Very Poor Performance

[Blight]

I used to play EQ2 when it first came out, and then again about 6 months ago. Back then, i had an older computer and could run the game at high/very high quality no problems at nice frame rates. I also built my GF at the time a computer and it had a better P4 processor and an nvidia 7600GS and was able to run the game on extreme quality very smoothly.<u><b>The Rig then:</b></u>Processor: Intel P4 @ 3.0GHz (512kb cache)RAM: 2GB DDR RAM 400MHzGPU: ATI x800GTO - 256MB cardOS: Windows XP SP2Ran the game at 1280x800 resolution<u><b>The Rig Now:</b></u>MB: EVGA 780iProcessor: Intel core 2 duo e6750 @ 3.0GHzRAM: 4GB DDR2 @ 1066MHzGPU: 2x nvidia 8800GT cards in SLiOS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bitRunning the game at 1680x1050 resolution<u><b>The Problem:</b></u>Well, here I am on my new computer wanting to play again, however...the performance is unbelievably bad. I'm getting on average, about 17 FPS. If i try and move, it drops...unless im staring at a wall i'll get about 30 FPS. I've turned off all shadows...had no effect. I've turned down the textures, no effect. The only things that truly made a difference was turning off flora and turning down the complex shader distance to 0. And even then, i still get some hickups, it's not smooth. And there should be no reason this game shouldn't run beautifully on extreme quality...or even very high or high quality for that matter.I was using 175.19 video drivers, and was getting twitchy performance in other games like CoD4 and some crashes it seemed, so i searched for some better drivers, thinking maybe this can be it. I downloaded 175.30 beta drivers, which actually improved performance in other games, but made no difference in EQ2. I've tried the game with SLi disabled, and it made 0 difference in performance. I also realize that EQ2 is a more CPU intensive game, but there is no way that my processor is holding me back when i can play more CPU intensive games such as Crysis at higher settings and get higher FPS. Plus, i could run the game on my older computer MUCH better. I'm completely stumped on this one. If anyone has a similar problem or perhaps has heard about this problem somewhere else and knows a remedy, please speak up.Also...my frames don't drop until the character actually loads The character creation is incredibly smooth on extreme quality netting about 110FPS on average.

[Cassea]

<cite>Blighter@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>I used to play EQ2 when it first came out, and then again about 6 months ago. Back then, i had an older computer and could run the game at high/very high quality no problems at nice frame rates. I also built my GF at the time a computer and it had a better P4 processor and an nvidia 7600GS and was able to run the game on extreme quality very smoothly.<u><b>The Rig then:</b></u>Processor: Intel P4 @ 3.0GHz (512kb cache)RAM: 2GB DDR RAM 400MHzGPU: ATI x800GTO - 256MB cardOS: Windows XP SP2Ran the game at 1280x800 resolution<u><b>The Rig Now:</b></u>MB: EVGA 780iProcessor: Intel core 2 duo e6750 @ 3.0GHzRAM: 4GB DDR2 @ 1066MHzGPU: 2x nvidia 8800GT cards in SLiOS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bitRunning the game at 1680x1050 resolution<u><b>The Problem:</b></u>Well, here I am on my new computer wanting to play again, however...the performance is unbelievably bad. I'm getting on average, about 17 FPS. If i try and move, it drops...unless im staring at a wall i'll get about 30 FPS. I've turned off all shadows...had no effect. I've turned down the textures, no effect. The only things that truly made a difference was turning off flora and turning down the complex shader distance to 0. And even then, i still get some hickups, it's not smooth. And there should be no reason this game shouldn't run beautifully on extreme quality...or even very high or high quality for that matter.I was using 175.19 video drivers, and was getting twitchy performance in other games like CoD4 and some crashes it seemed, so i searched for some better drivers, thinking maybe this can be it. I downloaded 175.30 beta drivers, which actually improved performance in other games, but made no difference in EQ2. I've tried the game with SLi disabled, and it made 0 difference in performance. I also realize that EQ2 is a more CPU intensive game, but there is no way that my processor is holding me back when i can play more CPU intensive games such as Crysis at higher settings and get higher FPS. Plus, i could run the game on my older computer MUCH better. I'm completely stumped on this one. If anyone has a similar problem or perhaps has heard about this problem somewhere else and knows a remedy, please speak up.Also...my frames don't drop until the character actually loads The character creation is incredibly smooth on extreme quality netting about 110FPS on average.</blockquote>I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it's the SLI and/or the higher resolution.Moving from 1280x800 to 1650x1080 means that each would need to process:1280x800 at 30fps = 30.7m1650x1080 at 30fps = 53.5mYou are asking to process almost double what you did before and since EQ2 is so dependant on your CPU this chokes your FPS. Add to the fact that Vista is about 10% slower than XP and I think we found the answer.What FPS do you get when you drop to 1280x800?-JBP.S. I have read that there were issues with SLI and many games under Vista. Since I do not run an SLI config I cannot comment on this.

