Tom's Hardware > Forum > Games General > PC Gaming > Problems running SWTOR with my PC not sure why.

Problems running SWTOR with my PC not sure why.

Forum Games General : PC Gaming Problems running SWTOR with my PC not sure why.

I'm not sure whats wrong with my PC. I'm not computer literate. Friend of mine though told me this is the place to go for asking questions. As it has pretty much the smartest community for tech questions related to pretty much everything to do with computers.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 1/16/2012, 14:13:51
Machine name: JEREMY-PC
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.110622-1506)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: HP-Pavilion
System Model: NY545AA-ABA p6210y
BIOS: BIOS Date: 04/15/10 18:59:02 Ver: 5.22
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 620 Processor (4 CPUs), ~2.6GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 5632MB RAM
Page File: 1452MB used, 9807MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 64bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 560 Ti
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1087&SUBSYS_25741462&REV_A1
Display Memory: 3808 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1248 MB
Shared Memory: 2559 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: HP 2310 Series Wide LCD Monitor
Monitor Model: HP 2310
Monitor Id: HWP288F
Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz)
Output Type: HDMI
Driver Name: nvd3dumx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Driver File Version: 8.17.0012.9053 (English)
Driver Version: 8.17.12.9053
DDI Version: 11
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 12/17/2011 16:05:00, 17483072 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes

Message edited by Mousemonkey on 01-24-2012 at 04:23:54 PM

Reply to aurion546

Hi

We need some system specifications...to help...

All the best Brett

Reply to Brett928S2

Also my problems seem to be that I get 60 fps standing still in game. Then drops between 40-50 when running. In combat some places an situations it's 30-40. Most the time though in combat it's running horrible between 15-20. At times I open menu's or bring out or dismiss companions in game. Fps will spike down to 3 fps. One guy in game said he was computer literate. An told me it's not my processor or my video card. He said it's my ram. The fact it's 800mhz DDR2. I wasn't sure if I should believe it. So rather ask you guys.

Reply to aurion546

couple questions. is the game installed on your o/s drive or a secondary drive. whats the drive speed? is it IDE sata 3 or sata 6. do you run any other processes while sw:tor is running? like A/V... internet explorer.... next time you experience frame rate lows; ctrl alt del and see how large sw is in your page file. how long have you been running the game when these problems occur? i find that sw:tor was released too early and the programmers did a crappy job on garbage collection ( deleting variables created that are no longer needed ) so it takes by far the most of any game ive ever played of memory and if you play for a long time continiously the game will either close and go to desktop automatically or lock up and require a restart. hopefully memory issues are fixed in future patches but as of right now the best solution is to get more memory or blow the game away every 2 hours or so. your amount of memory seems fine, so it could be the speed of it, or the speed of your harddrive is slow when the game swaps in and out information when "zone". if you can bump up your memory. or speed up your drive you should be good. good indication on whether its your harddrive or your memory or your memory on your gpu is:
1. does it take a real long time to load when you zone? ( for example from the fleet to your ship, or your ship to a planet )
2. does the screen get choppy during heavy loads, or does it tear, or does the hard drive spin up and your screen locks out for a second or two? ( for example when you spin the camera)

Reply to optr0nic

It's installed on the C drive. I run nothing else. I use Advanced Care 5 an it has a tool box on it that allows me to shutdown background processes that are not necessary for the operation of windows. IE: Yahoo, apple updater, skype etc. SWTOR runs at the beginning of what seems like 600,000k then jumps to 1,200,000k then eventually reaches a peak of 1,600,000k. It does take a long time to load yes. An I picked up a program that supposedly speeds up my harddrive called Diskkeeper 2012. Speeds up the read write. I know it's not my Graphics card. My graphics card is MSI Twin Frozr III 2x 120mm fans GTX 560Ti OC w/ 448 cores 1280mb DDR5. Some people believe an I'm starting to as well that there is a memory leak in the game. Harddrive --->

Figure 4: Hard drive

Size: 640 GB
Interface: SATA
Transfer rating: 3.0 Gb/sec
Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM

Game seems to lag only when in combat really. Dropping down to around 30. Some fights between 15-20. Funny thing is when standing still it's 60 fps. Moving around it's 40-50. Get in combat it can decide sometimes to be 30, or to just flop around between 15-20. It makes no sense. Some planets worse than others no matter where I am like Nar shadda. It's weird. It does take a while for the game to load too. Doesn't really seem to tear at all though. An game has never locked up.

