FPS performance issue going from XP to Vista

[Robo13]

<p>I recently installed vista 32b home premium.( 64b is on order)</p><p>Now when I play my FPS is only about 20 - 25 FPS in high performance. ( playing in vista or XP compatibility mode has no change.)</p><p>In XP my FPS on high performance was between 35 - 60 FPS.</p><p> What can I do increase my performance other than going back to XP which I can do when I get my 64b Vista in and do a duel boot?</p><p>CPU Q6600 2.4G</p><p>Video BFG 9600GT OC2</p><p>RAM 2g Cosair PC6400</p><p>MOBO XFX680i LT SLI</p>

[Hamervelder]

Vista is a resource-intensive OS. (read: It's a memory hog)  There isn't really anything that you can do to get Xp-type performance out of it.

[TSR-TrevorG]

Getting more RAM would help out your issue. :p

[Cassea]

Vista is actually faster than XP... serious here. The issue is really that we are playing a game that was designed from the ground up to run on a single core machine that tries to run much of the graphics on your CPU.Vista will never be as fast as XP with "XP" games but on newer games it's either about the same or even faster.If SOE ever got off their duff and rewrote some code to actually use our video cards and multiple cores you would see Vista shine.Yes Vista has a ton more overhead vs XP just as XP had more overhead vs Win98. I run EQ2 on a dual core AMD with Vista 64 and it runs pretty darn well. Sure it runs EQ2 at only about 3/4 of XP speed but as you add more memory (esp with Vista 64) you will see Vista shine.Vista eats XP for lunch in regard to memory management and while I concede that a 1gig XP machine will run rings around a 1gig Vista machine try adding 2 or even 4 gig of memory and see Vista shine.The game plays smoother with less load times because all that extra memory, often going unused in XP, gets used in Vista for hard drive caching.Another factor is that often people upgrade their computers from "faster" single core computers to "slower" multi-core computers.Example:A 2400mhz single core computer will run EQ2 alot faster than a 2x or 4x core 2000mhz computer because EQ2 does not use the extra cores so when people "upgrade" from a 1x 2400mhz to a 4x 2000mhz CPU they actually take a big hit with single core games like EQ2.Clearly EQ2 is due for some serious rewrites. What they did last month was a nice first step but only a first step. Now they need to put shadows and other "GRAPHIC" fuctions on our graphic cards. This will allow faster video for two reasons:1. Out video cards run graphic code a ton faster than the cpu2. That free cpu time that used to be used for graphics can now be used for other features.So how about it SOE? You going to get EQ2 die a slow death or are you going to actually spend a few $$$'s to upgrade the graphic engine?-JBP.S. Don't forget that Lucasarts paid SOE to develope the EQ2 engine for Star Wars Galaxies. We have been playing on a lucasarts funded game engine for years. Sure SOE modified the code a bit but the code has been relatively unchanged for years now and needs a ton of work.P.P.S. Doom was also a state of the art game engine way way back... we're not still playing Doom #1 games in '08 are we? LOL

[Robo13]

<p>thanks all. I thought maybe I missed a setting or something. Oddly enough I didn't change anything and now I am back up to 30fps. The game does seem to be smoother on vista even when it was at 20fps compared to how it ran on xp. </p><p> Needless to say I upgraded to vista for dx10 for some new games I have gotten and my new 9600GT. I do know Age of Conan runs on my system on Medium setup around 45 to 50FPS and that was open beta client. Yes I do play many other games because I like new things. Not because any game is better than the next. I just need change sometimes to over come burn out and games becoming stale to me over time. Hence why I have jumped from eq2 to wow to vanguard to wow to eq2 now to Age of Conan. Should be fun though playing both AoC and EQ2.  </p><p>Long live gaming. =)</p>

[TSR-TrevorG]

<cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote>P.S. Don't forget that Lucasarts paid SOE to develope the EQ2 engine for Star Wars Galaxies. We have been playing on a lucasarts funded game engine for years. Sure SOE modified the code a bit but the code has been relatively unchanged for years now and needs a ton of work.</blockquote>????????That is certainly news to me!

