My New Rig - How will this Run EQ2?

[cemond]

 Just put together my new Rig today, installing updates and such as we speak. How will this fair in EQ2? I wanna run it @ 1680x1050 res. (LCD native) Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 1333 FSB 2.66ghz Core(x2) Asus P5KC Mobo (1333FSB) eVGA 8800 GTS Superclocked 320mb 2GB DDR2 Kingston Windows Vista Ultimate Thoughts?

[Ninkobei]

ahh, why dont you try it out instead of boasting about it

[MidnightShade]

Well considering I just came back to eq2, after a long break (since 05'<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> actually, I can say from first hand experience that you will be able to run the game beautifully! Why?  My specs, Intel Core2duo E6400 overclocked to 2.66ghz (same as yours but only 2mb l2 cahce instead of 4) Asus P5LD2 rev2, (1333fsb) 2gb Xms2 ddr2-667mhz 4-1-1-12 corsair ram eVGA 8800gts-640mb 1 Terabyte worth of hard drives over 4 drives(2 sata, 2 pata) Dual boot windows XP/ and Windows Vista 22" Acer LCD 1680x1050res And I play at extreme quality! At native 1680x1050 res 16xaf, and its silky smooth!  I don't know what the actual fps is, and frankly don't care as long as I have a smooth game with bleeding edge graphics! I can even turn on 4x aa. and its still smooth, the only problem with that is AA doesn't work for me unless its in windowed mode, which I don't like so I do with out the Anti-alaising <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Your rig will run fine,  it may do extreme quality though so be prepared for that, why? That gts is faster then my non overclocked 8800, but extreme quality requires a lot of video memory for the textures, couple that with a res that is about the highest res that card can use (due to vid mem size) on most newer games. What will happen is that the graphics card will run out of local vid memory and have to take from either system ram(the 8800 can do this) which means passing the textures through the pci-express bus which is an added step and slower.  Then if it has to get more textures it need to go use virtual memory which is hard-drive access on top of that, which causes hitching. ( when I played in 05' I had a 6800nu 128mb card that would hitch like crazy because i had to play at a higher visual quality)   I may be wrong though, I don't know the exactly how much texture usage is on extreme. i can guarantee though that high quality will be super fluid at that res.  The only areas I ever have any lag is near the freeport broker, when 30+ people are there.  Have fun with that system, and try to play some games besides mmos, just to taste how that setup will rock any game you throw at it!  I am loving mine, the 8800 cards are the most advanced graphics cards ever made, they spent 450million and 4 years making the cards by hand coding(they usually machine it) and it shows, in every game you run! The core2duo is a phenominal cpu, it floors everything as well, couple the core2dup with an 8800 and 2gb ram and your unstoppable!

[MidnightShade]

One morre thing; vista my slow you down some! I haven't played eq2 on vista yet, but every other directx9 game I have played is about 10-30 frames slower in vista then xp, as dx9 is in a kind of emulation mode on vista.  The dx10 games on vista work great, too bad there is only 1 .5 games released for dx10 so far, lost planet, and the world in conflict demo.  I dual boot to xp just for the reason of compatibility problems with my tv-tunner/dvr, and most games. Vista is great for doing work though, i am a web site tech and I use a lot of photoshop and in house apps, vista runs them great!

[cemond]

Well my eVGA qualifies for there Stepup program. Withing 90 days, I can exchange the card for any higher card in there lineup, so I have 3 months to decidei If I wanna add $100 bucks and go to 640 mbs. It might be worth it, just didnt wanna do it right there and then, I had already spent enough cash for the day.

[cemond]

Game runs great on extreme quality, but I noticed with shadows on it still lags a tiny bit in populated areas? Is it normal for this system? Would the 640 mb version of my card help over the 320mb.

[Ve]

320mb graphics card for games this day and age is sub-par. Also, clicking on the preset "extreme quality" in the graphics menu isn't nearly as high quality as the game will allow. If you go through each inividual menu and adjust everything to on or the highest settings it will show custom and be higher quality then "extreme quality". I have a machine that is quite a bit faster then yours and run into some noticeable slowdown in areas like the Freeport docks with 20+ characters on screen at 1920*1200 resolution with all settings maxed. It appears shadows, lighting and having the max of ten characters with max detail are the three biggest performance hogs in the game and will bring the fastest PC's available today to under 10 frames per second easy under the right circumstances.