Game Guides Archive

After playing the 14-day trial and buying the game, I'm completely hooked. Was it not for the very poor performance of the game, the game would get a 10 out of 10 from me.

Well, game performance was very poor. Walking around on Tatooine was ok. But as soon as I walked in a town, by example Mos Eisley, the hard disk would start reading and reading and I was seeing my character moving on the screen in a bad slow motion. Summarizing: it sucked! It lagged as hell...

Believe me, I've fine tuned my system for gaming. Latest drivers, etc are installed. But I was forced to play with shadows off and almost all terrain settings in the game on the lowest setting, etc.

This was my computer-configuration last week:

Cpu Vendor: AuthenticAMD
Cpu Identifier: x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1
Cpu Speed: 2004 Mhz
Physical Memory Size:512 MB
Video Description: RADEON 9700 PRO (Omega 2.5.58)
Video Memory Size: 122 MB
Vertex Shader Version: 2.0
Pixel Shader Version: 2.0
Operating System: Windows XP Service Pack 2

Looking further into the Options on the Launchpad, I noticed that the game uses 75% of your physical memory. I talked about it with friends and came to the conclusion that it could indeed improve the performance by buying another memory module and install it in my system.

I searched and read into a lot of topics on this forum about settings and found none to be really giving me THE tip that could improve performance. Sure, a lot mentioned turning down terrain settings, shadows off, water detail off, etc. But if Ispent money on the game and am still spending it to play it monthly I want to make sure that I'm enjoying it as much as possible!

But last week I ordered another 512 Mb of physical memory. I installed it last weekend, ran the game AND...

Believe me or not, but expanding your total of physical memory to 1024 Mb REALLY helps the game! I now have almost every terrain detail maxed or at about 75%. Shadows are still off. But I have tried to max out everything and walk around Mos Eisley. Not ONCE did I hear my harddisk read or did it cause any lag. When I enter a town, the screen waits for half a second to load data, to let my character continue its run afterwards.

Ever since, I have found out that some dunes on Tatooine have bushes and some dried grass. The dunes also have a sandstructure, as if the wind made those curves in it... The game is lovely! BEAUTIFUL!

So yes, you can improve game performance by turning down/off game-details, but this way you will lose a lot of beauty. If you don't want to take the risk and are doubting my words: ask a friend, family-member or colleague from work/school if he can borrow you a memory module. Just for one day, so you can see for yourself if it is worth it to invest some money in extra memory.

Believe me, you won't regret it!

i also found very little on topic of SWG Tweaking..

more memory does help ( i currently have 1.4Gb)...

as far as in game settings go i actually preferr to have shadows on and the terrain bars at about 50%..

the other must have is the view distance has to be at 100%..

essentially what i did for tweaking was i started at 100% View Distance and shadows on (vertex shadows on both characters and structures)..

and then slowly inched up the settings until i found a good setting in a busy city (i usually do my tweaking while in coronet).. this provides the "worst case scenario".

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Kettemoor Galaxy

Yeah I found the same thing, more RAM improved the framerates 100%. I went from 512 to 768. No more lag

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

You are right about the 1gh RAM, it really makes a big difference. I have one small tip for you what you can use entering/leaving city´s. This will increase your fr as well.

Just make a macro with this inside:

Hey there...

I have 768 Mb of ram and an ati radeon 9600xt (128 mb)...I might upgrade my 256 mb stick to another 512 mb ram stick after reading this. So thank you.

I have 1 question however...for those of you withATI cards...in the display settings under 3d - for Directxdo you play with the Truform on "Always Off" or as "application preference"? I've put it on app pref and it improves the horizon immensely in the game..but slows it down a tad also...was wondering if that extra 256 mb might help clear up that lag as well.

Cheers

____________________

Alimao

Master BE, Master Fencer

Hi, TRUFORM is OFF inmy settings. Have read a lot about configuring your videocard and it is advisable to switch Truform off.

The lag surely dissappeared here after the memory upgrade. Hope it works for you too!

Basically guys, the message of my post was: no matter how much you play around with the (in)game settings, the best improvement is a memory upgrade! Other games and Windows itself will thank you too! It seems it does wonders to Doom3 too!

And I've got my swapfile turned off... Smooth!