Wow! An engine upgrade!?

[Ilae]

I noticed since the last LU that my game is now running on both cores.. Ones loaded at about 90% and the other around 20%.. Game is using between 50-65% of my processor power..Intel core2duo E8400@4ghzThank you SoE!Now if the graphics engine could get an overhaul too, at least upgrade it to dx9 and skip the crap dx5/dx8 mix stuff.. Would be wonderful to be able to enable AA in this game as my 4870x2 doesn't drop any performance with max AA enabled in the resolution Im running(1680x1050)..Im at extreme quality, running 22 fps right now in KJ.. GPU activity 27% LOL, and thats just one GPU core.. 173% left unutilized.. :/ Funny how I can run Crysis at Very High settings with highly playable framerates, 30+ easily..Also seeing as the game now uses both cores of my CPU, but still fps drops to unacceptable levels without the game using more than around 60% of my processor and 1/8th of my graphics card, that tells me there is something seriously flawed with the whole engine design..I would like to hear that the engine is getting upgraded or Im not gonna bother with the next expansion because Im not keen on paying for 6 year old game tech when I just spent @1000 upgrading my rig..

[Nail]

EQ2 is DX9 , as far as a complete engine re-write / overhaul - its unlikely , that would be a lot of time and money (not saying it dosent need to be done , because it does)

[Cassea]

<cite>Nailuj wrote:</cite><blockquote>EQ2 is DX9 , as far as a complete engine re-write / overhaul - its unlikely , that would be a lot of time and money (not saying it dosent need to be done , because it does)</blockquote>Just because it requires DX9 does not mean it uses DX9 code.My best guess is that EQ2 is mix of DX7 and DX8. This is why people with old DX7/8 video cards (many laptops) can even run the game. Perhaps as they upgrade the video engine they will move things to DX9.Right now the point is moot because most of the advanced stuff is done on our CPU's so it matters little if the game needs DX7,8,9 or even 10 <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Wingrider01]

<cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nailuj wrote:</cite><blockquote>EQ2 is DX9 , as far as a complete engine re-write / overhaul - its unlikely , that would be a lot of time and money (not saying it dosent need to be done , because it does)</blockquote>Just because it requires DX9 does not mean it uses DX9 code.My best guess is that EQ2 is mix of DX7 and DX8. This is why people with old DX7/8 video cards (many laptops) can even run the game. Perhaps as they upgrade the video engine they will move things to DX9.Right now the point is moot because most of the advanced stuff is done on our CPU's so it matters little if the game needs DX7,8,9 or even 10 <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote>Minimum system requirements is a Directx 9 capable card and directX 9.0C. There where numerous trouble posts made a long time ago and the basic statement was upgrade to these

[TSR-TrevorG]

My DX8 card ran like poodoo...

[Laedarr]

<p>Is it really that much of a hassle to admit wether or not SOE plans on redisigning or upgrading the engine to utilize fully both 2 or more processor cores?  At least it would alleviate a lot of issues.  If not then Hardcore gamers can go ahead and rebuild a nice pent 4 with a single 4 gig proc, while casual gamers can still enjoy the game on their newer systems.  Personally, I can't imagine for the life of me why SOE would not go ahead and updgrade everything to current and future standards.  Yes, sure it will cost some money, but I hardly think that with millions of subscribers that it would barely touch the "overhead" department.   The fact is, if they updgrade their game engines to run effectively and efficiently with vista and duo or quad cores it will only increase their subscription base.  </p><p>I dont think there is a game that has the phenomenal graphics that EQ2 has when played at highest quality.  SOE has a huge history of disappointing their customer base in their online gaming community, yet we still stay with them or come back to them.  That shows a lot of loyalty to the games itself, so imagine what it would do to the subscriptions if they actually did the right thing.  /end rant i guess.</p>

[Nail]

