SWTOR Performance on the M11x

Over 4 days I tested the Star Wars Old Republic (beta weekend). While I enjoyed the game quite a bit, that is not the purpose of this post. I thought people might appreciate having an exact listing of the graphics options available, and hear of my experience with the graphics settings and performance.

After much tweaking and fiddling I got the game to run very satisfactorily on my system. (see my signature to view my personal M11x system specs)

I did not monitor the exact frame rate, so I can not give you that, I can only say it ran smooth at these settings, on my machine, with no stutters, hiccups, or slowdown, even under heavy action in complex environments.

The Following is a list of the Graphics options which can be set in the game (and what I set them at for best personal performance):

Resolutions
There are a massive number of optional resolutions, the game seems to support as much as your monitor will allow.
I ran the game at 1280x800 on a 28 inch 16x10 computer monitor through the HDMI port. But I imagine that any resolution near this level should have comparable results.

Checkable Boxes: Off or On
Windowed Mode (Off)
Vertical Sync (Off)
Bloom (Off)
Conversation Depth Of Field (Off)
Blob Shadows (On)
Anti Aliasing (Off)

Drop Menus composed of: Low, Med, High
Graphical Quality Preset (High)
Texture Quality (High)
Shader Complexity (High)
Dynamic Light Complexity (Medium)
Mesh Level of Detail (High)

Graphic Settings Sliders
Texture Antistropy (Maxed)
Clip Distance (Maxed)
Shadow Quality (Minnimum)
Ground Clutter Density (Maxed)
Speed Tree Distance (Middle)

Added Notes:
From my testing I found that the Bloom option had a massive effect on performance. With Bloom enabled the game showed noticable slow-down. This loss of performance was large enough that it made combat difficult and often would get me killed.

I was able to run the game at 1920x1200 on my monitor as well, but it stuttered occasionally. I found that I would rather have the high detail textures, meshes, and shaders, rather than sacrifice them in order to have a higher screen resolution.

Although the higher screen resolution made a noticable difference in how 'pretty' the game was. Again however, the loss of performance could have affected combat and I found it was best to have the game running smoothly than risk needless deaths.

I should also add that this was played while the system was plugged into the wall for direct power. I found that when playing from the battery, the M11x suffered from quite a bit of slow-down and did not run smoothly at all.

This performance was arrived at by setting my power profile on the M11x at 'High Performance' and setting my NVIDIA global settings also to 'High Performance'. I also whitelisted all of the .exe files inside the Bioware folder to insure that it would always use the NVIDIA chip when the game was running.

I never had problems with overheating. The most the temperatures got to were 70c. Most of the time they were around the mid 60's. The game ran for most of the time during that 4 days and the system showed no problems with it at the above settings.

If anyone else has experiences to share with the graphics performance in SWTOR feel free to post about them here =)

 

I really enjoyed this Beta as well , but the performance were not as great as you descirbed.

Sure , i got a WAY lower CPU and a lower GPU ( M11XR1 ) , but the game is playable.

I played the game on 1366*768 , but it seem that having settings to medium or very low give me the same FPS.

The game was not really optimised ( the games runs " not that great " on my powerfull Asus , specs in sign ) , but it's way better than M11X for sure ( Asus perf : 1920*1080 , medium settings , 45-60 FPS )

The problem is that my benchmark are not accurate cause it seem that my windows install is way too old , with many drivers installed on it , so some of them may be corrupted or such and give me a performance lost.

Adding to this , i played with last Dell driver ( 260.x ) , so performance may have been GREATLY improved if i used the last 335M drivers.

Anyway , the game is far from being 60FPS @ native with my M11XR1 , stock drivers.

 

Thanks for the detailed run-down zenstrata. I didn't get to play the beta but I'm really looking forward to getting sucked in when it is released. The Star Wars fanboy within will be ignited once again

 

Video of it running - 60fps without Fraps.

Star Wars:The Old Republic on the M11X - YouTube

 

ahh you showed your graphics settings there. Nice video froogle! You should be able to turn ground clutter density up some. I had that maxed with no problems. Made the ground more interesting to look at.

For me, my M11x is my main machine. When at home I hook it up to an external monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Basically it gets 'docked' to a little laptop cooler on my desk when I am not traveling. My previous machine was a Pentium 4. So for me this is a huge step forward. I like it quite a bit.

In response to Catzoo: An old windows installation could certainly affect performance! Might be worthwhile to break out those original restore cd's that came with your system =)

 

Thanks for the feedback dude. Yeah I didn't mess with it too much - the M11's I have are really a main machine for my son and a mobile only machine for me. I have been using the R3 lately hooked up to a 27inch Cinema display but that's just painful for the little machine in gaming (2560 x 1440 res).

 

I can report that the Release state of the game does run smoother. As others have noted performance has been increased now that it is out of beta. I couldn't fiddle around with it too much tonight, But I was able to raise my general screen resolution, while leaving the other settings the same as they were in my first post, without encountering any of the slowdown I ran into during the Beta.

I did notice that some graphics options have changed, certain things are no longer present, and blob shadows can now be turned off completely if the user desires. I can't remember specifics on exactly which settings have changed, but they are mostly the same types of things, just under different labels in some cases.

Interestingly I found that my overall system temperatures were lower as well. Temps hovered in the mid 60's and rarely got as high as 70c. Not sure what was different there but it seems to have affected how hot the M11x runs during gameplay. My ambient room temperature is the same as it was in beta, and the positioning of the M11x has not changed. I can only conclude that the game is using significantly less resources now that beta is over.

The new resolution I was able to get it to run smoothly without any slowdown and such was 1440x900 I intend to check 1680x1050 when I get time tommorrow evening and will edit this post to be more complete at that time.

Still very much looking forward to viewing your upcoming video froogle =)

The Edit! As promised here is the edit concerning the resolution changes. I was able to raise the resolution once again and it ran fairly well at 1680x1050. However I encountered some screen tearing when looking at areas which had objects rendered at great distances.

1440x900 looks quite pretty on a 28 inch monitor however and does run very smoothly. (how do I display frame rate in that game? I would put up frame rates if I knew how to view them in-game)

I was able to set my shaders to high, but if I turned on bloom it would suffer noticable slowdown along with a very noticable screen tearing effect when looking at anything where large lights were being rendered. I had no problems raising the ground clutter and speed tree distance to maximums however.

I did notice some strange graphical artifacts in certain areas with this most recent build. But they were localized and rare.

 

My R3 i5 has been running it great on maxed settings. Per Froogle's suggestions I turned off shadows and also had to lower shaders to low.

Everything else is default "High settings" on native. Typically get ~35 fps in cities and 60-80 fps outside. Great experience so far!

I also noticed that M11x seems to run TOR cooler than other games. Highest my GPU got was also ~68c. More intense games I've seen get up to 72-74c. Less blow dryer mode ftw.

 

dont worry about it everyone, im sure its going to be better optimized upon release.

 

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http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ars-old-rebublic-m11x-video-general-talk.html