NVIDIA card + SWTOR, need some help!

[Lord Kristivas]

So, my Radeon 5770 was overheating and shutting down the computer. For the foreseeable holiday season, I'll be using a new EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GT 520. It's using SO much less heat. It's not giving me as good on the performance, however. My question is, can I tweak the card settings to run the game better? If so, how and to what? Much appreciation would be given if someone can help me out. :P

[Jaum]

As an owner of a EVGA GTX 560 Non-ti, i can't see your videocard running the game above 15-20 FPS. The GT 520 is a new card, i know. However, SWTOR requires more a little more muscle to perform on a acceptable form, let's say 30 FPS. Even if you overclock your card, i think it wouldn't make a big difference. As for myself, i'm watching my GTX 560 struggling to keep a 25-30 FPS rate at warzones, it's really frustrating. I would suggest you get a ATI card like the Radeon 6950 or a Nvidia card like the GTX 570, if you have the money. These are mid to high end chips that could run SWTOR on the highest settings with a reasonable 50 to 60 FPS most of the time.

[Lord Kristivas]

Is there really nothing I can do?

[chisuji]

Tech has limits. Software and OC just won't get you what you want.

[Shruikah]

Is there really nothing I can do?

The 520 is a low end card meant for use in office computers etc. It won't get much better in games I'm afraid. So many people get the wrong impression from how Nvidia name their cards.

[Glorious Leader]

We need to know more about your system specs I think. Whats your cpu? chipset? ram? etc etc

[Lord Kristivas]

Intel Core i7, 8g RAM

[Farahawnee]

If you are having overheating issues then you may need to download MSI Afterburner and make sure you have your Fan set to max. See if that helps. Auto typically has issues especially if you have a fan controller issue.

[crittcann]

What Farahawnee said, use afterburner, I used it on some low end cards and saw about a 35% increase in overall performance.

[nogard64]

The 520 is a low end card meant for use in office computers etc. It won't get much better in games I'm afraid. So many people get the wrong impression from how Nvidia name their cards.

I'm sorry if I harp on you OP but pretty much what Shruikah has said, get at least a Mid range GTX or higher, I'm just at a lost for words for all the people who buy really bad GPUs, when I first started PC gaming me and all my buddies used to focus really hard on Vid cards, that was your weapon, we used to constant run 3dmark and other benchmarks to see how our comp handled things. I don't get when did the paradigm shift occur when people were more worried about the CPU? I'm just really confused. When it comes to 3D gaming its about 80-90% Video card.

In other words if you want to game, buy a $300 vid card and a $75 dollar CPU, heck most AMD $50 CPU would do, not the other way around, $300 CPU, and $50 Vid card.