What do u need to play at max settings?

[Venger33]

<p>What kinda video card do u need? I play at 1920x1200 res on other games. I have a nvidia 7900gt right now. Looking to upgrade.</p><p>Venger</p>

[Bournville]

What sort of PC do you have ?

[Lazuke]

<p>Im going to post my comp also, so i don't need to open a new thread. <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Guys, i run the game pretty well right now with a 8600GTS (very high quality with minimal shadows), i have a Core 2 Duo E6600, 2gb ram, but i'd like to get the best graphics possible, i was thinking about a 8800 Ultra, the card is a bit pricey, but if i can run it at extreme quality and with AAx4 at least im going for it, what do you think?</p><p>[]'s</p>

[Killerbee3000]

well, the graphicscard is not as important as in other games, the 8800 Ultra wont wield too much in terms of better graphics to justify the price. get a 8800 GT instead.

[antwar]

<p>i would agree to "upgrade" to an 8800 GT if you want a little more performance, and i do mean little. the 8800 GT currently performs somewhere between the 8800 GTS which you currently have, and the 8800GTX which is your cards bigger brother. the ultra is even better than the GTX, but imo, is cost prohibitive unless you have that kind of cash just lying around.</p><p>you would do better with a CPU upgrade for this game rather than video card upgrade in terms of overall performance. can your motherboard support the new 1333 Mhz FSB  processors? if it can, i suggest going with an e6750 which can be overclocked easily to 3+ Ghz with little adjustment from what i hear anyway. i personally dont like overclocking, because if i fry a CPU, i want that warranty to fall back on lol.</p><p>right now, the E6750 is intel's current price/performance sweetspot.</p>

[Killerbee3000]

<cite>antwarle wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>i would agree to "upgrade" to an 8800 GT if you want a little more performance, and i do mean little. the 8800 GT currently performs somewhere between the 8800 GTS which you currently have, and the 8800GTX which is your cards bigger brother. the ultra is even better than the GTX, but imo, is cost prohibitive unless you have that kind of cash just lying around.</p></blockquote>he got a 8600 GTS not a 8800 GTS... the 6750 is an excellent buy.. yep, especially for eq2 where quadcores wield no benefit

[Venger33]

<p>No one has answered my question. I play at 1920x1200. Which VIDEO card do I need to play at MAX settings? I have a 7900GT right now.</p><p>Venger</p>

[Dark_Grue]

<cite>Venger33 wrote:</cite><blockquote>No one has answered my question. I play at 1920x1200. Which VIDEO card do I need to play at MAX settings? I have a 7900GT right now.</blockquote><p>Your question has already been answered. No existing video card will allow you to play with all settings at maximum, under all circumstances, at what most people consider an acceptable framerate.</p><p>Your existing video card can already functionally handle all the required capabilities to run with all settings turned to maximum, it <b>will</b> work, the question is of acceptable performance. A "better" (read: more expensive) video card can provide better performance to a certain point; however, because EQ2 performs many of the more process-intensive video functions in software on the CPU, and not the GPU, the game reaches the point of diminishing returns well before the existing state-of-the-art in video cards. In fact, your 7900GT can outperform some of the 8K models in certain metrics.</p><p>If your intent is to increase EQ2 performance, you really need the fastest single-core processor (or a multi-core processor with the fastest core speed on each core) you can find, coupled with a decent video card (which you really already have). And even then there are diminishing returns on performance (and cost/value) considerations. EQ2 is just not a game you can throw hardware specs at and expect performance to scale properly. It just doesn't (and the reasons are complicated and involve not just technical, but economical, business, and marketing reasons).</p><p>You are much better off learning the video options settings and how they impact performance and appearance and using those, rather than spending $Texas on new hardware and just pushing all the sliders to the right. You'll just be disappointed - just like the dozens of people who have posted here saying "I spent $Texas on bleeding-edge hardware I didn't need, and I didn't see a performance increase!" before, and were similiarly disappointed. I don't recommend following them off the cliff.</p>

