For those with ATI cards, READ!

[Rooflesstoofless]

Did everything you said and have to wait for the servers to come back up. Wasn't have too many issues, my my screen would 'fracture' (not sure the technical name) whenever there was shaking of the camera in a cutscene. It looks like the screen is split into three different parts and each section is a few milliseconds off from the other.

NVM on this part...I saw your reply to this for someone else
Also on my "OpenGL Settings" I only have a box for Triple Buffering that is either on, or off. How should this be set?

Card is a 6850.

[Deleted]

Thanks so much, I had such a big issues last night and I didn't know why. Il try it out when servers are online.

---------- Post added 2011-12-16 at 10:15 AM ----------

Did everything you said and have to wait for the servers to come back up. Wasn't have too many issues, my my screen would 'fracture' (not sure the technical name) whenever there was shaking of the camera in a cutscene. It looks like the screen is split into three different parts and each section is a few milliseconds off from the other.

NVM on this part...I saw your reply to this for someone else
Also on my "OpenGL Settings" I only have a box for Triple Buffering that is either on, or off. How should this be set?

Card is a 6850.

I'm assuming you have to tick it. he did say OpenGL: Enabled , it's like tick.

[Aryev]

Did everything you said and have to wait for the servers to come back up. Wasn't have too many issues, my my screen would 'fracture' (not sure the technical name) whenever there was shaking of the camera in a cutscene. It looks like the screen is split into three different parts and each section is a few milliseconds off from the other.

Also on my "OpenGL Settings" I only have a box for Triple Buffering that is either on, or off. How should this be set?

Card is a 6850.

Triple buffering is only active when you have vertical sync on. If you are experiencing fracturing try enabling v-sync (as in disregard the vsync option i said) and ticking in triple buffering. However I am curios as to your problem because screen tearing only occurs when your card is rendering at higher FPS than your screen's refresh rate (generally 60hz). If you were having these fractures while having FPS below your screen refresh rate then I do not think vsync will help in this case.

I would recommend in this case if you have OC'd your card to turn down the clock speeds just ever so slightly (incrementally of 1-5Mhz) to see if that resolves your issue.

[handoverfizt]

mine has a tick box to turn it off, or a slide to set it to standard or advanced? nothing about performance mode or surface format.

there's also something called a mipmap detail level. what do i do with that? i can switch to 4 steps from performance to quality.

i also dont see an openGL option.

i got a AMD Radeon HD 6500M...atleast if i understand it correctly...

thanks for the assist, im a total newb when it comes to computers. im glad i can find the power button.

mine shows the same thing, I did some quick searches in google and found this little article that may/may not help out. I cant do links yet but quoting as such: "This is the kind of information that should be included with the driver release notes to be honest. It shouldn't need a forum poster to explain this kind of thing.

My understanding is that:

Catalyst A.I. = Off - No application profiles or driver optimisations are applied. In theory this should give the best image quality at the expense of some loss of performance. With multi-GPU setups (i.e. CrossFireX) it also means you're restricted to one GPU since the application profiles, which allow the use of CrossFireX, are disabled.

Catalyst A.I. = Standard - The default recommended setting that uses application profiles and driver optimisations such as allowing the forcing of anti-aliasing for Unreal Engine 3 games for example which won't work if Catalyst A.I. is disabled. This setting gives the best balance between image quality and performance. It also allows CrossFireX support for games that use it, which may or may not include Alternate Frame Rendering.

Catalyst A.I. = Advanced - Forces further driver optimisations to increase performance at the expense of some loss of image quality. It also forces Alternate Frame Rendering for CrossFireX setups. It is generally not recommended that you use this setting unless you have problems with one of the other settings."

this is my attempt at the link: forums .amd . com/game/messageview . cfm? catid= 279&threadid = 128579
added a few spaces ...

[Phototropic]

One of the bigger problems for me was my RAM being limited to 3gB when running the game in my x86 WinXP install. Since I switched over to my Win7 x64 and could use all 6gB of RAM I haven't had any problems (mainly micro-stutter and low(er) FPS).

Before anyone asks, my (old) network card's drivers didn't support 64 bit systems so, until I got my current one, I was forced to run all online games under my WinXP install and that is why I have 6gB but was using a 32 bit OS :P

CPU: i7 920 @ stock
GPU: 4890 @ 1000/1100
RAM: 6gB @ 1600
OS: Win7 x64

[Deleted]

Triple buffering is only active when you have vertical sync on. If you are experiencing fracturing try enabling v-sync (as in disregard the vsync option i said) and ticking in triple buffering. However I am curios as to your problem because screen tearing only occurs when your card is rendering at higher FPS than your screen's refresh rate (generally 60hz). If you were having these fractures while having FPS below your screen refresh rate then I do not think vsync will help in this case.

