Studdering and Ram usage

[Daladfar]

<p>Not sure if this is covered in the many threads here but here goes --  Eq2 for me has 2-3 second casting lag and alot of studdering which is confusing since according to the F11 thing im sitting at 60fps  ping usually 120-190    no packets loss</p><p>Another thing is ram usage -- according to the resource monitor thing when im playin eq windowed or full screen ram usage for me is between 75-85% only things running is eq - act - vent</p><p>System specs you ask --</p><p>I7-860 quad core     mild overclock from 2.8 to 3.36  multi thread enabled  and multi cpu in game is checked</p><p>GA-P55A-UD4P ver.2 mobo</p><p>Gskill ddr3 1600 4gb  9-9-9-24   2t</p><p>EVGA GTX 460 1024mb Gddr5</p><p>160gb Raptor  only has OS, EQ, and other programs</p><p>250gb WD for storage and such</p><p>Now with that system i would imagine that eq should be running perfectly smooth even on the high quality setting but nope i have to run in balanced with shaders and shader 3.0 turned off or it gets massively worse with studdering and casting lag </p><p>anyone else run into this same kind of problem and know of a quick fix or is this something with a setting on my comp that i am unaware of ?</p>

[TSR-DennisG]

<p>Performance will dip down a good amount with shader 3.0 enabled.  You may want to check out some of the stickied threads in the Performance Support forum for additional information on improving your gaming experience.  </p>

[Daladfar]

<p>Yep read all those threads and tried some of what they suggest to try with no apparent improvement to performance or drop in ram usage</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>Daladfar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Not sure if this is covered in the many threads here but here goes --  Eq2 for me has 2-3 second casting lag and alot of studdering which is confusing since according to the F11 thing im sitting at 60fps  ping usually 120-190    no packets loss</p><p>Another thing is ram usage -- according to the resource monitor thing when im playin eq windowed or full screen ram usage for me is between 75-85% only things running is eq - act - vent</p><p>System specs you ask --</p><p>I7-860 quad core     mild overclock from 2.8 to 3.36  multi thread enabled  and multi cpu in game is checked</p><p>GA-P55A-UD4P ver.2 mobo</p><p>Gskill ddr3 1600 4gb  9-9-9-24   2t</p><p>EVGA GTX 460 1024mb Gddr5</p><p>160gb Raptor  only has OS, EQ, and other programs</p><p>250gb WD for storage and such</p><p>Now with that system i would imagine that eq should be running perfectly smooth even on the high quality setting but nope i have to run in balanced with shaders and shader 3.0 turned off or it gets massively worse with studdering and casting lag </p><p>anyone else run into this same kind of problem and know of a quick fix or is this something with a setting on my comp that i am unaware of ?</p></blockquote><p>The delay you are experiencing is ping</p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_(video_gaming" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_(video_gaming</a>)</p>

[Daladfar]

<p>Huh i was told that my ping is pretty good i always ask what others ping is and theres is usually higher than mine and they say they are getting no casting lag</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>Daladfar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Huh i was told that my ping is pretty good i always ask what others ping is and theres is usually higher than mine and they say they are getting no casting lag</p></blockquote><p>A good dial up connection a on good proper region server can reach as low as 140 ping average dial up connections ping anywhere from 140 to 200 and vary long distance 220/300+ usually </p><p>canada to uk on high speed 70 or lower canada to usa east coast to east coast as low as 20 ping thats just some examples</p><p>also varies from isp to isp and server to server</p>

[Daladfar]

<p>Wow nice info -- well my connection is through Comcast  and ive done speed tests and it all says my connection is 12+mb im actually paying for a 16mb connection -- ive actually had a tech from them to my home several times to check the lines and everyone of them always says my connection is excellent</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>Daladfar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Wow nice info -- well my connection is through Comcast  and ive done speed tests and it all says my connection is 12+mb im actually paying for a 16mb connection -- ive actually had a tech from them to my home several times to check the lines and everyone of them always says my connection is excellent</p></blockquote><p>Personally i think its the Sony Servers a vary long time ago maybe 6+ years ago they us-to ping nice till some sort of change donno what it was though</p><p>click start type in command prompt click the command prompt in list then type in</p><p>ping thebazaar.everquest2.com</p><p>I get min 79 max 81 and average 80 but in game i get 200 or 300+ and sometimes 1000's lol</p><p>Further test examples can be done here</p><p><a href="http://speedtest.net/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://speedtest.net/</a></p><p><a href="http://pingtest.net/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://pingtest.net/</a></p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>TSR-DennisG wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Performance will dip down a good amount with shader 3.0 enabled.  You may want to check out some of the stickied threads in the Performance Support forum for additional information on improving your gaming experience.  </p></blockquote><p>If dx11 shader 5.0 cant make a GTX 460 dip in frames the slightest bit why would dx9 3.0?</p>

