Whaley
07-02-2008, 09:42 AM
<p>After 3 weeks with my new machine I finally got it to run EQ2 without a stutter, without playing/zoning for hours and watching my ram usage go up and up and my system start to slow down.</p><p>Hopefully this story can help someone else who is frustrated after spending money on new stuff only to go BACKWARDS in quality for EQ2. Maybe it will lead you in the right direction.</p><p>System - Falcon 3.2 quad processor 4gb ram 9800gx2 video card. XP SP3.</p><p> When I got the system it had a stutter and it was somewhat liveable but I was [Removed for Content] that with a new system that ran other games good I had this horrible stutter. Normally if I was running in the game it would flicker/twitch etc.... once in a while. When I was around several people at HQ it would get worse and worse. I bought the highest processor available thanks to very helpful/smart people in these forums and loaded up with RAM do to deal with the EQ2 engine issues. I started bashing the EQ2 engine only to read posts where people are playing at extreme no issue so I knew it was possible. To be honest HQ is just fine for me. Balanced or below on a new PC, I would rather play AOC and other games. Balanced with no flora is like running on painted turf, I am out.</p><p>First thing I did was update the driver. I had the 174 driver for my card and went to the 175.16. Recommened by Nvidia when I ran their auto detect deal. Same thing. I had stutter on a very good video card, good processor and it played worse than my old machine and I alway had to worry when I joined a group that it would get unplayable or worse and worse.</p><p>So I spent two weeks in these forums. I tried everything. Clean drivers with free program and install. Over and over forums said get latest driver. Tried the guide where you lowering your settings to high performance then slowly add stuff. Tried to set PC page file, /3gb(Which I still use. I only added it to boot.ini. Not sure if that helps since I had read you need to do something with the everquest2.exe....), Set to high performance and slowly added stuff, defraged, PLAYED with every setting in the Nvidia control panel, deleted certain everquest files and cache folder, tried FREE ram program that ran every minute that tired to clean up ram only to have it stutter when it ran, then used it after my usage got to 90% only to have it lock up the game etc... you name it I tried it. I either got things working for a while then zoned many times and played for a few hours, then boom I would go back to Freeport and stuttering would be almost unplayable. FPS - I really used this to try to trouble shoot at first but even when I had a high FPS of 60 it would stutter, so then I knew there was something really bad going on and I didn't think it was EQ2. All the forums in here say when FPS goes below the 20's people have stuttering. I live in the 35-60 range and had a stutter/memory leak. FYI I use vertical Sync feature in options to stop tearing on my 30" monitor which, from my understanding caps the FPS to the refresh rate of my monitor. I had 80-100 FPS at times when it's not on. I also know the 9800gx2 is not supported by SOE, so I thought I was going to be out of luck and have to buy a OLD graphics card or quit my subscritpion......</p><p>Issues I had:</p><p> 1. I had a stutter. Livable if you wanted. But I couldn't take it with money I spent.</p><p>2. Memory Leak. I have a G15 keyboard so on the LCD I watched RAM usage start at 43% and creep up and up until the stutter got worse.</p><p>How I THINK I fixed and what I learned. I played for 8 hours yesterday with ZERO stutter, no memory leak or having performance degrade at all. FPS depending on the situation was 20-60 but no stutter or slowdown. I am set at HQ with distance rendering to max(Must see queston marks at long distance.) and turn off shadows. I read shadows were broken and My FPS seemed to improve slightly. I like windowed mode so I can look at quests and then play but FULL Screen increased my FPS so I usually go to that now. Read the guides in these forums and find the settings that work for you.</p><p>These forums taught me alot but didn't fix my issues unless the the combo of below and /3gb switch was the key. Lots of 8800 card stuff I tried to apply to the 9800gx2 but nothing helped so I went directly to NVIDIA forums to see if there was other issues.</p><p>1. Nvidia has a sticky on there hardware/general hardware discussion that says : If you were suffering from video corruption issues with a nForce 7 series motherboard, check with your motherboard's manufacturer for a BIOS update to fix the problem. So this actually was just like the posts in here say, "Please get the latest drivers for all of your hardware". Which kind of contradicts their Video Card post in the knowledge base are that points to old drivers that are recommended by SOE.I read futher and my 790 sli according to some posts had issues with the 9xxxx series of cards. So I updated this to 15.17. Just like SOE hard to locate stuff(Though like new improvement) in their forums it's not easy finding stuff in the NVIDIA forums, just a warning. Seems SOE and Nvidia have somewhat same philosphy of not being the best communicators at times. </p><p>2. NVIDIA driver = I always read and believed that the latest and greatest drivers are always the best. So on June 23rd Nvidia came out with 175.19. I upgraded and performance got even WORSE! Two days later in the middle of the night Nvidia pulled it and went back to 175.16. In this case I found out the latest drivers are not the best. Go to Nvidia GeForce driver forum and you will see other people like us in OTHER games having the same problems with certain Nvidia cards. Several times people note that the 175 drivers have got issues. I have a friend who bought basically the same machine, on my recommendation with just a smaller processor running on a 175.16 with the stutter in full effect. No memory leak like me. I did not test fully 175.16 with my motherboard upgrade because I found a couple more posts that people said the 260/280 drivers were THE best drivers for 9800gx2. Here is where it gets messy. What I learned is drivers that are NOT Nvidia supported or Windows certified for your video card. You will read over and over on how people will take a driver for a newer card and use it with a modified INF file. I dont' understand it all and you try this at your own risk but it was all mainly done by Laptop people who had to battle the OEM version of their graphics driver and wanted to play games on the laptop. Again go to Nvidia forums and ask your own questions and get your own facts. In my RAGE I was only focused on the 9800gx2 and my system.