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Star Wars: The Old Republic: PC Performance, Benchmarked
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1. The Old Republic: A Little Backstory

Star Wars: The Old Republic is based on the most revered science-fiction franchise to ever influence pop culture, and Bioware is probably the most esteemed RPG developer on the planet. You might already be assuming that Star Wars: The Old Republic, (LucasArts’ latest, and Bioware's first MMO), will be an instant hit when it’s released on December 20th, 2011.

Then again, the LucasArts/Sony Interactive combo sounded unbeatable back in 2003 when Star Wars: Galaxies was released. That game will be shut down five days before The Old Republic is opened up to the players. The lesson here is that great intellectual property and a solid developer do not guarantee success.

In A Couple Weeks, On The Planet Earth…In A Couple Weeks, On The Planet Earth…

With this in mind, we spent some time with Star Wars: The Old Republic in order to see if it justifies such enormous expectations. Will this be the MMO that takes the genre to another level? Is it good enough to challenge the heretofore untouchable World Of Warcraft? The answer is a resounding maybe, with a ton of caveats.

A vibroblade just doesn't have the sex appeal of a real lightsaberA vibroblade just doesn't have the sex appeal of a real lightsaber

Let’s start with the game universe. Bioware released the original Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic single-player RPG in 2003. That game is set some 4000 years prior to the movie timeline we all know and love. This brilliant setting gave developers the flexibility to create their own Jedi/Sith lore, free to deviate from the continuity imposed by Lucas' movies. There was plenty of force to go around in the old republic days, so it’s only natural that there are copious amounts of both Jedi and Sith. Of course, there were also a lot of smugglers, imperial agents, troopers, and bounty hunters, so, in this game, players can choose from any of eight different professions.

Although it's set in the past, the art direction is obviously rooted in Star Wars. It's easy to distinguish the ancient equivalent of an R2 unit or TIE fighter. The visual style goes more for cartoon than realism, similar to the original Knights Of The Old Republic.

The Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs? The parsec is a unit of length. That's like saying I went to the corner store and back in less than two miles.The Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs? The parsec is a unit of length. That's like saying I went to the corner store and back in less than two miles.

Let’s start with what the game does right. Missions and progression are crafted in true Bioware style. All dialogue is spoken. Responses affect not only your character’s attributes, but also how your NPC associates feel about you. Character abilities are fantastic. Your avatar is swept up in important matters that can affect the fate of the universe. I think it’s safe to say that Star Wars: The Old Republic offers some of the finest single-player experiences seen from an MMO. Yes, that’s plural. There are eight professions (four per faction) that have their own, unique storylines.

That's not to say the same story is told from eight different perspectives. Rather, the dialogue, locations, and progression are usually unique depending on the profession you’re playing. It’s an impressive undertaking with a mountain of content, and Bioware should be commended for the effort it put into extending this game's playability.

Biggest. Holocron. Evar.Biggest. Holocron. Evar.

The game worlds give you the impression that some locations are colossal, although a lot of that might be smoke and mirrors. On Coruscant, for example, flying taxis take you between areas, suggesting a sprawling cityscape. However, the playable zones are a tiny fraction of that space. It's perhaps more important that the game feels huge, befitting a galaxy-wide Star Wars experience.

Flashbacks from The Fifth ElementFlashbacks from The Fifth Element

So, what’s wrong with the game? My biggest pet peeve is colossal levels with empty space between mission points. You’re going to spend a fair chunk of time simply getting from one spot to another, and while the world looks great, it’s not particularly interesting to travel through. If that’s the worst thing to say about the game, you might think it's darned near perfect. However, I don’t think it lives up to the expectation built up around it. We can't substantiate any claim that it'll turn the MMO world upside-down or draw away World Of Warcraft players in significant numbers.

A city the size of a planet, and not a single rest room to be foundA city the size of a planet, and not a single rest room to be found

Nevertheless, we know there will still be countless gamers interested in the title, and we're sure you'd like to see how this one runs on your hardware configuration. That's the purpose of this exercise, after all.

2. Image Quality And Settings

The game is built using Simutronics’ HeroEngine, licensed to Bioware Austin. Our testing shows that there are two graphics options that affect performance in a significant way: bloom and shader detail. The other settings don't appear to have as much impact on performance, even at the maximum setting.

Unfortunately, when the shader detail setting is lowered, shadows disappear (except for subtle blobs). Here is how the game looks at its Low preset (with bloom disabled and the shader level set to low) compared to the High setting (with bloom enabled and the shader level maxed out).

As you can see, the depth afforded by shadows adds a lot to the game, and high detail is obviously superior. Our one complaint is that shadow resolution is very blocky, regardless of detail setting, and when your character walks under a tree, it appears to be covered in grey blocks. In any case, similar to World of Warcraft, the cartoonish art is acceptable at low detail settings, so folks with low-end hardware can still enjoy the game.

