Unexpectedly poor performance

[Ariste]

Hey guys. I recently reinstalled EQ2 (woot for Kunark <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />) and have been experiencing some performance issues. First, here's my system: AMD Opteron 165 @ 2.7GHz ATI Radeon X1800XT 1GB RAM 10k RPM Raptor - game drive With this system I figured I should get some pretty nice performance. And I do - most of the time. For example, when running around GFay on the ground level I have no lag issues whatsoever on near-max settings. The problems come when I try to zone or if I enter Kelethin itself (and I'm sure the problem would be for other cities as well - I just haven't left GFay yet =P). As an example, I zoned from my inn back into Kelethin and it took me nearly five full minutes. With my system I know it shouldn't take that long. While running around Kelethin, I also experience TONS of lag. There are points where I can barely even move. It's not video lag. If I stand still for a little bit and let the game load whatever it's loading, I get perfect FPS. It's not that my video card can't render it. It sounds like a hard drive issue, but with a 10k RPM drive, I don't think I should be having these issues. Anyone have any ideas? Could it be the RAM? I know 2GB is advisable, but I figured with a Raptor 1GB should be passable for now. Any help would be appreciated.

[EpokSilvermo]

Definitely get yourself a second gig of ram <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Can you give more details to your settings? What is near-max in your case?

[Ariste]

Near-max means I started on High Quality and then tweaked the settings. I believe everything is at the max besides animated flora (destroys FPS) environmental shadows (destroys FPS) and some other settings. Most are at max settings, though. Like I said, it's not video lag. The game runs beautifully if I just let it sit and load whatever it's loading. The problem is that while it's loading I'm pretty much at a standstill, getting 1 FPS. I think a second gig of RAM would help, but I also feel that there's something else going on. It shouldn't take 5 minutes to zone from my inn back into Kelethin with my system, should it?

[Catsy]

Agreed about the second gig of RAM. That alone will boost just about anyone's performance, especially under XP--EQ2 is notoriously memory-hoggy. Might want to replace the Opteron at some point, too, as EQ2 leans heavily on the CPU.

[Tebos]

<cite>Ariste wrote:</cite><blockquote>Near-max means I started on High Quality and then tweaked the settings. I believe everything is at the max besides animated flora (destroys FPS) environmental shadows (destroys FPS) and some other settings. Most are at max settings, though. Like I said, it's not video lag. The game runs beautifully if I just let it sit and load whatever it's loading. The problem is that while it's loading I'm pretty much at a standstill, getting 1 FPS. I think a second gig of RAM would help, but I also feel that there's something else going on. It shouldn't take 5 minutes to zone from my inn back into Kelethin with my system, should it? </blockquote><p> Sounds like your available drive space is running low where the pagefile resides. For best performance, you should have 20% or greater available drive space, and defrag.</p>

[Ariste]

<cite>Tebos wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Ariste wrote:</cite><blockquote>Near-max means I started on High Quality and then tweaked the settings. I believe everything is at the max besides animated flora (destroys FPS) environmental shadows (destroys FPS) and some other settings. Most are at max settings, though. Like I said, it's not video lag. The game runs beautifully if I just let it sit and load whatever it's loading. The problem is that while it's loading I'm pretty much at a standstill, getting 1 FPS. I think a second gig of RAM would help, but I also feel that there's something else going on. It shouldn't take 5 minutes to zone from my inn back into Kelethin with my system, should it? </blockquote><p> Sounds like your available drive space is running low where the pagefile resides. For best performance, you should have 20% or greater available drive space, and defrag.</p></blockquote><p>Drive is less than half full, and I defragged yesterday. That's what makes this issue so strange.</p><p>I don't know if this means anything, but I have three hard drives. Windows is on a 320GB 7200 RPM SATA, Vanguard and EQ2 are on the 74GB Raptor, and then there's a storage drive. Could that throw anything off? I don't know why it would, especially since Vanguard runs fine, but since we're talking about hard drives here I figure I might as well give you guys all the information, heh.</p>

