves (for me anyway), one more suspect: network traffic/coding. This would be impacted by a lot of players being present on screen, but why would this impact FPS if rendering is done in a separate thread and ergo should not be blocked by network? Also, why would this be an issue on my fast cable connection?

So, anyone have any insights on what to do, check out here further? I considered getting an i5 or better GPU, but if my i3 and HD7750 are already picking their noses, I don't think that will help, and neither will upgrading memory.

Some other notes: I have no issues with other games, e.g. 64 player BF3 is no issue. Or displaying a hundred characters on screen (e.g. Hitman Absolution) is not an issue either.

Anyone any suggestions?

Get more memory maybe?

I have 32GB of ram and running Windows 7 x64. My swtor.exe client consumes around 1.2 GB of ram on fleet and jumps up to around 2 GB during a warzone. If you are running windows 7, then the OS will normally use around 2 GB just to run, if you are exausting memory, then Windows needs to page that to disk.

definitely pick up some more ram. you can get another 4gb for like < $30. youll notice an improvement in all your programs.

however, swtor has terrible performance. ive got an i7 oc'd to 4.5ghz, SLI GTX 570, running SWTOR off of a WD Raptor HDD, and 16gb of ram. i will get 40-50 FPS in warzones on 'very high', and 50-60 FPS at 'very low'.

but i load up BF3 and im cranking out 100 FPS at ultra. its b/c of the engine, and will take some major overhauling to fix

Get more memory maybe?

 

I have 32GB of ram and running Windows 7 x64. My swtor.exe client consumes around 1.2 GB of ram on fleet and jumps up to around 2 GB during a warzone. If you are running windows 7, then the OS will normally use around 2 GB just to run, if you are exausting memory, then Windows needs to page that to disk.

First off, 32 GB of RAM is essentially useless unless you do really heavy duty stuff. Like, proffesionally heavy duty stuff. For current and probably even next-gen games, it's basically wasted money on fancy marketing tricks.

Sorry, just had to get it out there. It irks me when people flaunt their 32GB RAM-peen.

And the recommended specs for SW:TOR are 4 GB of RAM. So, unless you've got the game cranked up to eleven with custom GFX settings or are running a lot of resource intensive programs in the background, memory shouldn't be a problem. My old laptop runs the game smoothly without any problems and it's not nearly as powerful as your specs. That being said, 8GB really won't hurt.

Usually, the culprit is a torrent/P2P client/a lot of useless processes running in the background or a browser with a lot of tabs open. Seriously, check FF or Chrome processes in the task manager when you have a lot of tabs open. You'll be surprised how much resources are dedicated even if you only open google on 5+ tabs and leave them there for a while. Getting up to 400-500MB memory usage from Chrome isn't a rare occurance for me when I'm browsing multiple forums/sites simultaniously.

Configure your start-up settings to specify which programs you want running at all times. Ditch all the useless ones. *ESPECIALLY* ditch the ones that require a network connection such as updaters and such as they can actually bog down network traffic. Those things can really build up over time as you install more and more applications. Only leave the important ones such as java etc. Oh, and check if nobody else at your place is constantly downloading massive amounts of torrents and crap.

Another problem might be your defrag settings. Windows 7 automatically defrags your HDD at set intervals. I've seen this happen quite a few times, where the defrag times were somehow planned by Windows on... unpleasant moments.

Another thing you might want to check is your CPU/GPU temperature. You can use RealTemp for that ( http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/ ). The amount of times people have been complaining to me about how slow their computers were and how games were even worse, was because their computer case had been gathering dust for about a year (quite literally). I've checked a colleague's once, and it reached 98 degrees C. You could quite literally bake an egg on his CPU. For an i3 2100, the average temp should be around 40. Maybe around 50-60 on full load (when the game is running). Use a simple can of compressed air to clean out your case every ~2 months. CPUs/GPUs can use relatively small amounts of memory like you have, but still run exceedingly hot.

EDIT: To clarify, most CPUs and GPUs automatically throttle down when they reach high temperatures (as in, huge performace drops). It's a safety feature to prevent crashes and even physical damage.

That all being said, your set-up should run SWTOR smoothly. That really should not be the problem. Upgrading from i3 to i5 or higher is also a pretty useless option in my opinion. For general (non high-end) gaming purposes, an i3 is sufficient.

I am not tech savvy at all. But what I've noticed is that swtor requires a lot of memory. I don't think its just ram but also the video card needs to have a lot of memory... if that even makes sense.

