Massive lag with cpu shadows

[ElogostElundiel]

<p>I have just come back to the game to give it a go after about 2 years away and since then I have built a vastly better computor. My system specs are:</p><p>Os: Windows 7 ultimate 64bit</p><p>gpu: xfx gtx 260 black eddition</p><p>cpu: Intel core2 quad q9450 oc 3.1 GHz</p><p>ram: 4gb Ocz 1066mhz</p><p>my old pc I got back in about 2004 from dell and its specs were:</p><p>Os: windows xp 32bit</p><p>Gpu: nvidia geforce 6800 gt</p><p>Cpu: intel pentium 4 3.4 GHz</p><p>Ram: 1.5gb</p><p>I used to be able to run the game with better preformance with cpu shaddows turned on on my old pc but now that I have come back to the game with my new pc they lag me out like crazy. I have gpu shadows turned on outside and I get about 60 fps average, probably higher but I have Vsync turned on, but when they kick in inside I get about 15 fps and If I turn them on outside I go down to about 5-8 fps. I can't find a solution to it. Don't know if anyone can help. I have support for multiple processors turned on and all of the processors are allocated to it on its affinity.</p>

[Dikatin]

<p>What you describe isn't lag - lag is a problem in network communication which leads to characters jumping around in a most uncommon way. What you describe is just ... well, your computer just doesn't seem to be able to compute the single pictures to show fast enough.</p><p>GPU Shadows are only for the outside world, you will hardly see them within a building, except guild halls. So, what does "inside" mean for you? If "inside" is a guild hall, yeah well ... good luck. Guild Halls are - depending on the creativity of their setters - true engine killers, no matter which kind of shadows you use. As normal houses are.</p><p>And damnit, I wish people learned what was the difference between "Lag" and "Computer not fast enough to show the pictures in an adequate speed" some day. Seriously.</p>

[Armawk]

<p><cite>ElogostElundiel wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I used to be able to run the game with better preformance with cpu shaddows turned on on my old pc but now that I have come back to the game with my new pc they lag me out like crazy. I have gpu shadows turned on outside and I get about 60 fps average, probably higher but I have Vsync turned on, but when they kick in inside I get about 15 fps and If I turn them on outside I go down to about 5-8 fps. I can't find a solution to it. Don't know if anyone can help. I have support for multiple processors turned on and all of the processors are allocated to it on its affinity.</p></blockquote><p>Your problem is most likely caused by the fact that if you select GPU outside/CPU inside then all options for the inside CPU shadows are enabled. This includes 'Environment shadows' , which causes massive framerate loss. If you enable CPU shadows as your primary option but turn off environment shadows you should usually get a decent framerate. There is not any way at the moment (dev says he will fix it) to turn off environment shadows with the 'CPU shadows in buildings option' as it always turns everything on.</p><p>Normal CPU shadows should work well if you turn that option off though.</p>

[Dragowulf]

<p>Your old PC probably had a very strong Single Core CPU.</p>

[ElogostElundiel]

<p> Well people generaly just say lag or hitching if their framerate drops because they don't want to say my Computer is not fast enough to show the pictures in an adequate speed every time their framerate drops. And I didn't realy just mean inside, just generaly. On my old pc which was well outdated and generaly useless I could run pretty much everywhere with max graphics and cpu shadows turned up but now on my new pc which runs everything else perfectly cpu shadows cause a huge framerate drop. And by inside I just mean anywhere inside attal and thats not realy the point its just generealy whenever cpu shadows are on I get massive framerate drops.  I'm guessing its just because eq2 dosen't have very good multicore suport yet as I'm using a quad core and my old processor was single core but was just wondering if there was a known soloution.</p>

[Dikatin]

<p>My apologies for my former post that just was too harsh - didn't realize that until later. The "lag" thing always gets me, don't know why.</p><p>CPU Shadows in general take much processing power, though it is odd that your old PC was better able to perform these kind of shadows than your new one. I guess it really could have something to do with the multicore-abilities of the engine, though even a single Core of your new processor with "only" 3.1 Ghz should be much faster than your old Pentium 4. Did you try if the performance improves by any way if you lock the application to only a single core in the task manager?</p>

[ElogostElundiel]

<p>Yep, I already had tried it with a single core but it dosn't alter the preformance atall. I looked at my task manager and there was no activity at all, other than very small blips which is just backround applications, in cpu 1,2 and 3 only cpu 0 was doing anything. Its deafinately down to very bad multicore support as my old processor was 3.4 gh whereas one of my cores in my quad core (the only one that is doing anything) is only 3.1gh. I think it is something the devs will have to sort out at some point. Strangly enough I got allt less lag on the test server so maby theres something in the pipeline already</p>