Force Sensitive Archive
Thread: BEST WAY TO STOP LAGGING
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SEPHIRTH
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:03 am
#1
HI ALL. LLOKING FOR FRIENDLY PEOPLE WHO CAN HELP. I'VE READ ON DIFFERENT FORUMS AROUND THE WEB THAT IN FACT MEORY IS THE BEST WAY TO IMPROVE AND INCREASE PREFORMANCE OF SWG. I CUURENTLY RUN ON A SONY LAPTOP WITH 512MB OF RAM, 6MEG ATI VIDEO CARD AND PENTIUM 4 1.6GHZ PROCESSOR. I WANT TO GET A TOWER THAT HAS THE NEW AMD 64FX-55 2.8GHZ PROCESSOR, READEON 256MB VIDEO CARD, AND 2 GB OF MEMEORY WITH 2 74 GB HARD DRIVES THAT RUN AT 10KRPM. SHOULD I SPEND THE $3500 FOR THE NEW TOWER OR TRY AND UPGRADE MY LAPTOP'S MEMORY TO 1 GB? NO I CAN'T UPGRADE MY LAPTOPS VIDEO CARD....I'VE ASKED SONY AND SINCE THE SCREEN IS INTERGATED WITH THE MACHINE IT'S A NO GO. CAN ANYONE HELP?
KURT
P.S. THE REASON I POSTED HERE IS BECAUSE FS PEOPLE SEEM TO BE MORE HELPFUL AND FRIENDLY THAN NON FS PEEPS
EvilHomerSimpson
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:12 am
#2
Lol, good reason. The two most important things are RAM and Videocard. The Bus speed and the Hard drive seek time is important too. SWG is a beast. I have a high end desktop and sometimes it just crawls. Upgrading your laptop will provide minimal results. If you have the cash, buy a new tower with the new AGP Express or PCI express slots and one of the new radeons. Upgrade your Ram to 2 GB and you'll have a desktop you'll be able to upgrade to stay current for a few years. Keep in mind Moore's law that technology roughly doubles every two years, so your new machine will be old in two years and obsolete in four years if your dont keep upgrading the hardware. Since the the new graphics standards are coming out now, and they require a new motherboard I think its a good time to dump the laptop.
VoweDarkwave
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:17 am
#3
Yep, save the laptop for an internet surfing machine. It will be more than adequate to do this.
Get yourself a tower. You don't necessarily need top of the line stuff. A nice processor (2 Ghz or up), 1GB of RAM, and at least a 128MB 128-bit video card will be more than happy while running SWG.
Obviously, invest what you like in your tower.
The great thing abouta tower is that you can swap components pretty much whenever you want to. Unlike your laptop, there's no parts "set in stone" after you buy it.
ukapu
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:17 am
#4
Well, I can only contribute a sample size of three here, but I hope it helps. It seems to me that the big bottleneck is video RAM, but there are so many variables involved that I may just be superstitious 
.
.1. Dell Inspiron 5800, 2.4GHz,512Mb RAM, 64Mb video -> pathetic performance (fpsusually 15 or less, always 1 around coronet starport)
2. Dell Inspiron 5800, 2.4GHz, 1.5Gb RAM, 64Mb video ->marginallybetterperformance (fpsusually20 or less, still always 1 around coronet starport)
3. Dell Inspiron XPS, 3.6GHz, 2Gb RAM, 256Mb video -> awesome performance (fps usually 30, rarely drops below 20 even around coronet starport)Only other monkey wrench to throw in the mix is that most Dells nowadays come with ATI video cards, which traditionally have unreliable buggy drivers. I've had great luck with the latest December 2004 drivers though.
EvilHomerSimpson
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:23 am
#5
I can add to that sample:
4. Dell Inspiron 3 GHz HT, 1 GB Ram, 256 Mb video. I'm usually at 30 fps but sometimes it goes foobar (and not just in coronet).
My radeon drivers are current and it's been better. I think the overall RAM is the key factor in looking at the current sample.
SEPHIRTH
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:32 am
#6
wow, thanks for psoting so quick guys. I'll do judt thta buy an new tower and keep the laptop for downloading music and low quality porn, yessssss. think i'll go all out and go to thunderboxpc.com and make the tower look cool. thanks again gents, and ladies if there are any.
