Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
SW:TOR system builders guide
Lord.Bachus
Member RarePosts: 9,686
I have seen many system ask what kind of system they need to build to play this game on max settings... And when one has enough money to spend thats question is easilly answered, but when you are on a tighter budget some questions need to be answered first to see where your money is best spend...
If we can get these questions answered, it will be easier to build the best system for your money :
- Does the game engine favour Nvidia or AMD graphic cards?
What game engine is used and are there any benchmark games that use this same engine, so we can compare graphics cards performances. Or did someone allready test the game with comparable cards like a Radeon 6950 and a Geforce 560 TI?
The game engine used is the heroengine, which seems to favour NVIDIA cards. (assumption based on the availabillity of the Physics engine which is Nvidia only)
- Does the game engine make effective use of crossfire or SLI graphic card setups?
If supported these setups work mirracles for people that want to play the game at higher resolutions, but if not supported performce gain may dwindle or even be worse then a single GPU.
THe heroengine seems not to be optimised for either crossfire or SLI
- How does the game handle memmory, how much does it improve when i install 4, 6 or 8 GB, is there a lot of performace improvement from faster memmory?
Tough with current prices i asume 8GB at under $50 is a great choice for everyone, faster memmory in general improves performnce only by a few tenths of procents, so thats not really the place where to invest your money.
-Multi core and multi threading, is the game programmed to make use of more threads and cores?
In general its hard to find something better then the I5 2500K for your money, espescially when you can overclock a little. But if the engine really makes good use of multi cores the AMD X8 processors could be an option. If the I5 is above your budget there are some cheeper AMD phenom CPU's that could deliver good performnce at a good price.
The heroengine is single threaded, So this means that it favours high clockspeeds as the most important factor for its performance.
-How much does game performance improve when i use a small SSD for my game install instead of a traditionall harddrive?
In general my MMO experience has tought me that a fast SSD drastically reduces both foreground (zoning) loading times as wel as lag generated by background loading. IF SW:TOR is anything like all other MMO's a SSD drive is really a no brainer. choose eitehr a small cheep 60GB one for the actuall game install, or if you have the money available in your budget choose a bigger one and install both the game and windows on it for lightning fast windows booting.
A mainboard in general doesn't make to much difference for your performance, except when it offers new things like more memmory lanes. I allways choose my mainboards based on 3 things : Feautures, Stabillity and overclockabillity. and not so much on the actuall performance.
So basically what i was hoping for is that someone with beta test experience or more indepth game knowledge can answer the questions in red. When we know the answers to those questions we can advise people better how to build systems for their budgets.
So whose going to answer these questions for me ?
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Comments
Go to Wal-Mart, grab the cheapest E-Machine you can find. This isn't Skyrim people.
Should explain most of the engine specifications you seek.
On a note on multithreading, I very much doubt you would have extensive support for threading. ^ Been saying this all along to people stressing. Could probably run on a toaster.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
So are they actually using this engine?
Or is this just a random engine, cause i pretty much know how these engines work, but they all have strengths and weaknesses that have a huge impact on gaming performance.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Old_Republic
lists the hero engine as the one being used and their has been posts on the official forums for people wanting know know more about it.
Folks can do that.. but then the game will look like crap.
Are you guys for real ?! I was in beta and this game is a cartoon. A commador 64 should run this on max settings. If you want to talk about building a rig for an mmo try Age of Conan, made in 09 and still has better graphics than any new release or upcoming mmorpg.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can
be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard
Ok humor typically relies on at least saying something somewhere near the realm of reality.
Swtor, like most mmo's, is targeted to be able to run on older systems still using dx9 cards. It's base graphics aren't all that bad really considering. The engine supports dx11 though and Bioware stated they will likely upgrade to it in the future. This issue with using dx11 right out of the box is that it works often horribly with dx9 cards.
Aside from art style the only difference you see with dx11 is all the bells and whistles it offers. Lighting, reflections, shadows and water upgrades makes even the most cartoony graphics look pimp.
