SWTOR - processor dependant?

[subrosian]

The i3 is probably still fine as they have hyper-threading and perform well in benchmarks, however, I cannot speak from experience on that, only on experience from quad-core processors (I have a Phenom II 965 x4 @4ghz)

---------- Post added 2012-01-29 at 02:39 AM ----------

I knew I felt a performance increase when I installed this SSD. Always brushed it off to a placebo effect.

No, you are correct, it's HDD dependent

[Deleted]

Atm, i got core2duo 2.4ghz socket 775 (cant overclock it due to mobo bugging), so would it help buying second-hand 3.16ghz core2duo for 70euro?
And is it a problem if i got 800mhz ddr2 memory sticks and that 3.16ghz cpu with 1333mhz fsb?

Yeah the Core2 duo is a little low on power.

If you can, buy a cheap used Core2 quad.
I did this with my computer : replaced an E5200 with a Q9550.
Overclocked the Q9550 to 3.4Ghz and games are really smooth. (well except SWTOR that stutters but it's a well-known issue with the game)

Be carefull though : check that your motherboard can handle a Core2 quad.
You may have to update the Bios also.

If you have the money, go for a full CPU+MB+RAM upgrade.

Edit : don't forget that SWTOR currently has performance issues on some computers.
So you might want to wait for BW to fix it before committing on an upgrade.

[Awfulist]

Wow is/was all cpu based as well

[Rowesdower]

One of the things I've noticed is that SWTOR has TWO processes running. I'm not certain why but it does.

[Crookers]

MMOs do tend to be quite CPU bottlenecked, although it probably depends on your kit.

If you have anything less than a sandybridge pentium or a phenom II, expect cpu bottlenecking.

Anything less than a GTX260 / 4770 expect gpu bottlenecking.

[Alvito]

ctrl + shift + f will give you your fps if the number is green your video card is the choke point, if its red its your cpu.

---------- Post added 2012-01-29 at 08:50 AM ----------

This was pulled off of the SWTOR forums and answers a few of the questions ppl have brought up. It is a wall of text though so have fun.



Originally Posted by Wakantanka


Quote:
As a software engineer I am going to throw out my speculation based on some poking around using tools like Process Explorer.

The game is not CPU or GPU limited when in Warzones or other player heavy situations. Usually when you see this kind of behavior it means things are I/O bound. Both the CPU and GPU are waiting for either data from the hard drive or the network and doing nothing for short periods of time.

Games used to be single threaded and the same loop that does the rendering also processed network packets and read data from disk. If something was loaded from disk no frames where being rendering during that time, so most games had a loading screen and loaded everything into ram and made sure to never touch the disk again until the next load screen.

SWTOR is not single threaded, this is easy to know because it runs two processes, this means a minimum of two threads, but its actually much more, last time I looked both processes had 10+ threads each.

SWTOR is definitively loading assets from disk constantly probably because a whole planet cannot fit into the 2 gigabytes of address space a 32bit process has access to. A lot of software does this sort of thing, it typically called streaming, and there are a lot of approaches.

SWTOR is actually unusual in using two processes, I myself have never seen a game do this. In poking around its easy to see the main swtor.exe with the larger memory footprint is doing the network communication and playing the sounds while the secondary smaller swtor.exe is doing the direct3d calls and utilizing the GPU.

These two processes must communicate somehow and this is what makes things unusual for something like a game, because inter-process communication adds much overhead, even when using the fastest form called "shared memory".

It's seems no matter how fast your CPU or GPU is any time the disk is read in SWTOR the framerate will plummet, this is the random "hitching" you see when driving a speeder around, this means the disk access is blocking the rendering engine in some way. Other players exasperate the problem because of their varying outfits and models which must not be able to completely fit in ram and must be loaded/unloaded on demand, vs NPC which in a questing area are all wearing similar outfits etc.

You can tell SWTOR blocks on disk while a game like WoW doesn't because have you noticed in SWTOR you never see another player partially loaded? In WoW while the players assets are being loaded they may show up as just a "shadow" on the ground, you can see them moving around but the model hasn't been loaded yet. In SWTOR players "fade in" fully loaded which mean their models must be read from disk(or already be in ram if lucky) before the engine will continue. This may be intentional or a limitation in the engine design. I prefer WoW's approach of never blocking rendering even if on the rare occasion you might end up fighting nothing but a shadow while the model is loading(happens much less in wow because of simpler models allow more to stay in ram).

So the game is blocking on I/O, either network, IPC, or most likely disk leading to horrible FPS even on high end systems. SSD's will help the situation some, but even an SSD is still thousands of times slower than ram. And for those with 8-16gigs of ram, SWTOR is only 32bit with two processes, so it basically has a total of 4 gigs of usable address space and it seems that only one processes is really using it's 2 gigs, while the second renderer is only using about 300-400megs. There has been reports of setting up RAM disks for SWTOR's assets helping if you have lots of ram, which would line up with what I am seeing.