[Terrius]

<p><cite>Peogia wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>TSR-DennisG wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Performance will dip down a good amount with shader 3.0 enabled.  You may want to check out some of the stickied threads in the Performance Support forum for additional information on improving your gaming experience.  </p></blockquote><p>If dx11 shader 5.0 cant make a GTX 460 dip in frames the slightest bit why would dx9 3.0?</p></blockquote><p>Shader 5.0 is better at utilizing newer video cards, and the games that support it off load rendering and other graphics tasks to the GPU much better then EQ2.Also in reguards to ping, depending on what protocol is used and how it's calculated Ping numbers vary wildly. There is no way to know how the ingame performace monitors ping aside from a dev posting and giving out the information. I'd say 120-190 is fairly good ping, mine is generally 200+ and I have no cast lag, which leads me to believe the way they calculate the ping is the time it takes for a packet to get from your PC to the server and back. In which case 100ms to get to the server and 100ms to get back isnt all too bad.</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>Tariuss@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Peogia wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>TSR-DennisG wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Performance will dip down a good amount with shader 3.0 enabled.  You may want to check out some of the stickied threads in the Performance Support forum for additional information on improving your gaming experience.  </p></blockquote><p>If dx11 shader 5.0 cant make a GTX 460 dip in frames the slightest bit why would dx9 3.0?</p></blockquote><p>Shader 5.0 is better at utilizing newer video cards, and the games that support it off load rendering and other graphics tasks to the GPU much better then EQ2.Also in reguards to ping, depending on what protocol is used and how it's calculated Ping numbers vary wildly. There is no way to know how the ingame performace monitors ping aside from a dev posting and giving out the information. I'd say 120-190 is fairly good ping, mine is generally 200+ and I have no cast lag, which leads me to believe the way they calculate the ping is the time it takes for a packet to get from your PC to the server and back. In which case 100ms to get to the server and 100ms to get back isnt all too bad.</p></blockquote><p>DX 9 10 11 shader 3.0 4.0 5.0 cant make a 460 dip in frames the frames in Everquest II aren't produced by your video card there produced by a faulty graphics engine that runs off of your cpu and not your video card thats why Everquest II doesn't run correctly on any pc on the planet</p><p>I truly wonder why they refuse to fix this and only fiddle with shader hybrid mixes aka the 1.0/3.0 hybrid mix flop</p><p>120-190 ping is dial up</p><p>A few years ago I was scoring a solid 70 ping on all Sony Europe servers and they ran nicer then the Sony usa servers at that time till they changed something 70 is high speed for that distance over seas and i haven't seen the Sony usa servers ping nice for almost 5 or 6+ years when they made this change there the standard 200 and 300 ping and even 140 ping you see now a days across all Sony servers is a standard dial up response time these super high ping times will cause spell casting time delays and chat delays and graphic delays and unresponsive game play and zoning delays and more</p>

[Daladfar]

<p>Well i cant say anything about ping times and such but im just wondering if its not something else contributing to the casting lag -- i have 2 neighbors and they play eq2 on the same server as me also we raid together and group together often ive compared notes with them and there ping times are the same or higher and they are experiencing no casting lag and there comps are not as new as mine -- so im just at a loss with this ping thing</p><p>Second i havent gotten any responses to my second question about ram usage ?</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>Daladfar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well i cant say anything about ping times and such but im just wondering if its not something else contributing to the casting lag -- i have 2 neighbors and they play eq2 on the same server as me also we raid together and group together often ive compared notes with them and there ping times are the same or higher and they are experiencing no casting lag and there comps are not as new as mine -- so im just at a loss with this ping thing</p><p>Second i havent gotten any responses to my second question about ram usage ?</p></blockquote><p>4GB is over kill for Everquest II u could box 2 accounts easy with that much ram the game only uses around 1GB or less usually unless there is a leak</p>