[Blight]

My FPS changed absolutely none when changing resolutions all the way down to 1280x800.

[Blight]

Also, as for other games...I've noticed 0 performance hits using Vista. I'm running SP1 with other hot fixes. I've also had no problems with any other games, new or old. I've played Lineage 2, STALKER, Devil May Cry 4, Arma, Crysis, CoD4, Battlefield 2, Starcraft (talk about old) and i could go on, but I haven't experienced any problems in any of these games with performance or jumpyness. As for the resolution, i believe the GPU becomes more important at higher resolutions and requires more video ram. I've got 1GB of it in SLi mode, and don't see an issue there. Well beyond that of the last video card I was using. However, this doesn't matter anyway, as I've said there was no increase in performance when switching down my resolution.

[Llach]

<cite>Blighter@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>Also, as for other games...I've noticed 0 performance hits using Vista. I'm running SP1 with other hot fixes. I've also had no problems with any other games, new or old. I've played Lineage 2, STALKER, Devil May Cry 4, Arma, Crysis, CoD4, Battlefield 2, Starcraft (talk about old) and i could go on, but I haven't experienced any problems in any of these games with performance or jumpyness. As for the resolution, i believe the GPU becomes more important at higher resolutions and requires more video ram. I've got 1GB of it in SLi mode, and don't see an issue there. Well beyond that of the last video card I was using. However, this doesn't matter anyway, as I've said there was no increase in performance when switching down my resolution. </blockquote><p>You could have 10gig of videa ram and it won't make a blind bit of difference mate.  SoE decided that people did not design this game with newer hardware in mind (regardless of what they say).  All shadows, particle effects are seemingly handled by the cpu, and only one core at that.</p><p>Some tips that "may" help:</p><p>Lose the grassLose the shadowsRemove Sli when playing this game (under profiles in your nv control panel (I think)).Drop Specular Lighting down to 1-3 sources.</p><p>Report back and let us know if that helped.</p><p>(ps to Cassea) Vista is at most 2-5% slower than XP if you have a slight clue on how to configure it (yes I know you know how to do, just pointing out the obvious).  90% of the crap you read is purely down to two things: ignorance and lack of knowledge and hardware companies producing poor drivers.  A lot like XP was at the beginning.</p>

[Cassea]

