SWTOR & GTX 680 FTW (For The... What the heck?)

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

I have SWTOR set at max and FXAA enabled through Nvidia control panel. 99% of the time the game runs at 100 FPS +. But when I get around say 30 people + my FPS drop it like its hot. I mean to 30 FPS, WHAT THE H#@$? I have FRAPS running, EVGA Precision and CPU and MOBO ASUS monitoring up. Nothing is getting hot, the highest I have seen on my GPU is 55 C and on my CPU 42C, and I am not running out of VRAM according to Precision. Is there something wrong with my card, or is SWTOR just graphically designed even worse than I thought. I will give Bioware this, the lastest patch 1.2 looks so much better than before. I love my gtx680, its just that these frame differences seem too drastic and like something is wrong.

Thanks in advance!!!

MANOFKRYPTON

Staring contest... 1... 2... 3... go!!!

 

[thently]

This is not your computer this is the same issue you run into in WOW in a 30 person raid or whatever.. Not allot you can do about this stay in rooms with less than 30 people LOL...

Thent

 

[alvine]

its an mmo. if you have bunch of people on the screen your processor is being tasked with the extra stuff

 

[17seconds]

I'm thinking it's a problem with the game. You have all the hardware necessary to run the game at max FPS and I don't think there is anything wrong with your 680. On-line games with a lot of players have to find some common ground with the graphics and you are probably on-line with other players who have much lower system specs. Anyway, it's starting to thaw up there in Alaska now, so you should probably get out and go hunting or fishing or something.

 

[Rockdpm]

lol

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

I play SWTOR hunt and Fish a lot! Two bears last year, went salmon fishing 3 or 4 times last year. I have an i7-2600, its running at 4.2 GHZ are you saying my baby can't handle SWTOR? But the graphics are not even great, good but not great. I was hoping for this build to last another 3-5 years of gaming, and not at ultra or high settings. After 3-5 years I should be done with college and in a career and then... SERVER TOWER and computer out the ying yang! I really want more power!!! I am going to have a room with 9-12 40" 3D monitors or TV's in surround so I can be in the game, eventually. I honestly dont think we are too far away for that.

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

What if I turn on windows basic graphics when I game and only on one monitor, and turn off all other programs?

 

[17seconds]

What I was saying is that not everyone else can run SWTOR, so the other players are slowing you down. And as mentioned, MMO games with a lot of players do tend to slow down regardless. I suggest you try to play Skyrim instead.

 

[djscribbles]

Yeah, an MMO can bring any system to it's knees if your rendering high detail surrounded by a lot of people. Often times there can be a lot of hard disk loading that is done on the fly that causes a temporary slowdown, or there is just too much going on around you to render it all in a timely fashion.

If your smart, you maybe able flip one or two settings (such as particle effect/spell detail if your in a raid; or visible distance of characters if the problem is in towns) and get alot better performance; but there is nothing wrong with your computer, low temperatures just mean the hardware isn't taxed, but it doesn't mean it will automatically increase it's speeds (i.e. overclock) to keep up with the game.

I would simply put up with it if I were you, it's not worth trying to fix, it may not be possible for you to fix, it could be fixed by a patch which applies smarter detail levels in crowds (but probably not something the devs care about)

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

But 111 FPS to 30? And I mean 111 is most of the time and dips into 80s sometimes. I could see how others bad systems could be slowing me down. If there character is stuttering around, it would be hard for my system to accurately portray that. I can turn down the settings a notch when raiding, but I consider the highest settings in game to be the minimum that I want to play at. What else can a man do? What else would bump up system performance?

Edit: Even at the lowest settings all I can get is 111 FPS?

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

Oh and playing, SKYRIM, BF3, ZELDAs, looking at GW2. But right now I am loving SWTOR.

EDIT: CRYSIS 2, SC II, hopefully soon D3 added to the list

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

Should I put SWTOR on my SSD instead of my HDD?

 

[djscribbles]

Putting it on your SSD may help if your FPS drags when you first enter the area. If your still at a low framerate after 5 minutes, the SSD isn't going to help much, if at all.

Also, other peoples' slow computers don't slow your framerate in multiplayer, they could hop around or pop in, but the server tells you where everybody is and what they are wearing, other client PCs don't matter whether they get 1FPS or 120FPS. More people does cause your PC to have to render more people (shocking, I know), if you have 200 people nearby, their presence in the area is adding a huge load to your system to render everybody.

