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nthowe

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Jan 21, 2012
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Hi,
So I'm running a system that I built a few years back. I started playing SWTOR and its been pretty hard to make it smooth. I have a feeling I have a bottleneck component somewhere, think its the ram, but just wanted to check.

GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

GeForce 8800GT with 512 RAM

A few notes on the system...:
Windows 7
The max supported ram speed is ddr2 800.
I have not done any overclocking.
The fan on the graphics card doesn't seem to run as strongly as it should.
Have the Virtual Memory (i.e. hard drive space) set at about 8GBs
When I'm playing the game, I shut down all other running programs that aren't windows files

Now the problem:
When Im playing swtor, a lot of the areas in the game are super choppy. Inside, where its not rending a mile of terrain, it runs pretty smooth, but even that can get bad depending on how long I've been playing. Basically, the longer I play the worse it gets. It goes in spurts though, It'll be at 10fps for 30 secs, and then it jumps to 30fps.

Thats why it seems like it might be the ram, the system just can't load all of the areas.

I want to make it playable so I'm trying to figure out the bottleneck.

Oh, here are the SWTOR system reqs.

Processor:

•AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ or better
•Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz or better
Operating System:
•Windows XP Service Pack 3 or later
RAM:

•Windows XP: 1.5GB RAM
•Windows Vista and Windows 7: 2GB RAM
Note: PCs using a built-in graphical chipset are recommended to have 2GB of RAM.

Star Wars: The Old Republic requires a video card that has a minimum of 256MB of on-board RAM as well as support for Shader 3.0 or better. Examples include:

•ATI X1800 or better
•nVidia 7800 or better
•Intel 4100 Integrated Graphics or better


Want to get some awesome feedback from you awesome guys!
 
Solution
Actually your motherboard supports DDR2 1066(O.C.) with 2 x 1.8V DDR2 DIMM sockets supporting up to 4 GB of system memory. So go for it!

As for your graphic card you´d get a much better gaming experience by adding another GeForce 8800GT in SLI -- which is your power supply?

You also could OC your CPU.

jemm

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Actually your motherboard supports DDR2 1066(O.C.) with 2 x 1.8V DDR2 DIMM sockets supporting up to 4 GB of system memory. So go for it!

As for your graphic card you´d get a much better gaming experience by adding another GeForce 8800GT in SLI -- which is your power supply?

You also could OC your CPU.
 
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nthowe

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Jan 21, 2012
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Really? I looked under default ram and it said ddr2 800. So what your saying is I can overclock it to run the 1066 RAM? Will I need better cooling or anything? System doesn't get very hot as is, just want to make sure. Also, if I get faster RAM i.e. 1066, and don't OC it, will it run at 800, or will it not run at all? Just don't want to waste the money if I can't get it to work.

Did a bit of hunting on Newegg, this is the only 2x2gb 1.8 voltage memory set I could find. Good?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148249


PSU is a 550 Watt Antec PSU. Runs beautifully.
I definitly can't afford another 8800gt though. Eventually gonna upgrade to an i5, but for that i'll need all new mobo, ram, cpu, etc.
Thanks for your reply!
 
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