Performance on Elite Top End Hardware Pathetic

[alevi]

<p>Hello all, been playing EQ2 for a few years now. I had recently upgraded my home pc to what most would call a dream machine. After the upgrade I have to say I am disappointed with the game to say the least. Lets start by telling you about the machine in question.</p><p> intel Core 2 Extreme clocked at 3.8 GHZ Q9770 (Is there anything better?)</p><p>ASUS P5KC</p><p>16 GB DDR3 1333mhz Corsair XMS3 (Most people dream of having this, cost me over 600$)</p><p>Nvidia BFG geforce 280 1GB OCX (highest clocked graphics board offered for gaming to my knowledge)</p><p>WD RAPTOR 500gb 10,000 RPM 32MB cache (awsome hard drive, said to be the fastest on the market)</p><p>Sound Blaster X-FI Sound Board (Mid Ranged Board, was purchased for DJing but is classed as a gaming board)</p><p>Windows Vista 64Bit </p><p>With just those major specs out of the way, and running on the balanced settings in game, how is it possible that the game runs a mere 10 fps faster than my older more dated system?</p><p>here is my old system specs to contrast:</p><p>Intel core 2 duo e6750 @ 2.66ghz</p><p>ASUS P5KC</p><p>2 GB DDR2 667 Kingston Value Ram</p><p>ATI X1950 Pro 256MB (genuine ati product)</p><p>Seagate 160GB 16MB Cache 7200RPM</p><p>Windows Vista 32 Bit</p><p>Quite a difference? I thought so, about 1500$ different atleast.</p><p>Now with all that taken into consideration, how is it possible that this game still runs like a dog? </p><p>Any advice?</p>

[Ortega]

Congratulations on your new rig! <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> The specs are amazing!Unfortunately, from what I understand, it doesn't look that much different to EQ2 than your old system <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />The problem is, EQ2 was coded several years ago before these new technologies existed.  It wasn't coded to take advantage of multiple cores or super-high end video cards.You have a killer quad-core cpu, but EQ2 only sees ONE 3.8 GHz core.  That's still quite a bit faster than 2.6 GHz, and that's probably where your extra 10 fps comes from.You have probably THE top of the line video card, but EQ2 was coded when video cards were far less advanced.  Back then, the video card rendered the polygons, but if you wanted "eye-candy" like shaders, particles or shadows, they usually had to be CPU rendered.  Consequently, most of the "eye-candy" rendering for EQ2 (shadows, particles, etc.) is done by the CPU, not the video card.  Your x1950 was probably plenty sufficient as far as EQ2 is concerned, because the game mostly just uses it to render the objects and apply the textures.Your RAM, hard drive and everything else are great, but they will only help you to a point.CPU GHz is numero uno in this game.  Nothing else comes close.  For the best performance, all you would need to do is take your old rig and add an 8 GHz single-core CPU.  Unfortunately, such a thing does not exist <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Of course, you're wondering why the devs don't rewrite the code to take advantage of these new technologies?  I can't say for sure, but from what I understand, it would be a huge undertaking.  They would have to rewrite huge chunks of the game and it would take lots of time and money.  Not only that, but the new code would probably introduce tons of NEW bugs and compatability issues for them to deal with.Anyway, I'm sorry you're not getting the performance gain for EQ2 that you paid for <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I hope that you also play some of the newer games that are able to take advantage of your new system.Josh

[TSR-TrevorG]

Josh has good information on this for sure.

[gundamit]

Just curious about the resolution you're running at the average FPS you're seeing.

[alevi]

<cite>Ortega wrote:</cite><blockquote>Congratulations on your new rig! <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> The specs are amazing!Unfortunately, from what I understand, it doesn't look that much different to EQ2 than your old system <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />The problem is, EQ2 was coded several years ago before these new technologies existed.  It wasn't coded to take advantage of multiple cores or super-high end video cards.You have a killer quad-core cpu, but EQ2 only sees ONE 3.8 GHz core.  That's still quite a bit faster than 2.6 GHz, and that's probably where your extra 10 fps comes from.You have probably THE top of the line video card, but EQ2 was coded when video cards were far less advanced.  Back then, the video card rendered the polygons, but if you wanted "eye-candy" like shaders, particles or shadows, they usually had to be CPU rendered.  Consequently, most of the "eye-candy" rendering for EQ2 (shadows, particles, etc.) is done by the CPU, not the video card.  Your x1950 was probably plenty sufficient as far as EQ2 is concerned, because the game mostly just uses it to render the objects and apply the textures.Your RAM, hard drive and everything else are great, but they will only help you to a point.CPU GHz is numero uno in this game.  Nothing else comes close.  For the best performance, all you would need to do is take your old rig and add an 8 GHz single-core CPU.  Unfortunately, such a thing does not exist <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Of course, you're wondering why the devs don't rewrite the code to take advantage of these new technologies?  I can't say for sure, but from what I understand, it would be a huge undertaking.  They would have to rewrite huge chunks of the game and it would take lots of time and money.  Not only that, but the new code would probably introduce tons of NEW bugs and compatability issues for them to deal with.Anyway, I'm sorry you're not getting the performance gain for EQ2 that you paid for <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I hope that you also play some of the newer games that are able to take advantage of your new system.Josh</blockquote><p>Thank you for the response, I had a feeling that was the case. I had hoped that having my cpu higher than before would pan out the performance boost i wanted but it seems even 3.8ghz is not enough to run the game the way i had wanted. On a positive note, after tweaking with my BIOS i was able to get a much nicer overclock on my cpu (at 4ghz stable) The game is working better than before, and I have now turned it up to Highest Quality with the exception of shadows and some particles (set at High only)</p><p>The game still hovers in the 30-60 fps range (im running at a lower resolution 1280x1024) Hopefully the game is recoded at some point, so we can enjoy our raids without having to lower settings.</p>

