Why does this game run so poorly?

[zipper761882]

<p>I just started playing the game and I am absolutely shocked that a game this old runs this bad.  Here are my system specs:</p><p>Mobo: Gigabyte MA770T-UD3</p><p>CPU: Athlon X4 635 @ 3.4ghz</p><p>Video: Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2gb</p><p>RAM: 8gb(2x4gb) Gskill Ripjaws 1333</p><p>HDD: 500gb Seagate 7200rpm</p><p>PSU: 650w Apevia</p><p>Now I know my pc isn't the most powerful out there but I can max out games like Dragon Age 2, WoW, LotRO and many others with no problems at 1440x900 resoultion and they run amazing.  Whats the deal with this game?  Is it just very poorly coded or something?  I can't run it on anything beyond the Balanced setting or I get less then 30fps most of the time, sometimes as low as 20 even.  Are there any plans by Sony to actually fix it??  I could see if the game was a graphical beast but it doesn't even look very good, even at the highest settings.  Any info on this would be great.</p>

[Smirk]

<p>eq2 is very cpu bound</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>Smirkna@Runnyeye wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>eq2 is very cpu bound</p></blockquote><p>Eh I haven't seen cpu up grades do much either or overclocking</p><p>bottleneck for Everquest II is pure codeing issues </p><p>I get same performance as him or worse with </p><p><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: #ffffff;">AMD Phenom II X6 1100T</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="color: #ffffff;">and I didn't get 1 frame boost from a amd 955 to a amd 1100t or 240 to 460 just a ton of wasted money</span></span></p><p>also if you ever quest in Sundered Frontier the lag can get so bad feels like an astronaut in space with out oxygen </p>

[Smirk]

<p>the 955 and the x6 1100T will prolly perform similar in apps that don't use all cores, like eq2, and the athlon x4 635 performs around 10 fps slower in games than a phenom 2 955 according to some reviews. </p><p>Peogia you should prolly have done more research before upgrading the cpu at least <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>upgrading from a core 2 duo e8400@4ghz to a i5 <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> made a huge difference.</p><p>ask anyone who knows what they are talking about and they will say the same, that eq2 is limited by cpu speed.</p>

[zipper761882]

<p>Well  I don't know anything about coding or all that, but I know when I am playing a game that came out in 2004 on a system that was just built and can take any modern game I throw at it, I should be able to max the older game out without a problem.  I am in love with the game if not for that one aspect, but it is a pretty big aspect.  The depth and customization is so much more than I am used to.  I just hope I can continue to ignore the shoddy performance a few weeks from now after the new game thrill wears off.  Ah well if it holds me over through the summer I'll be happy.  Then I'll be heading to a galaxy far far away....</p>

[MurFalad]

<p><cite>Aerisrose@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well  I don't know anything about coding or all that, but I know when I am playing a game that came out in 2004 on a system that was just built and can take any modern game I throw at it</p></blockquote><p>The 2004 bits then of EQ2 you'll want to see are Antonica, Rivervale etc, as places like Sundered Frontier (2010), Kunark(2007), and Velious (2011) all came out much later.  Even there though things are much different then launch, GPU shadows especially makes a massive improvement in speed over the older CPU shadows.</p><p>EQ2 definitely benefits from a faster processor more so then other games, when I upgraded my CPU on the laptop WoW ran at exactly the same slow speed (fair/low), while EQ2 went from high performance to high.  There are improvements coming in later this year with lighting, and we have a graphics dev on the team dedicated to working on the engine.    Although personally I think that until they update the renderer to support shader 3.0+ efficiently (or a total rewrite was done optimised for multicore) then I think things will always overwhelmingly favour a fast CPU.</p><p>Edit : if that CPU is actually an Athlon instead of PhenonII architecture then I'd be tempted to look around for an upgrade, since the PhenonII is 20% faster clock for clock then the older X64 chips.  Or wait for Bulldozer which promises to be decent at least.</p>

[Banedon_Toran]

<p>As others have said, you need to look at the speed of a single core of your CPU.  Improving <em>that</em> will improve EverQuest 2.</p><p>This is due to the fact that EQ2 was originally coded with the belief that processor speed would get higher and higher, however the CPU makers decided to go multi-core instead.  To put it another way, a duo 3.0Ghz will beat a quad 2.8Ghz, as EverQuest 2 maxes one core and uses a nominal small amount of a second core.</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>MurFalad wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Aerisrose@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well  I don't know anything about coding or all that, but I know when I am playing a game that came out in 2004 on a system that was just built and can take any modern game I throw at it   </p></blockquote><p> Although personally I think that until they update the renderer to support shader 3.0+ efficiently (or a total rewrite was done optimised for multicore) then I think things will always overwhelmingly favour a fast CPU.</p></blockquote><p>3.0 has nothing at all to do with it and the game actually supports multi core it runs on 2 cores first core defaults to max and second varies from view and zone location ect and still performance sux that is because a video card has like 3200+ cores while our cpu's are topped out at 6 cores not to mention video cards were designed to do all the rendering for our pc's and not our cpu's they need to get the entire graphics engine off of the cpu's and put it on the gpu like a (REAL) application program game mmorpg ect that supports a PC and microsoft windows</p>