I looked around for my SATA drive. It's weird cause I couldn't find it in device manager under disk drives. I did find a listing of IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. I'm not sure if thats it or not. All I can see though is CD rom drive. An then under Disk drives it lists 4 usb. An the 5th is WDC WD64 00AAKS-65A7B SCSI Disk Device.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by aurion546 on 01-17-2012 at 04:37:21 AM

Reply to aurion546

was trying to be more helpful and found this on the swtor website.... is your video card overclocked ?

Quote :

was getting these. hard black screen locks with no resolution but to hard reset system. resolved by underclocking videocard, have been stable for a couple weeks now, where the game was unplayable for me prior to underclocking my card adn i was frankly getting scared to even attemp to run it anymore risking corruption and damage to my system.

gpu temps are rediculous in some portions of the game. my avg load temp is around 70 for all new graphics intensive games at my standard clocks and 85% fan on gpu. swtor routinely pushes my card over 100 without ramping up my fan to full speed and underclocking my card so that it doesnt break 85. even with the case open, fan at full speed and underclocked by about 10%, the game still pushes my gpu to 80 consistantly. hope there is a driver fix for this soon, not pleased about having to underclock my card to run the game, nor am i happy about any potential damage my system may have suffered before i identified the heat isssues with the gpu. just to clarify, this video card runs everything else AAA i throw at it without a hiccup. this is a swtor specific conflict with my card/nvidia driver. hoping for a fix before more peoples hardware are damaged. nvidia 460 gtx card, newest beta drivers.

the heat issues are bizarre, you walk inside somewhere, not even a populated area, and watch your gpu temps rise 15 to 20 degree's in the space of 30 seconds! i can understand if the card is having to render alot of stuff, but these are otherwise static indoor areas with little going on, certainly not enough to cause the card to break into a literal sweat like it's doing. lots of others reporting the same temp issues and quite a few have posted that they resolved thier black screen locks by underclocking their gpu. i notice it alot on the "close up" conversation scenes with quest npc's indoors. you can just watch your gpu temps skyrocket.

Reply to optr0nic

in retrospect im seeing a lot of posts about nvidia driver issues with swtor on the forum... unfortunetly i dont see any replies from sys admins or anyone offering solutions. i know this might not be your issue.. im pretty sure you issue is not enough, or slow memory. my memory is 4gb. which albeit is less then you. but they are 2 ddr III patriot 1600's 2 gb chips. i dont have any fps issues. i only get really long load times. like 10+ minutes. but thats because my os is full and i am running it off a dying 4800 rpm seagate 160gb secondary drive. my video card is one single gtx 550 1gb.

Message edited by optr0nic on 01-17-2012 at 04:00:50 PM

Reply to optr0nic

I've not noticed the GPU temps skyrocket. An there never seems to be a single issue during cinematics. Only when running does it seem to drop in fps between 40-50. Then combat can range from 15-30. But from what i'm hearing i'm guessing it's a Bioware/Nvidia thing right now. So i'll just have to wait for a fix on both ends. Probably one from Nvidia first with new drivers. Then bioware will patch on their end. We don't want another issue like what happened with STO.

Message edited by aurion546 on 01-17-2012 at 05:39:48 PM

Reply to aurion546

Hello,

aurion,

what are the temperatures for your hardware when you're running the game?
what driver version for nvidia are you running the game with?

if your temperatures are normal and your HDD is at least 5400 rpm with at least 8% of total capacity free on it, you shouldn't have any trouble from the HDD side.

DDR2 memory might be slow, but I'd try adjusting the game settings at first and see if you get achieve better FPS. Replacing memory is a long shot.

I've seen a few people mention that the game has a memory leak. I've also seen a lot of people having fps troubles.