I would recommend in this case if you have OC'd your card to turn down the clock speeds just ever so slightly (incrementally of 1-5Mhz) to see if that resolves your issue.

Aryev on my CCC panel I have the following options:

SMOONTHVISION HD AA -ticked use application setting
SMOONTHVISION HD AF -ticked use application setting
Catalyst AI disabled
Minimap detail level set to quality
wait for vertical refresh set to off
Adaptive Anti Aliasing enabled and set to quality
Open GL settings ticked triple buff

Can you tell me if thas correct ? Im not sure. I've listed all options available.

[Aryev]

Aryev on my CCC panel I have the following options:

SMOONTHVISION HD AA -ticked use application setting
SMOONTHVISION HD AF -ticked use application setting
Catalyst AI disabled
Minimap detail level set to quality
wait for vertical refresh set to off
Adaptive Anti Aliasing enabled and set to quality
Open GL settings ticked triple buff

Can you tell me if thas correct ? Im not sure. I've listed all options available.

Yes that should be fine. If you want more info about the settings check my OP as I updated it with some notes.

[Deleted]

I was sort of wondering if it was to do with the AMD cards, I had a problem with big fps frops indoors and this helped a lot thanks.

[Deleted]

Yes that should be fine. If you want more info about the settings check my OP as I updated it with some notes.

Thanks so much

[Scene88]

Thanks for this, going to try it out when the servers come back up since I was having some issues.

[ContentsMayVary]

If SWTOR doesn't have AA and the profile is set to use application settings then you aren't forcing AA and will not get it, and as such it is irrelevant for this fix. If you force AA I don't know if the fix works or not as I didn't have adequate time to test it. Additionally forcing AA on an application that doesn't run it natively will cost you more FPS than if it did.

I have an NVidia card, so I edited the game's INI file to turn on AA. It works perfectly - that means that the game itself DOES support AA, since I turned it on via the game's INI file (which of course the video drivers don't access themselves).

[ZeroWashu]

One of the bigger problems for me was my RAM being limited to 3gB when running the game in my x86 WinXP install. Since I switched over to my Win7 x64 and could use all 6gB of RAM I haven't had any problems (mainly micro-stutter and low(er) FPS).

so I wonder what its upper limit is for ram usage? I have 12 in my newer machine. I know W64 stops at 16 (silly OS) unless you get prof or is it ultimate?

[Phototropic]

I'm running Ultimate but that's no reason for it to be able to utilise more RAM than prof. or home... unless I'm mistake about Micro$oft!!!

In the end, I guess it entirely depends on whether BW will release a x64 client, if they haven't already. Either way, the extra 3gB certainly helped in my circumastance and probably will with anyone running at high resolutions (1080p+).

[Aryev]

[/COLOR]

so I wonder what its upper limit is for ram usage? I have 12 in my newer machine. I know W64 stops at 16 (silly OS) unless you get prof or is it ultimate?

If you got 24GB RAM (not insanely expensive) you could load up the entire game, all of its... well EVERYTHING, onto your ram, all the while having 20 tabs open in your browser and play a 1080p video in the background.

[Rebirth1108]

Just picked up a 6850 yesterday to replace my 6770 and i have had zero lag issues or fps with everything on max rocking 60 fps, dunno maybe the really high end 6900+ are the only ones with hicups?

[ysondro]

I would sitll want to know what the main issue is when the game is up following this topic!

Since turning AA off hurts my eyes, and would not do it if it does not make that big of a difference.

[Aryev]

Just picked up a 6850 yesterday to replace my 6770 and i have had zero lag issues or fps with everything on max rocking 60 fps, dunno maybe the really high end 6900+ are the only ones with hicups?

No, 6800's and M series are also reporting the problem. It's, if my fix is any indication, a problem with a certain setting. With your new card I assume you freshly installed drivers and got default values for everything?

[lordzed83]

shit.... When i run at high i get massive fps drops :/
i got phenom x6@4.1 6850@950/1130 4gb of ultra fast timed ddr3 and W7 ultimate on SSD.
I run bf3 at high with 4xMsaa 60fps constant !!! Engine in swtor is shit......
Only idea is to get 4gb of extra ram :/

[Deleted]

Trying this once servers are back up.

I played on all high settings in beta pretty much except shadows with my 4850, with 30-80fps depending where I was, but in EGA past few days I've been running on medium/low with barely 30fps.

[BlueNile]

Interesting!

Yesterday I was shocked, I didn't have any issue with my "old" ATI 4870 during beta, but game was almost unplayable... Around 15/18 FPS in a cantina. Didn't like that.

Tonight I'll try your hints for sure... Fingers crossed!