Anyway since I switched to a mediocre comp with lots of ram and a high end graphics card in it, the game has run much much smoother. However it is still far from perfect and I still have some fps issues in warzones.

Like the above poster said this is probably cuz of the coding. I've heard that swtor is horribly optimized graphically and unfortunately that seems to be the case. I hope some day that they will optimize the game engine.

I am not tech savvy at all. But what I've noticed is that swtor requires a lot of memory. I don't think its just ram but also the video card needs to have a lot of memory... if that even makes sense.

 

Anyway since I switched to a mediocre comp with lots of ram and a high end graphics card in it, the game has run much much smoother. However it is still far from perfect and I still have some fps issues in warzones.

 

Like the above poster said this is probably cuz of the coding. I've heard that swtor is horribly optimized graphically and unfortunately that seems to be the case. I hope some day that they will optimize the game engine.

Yeah, SWTOR is, to put it mildly, horribly optimized for sure. But with the OP's specs, it still shouldn't pose any real problems if he runs a clean system void of useless background applications.

I don't have any FPS issues on my main rig. Playing this game on a laptop is an entirely different & infuriating story however. PC specs:

Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz	36 °C
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
16.0 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 569MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. SABERTOOTH Z77 (LGA1155)	21 °C
Graphics
BenQ XL2420T (1920x1080@120Hz)
AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Hard Drives
238GB SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series ATA Device (SSD)
932GB Western Digital WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 ATA Device (SATA)	24 °C
Optical Drives
ATAPI iHES212 3 ATA Device
DTSOFT Virtual CdRom Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

I don't have any FPS issues on my main rig. Playing this game on a laptop is an entirely different & infuriating story however. PC specs:

 

Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz	36 °C
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
16.0 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 569MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. SABERTOOTH Z77 (LGA1155)	21 °C
Graphics
BenQ XL2420T (1920x1080@120Hz)
AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Hard Drives
238GB SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series ATA Device (SSD)
932GB Western Digital WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 ATA Device (SATA)	24 °C
Optical Drives
ATAPI iHES212 3 ATA Device
DTSOFT Virtual CdRom Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

569mhz clocked ram? wut

569mhz clocked ram? wut

Hah, just a bug in the speccy program is all. Too lazy to write out my own stats!

Hah, just a bug in the speccy program is all. Too lazy to write out my own stats!

oh. cuz that would be very weird

If I'm gonna be honest, while obviously updating you're computer with new hardware will improve your FPS, it's the games faults aswell, or rather the makers of the game, the amount of graphical options available on this game is too few.

The one thing that really disturbed me is that they have no slider for FoV (Field of View/Vision) which makes a lot of stuff spawn way ahead, often too far when not needed, like trees or bushes, or even mobs, players should be shown way ahead of course, but the stuff mentioned before does not need to spawn that far ahead.

If you have a computer that can handle it then great but a lot of people don't, and don't have the money to upgrade their computer either.

My computer can handle it decently, like, I can play, my fps drops to around ~30 in Warzones, 20-25 if a lot of AoE's and a lot of people on screen.

If they would have just added a slider for FoV it would improve so much, there's really just so much even outside the map I don't even need to see at all.

Now the work to do it is, I believe a lot more time consuming than if they had just added the option while they were making the game.

Though I'm not sure, I'm no coder, but can't think of anything else as for the reason why they haven't added the option yet.

Just wanted to get that off my shoulders.

First off, 32 GB of RAM is essentially useless unless you do really heavy duty stuff. Like, proffesionally heavy duty stuff. For current and probably even next-gen games, it's basically wasted money on fancy marketing tricks.

 

Sorry, just had to get it out there. It irks me when people flaunt their 32GB RAM-peen.

 

Not a peen thing. I just happen to run virtual machines on my gaming rig for work, as I am a heavy duty professional!

i had this EXACT same problem with my ati.

i ran guild wars 1 login screen in the background to fix it(forced utilization of gpu. went from 20% to 80%) then upgraded to a nvidia.

i5 + 8gb RAM and you'll see no FPS drop.

I can imagine me playing with 15ms.. I play with 140ms.

Thanks for all the responses people.

New RAM is something I will definitely do, 4GB doesn't leave a lot of margin, so I'll upgrade that to 8GB.

Some of you suggested my temps may be getting too high, which results in downthrottling of CU or GPU. I specifically monitored that, and my clock speeds are at max when measuring. Temperature is not really an issue, since GPU and CPU utilization are both at 50-60%, so they're not really getting hot at all.