Like all games, Star Wars: The Old Republic benefits from anti-aliasing. This is where things get a little complicated. The in-game anti-aliasing setting is disabled in the beta, so we had to find a workaround. Forcing AA through AMD's Catalyst driver worked, but it didn't on Nvidia's GeForce-based cards. A bit of research revealed that 4x MSAA could be forced in-game using the title's client_settings.ini file by adding the line “AntiAliasingLevel = 4”. This tweak worked with the Nvidia cards, but then wouldn't on AMD's (except for newer Radeon HD 6900-series boards). Despite the anti-aliasing mess, which will hopefully be worked out soon, we're at least able to test the game with the feature enabled on all hardware, albeit through different means.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of transparent textures in the game that don’t benefit from multi-sample anti-aliasing. The good news is that both AMD’s Adaptive AA and Nvidia’s Transparent AA work with this title. As you can see in the comparison shot above, transparency anti-aliasing really improves the quality of foliage, even if the benchmarks demonstrate its adverse effect on frame rates.

3. Test System And Benchmarks

As usual, we try to represent performance across a wide range of graphics hardware. We include cards from the low-end Radeon HD 6450 and GeForce GT 430 to the powerful Radeon HD 6970, GeForce GTX 570, and a GeForce GTX 460 SLI setup. Star Wars: The Old Republic does not work with CrossFire using the latest AMD Catalyst drivers, so we were unable to test a dual Radeon HD 6850-based platform.

Our testing shows that the lowest frame rates in this game are usually outdoors, especially when foliage is involved. We’ve found the Twi’lek village on Typhon to be a good representation of a demanding area, so we made our benchmarking passes at this location using Fraps.

Test Hardware
Processor
Intel Core i5-2500K (Sandy Bridge)
Overclocked to 4 GHz, 6 MB L3 Cache, power-saving settings enabled, Turbo Boost disabled.
Motherboard
MSI P67A-GD65, Intel P67 Chipset
Memory
OCZ DDR3-2000, 2 x 2 GB, at 1338 MT/s, CL 9-9-9-20-1T
Hard Drive
Western Digital Caviar Black 750 GB, 7200 RPM, 32 MB Cache, SATA 3Gb/s
Samsung 470 Series SSD 256 GB, SATA 3Gb/s
Graphics CardsGeForce GT 430 1 GB DDR3
GeForce GT 240 512 MB GDDR5
GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1 GB GDDR5
GeForce GTX 460 1 GB GDDR5
GeForce GTX 570 1280 MB GDDR5
2 x GeForce GTX 460 1 GB GDDR5 in SLI

Radeon HD 6450 512 MB GDDR5
Radeon HD 5570 512 MB DDR3
Radeon HD 5770 1 GB GDDR5
Radeon HD 6850 1 GB GDDR5
Radeon HD 6970 2 GB GDDR5
Power Supply
Seasonic X760 SS-760KM: ATX12V v2.3, EPS12V, 80 PLUS Gold
CPU Cooler
Cooler Master Hyper TX 2
System Software And Drivers
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Renderer
OpenGL
Graphics Driver
GeForce: 285.79 Beta

AMD Catalyst 11.11
Games
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Beta, Twi’lek village, Fraps
4. Low Detail, No AA

We’ll start out with shaders set to low and the bloom effect turned off. The rest of the detail options are left at their highest settings, since changing them doesn't have a notable effect on performance.

The Radeon HD 6450 is on the edge of playable at 1280x1024 with a minimum frame rate of 25 FPS. All of the cards tested except the Radeon HD 6450 are viable at 1680x1050, although the GeForce GT 240 and GeForce GT 430 also present low minimum frame rates of 25 FPS at that resolution.

Increasing the display to 1920x1080 doesn’t have much of an effect on those two GeForce cards, but the Radeon HD 5570, Radeon HD 5770, and GeForce GTX 550 Ti are really the only options that deliver smooth performance.

Although it doesn't look particularly demanding, Star Wars: The Old Republic seems to require mid-range graphics hardware in order to run smoothly. The Radeon HD 6450 GDDR5 is a fairly respectable low-end card, yet it couldn't muster a minimum 30 FPS at 1280x1024 using the lowest available detail settings. That's a pretty high requirement for an MMO, a genre that traditionally targets low-end integrated graphics hardware in order to accommodate the largest possible install base.

5. High Detail, No AA

Now that we’ve set a baseline with the low detail settings, we add bloom and high-detail shaders. Most importantly, the change in shader detail adds proper shadows.

All of the cards in these graphs deliver more than a 30 FPS minimum at 1920x1080, a playable result across the board. The GeForce cards do lag behind similarly-priced Radeon boards, though you probably wouldn't see the difference on-screen.

6. High Detail, 4x MSAA

All of the mid-range graphics hardware can handle high detail, but we also know that anti-aliasing increases graphics load quantifiably.

Once again, all of the cards are quite capable of playable performance at 1920x1080. Yes, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti has a minimum frame rate of 28, but this is close enough to our 30 FPS minimum in a demanding environment that. Radeon-based cards appear to have an advantage here, too.