[Gaige]

<p><cite>Peogia wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Eh I haven't seen cpu up grades do much either or overclocking</p></blockquote><p>My i7 2600k @ 4.8Ghz lets me play with everything maxed except shadows and stay above 30 fps in raids at 2560x1440.</p><p>Its all in the cpu.  AMD cpus are already slower clock for clock than Intel in the first place.</p>

[Martinus]

<p>While the downtime from Sony, I tried Lord Of the ring online. The first start surprised me. The software asked me if I wanted to play the game in Directx11. I said yes. It's fast.</p><p>Sony Online,</p><p>You had time to upgrade the graphic engine. I'm sure overall you did more money than LotRo. But still, they have a DirectX11 game. And the best you can give us is Shader 3? And we need a more powerfull CPU because you didn't optimised the client fast enough?</p><p>When you look at DC Online, you can see what Sony can do. But not on EQ2. Nope...</p><p>I'm done ranting.</p>

[zipper761882]

<p>I don't care whos cpu is faster.  I built this pc with cheap gaming in mind, and AMD has almost always been the cheaper option.  That is what overclocking is for.  I brought this from the stock 2.9ghz up to 3.4ghz just off stock cooling.  However debating overclockability and cpus in general is neither here nor there and I will not get into a debate about it.  The fact is this game shoud be able to run with everything maxed and then some and still get 100fps on modern gaming hardware.</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>MartinusPe wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>While the downtime from Sony, I tried Lord Of the ring online. The first start surprised me. The software asked me if I wanted to play the game in Directx11. I said yes. It's fast.</p><p>Sony Online,</p><p>You had time to upgrade the graphic engine. I'm sure overall you did more money than LotRo. But still, they have a DirectX11 game. And the best you can give us is Shader 3? And we need a more powerfull CPU because you didn't optimised the client fast enough?</p><p>When you look at DC Online, you can see what Sony can do. But not on EQ2. Nope...</p><p>I'm done ranting.</p></blockquote><p>They wish Sony couldent make that</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.unrealengine.com/showcase" target="_blank">http://www.unrealengine.com/showcase</a></p><p>would be nice if they used that engine in eq2 but that might raise the system requirements a bit<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" /></p><p>1 more engine they could use</p><p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://mycryengine.com/index.php?conid=68" target="_blank">http://mycryengine.com/index.php?conid=68</a></p>

[zipper761882]

<p>You can't just switch a game engine.  It isn't like a car where you can just swap engines out.  In order for Sony to use a different game engine they would have to rebuild a whole new game.  However it IS possible for them to optimize this engine for newer hardware if they were willing to spend the money and resources to do so.</p>

[Peogia]

<p><cite>Aerisrose@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You can't just switch a game engine.  It isn't like a car where you can just swap engines out.  In order for Sony to use a different game engine they would have to rebuild a whole new game.  However it IS possible for them to optimize this engine for newer hardware if they were willing to spend the money and resources to do so.</p></blockquote><p>Newer and older hardware isn't the issue the game runs horrid on any machine from any generation the issue lies with the games graphics engine not supporting a video card at all</p><p>Sony's sole excuse from launch day and for years to come of this issue was that the graphics were so great that they would never need to be up graded and it was designed for the future</p><p>and here we are now 7+ years later and the games still broken with the exact same excuse but even then from time to time soe stops by the forum and says they will fix and improve performance ect but I have yet to see anything</p><p>rather then up grade there servers they gave away all our financial & personal info and rather then up grade servers most zones in game auto kick ect to keep server loads low enough that the server doesn't hick up and hang the only thing that matters is how much they make annually I really wouldn't hold my breath on them fixing the performance in this game</p><p>its just not feasible for a multi billion dollar company to be abled to afford to up date and maintain a mmorpg</p><p>i mean after all <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px;"><span style="color: #ffffff;">Sony only recorded consolidated annual sales of approximately $78 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010. </span></span></p><p><a href="http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201105/11-0501E/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/P...501E/index.html</a></p>

[TSR-JoshuaM]

<p>A better CPU, a better video card, than what you are currently using, will increase your performance in game.  That is simply fact.  What a good upgrade path will be is for you to decide or the community to make suggestions on.</p><p>As there are no performance support requests to be addressed here and it is veering far off topic. </p><p>Thread is being locked.</p>