[Laedarr]

<p>Just out of curiosity...What type of rig would be required to run at the highest settings with particles and shaders all turned up to the fullest capacity?  </p><p>If you were to run this game with everything on your settings cranked up to 100%, what type of rig would you need?</p>

[vochore]

<cite>Laedarr wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Just out of curiosity...What type of rig would be required to run at the highest settings with particles and shaders all turned up to the fullest capacity?  </p><p>If you were to run this game with everything on your settings cranked up to 100%, what type of rig would you need?</p></blockquote>i dodnt think such a rig existes tho you can get close.my rig runs with all setting to max including shadows at med settings and i can hold between 30 to 60 fps depending on the zone..

[Kior]

<cite>Laedarr wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Just out of curiosity...What type of rig would be required to run at the highest settings with particles and shaders all turned up to the fullest capacity?  </p><p>If you were to run this game with everything on your settings cranked up to 100%, what type of rig would you need?</p></blockquote>Best CPu you can use for EQ2 currently, would an intel E8600, that was overclocked to 4.5ghz+ 4gb ram, and a current gen graphics card, nvidia gtx or ati hd48x card.overclocked dual cores are about the only cpu's that EQ2 will close to fully use

[Sebastien]

Myself I am returning to EQ2 with a substantially better rig than what I had my last time playing.  (It is still nowhere near OP's dream rig but it is very solid.)  I can also confirm that EQ2's engine just doesn't scale much at all.  I'm getting only slightly better performance than I had the first or second times I played, which is shocking given how much worse my hardware was at launch.

[dskeiez88]

# OS: Win XP home# RAM: 4GB# CPU: Intel pent D 3.0 mhz# Video Card: Geforce GTX260 896MB# 19" monitor 1440x900<p>just installed the vid card today and tried running @ High Quality and getting 9-22 fps in greater fae. any tips on how to improve my performance??</p>

[bluefish]

<cite>alevinn wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Hello all, been playing EQ2 for a few years now. I had recently upgraded my home pc to what most would call a dream machine. After the upgrade I have to say I am disappointed with the game to say the least. Lets start by telling you about the machine in question.</p><p> intel Core 2 Extreme clocked at 3.8 GHZ Q9770 (Is there anything better?)</p><p>ASUS P5KC</p><p>16 GB DDR3 1333mhz Corsair XMS3 (Most people dream of having this, cost me over 600$)</p><p>Nvidia BFG geforce 280 1GB OCX (highest clocked graphics board offered for gaming to my knowledge)</p><p>WD RAPTOR 500gb 10,000 RPM 32MB cache (awsome hard drive, said to be the fastest on the market)</p><p>Sound Blaster X-FI Sound Board (Mid Ranged Board, was purchased for DJing but is classed as a gaming board)</p><p>Windows Vista 64Bit </p><p>With just those major specs out of the way, and running on the balanced settings in game, how is it possible that the game runs a mere 10 fps faster than my older more dated system?</p><p>here is my old system specs to contrast:</p><p>Intel core 2 duo e6750 @ 2.66ghz</p><p>ASUS P5KC</p><p>2 GB DDR2 667 Kingston Value Ram</p><p>ATI X1950 Pro 256MB (genuine ati product)</p><p>Seagate 160GB 16MB Cache 7200RPM</p><p>Windows Vista 32 Bit</p><p>Quite a difference? I thought so, about 1500$ different atleast.</p><p>Now with all that taken into consideration, how is it possible that this game still runs like a dog? </p><p>Any advice?</p></blockquote>  this guy is flat out FULL OF IT! he does not own this system and enver will .. why ?number 1 - that motherboard supports a MAX of 8 Gigs of ram of DDR2 and only 4 gig MAX of ddr3 memory                   it has 2 dimm slots for ddr3 memory and 4 dimm slots for ddr2 number 2 -  western digital does NOT make a 500 GB raptor drive .. the newest is the velociraptor at 300 GBHe didnt buy this system .. he just wishes he could buddy if you are going to lie about stuff you should do a little more research to at least make it believable