[Cassea]

Lucasarts funded the SWG (Star Wars Galaxy) game engine that was the basis for EQ2. SOE managed and ran SWG for Lucasarts and then was able to take a game engine that Lucas paid for and use it (with some minor tweaking) for EQ2. This was a very smart business choice as the SWG game engine was very very good even if many people did not care for the game itself.Here you see the date Lucas and SOE joined forced:<a href="http://www.lucasarts.com/company/release/news20000316.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.lucasarts.com/company/re...ws20000316.html</a>March 16, 2000SWG comes out in June 2003EQ2 comes out in November 2004 with almost the same class system, character creation, graphics features and adjustments, same "type" of crafting system yadda yadda yadda.Since the only thing people liked about SWG was the graphics and crafting (well most people LOL) this was not a bad thing. EQ2 got a kickass game engine that Lucas paid for with some tweaking to suit the change from a Sci-Fi to Fantasy game and to make it look more like EQ1.At the time EQ2 was trying to be as different as possible from EQ1 and, IMHO, it was "too" different which is why SOE's later expansions made the game more "EQ1-Like"Don't get me wrong... I LOVE EQ2! I really think it's the best MMORPG out right now but it's still very clear that SOE had done very very little to update a graphics engine that is over 8 years old. It's a testament to the skill, dedication and talent that 8 years later EQ2 still it holding it's own but without some $$$ and some serious updates I fear that people will never even try EQ2 when they look at LOTRO and the upcoming MMORPG games that were writen from the ground up for Vista, the new video cards and multi-core CPU's.Graphics may not make the game but they sure do get people to "try" a game.As much as I admire the skill and dedication of those on the EQ2 live team, I am upset with SOE for not allocating some $$$ to update what was the very best game engine for MMORPG's and seemingly letting it die on the vine so to speak.If only they would move the graphics that are currently done on the CPU to the DX9/DX10 codepath that would not only speed up the game but free our poor CPU's to do what they do best which is NOT video <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />In 2003 it was expected that CPU's would only get faster and faster. SOE "chose poorly" *smiles* and instead of getting faster they went multi-core.Right now as many people "upgrade" their CPU's to multi-core they are actually losing performance with EQ2 as many multi-core CPU's actually run a bit slower than the single core varieties and while a game like LOTRO (written from the ground up for multi-core) only gets faster and faster as you add more cores, EQ2 gets slower.LOTRO (written for multi-core) = 2000mhz+2000mhz = 4000mhz (not exactly true but close LOL)EQ2 (written for single core) = 2000mhz+2000mhz = 2000mhzA 2400mhz $40 CPU runs EQ2 much faster than a 2000mhz+2000mhz+2000mhz+2000mhz $200+ cpu because it can only use the one core.This has to change IMHO.-JB

[Hamervelder]

<cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote>Vista is actually faster than XP... serious here. The issue is really that we are playing a game that was designed from the ground up to run on a single core machine that tries to run much of the graphics on your CPU.Vista will never be as fast as XP with "XP" games but on newer games it's either about the same or even faster.If SOE ever got off their duff and rewrote some code to actually use our video cards and multiple cores you would see Vista shine.Yes Vista has a ton more overhead vs XP just as XP had more overhead vs Win98. I run EQ2 on a dual core AMD with Vista 64 and it runs pretty darn well. Sure it runs EQ2 at only about 3/4 of XP speed but as you add more memory (esp with Vista 64) you will see Vista shine.Vista eats XP for lunch in regard to memory management and while I concede that a 1gig XP machine will run rings around a 1gig Vista machine try adding 2 or even 4 gig of memory and see Vista shine.The game plays smoother with less load times because all that extra memory, often going unused in XP, gets used in Vista for hard drive caching.Another factor is that often people upgrade their computers from "faster" single core computers to "slower" multi-core computers.Example:A 2400mhz single core computer will run EQ2 alot faster than a 2x or 4x core 2000mhz computer because EQ2 does not use the extra cores so when people "upgrade" from a 1x 2400mhz to a 4x 2000mhz CPU they actually take a big hit with single core games like EQ2.Clearly EQ2 is due for some serious rewrites. What they did last month was a nice first step but only a first step. Now they need to put shadows and other "GRAPHIC" fuctions on our graphic cards. This will allow faster video for two reasons:1. Out video cards run graphic code a ton faster than the cpu2. That free cpu time that used to be used for graphics can now be used for other features.So how about it SOE? You going to get EQ2 die a slow death or are you going to actually spend a few $$$'s to upgrade the graphic engine?-JBP.S. Don't forget that Lucasarts paid SOE to develope the EQ2 engine for Star Wars Galaxies. We have been playing on a lucasarts funded game engine for years. Sure SOE modified the code a bit but the code has been relatively unchanged for years now and needs a ton of work.P.P.S. Doom was also a state of the art game engine way way back... we're not still playing Doom #1 games in '08 are we? LOL</blockquote>Vista has some serious issues.  I don't think that I'd say it's faster than XP.  I'd say that since Vista can make use of more memory than XP, you can logically acquire and use more resources.  Vista itself is a bloated hog.  Another issue that especially affects EQ2 (since it's already very CPU-intensive), is the fact that Vista forces all audio to be handled in software.  Our cool Audigy 2 cards are useless in Vista.  That results in even more CPU strain.  Therefore, one could reason that for EQ2, Vista is actually worse, partially because of all the load on the CPU.