[Daladfar]

<p>Yea when i try to box my 2 accounts ram usage goes up to 99% -- didnt think it was right -- any ideas on whats happening there ?  anything i need to check setting wise -- page file on or off and size of it etc etc ...  right now page file is set to system manage on both drives ?  any other settings at all to mess with or check ?</p>

[Daladfar]

<p>One other thing -- since i have 2 hard drives will i gain anything if i put them in raid 0 -- the hdd's are -- 160g raptor and a WD 7200 250g ?</p>

[Terrius]

<p><cite>Daladfar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well i cant say anything about ping times and such but im just wondering if its not something else contributing to the casting lag -- i have 2 neighbors and they play eq2 on the same server as me also we raid together and group together often ive compared notes with them and there ping times are the same or higher and they are experiencing no casting lag and there comps are not as new as mine -- so im just at a loss with this ping thing</p><p>Second i havent gotten any responses to my second question about ram usage ?</p></blockquote><p>Ping does not create lag, High ping is a result of network load/latency aka lag, basically what I'm saying is dont focus on your ping. Casting lag is caused serverside, it wont show up in ping, and it shouldnt show up in FPS loss. It's simply the server having too much work and not enough resources, there is no reliable way to judge whether you will get casting lag.</p><p><cite>Daladfar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Another thing is ram usage -- according to the resource monitor thing when im playin eq windowed or full screen ram usage for me is between 75-85% only things running is eq - act - vent</p></blockquote><p>4GB of RAM is plenty sufficient to play EQ2 on max settings. However how much RAM is EQ2 actually using? I see you state a percentage, but when ingame check Taskmanager find EQ2 and look at the memory usage colum. It seems odd to me that it would be using more than 1.5gb if it is you may have a memory leak most likely in your UI. However memory usage will spike when the game first loads and whenever you zone, or atleast that's what I've noticed, I've also noticed EQ2 doesnt seem to clear it's memory usage very well, and the more you zone the higher it will get. Are you using the Default UI? or a third party like Profit?</p><p><cite>Daladfar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>One other thing -- since i have 2 hard drives will i gain anything if i put them in raid 0 -- the hdd's are -- 160g raptor and a WD 7200 250g ??</p></blockquote><p>While you can Raid 0 two drives of differing sizes I cant see that giving any performance boost when one is 10kRPM and the other is only 7.2kRPM, however if you had 2 raptors or two of the other drive raid 0 would increase their performace noticably.Anyways I dont really have any suggestions other than try reducing Texture Resolution settings and see if that helps with the memory usage. Maybe a TSR will know more. :/</p>

[MurFalad]