I know Vista is only slightly slower (esp the 64-bit version) than XP in games and this depends on the game. Games designed for Vista can actually be faster. The reason I stick with the 10% is that it covers the worst case in which the person does not know how to tweak Vista and/or has some parts of their system that is not100% Vista compatable.I love Vista and have used it since day 1 and those who are unbiased (and not just parrots who either repeat what they have heard or either used or read reviews about Vista only a few months after release) know that Vista is a good OS that was marketed by Microsoft to people who should never have been running it... namely systems that were not up to the "real" specs and not those BS specs MS used to try and get more people to buy Vista.If moving the resolution down has no effect on fps then it most likely is some compatability issue with the drivers. I'm not a fan of SLI at all as I feel that spedning double to get maybe 25-40% more fps does not make sence when you could have just spent more and gotten a faster single video card.The only time SLI, IMHO, makes sence is if you are rich and care not about value and want to run and some insane resolution. The fastest single video cards will get you 60fps (well in games that use the vidoe card fully LOL) and once you get to 60fps on an LCD it no longer matters if you are 60fps or 600fps as all an LCD can display is 60fps anyway.I'm not knocking people who have $$$ and only want the best... just explaining why SLI costs a ton of $$$ and you pay a pretty penny for a few extra fps.I have read a number of posts about issues with many games, SLI and Vista. I'm almost positive it was issues with Nvidia drivers and while I think many issues were worked out, some may remain.As far as video ram... 1gig is too much and can actually be slower than 512meg. You only need "enough" video ram to hold your textures and framebuffers and more VRAM can actually be slower because some companies use slower VRAM or clock down the memory some to help keep the extra VRAM timings.More is not "automatically" better and while I do not think 1gig is the issue here I can see you paid a nice sum of $$$ for this setup. If it runs everything fine in other games and just runs bad in EQ2 then we can assume it's the CPU bottleneck. What is your framerate out of cities?In cities?In areas with a ton of people (near the QH broker)?Does your fps drop and after a few seconds get better after textures are loaded into the Vram from your harddrive?When the fps is really bad is your hard drive being accessed?Just a few things to check.-JB

[Blight]

"The only time SLI, IMHO, makes sence is if you are rich and care not about value and want to run and some insane resolution. The fastest single video cards will get you 60fps (well in games that use the vidoe card fully LOL) and once you get to 60fps on an LCD it no longer matters if you are 60fps or 600fps as all an LCD can display is 60fps anyway.<p>I'm not knocking people who have $$$ and only want the best... just explaining why SLI costs a ton of $$$ and you pay a pretty penny for a few extra fps."</p>Actually...my SLi setup cost less than a single 8800GTX and is faster than a single 8800GTX. So i got more performance for less cash. And there's the fact of 60 fps may technically be the max that you can detect, but you're still going to see some drop in FPS. I cannot believe the CPU would be a bottleneck in this system. I can run Crysis on max settings at 40FPS at full resolution...pretty sure it's more CPU intensive than EQ2. Also...and this is the more important thing since EQ2 doesnt take advantage of multiple cores...<b>ran EQ2 before BETTER with an old school P4 at the SAME clock frequency with less L2 cache. Had it running at extreme quality with i believe it was another 3.0GHz P4 just higher cache and not overclocked just with a 7600GS instead...and it was very smooth anywhere, at anytime. </b>This is the part that just doesn't add up when someone says it's hardware or a CPU bottleneck. You guys seem to be completely ignoring this part of what im telling you.If EQ2's code has this big of a problem with newer hardware, they seriously need to figure something out. If there's a compatability issue with some other programs i run at the same time or some other driver incompatability then this needs to be figured out.Also..my CPU is at about 65% with EQ2 running fullscreen + background apps.Now onto the real issues that you should be focusing on...What is your framerate out of cities? 17-21FPSIn cities? 17-21FPSIn areas with a ton of people (near the QH broker)? i can be with no one around except mobs and it is 17-21FPS<p>Does your fps drop and after a few seconds get better after textures are loaded into the Vram from your harddrive? No, it's a constant 17-21FPS...when i move it drops..stare at a wall or in the sky, it goes up.</p><p>When the fps is really bad is your hard drive being accessed? It's not a when, the FPS is constant at 17-21FPS standing still. And no, the hard drive was not being accessed outside the game data.</p>

[Blight]

Sorry, forgot one.."If moving the resolution down has no effect on fps then it most likely is some compatability issue with the drivers. I'm not a fan of SLI at all as I feel that spedning double to get maybe 25-40% more fps does not make sence when you could have just spent more and gotten a faster single video card."Alrdy said I tried it with SLi completely disabled...no, there are no different drivers to use between SLi and non-sli...same drivers. And i alrdy hit on that last part there...got more performance for less cash with my SLi system.