[Cassea]

Vista does not force audio to be run in software. Vista supports OpenAL hardware based audio while XP supported both OpenAL and Directsound in hardware. EQ2 uses Directsound which is forced to run in emulation (software) mode.While you are technically correct in that EQ2 does use software based sound for "all" sound cards (I have the A2 card also) it's not Vista's fault. A few years ago Microsoft moved away from Directsound because it was causing too many issues and told everyone to start using the much better OpenAL. Most software companies stayed with the tried and true Directsound... IE they took the easy way out.LOTRO, for example, uses OpenAL sound and as such does not slow down the cpu due to using software sound. Yet another example of a game being programed before and after Vista.This is really not an issue  with multi-core cpu's because Vista is smart enough to put the sound on the second core but yes single core CPU's will suffer.Vista a bloated hog? Yes and no. Yes if you install it as is... no if you shut down all that bloatware like I have done. Vista is actually much much better than XP day and date.... IE what state was XP in at the one year mark vs Vista at the one year mark?If you remember correctly XP was at utter and complete mess even one year after release. Hey... vista is not perfect and still has issues but never forget that the very same people who proclaim to hate Vista are also the ones who said that XP sucked and we Win98 was all we would every need.People resist change and Vista with SP1, while not perfect, is far more stable than XP ever was. I have not seen a bluescreen or lockup once since SP1 was released and prior to that maybe once a month if that. Bloat? maybe but with 4gig of memory only costing $65 and a 500gig hard drive under $100 now I'll take that bloat <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I laugh when I remember using Windows 3.1 or even DOS 5.0 and thinking about people complaining that they had to have 640k or 1meg (1024meg = 1gig) to get it to run fast enough <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I also seem to remember people complaining that you needed 256meg to run XP when Win98 only needed 16meg <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Times change and I suspect that when then next version of Windows comes out we'll all be saying how great Vista is and why do we need 32gig when 4gig runs Vista so well <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />-JB

[Hamervelder]

<cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote>Vista does not force audio to be run in software. Vista supports OpenAL hardware based audio while XP supported both OpenAL and Directsound in hardware. EQ2 uses Directsound which is forced to run in emulation (software) mode.While you are technically correct in that EQ2 does use software based sound for "all" sound cards (I have the A2 card also) it's not Vista's fault. A few years ago Microsoft moved away from Directsound because it was causing too many issues and told everyone to start using the much better OpenAL. Most software companies stayed with the tried and true Directsound... IE they took the easy way out.LOTRO, for example, uses OpenAL sound and as such does not slow down the cpu due to using software sound. Yet another example of a game being programed before and after Vista.This is really not an issue  with multi-core cpu's because Vista is smart enough to put the sound on the second core but yes single core CPU's will suffer.Vista a bloated hog? Yes and no. Yes if you install it as is... no if you shut down all that bloatware like I have done. Vista is actually much much better than XP day and date.... IE what state was XP in at the one year mark vs Vista at the one year mark?If you remember correctly XP was at utter and complete mess even one year after release. Hey... vista is not perfect and still has issues but never forget that the very same people who proclaim to hate Vista are also the ones who said that XP sucked and we Win98 was all we would every need.People resist change and Vista with SP1, while not perfect, is far more stable than XP ever was. I have not seen a bluescreen or lockup once since SP1 was released and prior to that maybe once a month if that. Bloat? maybe but with 4gig of memory only costing $65 and a 500gig hard drive under $100 now I'll take that bloat <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" />I laugh when I remember using Windows 3.1 or even DOS 5.0 and thinking about people complaining that they had to have 640k or 1meg (1024meg = 1gig) to get it to run fast enough <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" />I also seem to remember people complaining that you needed 256meg to run XP when Win98 only needed 16meg <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" />Times change and I suspect that when then next version of Windows comes out we'll all be saying how great Vista is and why do we need 32gig when 4gig runs Vista so well <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" />-JB</blockquote>Thank you for clarifying.  It was DirectSound that I was referring to.  Given that many (if not most? ) games use DirectSound primarily, Vista thusly places gamers at a disadvantage.

