Finally, SWTOR is almost upon us!  Before the best game of the year (and possibly the decade) arrives, make sure your PC is ready by doing all that you can to get it ready before you install it and begin your adventure in a galaxy far, far away.

Update Your Drivers.  Driver updates are one of the last things people think about then performing maintenance on their computer, and for good reason.  If you’re reading this post, then it means that your video drivers are working, right?  Why should you change them then?

Video card manufacturers release driver updates all of the time.  The new and improved drivers are typically more stable than the previous one, fix bugs associated with particular applications (such as video games), and generally make video perform better overall.  So, before you log in and start your SWTOR marathon, grab the latest driver for your video card.

Since you’re in the driver updating mood (notice how I didn’t say “driver’s seat.”  That would be lame and BloggingTOR will not advocate lameness), check to see if there is an updated driver available for your sound card as well.  Although new sound card drivers aren’t released as often, an update may be available.

Plus, you wouldn’t want to be lame by running an outdated driver, right?  All the cool kids keep their drivers up to date.  All of the time.  Even the one for their monitor.  Do it now or you won’t get into the college of your choice.

Clean Up Your Space.  At last check, the full install of SWTOR was over 27 gigabytes in size.  Before you allocate close to 30 gigs of disk space to this application, uninstall any old programs you no loner use and delete any temporary files that exist on your system.  You will free up space on your system and you may find that it runs better too.

When an application is installed, sometimes it installs a service or small program that runs in the background.  If this application is uninstalled, then this service is not using any memory and you will have more memory available for running SWTOR.

The concept is similar to that of a man entering his middle age years.  In order to remember something new, he has to forget something that he once knew.  Take it from me personally….I can recall the seven layers of the OSI model, but can’t remember how to spell the word restaraunt, restauraunt,  restaurant.

Defrag.  Along with doing a general disk cleanup, consider defragmenting your hard drive.  The Windows NTFS file system is supposed to be self defragmenting, just like the government is supposed to advance the best interests of its citizens, but as with both cases, this isn’t always true.

Defragmenting will help “get your house” in order as far as the Windows file system is concerned.  Before laying down a fresh application, run the defrag and you may bolster system performance.

Windows Vista/7 machines may already be configured to defragment automatically at a certain time of day each week.  However, If you’re still living in the beginning of the millenium and running Windows XP, why don’t you defragment your hard drive while watching your favorite Arrested Development episode on your DVR, Blue Ray, DVD player tonight?

Consider an Upgrade.  As a last resort, you may want to upgrade your existing system in order to make it perform better.  For those of us who may have to get approval of a hardware purchase from the wife budget committee, this may not be a viable option.  Plus, you may want to see how your current hardware performs in SWTOR before you spend money on new hardware.  It may turn out to run just fine.

If you do decide that you need to purchase new hardware in order to optimize your SWTOR experience, here are a few tips to consider if you decide to upgrade your system:

Memory.  More memory may help your system load items faster, but typically this is not where you will get the most bang for the buck unless your PC is severly starved for memory resources.  I would look at upgrading other components first.

Video Card.  A faster video card with its own memory and GPU will definately give you a better playing experience in SWTOR.  If you are looking to upgrade your video card, make sure that your power supply is equipped to handle it though.

If you are looking to get the A1 Xtreme Talon video card* and it requires a 500w power supply when you only have a 350w power supply, think twice about getting this card.  Although it may run, your PC may get too hot causing it to crash and even damage other components.  Heat and magnetism are still the two worst things for any computer.  Don’t add more heat to your system unless you know your system can accomodate it.

*The A1 Xtreme Talon Video card is an exclusive video card sold only through BloggingTOR and is guaranteed to give you the smoothest, most fluid graphics experience in any video game….ever.  It also comes with the ownership rights to a bridge in San Francisco. 

Disk.  Upgrading to a solid state drive will definately decrease your load times in SWTOR, but they are still pretty pricy, especially when you compare the cost on a per gigabyte basis with a SATA drive.  If you are using a laptop for your SWTOR gaming, upgrading to an SSD is the only upgrade option you have aside from increasing your memory.

If your PC has a free SATA port open, you can consider buying a second drive and then moving your page file onto this drive.  Having the Windows page file on its own drive that is connected to its own SATA port on the motherboard will give your system a little extra ooomph.

We’ve got a little less than two weeks to go until SWTOR is released.  Make sure that your PC is primed and ready.