[Blight]

And Aolish...Thank you for your response.Lose the grass: nets 5-10 FPS increase.Lose the shadows: No difference in performance.Remove Sli when playing this game (under profiles in your nv control panel (I think)). No difference in performance.Drop Specular Lighting down to 1-3 sources. : Makes no difference in performance.

[Vodr]

Just for giggles, try disabling the sound in EQ2 and report back.

[Blight]

I found some others with my exact problem. Seems to be related to 8800GT's in general, possibly some SLi and even some motherboard chipsets. And apparently there is no workaround yet. Guess I'll just have to leave EQ2 on the shelf.Btw, here's the thread i found... <a href="http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=254440" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=254440</a>I'm fairly convinced after my own testing and browsing...the game just has problems with some newer hardware (this goes far beyond the "EQ2 is CPU intensive" issue).If someone does have a similar setup and has the game running excellent and smooth...then please chime in and say what you did to get it that way. And by running smooth, you need to have it on extreme quality.Vodroc: lol...well i guess i could try that. I'll do that when i get home for the heck of it.

[Vodr]

<p>I run a similar setup actually, Vista 64 ultimate,  AMD 6000+ which is 2x 3 gig core, 4 gigs of ram,  MSI 8800 GS card and a 7900 GS card (Had dual 7900 GS's but they were overly hot and overheating) and I actually dual box on this PC with average framerate @ 55 fps.</p><p>On the 8000's series GPU's they added a reuse vertex buffer option to try to fix the performance on them.</p><p>I also wonder if you may have some apps that are addressing themselves to the primary core sort of gimping the usage you get from them, can try changing the afinity to core 1 and off of core 0 to see if that helps while the game is running.</p><p>Have you checked your BIOS version on the MB to see if it's due for a update?</p><p>One last thing you can try,  many use this for dual boxing.  There is a program called wineq2 which can clip the framerate to allow you some CPU breathing by clipping down the framerate (I know you want more FPS but it's worth a shot if all else fails).</p>

[Blight]

Now that's the type of response I've been looking for! I updated the BIOS on my MB a few months ago but i'll check again. I'll start tweaking with some of the things you said and see what i get.Appreciate the response!

[Blight]

Well, i got a little excited there...saw some notes on the newest BIOS update for me that related to my hardware. Tested the game...and it did improve performance a little bit...but not enough. The option to reuse vertex buffer didn't do anything for me.Changing the core the game runs on actually did improve performance by a little bit, about 2 FPS i think it was. All in all, couldn't run the game at playable rates unless i was playing at balanced, and that's just crazy.Ah well, thanks for the help.

[Vodr]

<p>Did you try to disable sound?  Also disable shadows as they are a massive and un-needed CPU hog which I know someone else suggested.  And the best of all did you defrag your hard drive so when it goes to load all the massive textures it can do so un-inhibited.</p><p>Also check for firmware relases for your video card the 8000's series nvidia cards have kind of been a wash with issues.  Give wineq2 a try as well.  And are you running full screen or in a window.</p><p>After those are washed through if you don't get the performance your looking for there is a post around here somewhere with how to post your directx diag info.</p><p>Oh and speaking of that did you ever directly download the directx 9c from microsoft,  yes I know Vista has DX10 built in but you can install and run DX9c and it makes games like this run better.</p>

[Alebringer]

Thanks a ton for the tips on flora, water and shadows. I made a rig in May 08 that handles Age of Conan at extreme quality settings just fine, but is brought to its knees by EQ2. Setting the game to Extreme Quality then disabling those three things made me get a fairly steady baseline of 30 fps, with jumps to 50-60 in less populated areas. Thanks again!Computer specs:Intel Q6600 processor4gb OCZ Reaper ramWindows XP8800 GTS 512 MB "Alpha Dog" edition by BFG

[Blight]

Glad it could help someone. Btw Vodroc: Disabling shadows or sound did nothing for my performance. There were no firmware updates that i could find. And yes, i had the latest Direct X (9 and 10).My solution was to just shelf EQ2 again...the performance problems are ridiculous with this hardware. I bought Vanguard, and it runs insanely smooth maxed out with 16x AA at ~60 FPS.Thanks though.