Crackling audio and Stuttering Video
I have been playing SWTOR since release and only with in the past couple of weeks I have encountered this problem. My video, every few seconds, will drop in frame rate briefly, as if I am missing ...
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Confirmed - my GPU is NVidia and system is quite stable and runs all manner of other games networked and solitary campaign regardless. Drivers are not the issue it is system level either instantiated by a game patch/update or newer O.S. updates fixes/patches breaking game compatibility.
It is more than likely issue with the operating system than the game; Windows 7 & 8 have gotten a slew of security patches & updates recently and Windows 10 opts to do entire "in-place" upgrades to itself. Why would the game already work with the system and drivers then gradually degrade about the time it begins to rain updates, patches and hot-fixes for Windows - do the math. Other Windows users reported that they sought assistance in the Microsoft Windows support channels only to get a response like "it's an issue with Electronic Arts services" - maybe - maybe not - more than likely not.
Have the same exact issues (noise, popping and frame-rate drop/lag) as everyone else while using Windows 10; everything thing else like video editing software, games and scores of other larger, memory intensive software work as they should, but SWTOR has issues everywhere like the hard drive and RAM hate it. I'm not buying that it's EA, I'm not buying the user installed their drivers incorrectly canned responses. Content and patches often bring with them holes that need patching and rests upon the game developers and if it is at the O.S. level they need to contact Microsoft for support concerning the matter and may take some time doing so.
These issues are not operator head space or EA lacking interest in our gaming enjoyment, but O.S. system level management. The game had worked prior to release of Windows 10 and an awesome slew of updates to Windows 7 and 8.1 recently, the newer content was also working well with little negative feedback or performance loss, so it has to be - yes the o.s. I've beat the dead horse long enough, but in closing don't hate yourselves, EA or SWTOR dev-heads or the stupid advice flying around we merely must wait for the inevitable quiet hot-fixes and system patches that update our operating systems - this is the same stuff that happened with XP, Vista, 7 and 8 (s.o.s. peeps) get used to it.
I should and will also inform anyone reading this thread that many Windows 10 users are reporting these exact issues in scores - do be aware of this fact.
On a side-note - I was trying to play SWTOR today while Windows 10 was updating itself in the background; once complete Win10 decided to reboot my system while I was right in the middle of the first mission. I only knew that Windows butchered my gaming moment due to the alert/notification that "Windows has installed updates" after the system rebooted. This type of behavior has been going on for some time and has met nothing but excuses and flame wars in the Windows forums when mentioned. I was in the Windows Insider Preview testers group (think I still am) and have seen numerous complaints about the auto-update mechanism doing things like this. As it currently stands there are few update configuration opportunities to iron out the problems manually. Depending on how frequently your Windows 10 system updates you may notice intermittent performance issues & disconnections like those discussed in this thread for some time to come.
I hadn't considered the issue being OS related. I've been on windows 7 then entire time and as it had only started up relatively recently I didn't think to ask about that one.
Getting fed up with the Windows 10 update system for many reasons drove me to installing my Vista Ultimate with all the newer drivers. The Nvidia 341 series works well, if not identical to operations in Windows 7 & 10, in Vista. As an insanity check, download and installation of SW:TOR in the Vista platform proceeded a custom graphics driver installation (driver & control panel only). The game started normally like it did in Windows 7 & 10, but it loaded a bit quicker and when it ran did so very well - much faster than the previous Win7 & 10 installations. There were still frame-drop instances, but performance issues were clearly observed at load times when going into densely populated areas of the game map which is normal; upon loading and updating my screen pretty quickly the game would resume at the expected performance level.
My Vista SW:TOR system was not updated considering the .Net Framework and the MSVCRT files except for those aspects at the discretion of the game installer. My conclusion is, as was previously stated in this thread, that game performance, stability and connectivity issues are low-level and beyond the control of the game. Am unsure of the exact locality of the game's MSVCRT dependencies, but if they are not local to the game installation directory they should be; this locally managed MSVCRT workaround has worked in the past with numerous other games and also works well for DirectX (especially 9c) eliminating lousy overall operations especially when considering WOW64 for 32 bit systems hosting in a 64 bit O.S. Possible considerations include the MSVCRT, DirectX 9c and .Net Framework I including version and installation relative to the game directories.
ST:TOR runs great in Vista, even now after all this time, with nothing g more than what was shipped with the O.S. and installed by the game installation executable. It' s not the game - has to be dependency issues with updated MSVCRT, .Net and DirectX 9c systems.
Had some grammar issues in my post authoring from my Kindle - still trying to get in the habit; please forgive my run-on sentences and orphaned characters. Thnx tc.