Seeing how I have a dx11 card I would obviously prefer it to be dx11 now but oh well.
Btw the latest build has updated graphic elements and performance. Looks tad better at least.
You stay sassy!
This is the engine they are using, though they have modified it a bit. They've also just released a major upgrade to it and are currently working on porting it to Mac and IOS
I have 6870 maxed settings 55 fps I believe some where between 50-60. I plan on purchasing a second so I run crossfire and run 3 monitors. I will have to update with how that works.
I updated my orriginal post with information i found, the heroe engine they use is not optimised for SLI and Crossfire
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Why not play it on a 42 inch screen? unless your multiboxing.
I did play my weekend beta on the 42 inch tv right next to my monitor. However I wanted the multi-screen for games like MW3/BF3 and just in general. I have the tv there bc I watch a lot of sports college basketball/football NFL so playing on the tv isn't always an option.
@Lord so you are saying that crossfiring another 6870 is going to be pointless in helping keep the performance up on a 3 monitor setup? If so thats a little disappointing.
I didn't say that...
I only said that the game engine isn't optimised for Crossfire, but some games allready get a boost from Nvidias crossfire drivers, i am wayting for some beta testers that tested out the Crossfire/SLI performance...
there was somehting posted about this on the official SWTOR forums, but they are not accesible right now.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I don't get people not liking this post, it's informative and interesting.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Based on my experience, and the experience of some people I've talked to, the system requirements are pretty minimal. I ran the game just fine using the following:
Intel Core2 Duo e6450
4gb Ram
ATI HD5770
SATA hdd
I didn't crank any settings up to max, but I also didn't turn any settings down. The game looked great and ran at a very good frame rate.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Look, it's a beta. Give AMD and Nvidia a chance to mess with the game and tweak their drivers for it. Remember how the FFXIV benchmark was very favorable to Nvidia the day it launched, and then very favorable to AMD by the time the game itself actually launched? Civilization V saw some wild swings in benchmarks as drivers got tweaked, too.
The first major game (sorry Faxion) on a new game engine might well see that sort of wild swings as drivers get fixed. With all the hype around this game, you can bet that both AMD and Nvidia will try to optimize drivers for this game in particular. A system that doesn't run the game that well today might well run it quite nicely by the time release day rolls around.
-----
"(assumption based on the availabillity of the Physics engine which is Nvidia only)"
That is complete nonsense. I strongly doubt that SWTOR uses GPU PhysX. If it runs PhysX on the CPU, then that has no bearing whatsoever on GPU performance.
"THe heroengine seems not to be optimised for either crossfire or SLI"
See above. Give AMD and Nvidia time to make it work. Even if the game engine wasn't designed with CrossFire or SLI in mind, I'd be surprised if they don't both work pretty well with SWTOR within three months.
"The heroengine is single threaded, So this means that it favours high clockspeeds as the most important factor for its performance."
Don't forget IPC. A 3.8 GHz Pentium 4 isn't going to run a lot of things well.
In more than a few games, however, a faster processor is the difference between having the processor cap your frame rate at 200 frames per second or 300. That doesn't matter. Find out if the game is meaningfully processor limited before choosing a processor based on this particular game.
We will have to see about that, i know they can repair a lot for bad performing games through driver optimalisation.
You're right about certain games capping out on processor performace... But there are also even more games capping out on GPU performance. In general MMO's are very heavy on CPU power (thats why i am very surprised about the number of MMO's that support multi threading, they're almost non excistant) and i don't see any reason why that would be different for this game, espescially with what i read about the hero engine in mind.
So its important to know if a game caps on processor or Video card....
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I'd like to point out that if you purchase an SSD you should buy the newer type that utilize SATA 3 and make sure you have a mainboard that has atleast one SATA 3 (6gb/s) port. I can recommend the crucial M4, I purchased it with SWTOR in mind and have my entire hard drive on it, I couldn't go back to the HDD stone age now!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis