Why is my game running so poorly?

[Sydares]

<p>Intel QX6850 (Quad-Core, @3.0 GHZ per core)</p><p>ATI Radeon 4870</p><p>8 GB of Patriot DDR2 800mhz RAM</p><p>Windows 7 (64-Bit) (Tested Vista and XP as well to no avail, which rules out driver problems as well, I should think)</p><p>My performance is nothing short of awful - in raids, with all settings nuked to their very lowest, I can't even maintain framerates over 25 fps. This, from a rig that can chew up Crysis and spit it out, and run every other recent MMO like a dream come true. My lag seems to worsen with more people on screen, and turning particles on? Forget it. It's like what's expected of rendering lag, but I have more than enough processing power and my graphics card should be perfectly fine, too... I just don't get it.</p><p>My cpu never goes above 34% usage, and I can even run up three different instances of the game, and they all run at the identically terrible framerate without any sort of performance hit. It's like EQ2 is obstinately refusing to USE any of my hardware.</p><p>What do I need to change for this game to actually run properly?</p>

[Veskandar]

<p>Becouse this game was made for 1 core</p><p>your 4 core prosessor runs combined at 3.0 GHZ, that is 0,75 GHZ per core, so having a single or duo core at 3.0 GHZ would run it way better, nothing you can do about that.</p>

[Sydares]

<p>Well, my FPS does go up by about 10-15 frames if I change my processor affinity to only use two cores.</p><p>Trouble is, EQ2 keeps resetting the affinity to 4 cores after literally about 10 seconds. Why on earth?</p>

[Dact]

<p>I've heard about some sort of shader optimization on the test realm thats supposed to help with this issue.  Can anyone confirm or at least comment on that?  I want to continue my eq2 sub but unfortnately I might not be able to due to this technical problem.  Any feedback is appreciated-   thx</p>

[jagermonsta]

<p>Game performance with my $4k computer is what drove me away in 07. While I've been playing each new MMO that has been released since then with zero performance issues, I long for EQ2 gameplay and lore as it's most appealing to me.</p><p><cite>Dactil wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I've heard about some sort of shader optimization on the test realm thats supposed to help with this issue.  Can anyone confirm or at least comment on that?  I want to continue my eq2 sub but unfortnately I might not be able to due to this technical problem.  Any feedback is appreciated-   thx</p></blockquote><p>I truely hope they resolve this issue.</p>

[Dact]

<p>I want to upgrade my mobo & processor this christmas and I really don't want to do another 775 socket.  I'd like to move up to quad core i7 and if this isn't fixed then its adios eq2 <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  and I'm not spending a thousand dollars on one of those high end i7's so I can run a 5 year old game...</p><p>Where are the tsr's?  They're usually active.  Hope soe didn't lay them off or something.</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p><cite>Dactil wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>  Hope soe didn't lay them off or something.</p></blockquote><p>Nope, they haven't fired me yet!<span style="font-size: xx-small;">(shouldn't take too much longer, though)</span>  I'm sorry for the slow response.  It seems half the office is out sick so I've had to answer more phones/e-mails than usual.</p><p>Regarding the affinity being set back to multiple cores, try starting the game directly from the Everquest2.exe in the game directory.  Make sure to do so by right clicking and selecting 'run as administrator'.  That should give you sufficient permissions to modify and save that setting.  It seems like it simply wasn't saving the change before.</p><p><strong>Quote:</strong></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em><span >your 4 core prosessor runs combined at 3.0 GHZ, that is 0,75 GHZ per core, so having a single or duo core at 3.0 GHZ would run it way better, nothing you can do about that.</span></em></p><p>Sorry, but that's wrong.  Each individual core on a multi-core processor will run at the rated speed.  A 3Ghz quad core will have 4 cores running at 3Ghz each.</p>

[Clownshoes]

<p>I run the game on a clocked 6750 duo at 3.4ghz and I found out that it actually runs much better in both solo and group situations if I de-activate the multiple core usage on the display settings. Try it out.</p>

[Sydares]

<p>I was doinking around with the multicore options, but disabling it only seems to hurt my performance further - thanks for the suggestion, though.</p><p>TSR-DanielH, I replied in the other thread specifically about the core affinity issue - in short, run as admin has no impact.</p>

[BungFoo]