[Tebos]

<cite>Ariste wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Tebos wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Ariste wrote:</cite><blockquote>Near-max means I started on High Quality and then tweaked the settings. I believe everything is at the max besides animated flora (destroys FPS) environmental shadows (destroys FPS) and some other settings. Most are at max settings, though. Like I said, it's not video lag. The game runs beautifully if I just let it sit and load whatever it's loading. The problem is that while it's loading I'm pretty much at a standstill, getting 1 FPS. I think a second gig of RAM would help, but I also feel that there's something else going on. It shouldn't take 5 minutes to zone from my inn back into Kelethin with my system, should it? </blockquote><p> Sounds like your available drive space is running low where the pagefile resides. For best performance, you should have 20% or greater available drive space, and defrag.</p></blockquote><p>Drive is less than half full, and I defragged yesterday. That's what makes this issue so strange.</p><p>I don't know if this means anything, but I have three hard drives. Windows is on a 320GB 7200 RPM SATA, Vanguard and EQ2 are on the 74GB Raptor, and then there's a storage drive. Could that throw anything off? I don't know why it would, especially since Vanguard runs fine, but since we're talking about hard drives here I figure I might as well give you guys all the information, heh.</p></blockquote><p> Did you newly introduce another drive to your computer and for that matter, did you newly introduce any newer software or hardware to your computer system? Is there an A/V engine installed that maybe acting up? If so, then completely uninstall the A/V software suite for troubleshooting purposes and report back with your in-game findings. You also might want to fire up msconfig and disable all "non-Microsoft" services and see if that allieviates the issue. </p><p>By the way, if your using the built-in Microsoft defrag program, then that may still be the cause of this sudden performance issue. I recommend you either try "Perfect Dis" or "Diskkeeper" as the media defrag program.</p>

[Ariste]

Tebos wrote:<blockquote><p> Did you newly introduce another drive to your computer and for that matter, did you newly introduce any newer software or hardware to your computer system? Is there an A/V engine installed that maybe acting up? If so, then completely uninstall the A/V software suite for troubleshooting purposes and report back with your in-game findings. You also might want to fire up msconfig and disable all "non-Microsoft" services and see if that allieviates the issue. </p><p>By the way, if your using the built-in Microsoft defrag program, then that may still be the cause of this sudden performance issue. I recommend you either try "Perfect Dis" or "Diskkeeper" as the media defrag program.</p></blockquote> I did introduce a new drive not too long ago. I originally had the 74GB Raptor for Windows and games and a 160GB storage drive. Then I added one of those new 300GB perpendicular drives, put Windows and all non-gaming apps on that, and reserved the Raptor just for games, and keep the 160GB one for extra storage. I didn't put any new software in that would have screwed it up. As an interesting side not (or maybe not a side note), after I installed Windows on the 300GB drive, the system wouldn't boot up. It said something about not having an operating system. For some reason, when I put hard drives as the last boot priority, it worked. My boot priority is something like Floppy-->CD Drives-->Hard Drives. The system says it's booting from a CD when my system boots up, but somehow it works. Nothing bad ever happened so I just left it, but now with this issue I think it may tie in somehow. Any idea what the hell this wierd problem could be?

[Tebos]

