Minimum Specs For 4 Instances Of SWTOR On One Machine?

[Memooselah]

Hey There Everybody!

I'm eager to try doing a full group in SWTOR on one box. Has anyone had any experience trying it? Fundamentally, I was wondering if anyone could recommend some minimum hardware requirements? Right now, my beefiest system has the following relevant components -

Mobo: Nvidia 650i Ultra
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 8600GT
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz
RAM: 4GB of DDR2 800 (out of a possible 8GB)

This was sufficient to 4Box Wow. But, it's barely able to run one instance of SWTOR. I have to turn everything down to the minimums in-game and dial down every setting in the control panel to run it at 1024x768. So, I'm not really worried about visual quality. The abject graphical minimum is fine. I'm just looking to try running 4 copies with a minimum outlay of cash.

As it stands right now, this is a list of the upgrades I've been looking at. But if anyone has better suggestions, I'm all ears...

OS: Upgrade to Win7 64-bit
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131773) (So I can eventually go SLI, if necessary. Couldn't seem to find a good P67 board with dual PCI-e x16 2.0s.)
Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072) (Will end up upgrading to i7 later, just can't afford it at the moment.)
Graphics Card: EVGA 02G-P3-1559-KR GeForce GTX 550 Ti 2GB 192-bit (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130652) or EVGA 02G-P3-1568-KR GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2GB 256-bit (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130683) (Don't really know if either card is powerful enough. This is the one component that really has me worried. I'd love it if anyone could give me some guidelines.)
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233143)

That's pretty much it, at the moment. I'd especially like some advice on a graphics card. I can only really afford to do one big upgrade in the near future. So, if I need to go better on the card, I can. I'd just like to try to keep it reasonable (like under $500, if possible). I just don't want to spend several hundred on a card and then find out it's not beefy enough; because I won't be able to afford to upgrade for several months.

Thanks Everyone!
-Moo

[remanz]

I went through quit a bit of performance tuning for 4 boxing SWTOR.

1st. THE Most important part: you need 8GB + RAM, to 4 box. 12GB to make it playable. 16GB to be able to smoothly play it. and trust me on this, with 8GB or 12GB , you will get bugged down with large open areas.

at the current stage of the game client, it loads pretty much the entire planet into memory when you launch the game. and as far as I can tell, it doesn't do a good job in memory management (does not clean up enough when you leave the planet). When you are out of memory and go to cache swap, you will get 5fps and stuck for 20-30seconds.

2nd. SSD. solid state drive is more useful for SWTOR than for wow. (really long loading times if you use normal HD).


3rd. Graphics card. get as much as VRAM as you can get . recommended 3GB gtx 580. The game client does poor memory management, both system RAM + VRam. Min 1.2GB (570 GTX)

4th. CPU, standard multiboxing stuff here. i7


(note on system RAM, it is cheap so no reason to hold back on buying the memory. I just purchased 24GB ddr3 1600 RAM for $95 in a local retail store. so do get memory. its worth it for boxing this game)

[Memooselah]

Thank you very much for the information. It's exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping to get.

With 16GB of System RAM, do you think I could get by with a 2GB GTX 560 Graphics Card if I set all the graphics settings to the minimums?

Thanks again for the feedback!
-Jojo

[remanz]

2GB GTX 560 is more than capable of handling this game. So you are all set.

[Memooselah]

I took your advice and just went ahead with the 570 as well as your other recommendations. I just really wanted to say thank you for all your help! I finally got everything installed and got Innerspace / ISBoxer running and man it's smooth as silk.

I'm only running two accounts at the moment while I test out my key mapping / binding set up. (I want to do a test case before I sit down and basically do 480 key maps.) But it's obvious I've got more than enough juice to handle four. Thanks again for all your help!

-Moo!

[Pyro_box]

Currently running (2) accounts and looking to tweak a bit more fluidity out of my system; still get some jittery moments with cut-scenes and travel on speeders.

Dell 8100 i7 with factory installed 8-gig DDR3; ATI 6850 – 1 gig
Once things get loaded up into ram my average FPS is 45-55 on the main; 24” Viewsonic with graphics set to max; 25-30 on my second screen 19” all graphics set to min. Space Port things slow down as do some planets with lots of vegetation.

Would I get more out of upping my memory to 16-gig, or should I look at overclocking my Video card?

[losschris]

2GB GTX 560 is more than capable of handling this game. So you are all set.

my spec 4 boxing

cpu + i7 3930k 6core 5.2ghz watercooled
gpu ~ gtx 680 4gb
ram ~ 32gb g.skill quad channel
mobo ~ftw evga x79
works great, but i do notice vram maxed allot and ram always pulling 27gb in large pop areas.