Graphics Card Chart - aka, what about this card?

So my new gaming laptops, GTX560m is only ranked #6...

*sigh* it'll be out-dated in 2 years I bet... 

Well at least I'm able max swtor (for now).  HOPE that continues for at least the next xpac.

I thought it may be useful to toss this up, as I know a lot of peopel are finding that their PC is struggling with SWTOR and thinking about upgrading.  The chart above is from Toms Hardware - as of 1/4/2012 (today).  http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

Basically every horizontal line going down is supposed to represent a different tier, or capability level.  This chart spans just about every generation of graphics cards, going back almost 15 years.  I still have an ATI Rage Fury 128 (the very bottom card in the chart) at home - I bought it with my Pentium II in the late 90's. 

I'd say that "great" performance on WoW or "Good" performance for SWTOR starts at about tier 6 and above and these are $150+ GPU's.  You should be able to play with good FPS, with all settings maxed out and not have to worry about too many people lagging you out in raids.

If you're looking for "good" WoW performance or "Fair" on SWOTR, I would try to stay at tier 8 and above, but I would limit myself to just the DX11 cards if possible (Nvidia 4xx/5xx series or AMD 5xxxx/6xxxx series).  If you have an older Nvida 280 or AMD 4870, those are still "good" cards and will still produce good frame rates, but they cannot do DX11, so that is starting to limit them a little bit.  Still, something like the 4870 (tier 8) will overall perform better than a 5750 (tier 9). These cards run about $100

You can get "Fair" WoW performance and "Poor" on SWTOR down to about tier 12 or so.  This will man playing on very reduced settings, and still getting barely acceptable frame rates, but the frame rates will struggle to get above 30 if you go much past the lowest level of detail possible.  I wouldn't recommend buying one of these cards at any price (better to save up $100 and go up a tier), but many packaged PC's still come with GPU's in this range.

Down to about tier 20 will give you "Poor" WoW performance, but the game will actually load and at the lowest possible settings, you will probably get acceptable frame rates if you're only doing single player. 

If you have an integrated video processor - you'll see these start at about tier 25 and go all the way to the bottom.  For comparison, I bought a $200 laptop on a Black Friday sale 2 years ago - it's GPU is down in the tier 30 level.  I did actually get WoW to load on in back in WOLK.  When I turned all the settings as low as they would go, I got FPS between 10 and 15 outside of the towns, but I droped to single digits when I went into Dalaran - it was like watching a slideshow.  Someone may consider this "playable", but I just found it frustrating.  I guess if you just want to hang out in guild chat or troll /trade it may work for you - but it won't be enjoyable. 

Crossfired 5870's runs swtor like silk at 6048x1080.  Cant wait to see what the larger fights do to it.  Gonna rig up an 8800gts in cal's computer today.  Can you guys believe hes been playing wow with integrated nvidia for this long?

I cant.