If this is the case what are the solutions?

1. Stop blocking on disk reads, this made leads to things like just seeing a blob shadow run by for a few seconds, but you can still control game and take action. This may or may not be easy to do given the engine design.

2. Merge the two processes. Again I have never seen a game do this, IPC adds overhead and latency that would not exist in a single process design.

3. Compile for 64bit. This may be difficult to do depending on the engine design, but a single 64bit process could use all the available system ram for caching assets greatly reducing disk I/O.

That is my educated guess based on what I know and what I have seen in game, it may be wrong, it would be nice to get a real response from a dev to clarify.



Originally Posted by tbur


Quote:
Wakantanka is right. I also am a software engineer and I noticed a few things that indicate corners were cut, such as the 2 processes.

Each x86 Application is limited to 2gb of ram and by having 2 it means they could not for what ever reason get memory utilization below 2 and cheated by having a second process. If they were willing to cut corners on this I can only imagine what other design corners they have cut and agree 100% this is a design flaw. I love this game but imagine this will kill it as they cant reproduce years of design fast enough to keep subscribers especially if they purchased the engine instead of writing it themselves. These issues are most likely an IO issue caused by reads from disk or network.

I worked on a project that encountered similar behavior after years of poor design flaws and cut corners that ultimately resulted in starting over from scratch as it was control software for industrial automation and crashes / poor performance issues like this that take down multi million dollar factory equipment is unacceptable to most customers as I assume it will be for a gaming community who spend thousands to just play a game.

Bottom line this is a software issue and it was not ready to be released. They should have put more effort into design and pushed the release back to focus on quality. I am usnure if it was a cash flow problem as most software projects go over budget and get released with some bugs. The fix for this could take months or even years depending on the severity of the engine problems (Full engine rewrite) or not come at all because the cost could be too high to be profitable and they might just scrap this project.


Sorry to seem pessimistic but I have seen less severe problems like this kill projects and while I remain hopeful they will fix this game as I love it and would love it more if it worked as intended but I remain skeptical it will be fixed fast enough to keep enough subscribers to keep this game going.



Twitter message from Stephen Reid, Bioware - thanks to kmufc


Quote:
Originally Posted by kmufc
Just received this from Stephen Reid via Twitter Guys::


DeanMufc77
@
@Rockjaw Please update the "Horrid FPS Thread",sent you this around 4 times now,i know you get tons of mails,but please update us.


@DeanMufc77 It's coming, but don't expect a miracle solution I'm afraid.



http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/599/capturenhz.png

your rigs are fine guys, it's sw:tor's engine

[abijax]

GPU-bound: The GPU's job in relation to framerate is to render the display as a frame many times per second. A GPU-bound framerate happens when the video card cannot render frames fast enough to keep up with real-time.

CPU-bound: The CPU's job in relation to framerate is to take the rendered frames from the GPU, then sort and send them to the monitor back through the video card's vga/dvi/hdmi adapter.

This is one of the most retarded things posted on these forums and you even present it as a "lesson".

[Venant]

So swtor running 2 processes is a fatal flaw, they should have built the engine to run at 64 bit, and there may be no viable solution to this. I hadn't thought about it much myself, but perhaps how the game runs 2 processes is what causes memory issues for some players, especially if you are running more than 4gb in dual channel.

[Lemmiwink]

I find the "if your fps counter is green then your CPU isn't good enough" to be a bit wrong? I have an OC'ed i7 2600k paired with a good SSD, 16GB ram, 2 6950's in Crossfire and otherwise a very good system that cost me around 2700 euros to build. My fps is green, steady 110 fps+ all the time. Now, if this meant my processor wasn't good enough, would I have 110+ fps everywhere? Look away from fleet ofc, where I only get around 75 steady.

The only time I have seen a red or a yellow fps counter was when my gf was running it on her old system. She had 18-20 fps switching between yellow and red. This was on max settings with an AMD 6 core @3,3ghz, 8GB ram and a 6850 card. I switched out her amd setup and replaced it with a 2500k system with an extra 6850 card and now she has green fps at 55-80 at highest settings. The CPU is OC'ed to 4,2ghz.

My conclusion: Green means you're good. Red or yellow means you either need to upgrade your gpu or cpu.

[ghostprotocol]

from reading all the posts and wondering why my shitty i7 system with a gtx260 has no problems, i intend to test this theory by installing swtor on my i5 laptop with bad video card to see how it fares.

---------- Post added 2012-01-29 at 08:23 AM ----------

So swtor running 2 processes is a fatal flaw, they should have built the engine to run at 64 bit, and there may be no viable solution to this. I hadn't thought about it much myself, but perhaps how the game runs 2 processes is what causes memory issues for some players, especially if you are running more than 4gb in dual channel.

comment makes no sense.