<cite>Wingrider01 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nailuj wrote:</cite><blockquote>EQ2 is DX9 , as far as a complete engine re-write / overhaul - its unlikely , that would be a lot of time and money (not saying it dosent need to be done , because it does)</blockquote>Just because it requires DX9 does not mean it uses DX9 code.My best guess is that EQ2 is mix of DX7 and DX8. This is why people with old DX7/8 video cards (many laptops) can even run the game. Perhaps as they upgrade the video engine they will move things to DX9.Right now the point is moot because most of the advanced stuff is done on our CPU's so it matters little if the game needs DX7,8,9 or even 10 <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote>Minimum system requirements is a Directx 9 capable card and directX 9.0C. There where numerous trouble posts made a long time ago and the basic statement was upgrade to these</blockquote>EQ1 was using DX9 before EQ2 came out. If the game requires DX9 that means it was programmed to use certain features of DX9 - the video card is kida moot as a video cards dx version is simply the hardware extension to process certain software commands. Without those hardware extensions it is either done in software mode or may not work at all. Take an older computer and put only DX8 on it and try to run EQ or EQ2 , you will get an error message stating you need DX9 - the video card is not important in this factor. So sorry but EQ2 is DX9

[Cassea]

<cite>Nailuj wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Wingrider01 wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Nailuj wrote:</cite><blockquote>EQ2 is DX9 , as far as a complete engine re-write / overhaul - its unlikely , that would be a lot of time and money (not saying it dosent need to be done , because it does)</blockquote>Just because it requires DX9 does not mean it uses DX9 code.My best guess is that EQ2 is mix of DX7 and DX8. This is why people with old DX7/8 video cards (many laptops) can even run the game. Perhaps as they upgrade the video engine they will move things to DX9.Right now the point is moot because most of the advanced stuff is done on our CPU's so it matters little if the game needs DX7,8,9 or even 10 <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote>Minimum system requirements is a Directx 9 capable card and directX 9.0C. There where numerous trouble posts made a long time ago and the basic statement was upgrade to these</blockquote>EQ1 was using DX9 before EQ2 came out. If the game requires DX9 that means it was programmed to use certain features of DX9 - the video card is kida moot as a video cards dx version is simply the hardware extension to process certain software commands. Without those hardware extensions it is either done in software mode or may not work at all. Take an older computer and put only DX8 on it and try to run EQ or EQ2 , you will get an error message stating you need DX9 - the video card is not important in this factor. So sorry but EQ2 is DX9</blockquote>Ok a history lesson <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />EQ1 came out and required DX7. EQ1 has gotten numerous graphic "total" revamps.... EQ2 has remained the same from day 1 to now.Now onto DX requirements...DX is a set of graphic routines used to make games and come in two parts:Part 1 is DX itself and this is a part of windowsPart 2 is the driver from your video card companyNow video cards come in all shapes and sizes and the way they work is to perform certain video related tasks in hardware (fast) mode. Now not all video cards support all graphic fuctions in hardware so it works this way...In EQ2 (or any DX game) the game "asks" for a certain graphics function to be performs. This request is in the form of a DX command that then "asks" your video card driver if it knows how to do this function in hardware mode. If it reports back that it can, the instruction is done via your video card and it moves on to the next command.If your video card reports that it cannot perform this command (usually older cards) then DX will perform this command using software emulation mode (slow)Now a game can elect to skip emulation mode if doing so will be too slow.Now EQ2 requires DX9 because EQ2 uses DX9 "commands" but this does not mean that EQ2 requires a DX9 video card.Sometimes certain commands can be programmed to use older hardware funtions. Some DX9 commands can be done on DX8 cards, for example, but they will be slower.So EQ2 "requires" DX9 because it now uses the DX9 command set (which includes DX8 and DX7 of course) but many people can and do run EQ2 in DX8 video cards and some even on DX7 video cards.So what happens when you run EQ2 on a DX7 or DX8 video card? Well if EQ2 asks your vid card to do a DX9 command it will attempt to run the command in software "emulation" mode.... IE your CPU will do the command. This is often very very slow and is why older vid cards run EQ2 so slow unless you turn off the graphic features that either use DX9 commands or shut down enough video commands so that the game will run at a playable rate.So if you go to ATI or Nvidia's web page and look at some DX8 cards (the ATI 8500 or Nvidia GF3/4) you will find DX9 and even DX10 "compliant" drivers for these cards but these cards can never run DX9 or DX10 code in hardware because those functions did not exist when the cards were made.DX code does not only control video BTW, it also serves other functions such as sound, networking and control input. These are not always used in all games.SOE just hired a programmer to rewrite much of the video code to use our modern DX9/DX10 video "hardware" and once these new routines start to make their way into the game you will have alot of unhappy people... people who have below spec video cards will now cry foul because they will no longer be able to run the game.The same thing happened with EQ1 but SOE needs to either move forward to try and keep up or allow the game to whither on the vine and die.It's going on 2009 and all cards sold in the past year are DX10 cards... EQ2 does not even use DX9 very much if at all. How long should we be stuck using DX7 or DX8? How can EQ2 compete with games like Lotro, AoC or the other games which are now using DX9 100% or even DX10?Right now I can play EQ2 on an old DX7 laptop with 512meg of memory... I can do this because EQ2 does not "really" require DX8 or even DX9.Sorry for the long post and I'm sure many of you already knew much of what I just posted but I wanted to clarify that just because a game requires DX9 does not mean it actually uses DX9 code.