There's another variable to bear in mind, though. While forcing AA using the game's client_settings.ini file didn't work with most Radeon cards, it did on the Radeon HD 6900-series boards. The resulting frame rates were lower than the scores we collected with AA forced on through the Catalyst Control Center driver panel.

We were unable to make the same comparison using Nvidia's cards because driver-forced AA does not work, so it's possible that the GeForce boards are at an artificially-imposed disadvantage until a more apples-to-apples comparison is possible. The point, however, is that Bioware has more work to do on its 3D engine prior to launch, and we'll be looking out to see if anti-aliasing is fixed by December 20th.

7. High Detail, 4x MSAA Plus Transparent/Adaptive AA

Finally, we turn on Nvidia’s Transparent SSAA and AMD’s Adaptive AA to smooth out the aliasing artifacts on transparent textures. As we’ve shown in our image quality comparisons, this makes a big difference on foliage especially.

The GeForce GTX 460, 550 Ti, Radeon HD 6850, and 5770 are immediately kicked out of the running with minimum frame rates below 25 FPS. At 1680x1050, the GeForce GTX 460 SLI combo struggles to achieve a minimum frame rate of 30, but the GeForce GTX 570 and Radeon HD 6970 proceed with smooth performance.

At 1920x1080, the Radeon HD 6970 stands alone as the card able to handle texture transparency AA without dipping below 30 FPS, but the GeForce GTX 570 isn’t far behind with a minimum frame rate of 28 FPS.

8. CPU Clock And Core Benchmarks

Let’s see how the game engine responds to clock speed adjustments across Intel Core i5 and AMD Phenom II CPU architectures:

Performance is closely tied to clock rate, though even a theoretical 2 GHz Phenom II X4 could provide reasonable minimum and average frame rates. Now let’s see what happens when we play with the number of execution cores:

Performance seems to scale with up to four threads, but a dual-core 3.0 GHz Phenom II X2 still performs smoothly. The lesson here is that any quad-core CPU, or any dual-core CPU faster than 2.5 GHz should be sufficient to run Star Wars: The Old Republic.

9. Low CPU Requirements, But Mid-Range Graphics Recommended

Star Wars: The Old Republic isn’t a resource hog, but it does require a respectable amount of graphics muscle to enjoy at its highest settings. Our testing shows that the game in its current state favors AMD cards, though it remains to be seen how much optimization AMD and Nvidia are able to put in before it goes live later this month.

At low detail settings you’ll want at least a Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTS 450 for smooth 1680x1050 frame rates. At high settings, even with 4x MSAA, the game doesn’t need much more, and a Radeon HD 5770/6770 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti can handle 1920x1080. 

I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.

With texture transparency anti-aliasing enabled, this MMO is much more demanding. At 1920x1080, only AMD's Radeon HD 6970 was able to provide slightly more than a minimum of 30 FPS, although the GeForce GTX 570 was only a little behind.

When it comes to platform requirements, the game is much more forgiving. Really, any quad-core chip will suffice. Or, you could go with a dual-core processor running faster than 2.5 GHz.

I look forward to completing your training. In time you will call me master.I look forward to completing your training. In time you will call me master.

What about the game itself? The question on everyone’s mind is: will it be compelling enough to take on World of Warcraft? While we think that Star Wars: The Old Republic is fantastic, its monthly fee is $15 (the same as Blizzard’s). If these were the only two MMOs around, we’d say that Bioware's new darling has a good chance of capturing big market share. However, the free-to-play model looks like the way of the future. Already, some premium games have gone free, including Lord Of The Rings Online, Age Of Conan, Need For Speed World, Vindictus, DC Universe Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Star Trek Online will be free in January of 2012, if you're a sci-fi buff looking for a no-cost MMO based on major IP. Even World Of Warcraft appears to be hemorrhaging more subscribers than usual between content updates, and it’s possible that players are being lured away by free, high-quality competition.

Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy!Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy!

None of this takes anything away from Bioware's accomplishments in Star Wars: The Old Republic, mind you. But we do wonder how many more players this title would have attracted a year or two ago when free-to-play was synonymous with crappy Flash-based browser games.

Still trying to find a restroomStill trying to find a restroom

Star Wars: The Old Republic offers a solid, fleshed-out single-player RPG experience to this MMO in the beloved Star Wars universe, but we don’t think it lives up to the hype. Frankly, we're not sure that anything could. Don’t get us wrong, we’re not saying this is a bad game. We think Bioware’s creation has the chops to pull a lot of people into its well-crafted web, but only time will tell if it has what it takes to keep them there, particularly when its subscription-based model is forced to compete against some impressive free-to-play titles.

Regardless, if you’re a fan of Star Wars and MMOs, you owe it to yourself to give Star Wars: The Old Republic a try, if only to play through all eight unique character classes.

Star Wars, Those Near And Far Wars...Star Wars, Those Near And Far Wars...