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

My FPS stay high when entering an area, in cinematics in fights, even around a bunch of other players 10 -15 in different areas not standing on top of one another. It just slowed the other night when I walked into a crowd of 20-30 people there companions and they where all bunched up together. when I stepped in to the crowd and looked at each player closely I was still at 40-50 FPS, only at the very beginning when I first entered the room where they where at and when I first saw them did my FPS drop. So run windows basic, put SWTOR on my SSD, close everything else and OC my card?

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

Putting it on your SSD may help if your FPS drags when you first enter the area. If your still at a low framerate after 5 minutes, the SSD isn't going to help much, if at all.

Also, other peoples' slow computers don't slow your framerate in multiplayer, they could hop around or pop in, but the server tells you where everybody is and what they are wearing, other client PCs don't matter whether they get 1FPS or 120FPS. More people does cause your PC to have to render more people (shocking, I know), if you have 200 people nearby, their presence in the area is adding a huge load to your system to render everybody.

I am just wondering why this is happening now and not earlier in game, granted there have not been so many people in such a small space before. I have an i7-2600, plenty of ram and a 680. Temp and vram aren't the issues. I can bump up the GPU boost and memory boost, running the card at stock settings right now. My CPU is at stock my MOBO will auto overclock it to 4.2 GHZ if I let it. IF the server is telling my computer what to render then should there be an 80 FPS drop? Like I said above I have been around 20 players before but they have been more spaced out and in more open farther rendered areas. I really do appreciate everyone helping!

 

[slicedtoad]

Many games lag when a certain number of units or characters appear in the same place. Usually this is cpu bound. It involves the game needing to do calculations on every unit against every other unit.

So, for example, if there are 3 characters in your vision the game may need to do, say, 5 calculations for each character against every other character. This means it would need to 3^5 calculations (243). If there are 10 characters it needs to do 10^5 (100000). at 30 characters the game needs to do 24.3 million calculations. For every frame.

Due to this exponentially increasing workload, even a very good computer will lag when enough characters get on screen. I would actually commend the programmers behind SWOTR if you only go down to 30fps (still very playable).

Try playing a custom map on SCII with too many units. You will go down to 1-2fps. And setting the graphics to minimum won't help a bit since it's mostly cpu bound.

and to those talking about other people's computers slowing the fps, you're wrong. Other people (or the server) can slow the game speed down, not your fps. So you might only be moving a step every 10 seconds but your framerate could remain at 60fps. Frames are generated independently of the server.

 

[braindogs]

IIRC SWTOR is capped at 112 fps (think I read this on a HardwareHeaven review of the gtx 680). Hence you won't see a frame rate above that. Also if you are using 3 monitors (which I would only guess that you are) you are probably maxing the VRAM (2 gigs) on your 680

 

[J_E_D_70]

What they ^ said. It's a by-product of an MMO (Plane of Knowledge in EQ is an early example, saw it in Stormwind in WoW too) and certainly not worth expending any more brain cells to address. That's just the way it is.

 

[catatafish]

I never saw anything higher than 111 either, I think there's a cap.

Regardless, 30 FPS is still smooth sailing. What's to worry about? I can't believe you have a 680 and you're not playing BF3!!11!!

 

[vmem]

as far as I know, it's not only a by-product of MMOs in general, but also a specific problem with SWTOR. you're lucky you have the 680FTW edition. most of us can't even do 30 person raids on SWTOR on high graphics settings, it's a common complaint in the community

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I have FRAPS running, EVGA Precision and CPU and MOBO ASUS monitoring up.

Why ? Turn the buggers off and remove conflicting utilities from the equation.

My son is running a 2600k at 4.8 Ghz and twin 900 Mhz 560 Ti's which is a bit more oomph than your 680. The 680 is not your problem however as fps slowdowns during the conditions you describe is a CPU limitation not a GPU limitation.

 

[slicedtoad]

^+1

 

[bystander]

It is possible you are running into a power issue. Stock settings on the 680 will throttle you if it tries to draw more than the PCIe slot is designed to run at. You can adjust this setting with MSI afterburner at the bottom of the settings page. You can increase it by as much as 35% extra power usage. The 6900 did the same thing.

Check in MSI Afterburner to see if the clocks are dropping under those extreme situations.

 

[slicedtoad]

^i thought only AMD cards could have the power setting adjusted. (and only 69xx and maybe 7xxx)

 

[bystander]

^i thought only AMD cards could have the power setting adjusted. (and only 69xx and maybe 7xxx)

It's new to the GTX 680.