What's My System's Bottleneck?!? Please Help!

[Tox-Camilla]

Okay, I don't really understand why I'm not able to run this game maxed out 100%. I've tried with an 8800gtx and an hd 2900xt 1gb. The HD 2900xt seems to do better, probably due to the extra ram available. Regardless, here's my computer specs before I convey my dilemma.Processor: Intel Q6600 running at 3.4Ghz.Video Card: AMD HD 2900xt 1GB DDR4.Ram: 2x 1GB DDR2 800 at CL4.Hard Drive: 2x Seagate 7200.10 in raid 0.Monitor: Running at 1920x1200 resolution, 60hz.Okay, my dilemma: I can't max everything out and I'm not sure why. I want to know what I need to upgrade in the future. I can run extreme settings very smoothly with no stuttering at all but when i go through the settings and increase them even higher (ie-max shadows/lights/high res characters) i get framerates in the low 20's in towns and brief stutters where it freezes. I notice that the game for some obscure reason decides to only use one core of my quad-core processor, so that's odd. Putting the game in crossfire/SLI doesn't appear to help framerates at all for some reason. Turning the resolution lower from 1920x1200 to even 1440x900 doesn't make a difference at all in framerates which leads me to believe my videocard is more than sufficient for this game.  Disabling forced 8xAA and 16xAF also doesn't make an impact on the FPS but decreases visual quality significantly which also leads me to believe my videocard is more than sufficient for this game.So is it my processor or 2GB ram? Or maybe the game is using such large textures it stutters from slow hard drives? I don't understand why this game doesn't even attempt to utilize multiple cores on the CPU, and would be surprised if the CPU is the bottleneck as it's running at clocks faster than anything you can currently purchase stock, but it's a possibility I guess. So my main question: What would increase my framerates and stop the occasional stuttering when maxed out? Faster processors that don't yet exist? A solid state hard drive to decrease time loading the textures into the GPU's ram? Increasing my system ram to 4GB? Any help's appreciated.

[willnotuse]

Ah, I see someone has fairly much figured out what I keep telling folks and they don't want to believe.  Luckily more and more are coming to the realisation and are stating the same now on this tech board.In short, yes.  Your CPU is being the bottleneck because the game itself simply does not make use of multiple cores nor does it send many graphical functions like shadows to the GPU where it belongs.Last I heard on test was a DEV saying they were working on adding/improving multicore support.  Another DEV mentioned a few months back that they are working on changing how much is offloaded to the CPU as well.  When can you expect any of the changes?  I can't answer that as I have no idea.  For now I'd suggest not throwing any more money on the hardware for this game.  You have a system sufficient enough to run new and innovative games.  Not to mention MMOs that make use of modern video cards more.

[Dark_Grue]

<cite>Tox-Camilla wrote:</cite><blockquote>Okay, I don't really understand why I'm not able to run this game maxed out 100%.</blockquote><p>As willnotuse says, you really can't - it's currently not possible (or economical) to throw enough hardware at EQ2 to run with everything turned on to max and still get performance that most people will find acceptable.</p><p>Turning on everything full does work really well for screenshots, but less so for play.</p>

[Tox-Camilla]

I guess CPU really is the only thing that makes sense. I don't get why EQ2 doesn't even attempt to utilize my other 3 processors when it's using one of them full force. After some more investigation: I found out that the main setting crippling my machine is Environmental Shadows. Is this primarily CPU-based? I'm assuming it is anyways. With all my settings maxed out beyond extreme I'm getting a smooth 40-60 fps (using v-sync @60hrz) with no stuttering. The second I turn on Environmental Sha dows it drops 20fps if I'm in a dense area and it  stutters when I turn corners to new areas inside c ities where i get a period of 2-3 seconds where i'm bottoming out at 2-3fps ...  I hope they start to optimize for multi-core systems soon; processors aren't going for brute force anymore so they really have to for anyone to ever be able to play this game at absolute max settings with a good solid frame rate.