[Laedarr]

^^ I love when cass gets all technical lol thanks, good info

[Zenith]

<p>Dude I've been watching my cpu usuage and eq2 isn't using both cores... that 20% you see on core 2 is probably background OS and such running.</p><p>Considering proper dual core support would nearly revolutionize eq2's performance (since it's so horribly cpu bound) it's amazing they refuse to do it. Even if they just added multi-threading support for the heavy stuff (ui, shadows, etc). Either that or offload some stuff to the GPU like nearly every other 3d game know to man kind.</p><p>WoW did it, and in once patch dual core folks saw a huge performance increase. There's really no excuse why they won't. The engine is cpu bound, all new pc's ship with dual cores (and have been for over a year), the technology not only isn't going away but would severely improve eq2's performance... so what's the SoE responce? Not only Ignore it completly, but put in code to force eq2 to just one core.</p>

[Laedarr]

<cite>Alondnar@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Dude I've been watching my cpu usuage and eq2 isn't using both cores... that 20% you see on core 2 is probably background OS and such running.</p><p>Considering proper dual core support would nearly revolutionize eq2's performance (since it's so horribly cpu bound) it's amazing they refuse to do it. Even if they just added multi-threading support for the heavy stuff (ui, shadows, etc). Either that or offload some stuff to the GPU like nearly every other 3d game know to man kind.</p><p>WoW did it, and in once patch dual core folks saw a huge performance increase. There's really no excuse why they won't. The engine is cpu bound, all new pc's ship with dual cores (and have been for over a year), the technology not only isn't going away but would severely improve eq2's performance... so what's the SoE responce? Not only Ignore it completly, but put in code to force eq2 to just one core.</p></blockquote>I'm in absolute agreeance with you.  Why wont SOE fix this issue?  And why is it such a secret, that they cannot or will not respond to it?  SOE is making millions of dollars a year from the subscribers of EQ2 and EQ1 and EQOA, that I refuse to believe it's a cost issue.

[Brook]

<p>EQ2 can run on dual core but they choose not to because there are some bugs that allow exploiting certain timing features of the game. Because the game engine wasn't designed to use the features of dual core its kind of hard to fix that exploit.</p><p>That's my understanding of why we don't use dual core with EQ2, I read it somewhere a long time ago.</p>

[Zenith]

<p>The older Athlon x2's had a timing bug, which is fixed when you install the dual core optimizer. What they could of easily done is just require people to install it since it effects all games really. However in LU 24 they changed how dual cores and eq2 mix, and really made them not mix.</p><p>Some people actually get a bug that instead of 100% of one core, eq2 just runs at 50% of one core and 0% of the other. Again thanks to the changes from LU 24. They refuse to comment or look into it.</p>

[Cassea]

<cite>Laedarr wrote:</cite><blockquote>^^ I love when cass gets all technical lol thanks, good info</blockquote>LOLI try to spit out the things I have learned over the years. Most of the time it's correct, the rest of the time people correct me but in the end we all learn... including me <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Cassea]

