ATI 3870 X2 performance problems?

[AgingGamer]

I recently upgraded from an ATI X1950XTX to an ATI 3870 X2 (2 x GPU; 2 x 512 MB video RAM).  The performance of the new card is surprisingly bad, arguably worse than the X1950 it replaced.My configuration<ul><li>Vista Ultimate 64 bit</li><li>4 GB RAM</li><li>AMD Athlon dual core 4600+</li><li>dual RAID0 WD Raptor 150 GB hard drives</li><li>1600 x 1200 video (LCD panel native resolution)</li></ul>With the new video card I've been observing frame rates of between 15 and 20 FPS on "balanced" settings.  If I turn shadows on or otherwise approach "High Quality" settings, my frame rate drops to between 5 and 15 FPS.  I've performed a complete driver re-install (I.E.: remove all traces of the drivers with Driver Cleaner and re-install from scratch; reinstall of DirectX drivers) without any visible change in performance.The "best" place I've found to test performance is any of the crafting instances in Qeynos (and presumably in Freeport).  In any of those instances I consistently see 5 FPS with shadows on (no environmental shadows, just torches and characters).This level of performance for a dual GPU video card strikes me as fundamentally broken.  The promise of EQ2's graphics scaling as better CPUs and GPUs became available seems to be false, as I note that <a rel="nofollow" href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=408857" target="_blank">owners of the latest Nvidia cards also appear to be experiencing significant performance problems with their cards.</a>  I'd love to get responses here from other 3870/3870 x2 owners regarding their performance observations to see if we can establish any sort of pattern- perhaps the performance issues I'm experiencing are unique?  I'd also be very happy to provide full diagnostic dumps of my machine if a SoE tester/developer requests

[The-Plethora]

The 3870 X2 is a great card and the low performance is nothing to do with it unortunately. If you were to compare both cards running Crysis or oblivion you would notice a good difference with your X2.It's your CPU thats holding you back and again there is no reason why it should, unfortunately EQ2 benefits far more from a high speed processor than any graphics card you throw at it. All shadows, flora etc all appear to be handled by the CPU. If you have a motherboard with decent overclocking options you will notice a difference.Back in the early EQ2 days I guess people thought CPU's would get faster and faster, however we have gone down the route of multi core CPU and graphics cards which was probably not forseen at the time.Sadly the only way EQ2 will take full advantage of dual core is by running 2 instances of it.

[AgingGamer]

<p>Thanks, Plethora, for your comment.  The think that disturbs me most here, however, is that my performance seems *lower* with my new ATI 3870 x2 than with my X1950XTX.  That seems absurd to me.</p><p>Further updates on performance: while playing in a single group, my performance was obviously lower than with my old card.  I had to switch to pure balanced mode (no tweaks) to stay at anything over 10 FPS.  </p><p><b>Further update</b></p><p>The driver version I'm using is ATI Catalyst version 8.2.  I performed some tests with various driver settings in the Catalyst Control Center an effort to try to improve my rendering performance to at least tolerable levels.  </p><ul><li>I logged in to my "worst" zone: one of the crafting instances in Qeynos.  The one in Nettleville was the one I used, but I tried several and they all dropped my FPS rating (as noted by the connection stats meter in game) dropped to below 10 FPS fairly consistently on "High quality" and, with two or three people at the broker board, even at "balanced"</li><li>After experimenting with various settings in the Catalyst Control Center, I determined that disabling "Catalyst AI" improved FPS rates in the connection stats meter to around 20 (between 15 and 25 FPS).  The subjective performance was markedly improved: I could spin around without horrendous "hitching"</li></ul><p>I don't know if this will help anyone else experiencing problems with the 3870 X2, but it seems to have given a slight relief to my issues.  Now my computer is at least useful again for EQ2, but I am *still* unable to get even remotely reasonable performance from this configuration.  My wife's single core Athlon 3600+ with an ATI X800 video card is still scoring 40 FPS on balanced in zones that my dual core Athlon 4600+ with an ATI 3870 X2 and twice the RAM struggles to hit 30 FPS with the same settings.   </p><p>Something is fundamentally not right with the EQ2 client and how it works with newer system hardware.  I'd really like to get some uplifting "we are working on fundamental game client performance improvements for modern CPUs/GPUs" sort of statement from the developers.  Heck, I'd happily pay $50 for an update with nothing but client performance upgrades- forget the new content!</p>

[AgingGamer]

For "fun" I went out and bought a brand new motherboard, CPU, and memory.  I've switched to an Intel Quad core Q6600, still with 4 GB of RAM, currently clocked at 2.4 GHz (I'll be overclocking to about 3 GHz soon, at least experimentally).I *knew*, deep down, that this change would make no difference and... I was completely right <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  EQ2 still runs at 20-25 frames per second in most zones with regular drops perilously close to single digits (I.E.: below 10 FPS).  This is, as noted, with an ATI 3870 X2.My current belief is that the EQ2 game engine is completely unable to take advantage of any current technology- neither multi-cores, nor multi-GPUs, nor highly pipelined GPUs.  This means that, since everything I've listed is core to all the performance upgrades coming now and for the foreseeable future, EQ2 is stuck.  Moribund.  Unable to improve and in fact destined to get slower and slower, unless and until they make significant changes to the underlying rendering engine.I'd be incredibly pleased and impressed if I were proven wrong.  But right at the moment my perception is that Sony has no plans or desire to do anything to improve performance on newer technology systems.  They cast the dice five years ago, assuming that all performance benefits would come from higher clockrate systems.  I suspect they believed that we'd all be running 15 GHz processors by now.  Unfortunately, physics got in the way, and instead we are all running multi-core systems.Switching off shadows, going back to Extreme Performance, and wishing for some future day when I'll see the game as it was meant to be seen...

[ShadyCharacter]

I hope all is working well now for you AgingGamer. Your problem is of personal interest because I am considering getting a new system which would be very similar to yours including the 3870 X2. Traditionaly I have gone nvidia but the X2 seems about the best bang for the buck at the moment but its performance in eq2 concerns me. While I know that the game is perhaps more optimized for nvidia surely such a powerful card (with an approriate system) as the X2 should run EQ2 fine if not as perfectly as its power would otherwise suggest. I know certain games run better or worse on certain cards but I have to think the X2 would be fine but I have been told otherwise and your problems seem to lend credit to these fears. Any update to your situation?

[Ilae]

Im having the same performance as you with my geforce 8800 GTS 640mb on a core2duo 2,4ghz with 6gb ram in vista 64.. Tried multiple drivers and still no luck <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Darkeyes-Shadowwalker]

<p>Almost no software uses the multi cores that are out now only a few games and some 3d softwear and even those dont use it that well. Vista and XP dont know what to do with multiple cores yet and from the many hours i have spent reading up on it alot of programs lose performance when you go from a single core gpu to a duel or as with the processer you see no real differance. Nice thing is when the OS finaly suports it i bet you will see a nice jump in performance in SLI crossfire and muli core processors and duel gpus.</p>

[Doral]

I am wondering if the power supply is in specs for your 3870 video card... <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/0a4d7238daa496a758252d0a2b1a1384.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />