Graphics Card in a Low End SWTOR System

Recall that my original system for the SWTOR beta was the following:


Windows XP Home
Intel Core 2 6600 @ 2.4 GHz
2.75 GB RAM
Geforce 7800 GTX 256 MB RAM

On that system I could get around 25-30 frames per second. You can show the frames per second in Star Wars The Old Republic by pressing Control - Shift - F together. They will then show in the left bottom corner.

Anyway, for the Christmas I got a new graphics card - an AMD Radeon HD 6850. To be precise a £110 Sapphire 11180-00-20R HD6850 1GB GDDR5. I plugged it in, did nothing whatsoever with the rest of the system, updated the drivers and started SWTOR.

On this new system I got between 50 and 70 frames per second. That's like double and then some.


Windows XP Home
Intel Core 2 6600 @ 2.4 GHz
2.75 GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB RAM

So by spending £110 on a new graphics card, but still mid range, I have made my aging PC run SWTOR perfectly fine. Sure, there are the occasional slow down, but the card is totally kicking ass. Now this is almost the difference between the cost of my SWTOR normal edition, and the Collectors Edition.

So if your PC is slow and rubbish, minimum spec, I can recommend upgrading the graphics card first and seeing what a difference just that can make.

Next up is an upgrade to an Intel i5 2400 system with 4GB of RAM and Windows 7 64 bit, so SWTOR can grab all the memory it likes. It likes a hell of a lot.