<p><cite>Sydares wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Intel QX6850 (Quad-Core, @3.0 GHZ per core)</p><p>ATI Radeon 4870</p><p>8 GB of Patriot DDR2 800mhz RAM</p><p>Windows 7 (64-Bit) (Tested Vista and XP as well to no avail, which rules out driver problems as well, I should think)</p><p>My performance is nothing short of awful - in raids, with all settings nuked to their very lowest, I can't even maintain framerates over 25 fps. This, from a rig that can chew up Crysis and spit it out, and run every other recent MMO like a dream come true. My lag seems to worsen with more people on screen, and turning particles on? Forget it. It's like what's expected of rendering lag, but I have more than enough processing power and my graphics card should be perfectly fine, too... I just don't get it.</p><p>My cpu never goes above 34% usage, and I can even run up three different instances of the game, and they all run at the identically terrible framerate without any sort of performance hit. It's like EQ2 is obstinately refusing to USE any of my hardware.</p><p>What do I need to change for this game to actually run properly?</p></blockquote><p>I'm having similar performance issues. I have a core2quad @2.83Ghz, 4 gigs of memory, an ati 4870 and windows 7 64bit. Standing by the DD quest giver in moors I get 25-30 fps regardless of my settings. Any resolution, shadows disabled or enabled, particles disabled or enabled, doesn't matter, 25-30fps. In firm rootmoot I get 10-20 fps. Its crazy.</p><p>In vista 64 with my old 8800gt (that died) I got 50+ fps in moors in these places on balanced with aa and anisotropic filtering.</p><p>If I find anything that helps I'll post here.</p><p>Den</p>

[DarkDragon66]

<p><cite>Dennika@Butcherblock wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I'm having similar performance issues. I have a core2quad @2.83Ghz, 4 gigs of memory, an ati 4870 and windows 7 64bit. Standing by the DD quest giver in moors I get 25-30 fps regardless of my settings. Any resolution, shadows disabled or enabled, particles disabled or enabled, doesn't matter, 25-30fps. In firm rootmoot I get 10-20 fps. Its crazy.</p><p>In vista 64 with my old 8800gt (that died) I got 50+ fps in moors in these places on balanced with aa and anisotropic filtering.</p><p>If I find anything that helps I'll post here.</p><p>Den</p></blockquote><p>Dennika, I also have a quad core and experience terrible performance, check out  Syndares post here, and see if you also get these results, as well as the affinity setting issue:</p><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=462830" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=462830</a></p>

[BungFoo]

<p><cite>DarkDragon66 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Dennika@Butcherblock wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I'm having similar performance issues. I have a core2quad @2.83Ghz, 4 gigs of memory, an ati 4870 and windows 7 64bit. Standing by the DD quest giver in moors I get 25-30 fps regardless of my settings. Any resolution, shadows disabled or enabled, particles disabled or enabled, doesn't matter, 25-30fps. In firm rootmoot I get 10-20 fps. Its crazy.</p><p>In vista 64 with my old 8800gt (that died) I got 50+ fps in moors in these places on balanced with aa and anisotropic filtering.</p><p>If I find anything that helps I'll post here.</p><p>Den</p></blockquote><p>Dennika, I also have a quad core and experience terrible performance, check out  Syndares post here, and see if you also get these results, as well as the affinity setting issue:</p><p><a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=462830" target="_blank">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=462830</a></p></blockquote><p>Very interesting read. When I get home tonight I will take a look at cpu usage of eq2 while I have it playing. I've read that windows 7 has significant changes to how it handles threads and balances loads between cpu/cpu cores and I'm wondering is my problem with eq2 is a result of this and the settings in the eq2 exe.</p><p>Den</p>

[Cragger]

<p><cite>Layton@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Becouse this game was made for 1 core</p><p>your 4 core prosessor runs combined at 3.0 GHZ, that is 0,75 GHZ per core, so having a single or duo core at 3.0 GHZ would run it way better, nothing you can do about that.</p></blockquote><p>You really have no idea what your talking about do you?</p><p>Quad and dual cores do not run at a 'combined' amount to their clock frequency. Every core on his runs at 3.0Ghz and no that does not add up to 12Ghz. Actually learn about the hardware before speaking on it.</p>

[Rock_Mansions]

I run a core2duo 8600, and have tried the core affinity thing, using the 'core affinity setter' utility to ensure that only either 0 or 1 core is being used, and my results are that: framerates are (possibly) reduced, and stuttering/hitching is no better. I use the 'possibly' in brackets, as I find fps varies so enormously in eq2 (even when standing still!) that I find it pretty much impossible to quantify.