It's a fairly new game, and I'm sure Bioware still has a few kinks to work out.

optronic,
the quote you posted, if you wish to reply to the guy there:
running your case with cover open renders you case fans useless as they no longer affect the airflow as much. You should always aim to run the case with cover closed, if you're running into cooling problems you should look to solve those problems with additional fans or better cooling solutions than an open case.

------------------------------ There are 10 kinds of people. Ones that understand binary and ones that don't.
How to ask for help
Reply to AntiZig

from my cs major in 2002 we always talked about bad garbage collection programming. i.e. variables would be created for some purpose and once used would be "garbage" variables in memory that served no use. eventually these would accumulate to a point where they where taking up a lot of memory. which is why sometimes i need to blow out my running swtor program and restart the game. is this the same thing as a memory leak or is that something else?

Aurion, have you tried lowering your nvidia settings to see if that improves your fps. i know you got some hot cards in your machine; pardon the pun. but you may want to try this to narrow down the issue. if the fps goes up then you know its a driver/ card issue. this would also help you increase the longevity of your card, by reducing its temps. at least until they get a fix. also you may want to go in an manually change the settings from the nvidia control panel. maybe theres one setting that is causing the issue. like anti-aliasing or whatever. maybe find someone with your card who is running the game smoothly and ask him to screen shot his settings in the nvidia control panel to match his. i have one but im at work and cant do that for you right now. my card is one gen behind you as well so i doubt it would be helpful.

Reply to optr0nic

Manually controlling your GPU's fan with a program like MSI Afterburner should fix the temp issues, without having to under-clock.

Reply to whatsthatnoise

I haven't checked the temps but I will next time. I've got 370gb free out of 500gb HDD.
I've attempted playing on low settings with shadows off. I've attempted high settings with shadows off. No difference in FPS between the two settings at all. I've run my card preset to Quality. Preset to Performance. Then preset to balanced. I've customized it with all AA an Anisotropy off. I've literally dug through forums upon forums for hours upon hours. Tried every trick. Right clicking the launcher an properties. Disable desktop themes an visuals. I've even raised the priority of the game to high through task manager. So far no matter what in combat it plummets to 15-20 fps wether I like it or not. I'm running the Nvidia beta drivers 290.53

Reply to aurion546

Yeah I just noticed that after running MSI afterburner to see my GPU usage an temps an fan speed etc. 51-53 C is the temp it stays at. 15-20 GPU usage %. 51% fan speed - 2400 rpm on the Fan Tachometer.

Reply to aurion546

im leaning towards, faulty or slow memory then. sounds like your video card is chugging along nicely and the game is being capped by memory. since your harddrive seems to be doing fine as well..... what exactly is your memory?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 20-233-186

Message edited by optr0nic on 01-19-2012 at 12:09:24 AM

Reply to optr0nic

My memory is PC-6400 6gb of it. 800mhz. I'm not sure I can throw anything more than what I have in my computer. I'm pretty sure it's stuck at DDR2 800mhz ram. If i'm wrong an I can actually throw better ram in it please let me know. If you want to know more about it that I haven't listed. You can find out by googling p6210y. When I looked up it's specifications an memory upgrade options it only showed 667mhz or 800mhz. An i have the 800mhz.

Message edited by aurion546 on 01-19-2012 at 05:06:56 AM

Reply to aurion546

I have that exact same memory on my box at home. and no fps issues now that i replaced the hard drive. maybe try reseating the memory modules? or bench marking the ones you got to see if there are any malfunctions with them. i also have only 4gb of this memory as opposed to your 5gb. if you do reseat your memory, try also reseating your video card. i dont want to send you down the rabbit hole. but im running out of ideas.

Reply to optr0nic

Yeah I know what you mean. It's fairly frustrating on my end as well. I'll try reseating.

Reply to aurion546

hey, just had an epiphany. check your virtual memory. if its too small, it could cause the issues your experiencing.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US [...] ual-memory

hope this helps. i usually change my pagefile to represent the size of my memory. in your case 5 gb or 5082 mb.

let me know.

