Performance hasn't improved much in 4 years. I came back but may not stay

[Master of Puppets]

<p>I quit eq2 a few weeks after release due to my rig at the time choking on the eye candy.  My frame rate was horrible no matter what setting I tweaked (I feel this is the reason why many people </p><p>eventually left).  When I read in an online forum recently that sony is offering a month (or is it 2 month) free trial for previous subscribers I couldn't refuse it.  Immediately I got out my dusty </p><p>eq2 retail box, reinstalled the game, downloaded all patches and waited with excitement.  Eq2 will perform much better on my new rig, I thought to myself.  Well my rig did handle the game </p><p>better than my old rig....but not by much.  </p><p>I have a 2.6 dual core, 4 gigs of ram and two 9600GTS cards in SLI with 512 megs of memory.  Looking at the retail box the recommended requirements are " 2 ghz or greater, 1 gig of ram and </p><p>128 megs of video memory".  Now I understand the recommended requirements are not an absolute and doesn't mean those requirements will run the game maxed but shouldn't my new rig </p><p>handle eq2 alot better?  I'm usually in high mode since performance in very high and extremely high is not acceptable.  Like four years ago, shadows still give me a horrible frame rate.  Raids </p><p>must be a huge lag fest.  A dx10 mmorpg I currently play with everything maxed performs far better for me than dx9 eq2 with high settings mode.  I'd rather play a game without much eye candy </p><p>that gives me great fps than a game that has uber shiny graphics and gives me horrible fps or if I need to dumb down settings too much to force a better frame rate.  Eq2 isn't optimized for dual </p><p>core processors or SLI and thats ok but geez, shouldn't this four year old game run better on my rig?  Overall I like eq2 alot but the performance will probably make me quit again.               </p>

[Morbiusv1]

<p>From what I read this is because SOE planned that computer processors would be in the 5ghz + range now and not in the dual core systems we have now. The game puts a lot of its rendering on the cpu and not the gpu. </p><p>I have a Core 2 Duo 3ghz, 2gigs DDR3 (yes 3) ram, SLI 8800GTS (G93) OC 512 DDR3 and Vista. I have to drop the settings to Extreme Performance if I want to do anything in Nariak. Otherwise I crash with an "Out of Memory" error. However outside I do fine at High and I can even do Very High if I don't mind the seldom frame drop. </p><p>I doubt this will ever be fixed. They would proably rather just make a new game then try and re-work the current engine.</p><p>Over the years reading this forum I've gotten the impression that SOE has a "If you don't like it leave" attitude. When anyone complains about performance or the look of the game they get shot down if even replied at all.</p>

[Dreyco]

Have you enabled your Reuse Vertex Buffers settings?How much have you tweaked?Yes, the game doesn't run as good as it could on Dual Core processors, but with 2.6 in each core, it should run perfectly fine on a 9600 GTS.  Enable the Reuse Vertex Buffers setting, and i'd strongly recommend that you tweak more.  What I do to build a really good looking, yet really awesomely running performance profile is start in HIGH performance and turn stuff up.  Lots of stuff.  And what's funny is that the more I turn it up from that profile, it doesn't really chug my system that much.  Granted, I can run Extreme Quality at a somewhat Decent frame rate, but I like getting a little more FPS than that.People can't expect a four year old engine to run like a 2 month old engine.  Or even a year old engine.  It just doesn't work that way.  But if you tweak, you'll get some awesome quality with great performance.Also, try turning on Anti Aliasing and AFiltering in your graphics card settings.  Makes a world of a difference.

[rosscoliosis]

Wouldn't turning on AA and A filtering just further decrease his performance?

[Dreyco]

With that card? Not really noticeably.  I have Anti Aliasing turned onto 4x and I don't lose many frames, or stutter noticeably, and i'm only running a 7900 GTX.The reason I recommend it is that, once again, if he tweaks his options to get a good amount of quality for a good amount of frames? He can turn on Anti Aliasing and get even MORE quality without losing much in terms of performance either.What is really strange about EQ2's options is that while Extreme Quality looks really good, you can achieve something that looks almost as good for not nearly the performance hit if you just play with your options.

[Armawk]

<p>2 things.</p><p>I cannot imagine why that setup wouldnt run very acceptably in very high. It should, something is wrong. maybe sli related, as the game doesnt undertsand sli at all does it?</p><p>not sorelated to eq2 as the game doesnt gain from quad cores and such, but I cant really understand twin 9600 sli cards in a machine with a dual core 2.6.. seems oddly graphics card heavy in comparison to the processor?</p>

[Master of Puppets]

<p>Eq2 isn't optimized for SLI but it can be used in alternate frame rendering mode 2 which is designed for games that aren't SLI optimized.  The frame rate seems to increase a bit when I use that </p><p>mode.  Heres a warning:  Don't buy into the SLI hype, I did and regret it.  For the amount of money you put into two video cards (and they must have the same amount of memory and use the </p><p>same chipset) the performance increase is minimal.  Its not worth it.  Oh...nvidia makes all SLI drivers for games.  The game developer or publisher doesn't, the responsibility lies with nvidia so if </p><p>they don't make a SLI driver for a game you enjoy you're out of luck.  However, there is a long list of games included with each each driver release so your favorite game is probably on that list.</p><p>I did find a problem I hadn't noticed before that has improved my game performance.  I'm using vista 64 bit and vista doesn't use EAX sound which is hardware based.  Microsoft decided to make </p><p>vista use sound in a different way than previous generations of windows for whatever reason.  Vista users can download an application from creativelabs called creative alchemy that allows </p><p>older games to use EAX through vista.  What I was unaware of is that EAX was enabled in the control panel of my sound card AND the alchemy application.  This apparently caused a conflict </p><p>of sorts.  I disabled EAX through my card and allowed the alchemy EAX to continue supporting eq2.  How this fix affected shadows in game I have no idea but eq2 does perform noticeably better </p><p>even with lots of shadows in high mode.  Is it 60 fps all the time?  No, but for now I'm somewhat satisfied.  If sony will ever solve the disappearing shadows bug (isn't 4 years enough time to fix one bug?) I'll </p><p>have little left to complain about.   <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src=" width="15" height="15" />  </p>

[Deathma]

<p>I have AA at 16 and AF at 16; and it runs fine on my PC </p><p>I have it set to Extreme and boosted some of the options after setting it to Extreme*yes i have all shadows off but toon shadows*</p><p>I have 4 gigs of DDR3, 8800 GTX that is OC, a duel core OC to 3.5 GHz and duel Raptor 74G in Raid 0.</p><p>To stop it from crashing in Neriak and  when flying up to TG I did the /3GB switch.</p>