Kurt
HanBaby
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:33 am
#7
I was having the same problem running SWG and lag. I upgraded memory from 512mb to over 1500mb RAM and man what a difference. Video Card was good on mine Geforce 4 so no problem there but only having 512 mb was a very limiting factor. You may not have to go all out $3500 worth of computer, but you can probably look at something around $1800-2000 to get the job done without real overkill. Anything 2k and above on processor speed is plenty. A laptop is always going to be a harder because of limited size to get bigger processors and such. With the limited capabilities of you video card upgrading just memory may not be a fix all either. So to sum up, if you were planning on upgrading anyway do it, if you don't mind the laptop and want to hold on for another year or so and only cost ya a couple of hundred $$ then just try the memory. Good luck and hope this helps
VoweDarkwave
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:43 am
#8
The 2 single greatest contributors to lag in SWG:
1. Too little RAM. 1GB makes the game hummmmm.....a LOT of lag is actually your computer using your harddrive as a "swap" to account for RAM it doesn't have. RAM has no moving parts and gets read fromvery fast. Harddrives are considerably slower and they will grind SWG to a halt if the "swap" is being used to compensate for too little RAM.
2. Video card has too little memory. 128MB is the key, at least - and don't forget to check the bit amount, too. A 128-bit video card essentially has a bigger 'pipeline' for moving the video data through. 64-bit cards will suck performance-wise for SWG. More RAM won't help that at all.
Of course, internet connection is a factor too, but so long as it's solid and reliable it should be adequate.
pyromonkey89
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:47 am
#9
(this is not a flame but a suggestion)
ok for one thing plz do not post a topic like this on this forum go to tech support or something else because u will usually be flamed like crazy if you go off topic as much as u did here i see the one-star bandit already got u
and for another dont buy a made computer go on the internet and look for site to build your own computer becuase it ALOT cheaper than a manufactured one plus you get to make it how you want it with wat you want
there are alot of sites out there that have good tips on how to make your own computer jus try that and youll be alot happier
you can make a awsome computer for less than the cost of an average manufactured one easily the only thing that really jacks the price up is usually the CPU i would recommend a really good AMD cpu if you are gonna make your own and more than 2 gig of RAM is overkill unless you really need it
ok for one thing plz do not post a topic like this on this forum go to tech support or something else because u will usually be flamed like crazy if you go off topic as much as u did here i see the one-star bandit already got u
and for another dont buy a made computer go on the internet and look for site to build your own computer becuase it ALOT cheaper than a manufactured one plus you get to make it how you want it with wat you want
there are alot of sites out there that have good tips on how to make your own computer jus try that and youll be alot happier
you can make a awsome computer for less than the cost of an average manufactured one easily the only thing that really jacks the price up is usually the CPU i would recommend a really good AMD cpu if you are gonna make your own and more than 2 gig of RAM is overkill unless you really need it
Message Edited by pyromonkey89 on 02-09-2005 12:48 PM
SEPHIRTH
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:49 am
#10
lol tell me about it. I only have a 16 megs video cards and even on the lowest settings i lag AND all human and twelik face apear blue to me, the same bluw that is on the windows xp task bar. lol. and i've been playing it this way since it came out in June of 03. YES it's time for an upgrade to a tower. and yes i'll spend the $3500 on it cause if i'm gonna do it i'm gonna make it the evny of the neighborhodd. check out tunderboxpc.com and you'll how cool these machines can look.
Kurt
pyromonkey89
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:50 am
#11
VoweDarkwave wrote:The 2 single greatest contributors to lag in SWG:1. Too little RAM. 1GB makes the game hummmmm.....a LOT of lag is actually your computer using your harddrive as a "swap" to account for RAM it doesn't have. RAM has no moving parts and gets read from very fast. Harddrives are considerably slower and they will grind SWG to a halt if the "swap" is being used to compensate for too little RAM.2. Video card has too little memory. 128MB is the key, at least - and don't forget to check the bit amount, too. A 128-bit video card essentially has a bigger 'pipeline' for moving the video data through. 64-bit cards will suck performance-wise for SWG. More RAM won't help that at all.Of course, internet connection is a factor too, but so long as it's solid and reliable it should be adequate.
/agree
ExcaliburCH
Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:52 am
#12
SWG does only address 1 GB of RAM. But I read in a topic that disabling the Swapfile does help against the lags. The explanation was, that SWG won't swap all the time, which produces the lags. I will check that out in a quiet moment.
cheers
Exi
cheers
Exi
DRWolfe
Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:10 pm
#13
By the way, if you still want to play on a laptop, go grab one of the new ones with the 17" widescreen. I've got one with stats comparable to a tower and it runs SWG with full graphics options at a moderate FPS. I turn them down just a little to get 20-30 FPS in most places, 15 in very crowded cities, and it looks awesome on that 17" widescreen.
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