EQ2 does not use multiple cores because it was not programed to do so... not bugs in one companies chipsets.Using multiple cores is not like turning on a light switch. The program needs to be set up to use multiple cores from the ground up. This is not going to happen with EQ2 at this late stage. Any game that suddenly "adds" multi-core support either was programed with multi-core support in mind as the game was made and just not finished, or they added a small "hack" to the game with some limited routines just to be able to "claim" they support multi-cores.It's a bit hard to do this these days because we're smart enough to be able to check what each core is doing <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Even if a game was made to support multiple cores this does not mean that all cores will be equally used. The first core will always be the most used and each additional core used less.Games are often very linear in nature. You need the data from one core before you can process the next instruction. It's a bit harder to process multiple streams of data at the same time because the output of one core often affects in input for the next instruction.To use multiple cores you need to have each core doing something that is non-related to what the other core is doing. This works fine when you start to program a game from the ground up but if you have a game that was programed for a single core and it's millions of lines of code... it's darn near impossible to go back and redo the entire game.The route SOE is taking in regard to leaving the game single core but offloading video tasks from the CPU back to our video cards is the correct one. If they do this right it will matter very little that the game only runs on a single core because most of the grunt work will be done on our video cards.The only thing that may matter are the poor souls who did not do their homework and exchanged faster "MHZ" single or 2x core CPU's for slower 3x or 4x cpu's.DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE YOU UPGRADE!!!Benchmarks are most usefull for selling you on upgrades and not increasing your performance <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Check this out when you get a chance...google cpu charts and look at the benchmarks for non-games... then look at the benchmarks for games. Games that "properly" (EQ2 is not currently one of them LOL) use your video card show very little fps difference between CPU's... at least anything your eye can notice.Once SOE fixes the video card problem EQ2 has and all this multi-core stuff will go away.... unless you have a junk video card <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Laedarr]

<cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote>Once SOE fixes the video card problem EQ2 has and all this multi-core stuff will go away.... unless you have a junk video card <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote><p>That is great to hear.  I didn't know SOE was working on making EQ2 more Video Card friendly.  Where can I find this info if you dont mind?</p>

[Cassea]

<cite>Laedarr wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote>Once SOE fixes the video card problem EQ2 has and all this multi-core stuff will go away.... unless you have a junk video card <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote><p>That is great to hear.  I didn't know SOE was working on making EQ2 more Video Card friendly.  Where can I find this info if you dont mind?08/24/2008 01:18:30 Subject: Re:Even WoW is planning on updating their graphic engine, why cant we get an upgrade?Rothgar</p></blockquote><p>According to Rothgar...</p><p>We are actively working on performance improvements in several different areas. I can't talking about them in detail, but we are working on them. The expansion is in no way taking us away from things like this. Ryan, our new "graphics guy" is not some myth, he's a real, live person. SMILEY</p><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=15&topic_id=427654" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=427654</a></p><blockquote></blockquote>

[asmiro]

<cite>Cassea wrote:</cite><blockquote>EQ2 does not use multiple cores because it was not programed to do so... not bugs in one companies chipsets.Using multiple cores is not like turning on a light switch. The program needs to be set up to use multiple cores from the ground up. This is not going to happen with EQ2 at this late stage. Any game that suddenly "adds" multi-core support either was programed with multi-core support in mind as the game was made and just not finished, or they added a small "hack" to the game with some limited routines just to be able to "claim" they support multi-cores.It's a bit hard to do this these days because we're smart enough to be able to check what each core is doing <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Even if a game was made to support multiple cores this does not mean that all cores will be equally used. The first core will always be the most used and each additional core used less.Games are often very linear in nature. You need the data from one core before you can process the next instruction. It's a bit harder to process multiple streams of data at the same time because the output of one core often affects in input for the next instruction.To use multiple cores you need to have each core doing something that is non-related to what the other core is doing. This works fine when you start to program a game from the ground up but if you have a game that was programed for a single core and it's millions of lines of code... it's darn near impossible to go back and redo the entire game.The route SOE is taking in regard to leaving the game single core but offloading video tasks from the CPU back to our video cards is the correct one. If they do this right it will matter very little that the game only runs on a single core because most of the grunt work will be done on our video cards.The only thing that may matter are the poor souls who did not do their homework and exchanged faster "MHZ" single or 2x core CPU's for slower 3x or 4x cpu's.DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE YOU UPGRADE!!!Benchmarks are most usefull for selling you on upgrades and not increasing your performance <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Check this out when you get a chance...google cpu charts and look at the benchmarks for non-games... then look at the benchmarks for games. Games that "properly" (EQ2 is not currently one of them LOL) use your video card show very little fps difference between CPU's... at least anything your eye can notice.Once SOE fixes the video card problem EQ2 has and all this multi-core stuff will go away.... unless you have a junk video card <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote><p>what cass said about it being "darn near impossible" to recode the game to use multiple cores is not *entirely* acturate. true, the game engine, as it sits right now, would really not be much more than a hack job to "claim" that they  suppor multi-core processors. HOWEVER, the game engine can be re-written from the ground up, as she says, to support multi-core CPUs, WHILE THE GAME IS STILL USING THE CURRENT ENGINE.</p><p>i would GLADLY pay for what one expansion is worth to skip one of the "expansions per year" that they put out, if only they concentrate one year on recoding the engine. the textures, geometry, quests, etc, really should not need any recoding, or not much, if any, so if they work on that rather than a bunch of small quests or zones like veksar in between the expansions, and *ONLY* concentrate on the engine upgrade that whole year, i think they could get it done, or done enough to be put on the test servers.</p><p>again, i would gladly pay an expansion's price to get the graphics upgrade.</p>

