out of ideas, game slow and choppy - Help!

[icoventry]

<p>hi guys</p><p>thankyou for taking the time to read my post i really hope you can help. you see im completely out of ideas of what to do, ive tweaked every setting from min-max individually from inside the game starting from mega ultra performance setting and tried all the suggestions i can find on google websites to no avail. ive tried updating my drivers for my vid card too. it helped slightly and now i can play at least, but the animation is still choppy. heres my spec:</p><p><i>Windows vista home build 6. build 6000</i></p><p><i>bios phoenix award bios v6.00pg</i></p><p><i>intel core 2 quad 2.40 ghz (4 cpu's)</i></p><p><i> 2 gb ram</i></p><p><i>3480 mb page file</i></p><p><i> directx 10</i></p><p><i> nvidia geforce 8300 - 268 mb</i></p><p>im not exactly top notch at computer knowledge, but i know this runs battlefield 2 and 2142 like a dream and this game is alot older. ive disabled anti virus tried shutting off all processes in startup, changed my vid card driver and even been through every setting as i said. its driving me crazy. i dont know if theres a fps meter on this game but id estimate i get around 30 while standing still, 15 while running/turning camera and my animation is really choppy(even with the animation slider all the way to the right may i add) i get this type of performance with everything either at really ugly or really pretty (which is slightly slower but hardly noticable) and both with shadows completely off, and may i add though its completely unplayable with complex shaders on even with the lowest settings and complex shaders at 1 meter.</p><p> its killing my experiance. i played this game 3 years ago on my old amd athalon 2 ghz single processor and 128 mb ati card with 512 ram and got <b>better </b>performance and all the pretty settings cranked up to at least half way, which of course is rediculous! and depressing since i was expecting to come back and play this game in its most beautiful form.</p><p>im pullin my hair out here. help me, please!</p><p>thanks in advance for your time <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" /></p>

[icoventry]

can anyone help me pleasse. getting really sad here!

[Bournville]

Have you tried disabling any antivirus software etc. ?<div></div><div>My simple PC (listed below) runs EQ2 great.<div></div></div>

[icoventry]

yeah ive tried disabling both anti virus and anti spyware, didnt change anything <img src="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/images/smilies/e78feac27fa924c4d0ad6cf5819f3554.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />

[Bournville]

I really don'y get it. I have an older PC and my son has a cheap HP (Celeron 3Ghz with inbuilt video). Neither of us have had any real performance issues but it seems that people with super fast PCs, dual core, Dual video cards etc. have more problems.<div></div><div>I'm not sure if it is possible but can you disable any of the processors to slow things down and see what happens ? (i.e. bring your PC down to my PCs speed)</div>

[Josgar]

<p>Its because he is on Vista...</p><p>Have you tried disabling Aero?</p>

[Bournville]

Good point. I'm using XP home on both PCs.

[icoventry]

<p>i may have done. whats aero exactly?</p>

[Josgar]

Aero is shiny GUI on vista... it eats up RAM and such.

[icoventry]

<p>ok i disabled that, far smoother now. but still cant crank up the visuals much. anyone got any other idea?</p>

[Hunter-Wolf]

<p>likely your problem is the vista your using, the non x64 versions of vista takes away from your physical memory an amount of ram equal to your video card.  Your card has 386 megs, so you lose 386 megs of physical ram, until the new service patch comes out this will occur, essentailly making you run on 1.7 gigs ram.  Since you don't have the x64 version, I would add another gig of ram to give you a total of 3 gigs.  That way when the 386megs are taken away it still leaves you with over 2 gigs ram. </p>