Reply to optr0nic

It was system managed when I clicked it to set it myself it said 16 mb min 6000mb max. The recommended it said was 9124. So I set it to 1000 min an 9124 max.

Reply to aurion546

Just so you know, most monitors (even HD) don't display much higher than 60fps.

Also, your not alone in seeing framerate drops in SWTOR. I doubt its your RAM, I doubt its your video card, as both exceed the recommended requirements by the size of the Atlantic Ocean. With MMO's it's not always the user's computer that can be called into question, but sometimes more likely - the game itself & servers attached to such.
Fortunatly, I have not seen any drops in FPS. Since launch I have been around 47 - 55 fps, course I use ATI 6870.

A new patch came out this morning, which seemed to fix a bunch of FPS issues some people were having. Id go see if anything has changed for you as of today. And keep in mind the human eye can't tell the difference between 60 & 50 & 40 fps. Superhero's may argue otherwise

Reply to Dngrwtch

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_fra [...] ns_see.htm

I'll just leave that here for your perusal

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by AntiZig on 01-25-2012 at 12:16:58 AM

------------------------------ There are 10 kinds of people. Ones that understand binary and ones that don't.
How to ask for help
Reply to AntiZig

AntiZig wrote :

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_fra [...] ns_see.htm

I'll just leave that here for your perusal

http 404 not found? re-type ur link

Message edited by Dngrwtch on 01-24-2012 at 09:40:04 PM

Reply to Dngrwtch

K went to the source and found your link, and read the research with the combat pilots noticing a flicker at ~200 fps.

Thats tottaly not the same as playing SWTOR at 60fps & noticing a difference when it goes down to 45fps. You just don't.
And my statement wasn't on how much the human eye could see, but if it could notice the difference playing SWTOR

Message edited by Dngrwtch on 01-24-2012 at 09:45:44 PM

Reply to Dngrwtch

it's not that, if you read it carefully, you don't notice flicker whether it's at 45 or 60. you're however likely to notice the rapid change in framerate if it drops from 60 to 45 abruptly. Your ability to notice things, as article states, depends on many conditions, not just fps alone.

------------------------------ There are 10 kinds of people. Ones that understand binary and ones that don't.
How to ask for help
Reply to AntiZig

aurion546 wrote :

Game seems to lag only when in combat really. Dropping down to around 30. Some fights between 15-20. Funny thing is when standing still it's 60 fps. Moving around it's 40-50. Get in combat it can decide sometimes to be 30, or to just flop around between 15-20. It makes no sense. Some planets worse than others no matter where I am like Nar shadda. It's weird. It does take a while for the game to load too. Doesn't really seem to tear at all though. An game has never locked up.

This isn't really all that odd. Graphics processing when nothing's going on is alot less demanding then when you're moving around. Imagine each frame as an image your computer has to render and present to you via your monitor. If you are standing still, most of the textures are already rendered, with the exception of a few things moving in and out of your view. Your graphics card just has to dump what it's already loaded into it's memory back at your monitor over and over; a fairly simple task. When you move, the gpu and cpu have to wake up and start actually processing stuff. Every time you change your view, it has to re-render shadows, lighting, objects, textures, etc. In combat, this is taken a step further: you then have to render spell effects, create particles, move particles, render motion blur, etc. Also, i've noticed in alot of MMO's, the more people around you, the lower the FPS. I noticed this in WoW and Rift, not just TOR. In an area like Nar Shaddaa, which is pretty heavy w/ new lowbies (alts, ppl first trying the game), you've got a higher player population then some other areas. I think this is why they have 2 instances of some zones.

Reply to JMsicarius

good read antizig. I have the AMD 6870 laptop card. i never dip below 50. its unbelievably intense graphics rendering with images that are so crisp im not used to. I find that sitting in front of my laptop for too long gives me a headache just like they wrote about the 3 movies back to back giving people headaches. could one say that the better the video card is the harder the brain has to work to see the image? interesting theory. Dont get me wrong, im not complaining. but I am getting older and have played games for years. im noticing in my dotage, that as i get older, the amount of time continiously that i can play has gone down.