<p><cite>Daladfar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Now with that system i would imagine that eq should be running perfectly smooth even on the high quality setting but nope i have to run in balanced with shaders and shader 3.0 turned off or it gets massively worse with studdering and casting lag </p><p>anyone else run into this same kind of problem and know of a quick fix or is this something with a setting on my comp that i am unaware of ?</p></blockquote><p>I'm puzzled here by your finding shader 3.0 not being achieveable on that graphics card, <a href="http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-radeon-hd-6870-radeon-hd-6850,review-32039-7.html" target="_blank">according to this chart</a> its equivalent to my ATI HD4870, and on that shader 3.0 is as faster or faster everywhere in the game (indoors sometimes it can double frame rates, but outside its more of a 10-20% improvement on average).</p><p>I assume you also mean shadows and shader 3.0 turned off, GPU shadows now with the latest change make no noticable speed difference on my card whether they are low or high quality (but look great at max without that short range problem we had before, superb work there Imago-quem!).  Again your card certainly should be fast enough to handle shadows.</p><p>I do run my computer on extreme settings though (PhenonII 955 3.2Ghz) where I'm getting 20-30 overland, some areas are a bit slow but I'm happy to pay that price for the looks.  I wonder here if the problems you have are graphics driver related since it seems that this card is seriously underperforming? </p><p>I'm also not sure though if the lag is just some intense areas being passed through, or it can happen anytime periodically?  (one intense area for example is the water fall in the Moors of Ykesha, and much of Kunzar jungle), from what I've seen though achieving 60fps is hard, yet 30 or so feels smooth.</p><p>As a comparison my laptop with a 2.4Ghz T7700 and a ATI HD2600 graphics card is playable on high with shadows turned off (20-30 FPS overland), yet I'd have to drop it down all the way to the lowest setting to get near 60FPS reported, not even sure then, will have to try. </p><p>Out of interest I did try the latest version of WoW on that laptop where it prevented me from even selecting settings above "fair" and ran about 30 FPS with noticable but slight jerkiness, EQ2 runs at ~20-30FPS high quality but feels smoother, somehow I think the EQ2 FPS meter is actually a bit harsher in the way it reports the frame rate, but in this case EQ2's heavy reliance on the CPU works in my favour.</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>MurFalad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Daladfar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Now with that system i would imagine that eq should be running perfectly smooth even on the high quality setting but nope i have to run in balanced with shaders and shader 3.0 turned off or it gets massively worse with studdering and casting lag </p><p>anyone else run into this same kind of problem and know of a quick fix or is this something with a setting on my comp that i am unaware of ?</p></blockquote><p>I'm puzzled here by your finding shader 3.0 not being achieveable on that graphics card, <a href="http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-radeon-hd-6870-radeon-hd-6850,review-32039-7.html" target="_blank">according to this chart</a> its equivalent to my ATI HD4870, and on that shader 3.0 is as faster or faster everywhere in the game (indoors sometimes it can double frame rates, but outside its more of a 10-20% improvement on average).</p><p>I assume you also mean shadows and shader 3.0 turned off, GPU shadows now with the latest change make no noticable speed difference on my card whether they are low or high quality (but look great at max without that short range problem we had before, superb work there Imago-quem!).  Again your card certainly should be fast enough to handle shadows.</p><p>I do run my computer on extreme settings though (PhenonII 955 3.2Ghz) where I'm getting 20-30 overland, some areas are a bit slow but I'm happy to pay that price for the looks.  I wonder here if the problems you have are graphics driver related since it seems that this card is seriously underperforming? </p><p>I'm also not sure though if the lag is just some intense areas being passed through, or it can happen anytime periodically?  (one intense area for example is the water fall in the Moors of Ykesha, and much of Kunzar jungle), from what I've seen though achieving 60fps is hard, yet 30 or so feels smooth.</p><p>As a comparison my laptop with a 2.4Ghz T7700 and a ATI HD2600 graphics card is playable on high with shadows turned off (20-30 FPS overland), yet I'd have to drop it down all the way to the lowest setting to get near 60FPS reported, not even sure then, will have to try. </p><p>Out of interest I did try the latest version of WoW on that laptop where it prevented me from even selecting settings above "fair" and ran about 30 FPS with noticable but slight jerkiness, EQ2 runs at ~20-30FPS high quality but feels smoother, somehow I think the EQ2 FPS meter is actually a bit harsher in the way it reports the frame rate, but in this case EQ2's heavy reliance on the CPU works in my favour.</p></blockquote><p>As stated perviously the reason for degradation of performance regardless of video card is that all rendering is done by your cpu and not your video card so your just over tasking your cpu till it bleeds to death and dies</p>

[MurFalad]

<p><cite>Peogia wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>As stated perviously the reason for degradation of performance regardless of video card is that all rendering is done by your cpu and not your video card so your just over tasking your cpu till it bleeds to death and dies</p></blockquote><p>That's not what is happening here, years ago it used to be called "thrashing" where if you gave the CPU too many tasks to multitask it spent so much time switching tasks it didn't have time to actually do any work on those tasks.When that happens you can see the CPU usage actually drop down yet its completely busy and performing very slowly, its also something that generally gives a low constant performance since those tasks are consantly there (if he was experiencing this then a lot of people would have problems).So this problem of stuttering is unlikely to be due to the heavy usage of the CPU in rendering.  As an aside, heavy CPU usage isn't bad for all setups, sure its a pain for high end systems as the graphics card doesn't scale performance up as well as it should.  As my previous post showed the heavy CPU usage does pay off nicely for some setups with a weak graphics card where EQ2 actually runs smoother and at higher quality settings then WoW (my laptop is an example).In my opinion if EQ2 could use multiple cores more efficiently it could potentially perform better with the majority of mid-range and low end machines then games that rely on decent GPU's, and certainly at least close the gap to where it should be at the high end, but that's getting a lot off topic.</p>