Game Guides Archive

Hi all. This is my first post on this board that Ive been lurking on since getting hooked on SWG a couple months ago. I have found this very helpful in answering 99% of my game play questions that have come up.

One constant concern that seems to arise frequently are issues of "lag" and "return" or "rubberbanding" and game crashing. I was a victom of all and was getting distgusted by it also and also wanted to follow the hurd and blame SOE for the issues. Not that thier perfect either, but in my case at the moment and Im guessing the same for others complaining, its our PC's or whats inside them thats most of the issue.

I figured the machine Im using would be fine. Purchased early January 04. It was just an inexpensive HP Pavillion that I purchased from a mass merchant. All this concidered with the way PC technology evolves, this cheap HP runs rings around any of the wicked expensive custom PC rigs Ive had in the past.

The basic stats of my stock HP:

2.08GHz AMD Athlon XP

512mb DDR SDRAM(64 used by intergrated video.....so realy only 448)

nVidia GeForce 4 MX intergrated video graphics 64mb

This is what I added:

Radeon 9600 AGP8 graghics card 128mb onboard and uses 128mb of system RAM......this is a cheap board.

Increased RAM to 768mb total

Usually "cheap fixes" like this are disapointing, but WOW what a difference it made. I havent smiled like this since I got my first good swoop bike Normally I would have to avoid getting close to any of the busier spots like the med centers or cantina's unless I needed to be healed. If more than 8-10 npc's or real players were within my 64m reticual I would be in lag central. Frame rates would drop down to 1fps or worse and this was common. I found myself having a hard time on missions, getting killed or incapped while my screen froze. Also my shuttle/starcraft travel waits were anywhere from 1+ to 2+ minutes long. Not anymore!

Now I can cruise right threw heavily populated areas without delay. The worst framerate I saw was 9fps and that is still plenty playable and even that was rare. It dosent matter if Im on foot or my bike, everything happens quickly. Mission battles have improved. I was getting killed 3-4 times a day by easy npcs(white/blue) and last night only once(red) who I killed after cloning. My damage taken went down conciderable and in some cases I recieved none at all during fights. Shuttle time is down to maybe 10 seconds and planet to planet is maybe 15-18 seconds at worst.....Wow what a difference.

Before I had to turn all my game option graphics down to the lowest setting to help take some stress off the RAM. After my fixes I was able to crank them back up and again, Wow what a visual difference. The onboard sound card is working better too and Im getting a huge variation of background effects and music that I didnt know was there before.

This is making it fun again.

Murgo Almiston on Ahazi

- I quit. Im done Fairwell so long. The fun is gone. You can too

u like rubbers LOLOLOL

??huh??

- I quit. Im done Fairwell so long. The fun is gone. You can too

hhmmmmm must be an intergalatic troll

- I quit. Im done Fairwell so long. The fun is gone. You can too