But what id really like to know for aurion's sake is: is it his video card or his memory. or is he a superhero and his mental picture module is too good... lol??

Reply to optr0nic

It's not my graphics card. I have the MSI Frozr III GTX 560Ti with 448 cores. It's using the G 110 board not the 114 that the standard 560 an 560Ti use. The only other card that compares in the least to this card is the EVGA OC 560Ti with 448 cores. They call this card the budget 590. It can easily be clocked to the memory, an shader speeds of a 590. Might be my memory but others have said they run the game easily on DDR2. It's not that i'm some kind of superhuman that notices on screen the changes. I never said that. It's that it just dies an dies an dies down on fps. An yes i've noticed that the new patch has made things a little better. Still didn't help permanently. All I noticed with it, is that it helped fps on a few planets. I still notice frames dipping down to 40 an hovering between 40-50. Using Ctrl + Shift + F to see the fps in the bottom left corner. An in combat it just dies to around 10-27 fps. I've run alot of intensive graphical an most likely cpu intensive games. Being both DX 9 an 10 an 11. So i'm guessing it has something to do with the game. Now I know I have an AMD chipset. nforce 7 mobo. My friend runs an Intel an says he has no problems at all easily gets 60-80 fps. I'm guessing that the game just works better with Intel than it does with AMD. If it does work well with AMD most likely only the Phenom chipset. Probably different architecture between Phenom an Athlon. I've run games like Skyrim on high. Saints Row 3 on high. Witcher 2 on high. Dead Island on high. An as far as WoW goes. You can't compare WoW to anything for performance issues. WoW is as far as I know a joke on both GPU an CPU intensity scale. Crysis makes WoW look like friggin runescape. The most intensive game out right now from what I hear is Battlefield 3.

Message edited by aurion546 on 01-29-2012 at 12:07:28 AM

Reply to aurion546

Hi there, I also have the same problem as aurion546 and I'm also a tech newbie. I have the same video card as aurion546 and my com keeps restarting randomly while playing games such as SWTOR, BF3 or Saints Row 3 but it runs smoothly without restarting for Skyrim on High Settings. It can restart up to 5 times in a row or once in 3 hours. Attached are my com specs and please advice. Thanks.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 2/7/2012, 23:02:21
Machine name: GAME-PC
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.110622-1506)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: BIOS Date: 02/05/10 19:13:52 Ver: 08.00.10
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.3GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8174MB RAM
Page File: 1395MB used, 14949MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
Display Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 2: No problems found.
Sound Tab 3: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.

--------------------
DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D: 0/4 (retail)
DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (retail)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (retail)
DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow: 0/6 (retail)

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 550 Ti
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1244&SUBSYS_2734107D&REV_A1
Display Memory: 4064 MB
Dedicated Memory: 992 MB
Shared Memory: 3071 MB
Current Mode: 1366 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: ViewSonic VA1931 SERIES
Monitor Model: VA1931 Series
Monitor Id: VSCAC25
Native Mode: 1366 x 768(p) (59.790Hz)
Output Type: HD15
Driver Name: nvd3dumx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Driver File Version: 8.17.0012.8562 (English)
Driver Version: 8.17.12.8562
DDI Version: 11
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 10/15/2011 16:53:00, 15693120 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes

Reply to jermz89

I've also tried reducing my clocks to 700 using winfox III which my friends recommended so my clocks are now 700 and shaders are 1160 but the problems still persist.

Reply to jermz89

I'm also running a geforce gtx 550 ti, and was having massive problems with SWTOR. Low frame rates, and I practically couldn't run the game with shadows on at all. In combat, solo, facing just 2-3 mobs, I was getting down below 30 fps.

A complete re-install from DVD solved my issues. This was in early to mid February.

It wasn't a new patch revision. I think it must have been a corrupt install, or maybe a previous patch that just didn't take effect properly until the game was completely re-installed....I don't know.

I hate to sound like Bioware tech support, "reinstall the game", but anyone who hasn't tried it recently might find it's worth a shot.

Reply to Marc Abian

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