What is the weak link in my PC?

[Subyman]

<p>I feel that I have a decent gaming machine.  I put it together around a year ago and it runs pretty much everything else great.  For the most part EQ2 runs well but I keep getting low res textures popping in from time to time and it looks really bad.  I am assuming the game is running out of memory and swapping low res texs in for the high res texs.  I also get around 30 fps in some areas (my guild hall in the "cluttered area".)  I run the game at 1920x1200, 2x AA, 16x AF, Ultra textures, shadows off, high water, no spec lighting, blah blah.  Oh and I couldn't run high flora without it slowly down about 40 fps in Nek.</p><p>My specs are:</p><p>C2D E8400 @ 3.2Ghz</p><p>ATI 4870HD 512mb</p><p>4gig Ram</p><p>X48-DS4</p><p>7200RPM HDD</p><p>Win 7</p><p>Basically I think the low VRAM is hurting my performance.  I've also heard that the processor is key in this game.  Am I up to par in that area?  What about my Ram, should I go up to 8gigs?</p><p>Any advice would be great.</p>

[CYR3Z]

<p>hey I would say X48-DS4 which is a Gigabyte model and in the 775 chipset range! not that its bad, but i have a 775 motherboard and its an asus maximus formula II fantastic for overclocking if u need it and enchanced memory lanes for fater speed. </p><p>HDD dont know the make!  Im not sure the latest card on the market for ATI at moment as i haven't checked! but if u are spending anything higher than £250 or $400 you going to get a good card, 512meg is a little low despite cards being 700meg + nowadays but again its not important.</p><p>Ensure you have high quality memory spend at least $300 min on desent memory theirs new models coming out all the time so get them CAS LATENCTY Timings down as low as possible. U never mentioned the make on the memory!</p>

[Subyman]

<p>I thought Video Ram was very important for this game.  The texture files are quite larger and my main problem is low quality textures filling in for HQ ones which would seem like a VRAM problem.  HDD make is somewhat irrelevant but it is a Seagate 7200RPM 1TB.  G.Skill memory.</p><p>What I am needing to know is does this game need more VRAM than 512mb to use the max setting on textures and is 4gig of ram enough?</p>

[FreddyRo]

<p><cite>Subyman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I thought Video Ram was very important for this game.  The texture files are quite larger and my main problem is low quality textures filling in for HQ ones which would seem like a VRAM problem.  HDD make is somewhat irrelevant but it is a Seagate 7200RPM 1TB.  G.Skill memory.</p><p>What I am needing to know is does this game need more VRAM than 512mb to use the max setting on textures and is 4gig of ram enough?</p></blockquote><p>A few comments:</p><p>Actually, unlike cpu, Video RAM is not so crucial in eq2.  The ATI 4870 512MB should be plenty adequate for eq2.  (this may change as they try to export more rendering work to the video card).  Do you have GPU shadows enabled?  That would take some load off your cpu.</p><p>The HDD on the other hand is fairly important.  I built a rig for my dad to run this game, using a E8500, but 2 x 10k WD Velociraptors in Raid 0.  He has another big HD for media, and an external to back everything up.  He's *always* the first to zonein during a raid, and plays at nearly max settings.  Another option I've seen mentioned is to put the OS and EQ2 on separate drives (in a non Raid setup)</p><p>You say 4GB of RAM... Thats plenty, but is this high quality stuff?  You can tweak the RAM speeds in BIOS to run as fast as is stable - this is a big help in eq2.  Overclocking the cpu would help also. (disclaimer: if you don't know what you're doing here, tread carefully)</p><p>Also, you have a dual core cpu, but eq2 likes to reside on one.  Under options is a dual core setting, enable that...  This will pushy *some* of the work onto the second core.  Also, (in Vista at least), you can direct background programs to run on the 2nd core, thus freeing up some of the primary cpu for eq2.</p><p>Finally, I think you need to lower your expectations a bit.  40 fps is considered very good in this game, and in what is essentially a fast  'turn based game', you don't need 80+ fps like you might want in a first-person shooter.  Turn up the graphics and enjoy the show.</p><p>Good luck.</p>

[Subyman]

<p>Thanks for the post. </p><p>I currently have my e8500 at the stock speeds but I can certainly OC it.  I think I have CPU shadows on, I will check that and turn it to GPU.  As for HDD, I have the OS on one and EQ2 on another.  I would like to get a SSD but can't justify it at the moment.  The ram is <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231145">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16820231145</a>.  Timings are 5-5-5-15.  I think I have the dual core option checked in the game.  I am running 7.  </p><p>I am getting 60fps but it doesn't seem consistent.  I think your last point is the real deal here.  I think my expectations are higher than they need to be.  I am going to OC this set up and then see if that helps.</p>

[Subyman]

<p>So I got my e8500 to 4.0Ghz stable with a slight increase in voltage.  I'm sure that should help quite a bit since it is a 25% boost in clock speed.  Timings are as tight as they are going to get at that speed.  </p>

[FreddyRo]

<p><cite>Subyman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So I got my e8500 to 4.0Ghz stable with a slight increase in voltage.  I'm sure that should help quite a bit since it is a 25% boost in clock speed.  Timings are as tight as they are going to get at that speed.  </p></blockquote><p>See any improvement?</p>

[Subyman]

<p>Oh yeah big time.  I was able to enable shadows, up the lighting, and do a few extra things.  I found out what the problem was with my textures.  I upped LOD under the texture setting to the highest it would go and it looks wonderful now.  This game DEFINITELY benefits from a faster processor.  My FPS literally went from ~40fps outdoors to ~65-70fps outdoors with more options on.  I enabled GPU shadows to take some load off of the CPU and it helped quite a bit as well.  The shadows look a bit weird but they are better than nothing.</p>

[FreddyRo]

<p>Glad to hear it!  ...and yeah, those GPU shadows sometimes look off - it's not just you.</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p><cite>Subyman wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>So I got my e8500 to 4.0Ghz stable with a slight increase in voltage.  I'm sure that should help quite a bit since it is a 25% boost in clock speed.  Timings are as tight as they are going to get at that speed.  </p></blockquote><p>That sounds like it would run the game extremely well.  With the overclock I'd have a hard time suggesting anything to improve your system.  Short of some setups that would require some extreme cooling solutions, you're pretty much maxed out at the moment.</p>