SWG Tales

It seems like a lot of people have been having bad lag and FPS issues ever since the CU and ROTW came out, so here's how to fix it:

Go into the game options on your launchpad. Click on the graphics tab and disable the Vertex/pixel shader at the top. Then click OK and go into the game as normal.

The issue is that they tweeked the graphics after the CU in order to get the trees/leaves on Kashyyyk to look good. Some of the new testure maps for things conflict with the built in vertex/pixel shader on a lot of video cards (particularly the Nvidia cards). What is happening is the built in Vertex/pixel shader draws the texture one way and then the one built into the game draws it another way and it keeps flipping back and forth. This starts to eat up your memory resources as it goes back and forth and causes your FPS to go up.

If you disable it on your launchpad, it will default to the one built into your card. You won't see a difference in graphics quality, but you will see a 10-15 FPS performance boost.

I hope this helps you guys.

Thanks, I'll have to try that when I get home. Good stuff there.

Zannon, you are now my hero. I was wondering why, even with my good system and cable internet, Coronet and anywhere on Dantooine were just always lag central.

Now I can actually visit there without it taking forever. :-D

Kyanus wrote:Zannon, you are now my hero. I was wondering why, even with my good system and cable internet, Coronet and anywhere on Dantooine were just always lag central.

Now I can actually visit there without it taking forever. :-D

I think places like Coro and Theed will still be a lag fest, simply due to the sheer number of people that just stand there with their dorks in their hand. The fps problems that Zannon is talking about started happening after ROTW. You would land on Kasshyk and get literally, 1-5 fps the entire time you were there...just walking back to the shuttle terminal was a chore.

Krusshyk wrote:

Kyanus wrote:Zannon, you are now my hero. I was wondering why, even with my good system and cable internet, Coronet and anywhere on Dantooine were just always lag central.

Now I can actually visit there without it taking forever. :-D

I think places like Coro and Theed will still be a lag fest, simply due to the sheer number of people that just stand there with their dorks in their hand. The fps problems that Zannon is talking about started happening after ROTW. You would land on Kasshyk and get literally, 1-5 fps the entire time you were there...just walking back to the shuttle terminal was a chore.

It does help quite a bit on the other planets too. Especially if you were getting low FPS during rain and sand storms. In Coronet, I was getting about 8 FPS, now I get about 15-18. It's not great, but it's better.

It does help quiete a bit on the other planets too. Especially if you were getting low FPS during rain and sand storms. In Coronet, I was getting about 8 FPS, now I get about 15-18. It's not great, but it's better.

Yeah, I've been in-game for a while now, and those 10 FPS do make a noticable difference.

I've got it disabled; However, I've always had the lag. I always accustomed this to my internet (the dial up I was on). Now that I've switched to Cable and picked up 1GB of RAM for this puppy... I still notice lag in the 'heavy' populated areas. I'm assuming it's my processor at this point. I'm running a 128MB ATI Radeon 9200 Vid Card. My processor is an AMD Athalon XP 1600+ running at 1.4 GHz.

Now, if, at this point, it really is my processor slowing me up.... I'm a little leary of updating my system until A) I have the cash for it. and B) They release this new Windows platform comming out. I'd hate to sweeten this puppy up just in time to need to scrap for a new system platform.

Sai'nu wrote:I've got it disabled; However, I've always had the lag. I always accustomed this to my internet (the dial up I was on). Now that I've switched to Cable and picked up 1GB of RAM for this puppy... I still notice lag in the 'heavy' populated areas. I'm assuming it's my processor at this point. I'm running a 128MB ATI Radeon 9200 Vid Card. My processor is an AMD Athalon XP 1600+ running at 1.4 GHz.

Now, if, at this point, it really is my processor slowing me up.... I'm a little leary of updating my system until A) I have the cash for it. and B) They release this new Windows platform comming out. I'd hate to sweeten this puppy up just in time to need to scrap for a new system platform.