[Zenith]

I'll beleive it when I play it. It's been years, there's really no excuse at all why it's been this bad this long. Performance is one of the huge issues EQ2 never caught on, and they've been promising performance fixes since EoF beta.

[Ilae]

You are wrong.. I first noticed in my task manager that the game process was utilizing about 65% processor power(one core maxed is 50%).. I tested this by right clicking and unchecking one of the cores from being usable by the game and voila, process went to 50% and I lost about 10fps in the game..But its not perfect.. The game still runs ALOT slower than it should on high end modern computers, but once that new coder someone mentioned starts moving over shadows/lighting etc to GPU, perhaps my graphics card will start being used more than 20% with the game at the highest settings... LOL This seems to me to be just a temporary "fix", just to allow the games ubercpu pwnage run a little smoother.. I truly hope they will make some of the gfx run on gfx hardware soon...And I also read this from the upcoming GU release notes.. They just implemented multicore support a couple of weeks before announcing it.. ops? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><span style="color: #ff6600;">MULTICORE SUPPORT* The game automatically detects if you have more than one CPU.* EQII now runs better with more than one CPU.* There is an option to control whether the game uses multicore mode in the Options Window under Display -> Performance.* If you're running multiple clients on the same computer you may want to disable multicore mode.* Setting the multicore option has no effect on machines with one CPU.</span>

[TSR-DanielH]

<cite>Ilaean@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>You are wrong.. I first noticed in my task manager that the game process was utilizing about 65% processor power(one core maxed is 50%).. I tested this by right clicking and unchecking one of the cores from being usable by the game and voila, process went to 50% and I lost about 10fps in the game..But its not perfect.. The game still runs ALOT slower than it should on high end modern computers, but once that new coder someone mentioned starts moving over shadows/lighting etc to GPU, perhaps my graphics card will start being used more than 20% with the game at the highest settings... LOL This seems to me to be just a temporary "fix", just to allow the games ubercpu pwnage run a little smoother.. I truly hope they will make some of the gfx run on gfx hardware soon...And I also read this from the upcoming GU release notes.. They just implemented multicore support a couple of weeks before announcing it.. ops? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><span style="color: #ff6600;">MULTICORE SUPPORT* The game automatically detects if you have more than one CPU.* EQII now runs better with more than one CPU.* There is an option to control whether the game uses multicore mode in the Options Window under Display -> Performance.* If you're running multiple clients on the same computer you may want to disable multicore mode.* Setting the multicore option has no effect on machines with one CPU.</span></blockquote>I'd love to hear any information from people with dual core CPUs on the test server.  This is obviously still in testing so benchmarks and general impressions would be great.

[Aanwiel]

Wow as time flies by! When I first played this game I tested it with a 3 ghz cpu and learned that the video card matered little. The game back then was almost all about the cpu. Now I see they upgraded the engine some but it would be great if the engine could use more from the gfx accel.

[Intelleta]

<cite>Ilaean@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>Im at extreme quality, running 22 fps right now in KJ.. GPU activity 27% LOL, and thats just one GPU core.. 173% left unutilized.. :/ Funny how I can run Crysis at Very High settings with highly playable framerates, 30+ easily..</blockquote>I noticed that on a HD4870 1GB I was running that EQ2 would only push the temps to 60C (Idle at 53C), but when running ATiTool or FurMark I would hit 90C! EQ2 definately does not fully utilize new GFX cards.