But when I hear some of you mention dropping down to 40-50FPS, that something I would be really glad with actually, because it's almost double of my minimum right now. I think the GPU is powerful enough to run at the resolution and detail that I run it on, so I guess I could stick a core i5 in there, that doubles the amount of physical cores I have available. But I'm still a bit weary to do so, since CPU utilization is fairly low. (Though any excuse to get new hardware is good of course )

Sorry mate, but this is purely CPU's fault. You need somewhere around 2.8-3GHz to handle all the crap that happens in the background. Graphics is not the issue, this has been tested and benchmared into oblivion since the game came out, you need more juice per core, not better graphics or RAM sorry.

I ran the game with 280GTX graphics and 2.4ghz core 2 quad, upgraded to i5 and ran the game in highest settings everything maxed out etc. no issue anywhere.

Thanks for all the responses people.

 

New RAM is something I will definitely do, 4GB doesn't leave a lot of margin, so I'll upgrade that to 8GB.

 

Some of you suggested my temps may be getting too high, which results in downthrottling of CU or GPU. I specifically monitored that, and my clock speeds are at max when measuring. Temperature is not really an issue, since GPU and CPU utilization are both at 50-60%, so they're not really getting hot at all.

 

But when I hear some of you mention dropping down to 40-50FPS, that something I would be really glad with actually, because it's almost double of my minimum right now. I think the GPU is powerful enough to run at the resolution and detail that I run it on, so I guess I could stick a core i5 in there, that doubles the amount of physical cores I have available. But I'm still a bit weary to do so, since CPU utilization is fairly low. (Though any excuse to get new hardware is good of course )

it's not a problem with your system.

Sorry mate, but this is purely CPU's fault. You need somewhere around 2.8-3GHz to handle all the crap that happens in the background. Graphics is not the issue, this has been tested and benchmared into oblivion since the game came out, you need more juice per core, not better graphics or RAM sorry.

 

I ran the game with 280GTX graphics and 2.4ghz core 2 quad, upgraded to i5 and ran the game in highest settings everything maxed out etc. no issue anywhere.

^this. your CPU is the weak link here. 64 bit OS and 8g of ram would help also, but not really that much if you dont upgrade your CPU.

 

And the recommended specs for SW:TOR are 4 GB of RAM. So, unless you've got the game cranked up to eleven with custom GFX settings or are running a lot of resource intensive programs in the background, memory shouldn't be a problem.

If you can remember what/when/where "cranking to 11" comes from i will give you a cookie.

And just to avoid it, it didn't come from a movie hehe even though most will say it did.

caugh....... marshall amps ftw!!!!

If you can remember what/when/where "cranking to 11" comes from i will give you a cookie.

And just to avoid it, it didn't come from a movie hehe even though most will say it did.

 

caugh....... marshall amps ftw!!!!

Why don't you just make 10 louder?

^this. your CPU is the weak link here. 64 bit OS and 8g of ram would help also, but not really that much if you dont upgrade your CPU.

Already on 64-bit Windows 7. Core i5 and extra memory already incoming.

Hold it!! I need some clarification when people are saying that they're never expereincing any frame rate issues, is that in context of just warzones or in the context of the things mentioned in the OP (which covered more than wz)?

The reason to why I'm asking is because my own computer can best be described as a Transformer in comparison to some of the specs that people have posted and claimed will have no issues with the game. I'm never having problems in warzones or in areas with give or take 30 people but it seems like there is a threshold, a threshold that will be met around GTN and the PvP mission box during prime time (max settings). Are you honestly telling me that you're not experiencing any drops in these two areas? I wouldnt even describe the issues I'm having as fps drops, stuttering would be a better description. And you have no issues here whatsoever? That is strange.

I'm on a 100/100 connection btw so bandwidth isnt the issue either.

I don't think anyone mentioned not having lower FPS in WZ. But there is a huge difference between dropping from let's say 80FPS to 10FPS and dropping from 110FPS to 40FPS. Sure, you'll notice the drop in both situations, but one remains playable, while the other does not. And it's a sharp contrast to PVE, where I never have FPS drops like that, runs smooth as butter (or, as I mentioned, games like 64-player BF3, which requires a LOT more player interaction, but runs fine on my PC).

For me it's not unplayable, but enough to be annoyed by it. Anyway, my core i5 and memory should be delivered to my doorstep in about 5 hours, so I'll install them right away and post here about the results.