Yeah, the 1.4 GHz processor will give ya poor performance in the populated areas. I have two computers, one runs at 2.6 GHz and I get 30 FPS (the max for SWG) 90% of the time, the other runs at 1.4 GHz and I get about 15-20 FPS 75% of the time (dropping to around 8-10 FPS in the heavy areas).

one thing zannon, water looks like Poo with this option setting...and you lose some graphics choices


I run a p4 3.0ghz 800mhz FSB LGA775, 1 gig pc3200 ddr RAM, and a geforce 6800gt 256meg PCI-E vid card.

I still get FPS issues on occasion, latest drivers, etc etc...this game is just overall poorly coded for usage of resources. For those since launch...remember the leaves that fell sometimes and for a lot of people your system would freeze for 2-3 minutes loading only to see a little leaves dropping action. Heh, i do wish they'd bring back harvester animations though, and droid noises and such.


THe code-monkeys for SOE apparently just have no idea how to optimize code. I am gonna pick up another gig of ram and if i'm still suffering i give up.

Viceroy Odantis wrote:one thing zannon, water looks like Poo with this option setting...and you lose some graphics choices


I run a p4 3.0ghz 800mhz FSB LGA775, 1 gig pc3200 ddr RAM, and a geforce 6800gt 256meg PCI-E vid card.

I still get FPS issues on occasion, latest drivers, etc etc...this game is just overall poorly coded for usage of resources. For those since launch...remember the leaves that fell sometimes and for a lot of people your system would freeze for 2-3 minutes loading only to see a little leaves dropping action. Heh, i do wish they'd bring back harvester animations though, and droid noises and such.


THe code-monkeys for SOE apparently just have no idea how to optimize code. I am gonna pick up another gig of ram and if i'm still suffering i give up.

No, I gotta give ya that...I forgot that the water looks like crap now.

The extra gig of ram won't help you any because SWG only recognizes up to 1 gig for some reason. I remember a lot of talk about why that was during beta, but for the life of me I can't remember what the reasoning was...probably just an excuse anyway.

As far as the droid noises, check your sound options. I've found that it drops you to a max of 32 sounds every time there's a patch, if you go in and change it to 64, I've noticed a lot of the old ambient sounds come back (although not all of them).

Viceroy Odantis wrote:one thing zannon, water looks like Poo with this option setting...and you lose some graphics choices


I run a p4 3.0ghz 800mhz FSB LGA775, 1 gig pc3200 ddr RAM, and a geforce 6800gt 256meg PCI-E vid card.

I still get FPS issues on occasion, latest drivers, etc etc...this game is just overall poorly coded for usage of resources. For those since launch...remember the leaves that fell sometimes and for a lot of people your system would freeze for 2-3 minutes loading only to see a little leaves dropping action. Heh, i do wish they'd bring back harvester animations though, and droid noises and such.


THe code-monkeys for SOE apparently just have no idea how to optimize code. I am gonna pick up another gig of ram and if i'm still suffering i give up.

Now imagine running at 40% of that unit and you will understand how the rest of us feel. And by the rest of us I mean me.

And me!!

yeah, this is my first system that let's me actually do something other than take a screenshot with good graphics options on.

Talus was always a desert to me until 2 weeks ago lol

If you increase your page file in windows to like 2 megs, then that may give you some extra speed to.

Page File is a special file windows makes on your hard drive that acts as more RAM. I know SWG only sees 1 gig of ram, but how fast the comp accesses the file on the HDD doesnt really have anything to do with the RAM.

Novall wrote:If you increase your page file in windows to like 2 megs, then that may give you some extra speed to.

Page File is a special file windows makes on your hard drive that acts as more RAM. I know SWG only sees 1 gig of ram, but how fast the comp accesses the file on the HDD doesnt really have anything to do with the RAM.

So how do we do that and is it dangerous to mess with the file?