[Endure]

<cite>TSR-TrevorG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote>P.S. Don't forget that Lucasarts paid SOE to develope the EQ2 engine for Star Wars Galaxies. We have been playing on a lucasarts funded game engine for years. Sure SOE modified the code a bit but the code has been relatively unchanged for years now and needs a ton of work.</blockquote>????????That is certainly news to me!</blockquote><p>When I started I noticed the EQ2 characters run animation was very similar to SWG lol. I had always wondered about this..</p><p>Sorry for derail =p</p><p>Vista... it has so many compatibility issues... issues with... everything <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>IMO it's a PITA POS OS, but thats just me <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </p><p>*Vista* " Are you sure you're sure you want to submit this- Yes, No".  :p </p>

[TSR-DanielH]

Yes, Everquest 2 was designed around the XP operating system.  It has been tweaked somewhat since then to improve performance, but with all other things the same you will still see better performance with XP currently.

[TSR-TrevorG]

<cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote>Lucasarts funded the SWG (Star Wars Galaxy) game engine that was the basis for EQ2. SOE managed and ran SWG for Lucasarts and then was able to take a game engine that Lucas paid for and use it (with some minor tweaking) for EQ2. This was a very smart business choice as the SWG game engine was very very good even if many people did not care for the game itself.Here you see the date Lucas and SOE joined forced:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.lucasarts.com/company/release/news20000316.html" target="_blank">http://www.lucasarts.com/company/re...ws20000316.html</a>March 16, 2000SWG comes out in June 2003EQ2 comes out in November 2004 with almost the same class system, character creation, graphics features and adjustments, same "type" of crafting system yadda yadda yadda.Since the only thing people liked about SWG was the graphics and crafting (well most people LOL) this was not a bad thing. EQ2 got a kickass game engine that Lucas paid for with some tweaking to suit the change from a Sci-Fi to Fantasy game and to make it look more like EQ1.At the time EQ2 was trying to be as different as possible from EQ1 and, IMHO, it was "too" different which is why SOE's later expansions made the game more "EQ1-Like"-JB</blockquote>This "EQ2s engine is SWGs engine" is not true.  Yes there is a partner ship between SOE and Lucasarts, but EQ2 is designed from the ground up, and not taking anything from SWG.

[Cassea]

<cite>TSR-TrevorG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote>Lucasarts funded the SWG (Star Wars Galaxy) game engine that was the basis for EQ2. SOE managed and ran SWG for Lucasarts and then was able to take a game engine that Lucas paid for and use it (with some minor tweaking) for EQ2. This was a very smart business choice as the SWG game engine was very very good even if many people did not care for the game itself.Here you see the date Lucas and SOE joined forced:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.lucasarts.com/company/release/news20000316.html" target="_blank">http://www.lucasarts.com/company/re...ws20000316.html</a>March 16, 2000SWG comes out in June 2003EQ2 comes out in November 2004 with almost the same class system, character creation, graphics features and adjustments, same "type" of crafting system yadda yadda yadda.Since the only thing people liked about SWG was the graphics and crafting (well most people LOL) this was not a bad thing. EQ2 got a kickass game engine that Lucas paid for with some tweaking to suit the change from a Sci-Fi to Fantasy game and to make it look more like EQ1.At the time EQ2 was trying to be as different as possible from EQ1 and, IMHO, it was "too" different which is why SOE's later expansions made the game more "EQ1-Like"-JB</blockquote>This "EQ2s engine is SWGs engine" is not true.  Yes there is a partner ship between SOE and Lucasarts, but EQ2 is designed from the ground up, and not taking anything from SWG.</blockquote>EQ@ "takes nothing" from SWG? Give me a break <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Both games have near identical graphics, animation and even crafting system. They were both made at the same time by the same company. Did Lucasarts pay SOE to create the SWG game engine? YesDid SOE, less than a year later, come out with a brand new EQ2 game engine? YesDo you really expect us to believe that EQ2 shares "zero" with SWG under the hood?I've played both games a release and while years of moving in different directions may have blurred the lines a bit I can assure you that three years ago both EQ2 and SWG shared the exact same code base.How do you explain that both games have the exact same identical options? Same character creation? Same graphics "look", same crafting type trees, same class structure?I do not mean to start a debate here but it takes years and years to develop a new game engine. EQ2 and SWG sharing the same game engine is a given that has been common knowledge for years.I'm a bit shocked at your claim that they share nothing whatsoever.-JB

[TSR-TrevorG]

I'm just stating what I know from working here. I won't debate with you on this subject.