[vochore]

<cite>Intelleta wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Ilaean@Splitpaw wrote</cite>I noticed that on a HD4870 1GB I was running that EQ2 would only push the temps to 60C (Idle at 53C), but when running ATiTool or FurMark I would hit 90C! EQ2 definately does not fully utilize new GFX cards.</blockquote>this has been known for a long time....i actualy posted on this fact some years ago when eq2 was only about a year old.....glad some one else finaly noticed this and said something about it.

[vochore]

<cite>TSR-DanielH wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Ilaean@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>You are wrong.. I first noticed in my task manager that the game process was utilizing about 65% processor power(one core maxed is 50%).. I tested this by right clicking and unchecking one of the cores from being usable by the game and voila, process went to 50% and I lost about 10fps in the game..But its not perfect.. The game still runs ALOT slower than it should on high end modern computers, but once that new coder someone mentioned starts moving over shadows/lighting etc to GPU, perhaps my graphics card will start being used more than 20% with the game at the highest settings... LOL This seems to me to be just a temporary "fix", just to allow the games ubercpu pwnage run a little smoother.. I truly hope they will make some of the gfx run on gfx hardware soon...And I also read this from the upcoming GU release notes.. They just implemented multicore support a couple of weeks before announcing it.. ops? <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><span style="color: #ff6600;">MULTICORE SUPPORT* The game automatically detects if you have more than one CPU.* EQII now runs better with more than one CPU.* There is an option to control whether the game uses multicore mode in the Options Window under Display -> Performance.* If you're running multiple clients on the same computer you may want to disable multicore mode.* Setting the multicore option has no effect on machines with one CPU.</span></blockquote>I'd love to hear any information from people with dual core CPUs on the test server.  This is obviously still in testing so benchmarks and general impressions would be great.</blockquote><p>this seems to be the thread to post this on now so here it is.</p><p>went into test for about 30 mins yesterday and saw a big differance in cpu usage.with rivatuner recording both core 0 now stays at aprox 30 to 40% usage and core 1  now stay close to maxed at 100%.</p><p>definatly a change but i still havnt seen any change in fps in the game...enabling enviromental shadows still brings the game down to a slideshow...will try and get an instance grp tonight and see how having 6 people and a bunch of particals going off works.</p>

[Deathspell]

I'm not that tech savvy, and I'm still running an old Pentium IV, but regarding to CPU speeds; I always read that EQ2 is heavily depending on the CPU speed.Is there a lot of difference  in performance between a Pentium IV 3.2 GHz Prescott and a new E8500 3.16 GHz?Despite the same amount of GHz, do the newer CPU's give better results/benefits with EQ2?

[Cassea]

Chips of different designs can process more or less instructions per MHZ.The P4 was designed for higher clockspeed but at the expense of being able to do less things per MHZ.This is why the AMD's would run slower but do the same work as the faster P4's and thus why the "+" ratings came into being.IEAMD 2500+ was not running at 2500mhz but the 2500+ rating meant that it could process "about" the same amount of instructions at a P4 2500mhz.Same goes with the newer chips. The P4 3200mhz and C2D 3200mhz may both run at the same speed but the C2D can process from 50-75% more instructions per MHZ.This is why AMD finds itself in the reverse situation with their chips. AMD's chips (and I own and love them for their excellent price vs performance ratio) do less instructions per MHZ (clock cycle) than the Intel C2D's which is why you need a faster MHZ AMD to equal a slower clocked C2D.Hope this helps.

[Jacquotte]

<cite>Intelleta wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Ilaean@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>Im at extreme quality, running 22 fps right now in KJ.. GPU activity 27% LOL, and thats just one GPU core.. 173% left unutilized.. :/ Funny how I can run Crysis at Very High settings with highly playable framerates, 30+ easily..</blockquote>I noticed that on a HD4870 1GB I was running that EQ2 would only push the temps to 60C (Idle at 53C), but when running ATiTool or FurMark I would hit 90C! EQ2 definately does not fully utilize new GFX cards.</blockquote><p>its a bug with Ati x2 cards</p><p>disable Crossfire and you'll see</p>