</p><p>I am using the 177.39 driver which is for the 260/280 cards. I had read this was the best and 177.40 and 177.41 had a few issues. They even have a 175.80 driver and only recommend the 175.16 and screwed up and had to pull the 175.19. I didn't get to testing other drivers since I have played 8 straight hours with no issues. I am going to play more this week and post if I go backwards and my stutter is back. I just logged in and ran by a bunch a people with flaming mounts(My old stutter nightmare) and had no issues, sily smooth which is most important to me. If this keeps working I plan to try extreme or the one below and see how it works. Why does this work: Read the forums. Basically my understanding is that they do some fixes for a certain type of card, put it into certain drivers and only test it for those cards, so they list only those cards when in fact those drivers will work for most cards and some of the newer drivers for newer cards with have the latest fixes. Got to rush those fixes to the $500 video cards you know.... lol.</p><p>Where they say to go, below has every driver that came out and some that are beta or have not been released. Use at your own risk, but it helped me. There could be drivers that are WAY better for my card then I am using right now but with no stutter and no memory leak I have ZERO energy to keep uninstalling(DO DRIVER CLEANER!) a driver and trying new ones. I just want to play problem free for a few days..... so feel free to learn more.</p><p><a href="http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?s=6b3c9b348e59cff45c3ac550416958da&showforum=88" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum...da&showforum=88</a></p><p>Nvidia Forums - I found general hardware and drivers area the most useful.</p><p> <a href="http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s=6a0112bad0edf908ac8045228dbdc438&showforum=24" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?...38&showforum=24</a></p><p>FPS - My FPS in East Freeport / Kunark right now ranges from 25-40. Low areas. I notice Zero lag even in group battles and it never slows down. I have not tried Taren's grasp or GF but I couldn't even run around Freeport with out lag/stutter that was almost unplayble at times so I am happy for now. If I kick to Full screen my FPS goes up. I bet if I lowered the texture, particles, lighting etc.... I could probably get my FPS up but I am not going to get caught up with it as long as I don't have stuttering or it jerking slowly when running in certain zones. </p><p>Driver cleaning - Do it. I read over and over how you should do this, and I didn't belive them. Read the forum on how to install video drivers, there is a few in here where you download the FREE program that cleans up your old video drivers. The first time I put 177.39 onto my machine it played well but memory leak was still there. Slowly it kept going up in RAM usage. I was about to go to 177.40 and then I said, screw it I will try there clean deal. Did it, reinstalled 177.39 and I have not looked back since yesterday morning. </p><p>Summary</p><p>I am = on 177.39 with my 9800gx2 and running good so far. 8 hours and counting.</p><p>Friend #1 = Same system except 3.0mhz processor(Maybe motherboard is different, didn't check yet) with 9800gx2 didn't touch one thing since he got it and is on 175.16. (Current recommended driver by Nvidia for 9800gx2) Has stutter plans to try 177.39. He is playble and played all 8 hours in group yesterday but has a noticed stutter. Doesn't look like he has memory leak since he came back to town and was decent. I would come back to town and stutter would be unplayble.</p><p>Friend #2 = Same machine as me but has Alienware with Vista SP1 with 9800gx2. Locked up 3 times over 8 hours. No idea on drivers or what but wanted to mention it. He plays one from the top of graphics with no issues except the 3 lock ups. So maybe the 9800gx2 runs better on Vista with SP1 for a while and has a leak too... No idea. Friend plans to start looking at why he locks up.</p><p>SOE - I apoligize for blaming the engine and the game when it turns out a driver fixed my issues. Still the game engine needs an update as you can see from all the people who point out shadows runs on the CPU, only uses one core etc.... What is needed is some leadership. Somebody has to get these 75 page forum posts into the right hands.(Maybe they are, then sticky at the top we are working on X, X and X.) More importantly communicate better with the community, or maybe your to busy but somebody needs to lock themselves in a room and look at the whole organization from top to bottom. Outdated/old video cards, that are getting older and older, are the only cards supported and your trying to increase subscriptions? I like the new change to forum but when you have a problem that is 70 pages and some solutions are buried nobody has time to dig through those... Once I search on a topic I cannot sort by date. So I get fixes for memory leaks 1/2 a decade ago. SOE invest some money in your tech support and give your tech support people some resources/money, and keep up with new hardware at least within 6 months. The 9800gx2 has been out for over a 1/2 a year and you don't support it? Cards you have as supported I cannot even buy anymore since they got rid of the 8800 ultra and other cards. 9800gx2 and the 260/280 are the latest. People have to upgrade PCs. AT LEAST give us an update: Our plan at SOE is that we will support X card and move to Direct X10 support in X months with X expansion etc.... Some of these people who are frustrated and quiting might not quit if they knew at least their new PC would be supported in X amount of time. Live with the stutter and on balanced or below, knowing EQ2 has a plan. Tell us the Engine is getting worked, on, anything. I cannot believe the CEO Smedley business plan was to give 60 free days to get all these people to come back only to have them watch the game perform bad with newer hardware..... Someone needs to invest in resources, raises, staff or something on hardware support otherwise all your marketing efforts are going to be for not. Such a great game, and all these new things/features only to not grow because anybody who bought a PC this year or going forward could run into huge headaches.</p><p>[Hop off soapbox.] </p><p>Hope this helps someone. This is what I observed and what I tried. I am not a tech guru or write code all day long like some people in these forums so make sure you do your own reasearch and listen to them. Good luck. </p><p>Jaraxale 71 Brigand Oasis</p><p>Mysttx 80 Illusionist Oasis</p>