[Kizzer]

I have not noticed lag due to slow disk performance but i can tell you this. This game almost needs a ssd my brother installed one and what a huge difference it made in screen loading. Only issues i have had is weird curser lag even when its "fully loaded" and bugs in Cademimu. And when you dc you basically have to restart game.

[Deleted]

i can tell u that getting a ssd makes no diffrence sure it makes load times fast but it dont increase fps its the engine that is bad/bad coding, in ilum with 200 ppl its a slideshow 10-15 fps

[lolvik]

I love how this is the result of a $ 200 000 000 production.

[Roose]

Nobody knows wtf the game depends on. Right now it seems to be pretty much luck. You either have issues or you don't, regardless of system. People with the best systems seem to be having more issues than those with lesser systems. Go figure.

This game requires a performance guide put out by developers. Nuff said.

SSDs, new drivers, upgrading hardware, changing bios, running in different compatibility mode, etc, etc. All of them are just rumored "fixes". Seen tons of posts already that upgraded to SSDs and had no impact.

[xgm541]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqG5q...1&feature=plcp

it plays on a macbook air with 1.4 ghz core 2 duo on lowest settings.

[FlawlessSoul]

Nobody knows wtf the game depends on. Right now it seems to be pretty much luck. You either have issues or you don't, regardless of system. People with the best systems seem to be having more issues than those with lesser systems. Go figure.

This game requires a performance guide put out by developers. Nuff said.

SSDs, new drivers, upgrading hardware, changing bios, running in different compatibility mode, etc, etc. All of them are just rumored "fixes". Seen tons of posts already that upgraded to SSDs and had no impact.

Actually, we have a firm grasp of what is causing the issue - the engine is making ridiculous I/O requests of storage without any sort of handling for delays.

Are there other issues? Yes. But this is the primary issue causing so much headache, and it's also the main reason they dropped the high-res textures.

Maybe I should pick up a ton of memory and see how well it does in a RAMdisk.

[Deleted]

I think SWTOR has some memory issues, apparently quite a few people have difficulty getting it to function without removing a stick or RAM. I am able to run the game, and while it is running performance is fine, however it is not stable since I get random crashes and occasional blue screens.

If you are getting blue screens then you have either a hardware or a driver issue. End of story.

---------- Post added 2012-01-29 at 10:11 PM ----------

Maybe I should pick up a ton of memory and see how well it does in a RAMdisk.

You won't need a ton of memory. 6GB will do in total (presuming you hae a 64bit OS that can address that much RAM)
Given the way the game cache's and streams data, there should be some benefits in running within a RAMdisk.

[Deleted]

You can tell SWTOR blocks on disk while a game like WoW doesn't because have you noticed in SWTOR you never see another player partially loaded? In WoW while the players assets are being loaded they may show up as just a "shadow" on the ground, you can see them moving around but the model hasn't been loaded yet. In SWTOR players "fade in" fully loaded which mean their models must be read from disk(or already be in ram if lucky) before the engine will continue. This may be intentional or a limitation in the engine design. I prefer WoW's approach of never blocking rendering even if on the rare occasion you might end up fighting nothing but a shadow while the model is loading(happens much less in wow because of simpler models allow more to stay in ram).

I don't think this part is correct. I've frequently seen people showing as floating names only, until the assets are loaded.

[Standing]

I love how this is the result of a $ 200 000 000 production.

Businesses fail just like people do, unfortunately.

[Alvito]

I don't think this part is correct. I've frequently seen people showing as floating names only, until the assets are loaded.

My understanding of that is it happens when ppl are zoning into something else and while they are on the load bar for the place they are going you see them vanish and their name plate and sometimes companion stay behind, which is also part of the reason you have to resummon your companions so often. This is a common thing to see around hanger doors at fleet.

---------- Post added 2012-01-30 at 09:04 AM ----------

I have not noticed lag due to slow disk performance but i can tell you this. This game almost needs a ssd my brother installed one and what a huge difference it made in screen loading. Only issues i have had is weird curser lag even when its "fully loaded" and bugs in Cademimu. And when you dc you basically have to restart game.

There are a few threads on the SWTOR forums about Cademimu issues, whats happend to your brother is one of the many common problems.

You have to wonder wtf the beta testers were doing while they were testing. I know i was on the beta for a bit and you better believe i reported stuff like crazy because I didnt want what is now happening to continue. Maybe they weren't clear when they reported bugs, who knows but enough wasnt done. I have heard several ppl say it and it seems to be kinda true, ppl feel like they are paying to beta test right now and they put up with it because they want the game to be good so badly. Tons of promise with this game but right now its not getting it done.