<cite>Ariste wrote:</cite><blockquote>Tebos wrote: <blockquote><p> Did you newly introduce another drive to your computer and for that matter, did you newly introduce any newer software or hardware to your computer system? Is there an A/V engine installed that maybe acting up? If so, then completely uninstall the A/V software suite for troubleshooting purposes and report back with your in-game findings. You also might want to fire up msconfig and disable all "non-Microsoft" services and see if that allieviates the issue. </p><p>By the way, if your using the built-in Microsoft defrag program, then that may still be the cause of this sudden performance issue. I recommend you either try "Perfect Dis" or "Diskkeeper" as the media defrag program.</p></blockquote> I did introduce a new drive not too long ago. I originally had the 74GB Raptor for Windows and games and a 160GB storage drive. Then I added one of those new 300GB perpendicular drives, put Windows and all non-gaming apps on that, and reserved the Raptor just for games, and keep the 160GB one for extra storage. I didn't put any new software in that would have screwed it up. As an interesting side not (or maybe not a side note), after I installed Windows on the 300GB drive, the system wouldn't boot up. It said something about not having an operating system. For some reason, when I put hard drives as the last boot priority, it worked. My boot priority is something like Floppy-->CD Drives-->Hard Drives. The system says it's booting from a CD when my system boots up, but somehow it works. Nothing bad ever happened so I just left it, but now with this issue I think it may tie in somehow. Any idea what the hell this wierd problem could be? </blockquote>Copy the NTLDR file and the ntdetect.com file from the 1386 folder on the Windows XP Home/Professional CD to the root directory on C: drive.

[Ariste]

What will doing that do? And what's wrong with Microsoft's defragging program, by the way? Just curious <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Thank you for the advice.

[Tebos]

<cite>Ariste wrote:</cite><blockquote>What will doing that do? And what's wrong with Microsoft's defragging program, by the way? Just curious <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Thank you for the advice </blockquote><p>It's a little long and involved for me to go into the specifics of what that will do to your system. It will not harm your system but it will require you to boot into Safe Mode command prompt and know how to run DOS commands.</p><p>The Windows defrag utility is inefficient at the least, and does not touch the pagefile. In fact, I recommend that you google for Diskkeeper and download the trial program which will be good for 14-days, I believe. Before running that utility, I recommend that you delete the pagefile (through the use of the system icon in control panel), reboot the computer, run Diskkeeper and create a "static" pagefile of 1500 initial and 1500 max.</p><p>Good luck!!</p>

[Leinna]

I agree with a lot of the posts above.  Run diskeeper it is an amazing piece of software.  Your problem I feel goes along with your processor and the memory on your machine.  With the processor having a low cache rate it has to reference the memory and HD a lot which then bottle necks your game performance because the game is probably running on your page file due to the lack of memory.  2GB is ideal for your configuration,  you also want to make sure they are dual channeled memory and that you are not swapping different memory with different speeds into your machine.

[Jelloski]

<cite>Ariste wrote:</cite><blockquote> Tebos wrote:<blockquote><p> Did you newly introduce another drive to your computer and for that matter, did you newly introduce any newer software or hardware to your computer system? Is there an A/V engine installed that maybe acting up? If so, then completely uninstall the A/V software suite for troubleshooting purposes and report back with your in-game findings. You also might want to fire up msconfig and disable all "non-Microsoft" services and see if that allieviates the issue. </p><p>By the way, if your using the built-in Microsoft defrag program, then that may still be the cause of this sudden performance issue. I recommend you either try "Perfect Dis" or "Diskkeeper" as the media defrag program.</p></blockquote> I did introduce a new drive not too long ago. I originally had the 74GB Raptor for Windows and games and a 160GB storage drive. Then I added one of those new 300GB perpendicular drives, put Windows and all non-gaming apps on that, and reserved the Raptor just for games, and keep the 160GB one for extra storage. I didn't put any new software in that would have screwed it up. As an interesting side not (or maybe not a side note), after I installed Windows on the 300GB drive, the system wouldn't boot up. It said something about not having an operating system. For some reason, when I put hard drives as the last boot priority, it worked. My boot priority is something like Floppy-->CD Drives-->Hard Drives. The system says it's booting from a CD when my system boots up, but somehow it works. Nothing bad ever happened so I just left it, but now with this issue I think it may tie in somehow. Any idea what the hell this wierd problem could be? </blockquote>This is interesting.  When you notice the big lags, is the CDROM lights flashing?  Is Windows slow to access the HDD in general?  I would suspect that you have some strange bottleneck due to the system thinking it is running on a CDROM drive.   It is just a hunch so someone really technical could shoot my theory down.