[Cassea]

<cite>TSR-TrevorG wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm just stating what I know from working here. I won't debate with you on this subject.</blockquote>Sorry Trevor... I did not mean to turn this into a debate. Do yourself a favor and find the oldest person working at SOE and ask them about EQ2 and SWG. As I said before... SWG has one fantastic (if now aged like EQ2) game engine so saying that EQ2 and SWG shared a common start is not a bad thing.My point is that the EQ2 game engine is now very very old with little real updates. Even EQ1 received multiple graphic engine rewrites yet EQ2 has not. In fact the game still does not fully use our video cards.I know you fight the good fight and can only do so much. I give you credit for at least talking and communicating with us. I just wanted to shed some history on the issues we have.While I may not want to play LOTRO because I like EQ2's crafting, classes and gameplay better it is truly a great looking game and shows what you can do with modern graphics and multi-core support.I know SOE is not going to allocate a ton of $$$ to rewrite the game with the current subscriber count but they could at least fix the shadows and put them back on the video card where they belong.I'll stop now as I'm only rehashing what has already been said.Later-JB

[Albrig]

<p>If you optimize vista in the sense of memory management (the same as you do with XP), the type of memory you've got (and it's 4Gb (or 8Gb for Vista)) and you have the beta drivers for nVidia (I went back to nVidia and don't use ATI at the moment), the performance consistency slaps XP pretty badly.</p><p>But XP is extremely refined to begin and optimizing XP on top of that does push it out of reach from Vista's capabilities as they stand.</p><p>But they're more equal than you think. That's because of any game using dx10 is going to overlap XP which doesn't use it (particularly of SP1's recent appearance for Vista).</p><p>When game developers begin to start really *and I do mean REALLY* optimizing multi-threading on dual or quad cores (the E8x range as the standard), XP will be left far behind. Vista is basically Windows 2008 - they share an identical Kernel - so you already have the limits of Windows OS technology in your hands (and optimizing it for gaming).</p><p>On the subject of EQ2, two things will become apparent when it makes use of another core to thread shadows and lighting (GPU is an easier to task, but I don't really know for sure): </p><p>a) the game engine will not look old or out of date - therefore, neither will the game *appear that way</p><p>b) if the current EQ2 engine is so capable on the scaleability front, why don't other developers use it? Why are they using game engines that look similar from each other but work entirely differently?</p><p>If you look at point a), the opinion is reversed quite nicely.</p>

[Cassea]

Not having programed for a multi-core I can but restate what some have said which is that it's "very" hard to slap multi-core into a game after the fact. Multi-core requires you to organize your code in a completely different way because instructions can be completed on different cores out of order. With a single core you know "exactly" the order things will be done because they are done one at a time.Can it be done? Sure and off coding certain code paths can be done but you do not get the kind of speed you would as compared to when you code a game from the ground up with multiple cores in mind.IMHO it would be far easier to just put the "graphics" code that is currently being done via the cpu back on our video cards where it belongs. This not only speeds up those video functions because the code will be much faster on the video card, but then you free up CPU cycles that used to be used for video code and you can use those to speed up the game.I'm sure this has been talked about internally for years now at SOE as the programmers love to show their stuff but that costs $$$ and the corp bean counters look at better graphics of FPS differently than we do.Example:SOE Programmer: We need to spend xxx number of $$$'s to update the EQ2 graphic engine to bring it up to 2008 standardsSOE Bean Counter: Will spending this $$$ gain us more subscribers and thus make us more money?SOE Programmer: Well we're not sure but it will give our existing customers better graphics and more fpsSOE Bean Counter: If we do not spend the $$$ will we lose customers?SOE Programmer: Well we're not sure but most of our customers are addicted to the game and will stay no matter whatSOE Bean Counter: Why are you bothering us with this then? Next time you bother us make sure it's a way we can make more money!------Now we can "speculate" that better graphics would gain more customers or that some of us "may" leave for newer games and while this may be true it's still an unknown and the bean counters would rather spend money on expansions because expansions mean extra $$$ above and beyond our monthly subscriptions.Our best bet is to hope they slip in some upgrades with the next expansion. If SOE really cared about gaining new customers they would advertise more. The "perception" many people have with SOE is that they just want to maximize the income and if they spend 50% more to gain 10% more customers then this might not be a good expense to them.At least SOE did not go the WoW route and "dumb" down the graphics so the game would run on an Atari 2600 while telling everyone that the crappy graphics was an "artistic" choice and not a way to make more $$$.-JB