[antwar]

<cite>Killerbee3000 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>antwarle wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>i would agree to "upgrade" to an 8800 GT if you want a little more performance, and i do mean little. the 8800 GT currently performs somewhere between the 8800 GTS which you currently have, and the 8800GTX which is your cards bigger brother. the ultra is even better than the GTX, but imo, is cost prohibitive unless you have that kind of cash just lying around.</p></blockquote>he got a 8600 GTS not a 8800 GTS... the 6750 is an excellent buy.. yep, especially for eq2 where quadcores wield no benefit</blockquote><p>unless i am mistaken, and i will look again after i leave here on newegg.com to make sure, but the 6750 is not a quad core, it is a dual core.</p><p>edit: yep i just looked it up, and i am right, it is dual core, not quad core.</p><p>now i agree that dual cores or quad cores for that matter dont show a marked performance increase, however, SOE HAS stated on these forums that they ARE indeed working on a client upgrade that would take advantage of multi-core processors, however it was requiring an almost complete engine re-write. i also feel that it is probably on the back burner and not a high priority for them at the moment, but i am sure it is being worked on.</p>

[Vonotar]

<cite>Venger33 wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>No one has answered my question. I play at 1920x1200. Which VIDEO card do I need to play at MAX settings? I have a 7900GT right now.</p><p>Venger</p></blockquote>Achieving max settings is not a problem, the problem is <i><b>playing </b></i>at max settings, the majority of the lag is due to bottlenecks with your CPU and maybe (to a far lesser degree) your harddrives.EQ2 is very CPU heavy, the better your CPU the less laggy you will get and the higher framerate you will achieve.

[antwar]

yep, EQ2 is <u>VERY</u> CPU dependant still, and dual core processors, let alone quad core processors, show little to no benefit in EQ2. unfortunately, you are better off getting the fastest single core processor available, and most of the time, those are older technology, and dont benefit from the newer core architectures of today.

[Killerbee3000]

E6750 + 8800 GT + 2 GB Ram is currently the sweet spot from price / performance point of view in eq2. you can go above that but dimnishing returns will make faster hw pretty much a waste

[Dark_Grue]

<cite>antwarle wrote:</cite><blockquote>SOE HAS stated on these forums that they ARE indeed working on a client upgrade that would take advantage of multi-core processors, however it was requiring an almost complete engine re-write. i also feel that it is probably on the back burner and not a high priority for them at the moment, but i am sure it is being worked on.</blockquote><p>I don't think that's the case - other people have repeated that SoE has said they're working on a multi-threaded version of the EQ2 client (the term multi-core doesn't have any meaning). I've never seen an SoE representative say this. I have seen a response from a SoE rep that said they are constantly re-evaluating the game and technology, and that it (I believe the phrase used was) "under consideration". That's a far cry from "working on" or any assurance. I suspect the Internet Echo Chamber has be subtly  amplying the message from  "maybe, someday" to "COMING SOON!!!!one!1!" I've looked for other posts about this from the dev team, and I've been unable to locate any statements about it (the only time I remember it discussed was prior to the fourm purge).</p><p>Rewriting the application to take advantage of multi-threading is, as you correctly point out, a major rewrite. The amount of effort required, and the impact on the game (we've seen in the past the code is pretty fragile, a major rewrite's likely to be... traumatic). I suspect it doesn't make economic sense for them to undertake this project any time soon, perhaps not at all.</p><p>I'll believe it when I see it, in the meantime, I wouldn't make any purchasing decisions based upon the promise of future functionality.</p>

[Blitzrain]

I'd be surprised as well if they ever take the time to make EQ2 multi-threaded.  Way too much effort for a 3 year old game that survives on it's existing user base.

[Killerbee3000]

but it would be a good way to start changing that<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />(along with selling the game in stores and making political propaganda to make sure politicians that want games banned dont get voted for)