Game stutters in Windowed mode on my ATI card, whilst using ACT for timers

[TwistedFaith]

OK I have a weird issue that I cannot seem to fix by myself so I thought I would post there looking for answers. I am running EQ2 in Windowed Mode, and using ACT to call timers on a raid. I use the always on top window in ACT so I get a radial timer of the AOE that is due etc. This worked great with me before I switched to my new PC, but on this PC I find the game stutters terribly making it unplayable.I can see the taskbar obviously when I play, but whenever I run my mouse over say the broswer I have up or any other programs EQ2 stutters, but as soon as I move the mouse back on focus to EQ2 it works fine. Now this is a brand new PC which I built myself, Quad Core, 4GB with a aTI HD3850 card.M old PC worked great but that had a Nvidia card, and a lot less powerful processor.Has anyone experienced this issue, I know amm well its something stupid but I cant work out how to fix it. Does anyone have any ideas at all, its very frustrating.

[JAFO74]

<p>Assuming all of your drivers are up to date, windows is up to date and ACT is up to date, the first thing i would try is setting ACT affinity to processer 1, 2, or 3. You can do this under the general tab in ACT so that it always boots up on the same processor. Other than that, no idea. Go to ACT's website and post your issues there and see if they have any ideas. ACT is not an SOE supported program so if your issue is definately tied to running it, the support guys here will likely just tell you to shut it off, it's not supported.... Try running the ACT performance wizard as well. One more thing i thought of... Don't just swap windows when you shift focus to the game from ACT, minimize it, there is a difference. If it is not minimized it will still draw all the dps charts and graphs in the background, even if your front window is eq2. If you actually  minimize it(hit the little - button) it doesnt do that, thus using less CPU overhead.</p><p> Iago</p>

[TwistedFaith]

I'll try what you suggested but honestly it is not a issue with ACT as if I have Opera open and switch back and forth whilst questing the same thing occurs. Whenever I roll my mouse over the Opera tab on thr taskbar, EQ2 stutters terribly.I believe the problem is something to do with the desktop and game not being the same resolution or refresh rate or something like that. I do run them both at the same refresh rate though I just have a feeling its something like that.

[TwistedFaith]

OK quick update, the problem is now fixed. Another update, after experimenting I believe the problem I have may have been due to the Mimmap level which can be adjusted in the ATI control centre. I was playing around with it and putting it to max caused me to have the issues I was having before, the same stutter that happened when I ran my mouse over different windows. However changing the setting simply down to 'Quality' and the issue disapeared completly.I am going to see if I can set the AA/AS levels back to 8/16 and see if I can run with that, hpefully the mimap quality level was what caused my issues. Anyway hope that helps.

[TSR-DanielH]

<cite>TwistedFaith wrote:</cite><blockquote>OK quick update, the problem is now fixed. Another update, after experimenting I believe the problem I have may have been due to the Mimmap level which can be adjusted in the ATI control centre. I was playing around with it and putting it to max caused me to have the issues I was having before, the same stutter that happened when I ran my mouse over different windows. However changing the setting simply down to 'Quality' and the issue disapeared completly.I am going to see if I can set the AA/AS levels back to 8/16 and see if I can run with that, hpefully the mimap quality level was what caused my issues. Anyway hope that helps.</blockquote>Glad to hear it's working better for you now.  Sorry we weren't here over the weekend to assist you but it seems that everything got sorted out.  I'll keep the Mimmap in mind when people report problems with ATI cards in the future.  Thanks for the good info<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" width="15" height="15" />