SM3: from desktop to fullscreen and visavirsa takes AGES

[Jacquotte]

<p>since the implementation of SM3, resizing the game window takes a very long time, this includes:</p><ul><li>tabbing to desktop from fullscreen window</li><li>alt+enter to fulscreen gamewindow</li></ul><p>this is the case on both my ATI 4870 and my NVIDIA 470GTX</p><p>this keeps me from running SM3 all together sadly, i do really enjoy SM3, but i cannot live with the fact that i cannot switch to check ACT, ventrilio, internet etc etc</p><p>please consider fixing this <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>its sad that you did an amazing thing with the graphics but it cannot be properly utilized by people, don't let your great work be in vain</p>

[kirara]

<p>I had the same issue with my old 2 core CPU (switching to desktop in around 5 minutes and back to EQ2 in around 7 minutes). With my new 4 core CPU it switches in around 5-10 seconds but it's still to long for me. I play EQ2 in window mode so I have really no problems with switching between desktop and EQ2.</p>

[Jacquotte]

<p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I had the same issue with my old 2 core CPU (switching to desktop in around 5 minutes and back to EQ2 in around 7 minutes). With my new 4 core CPU it switches in around 5-10 seconds but it's still to long for me. I play EQ2 in window mode so I have really no problems with switching between desktop and EQ2.</p></blockquote><p>7minutes? thats just nuts</p><p>oddly enough you make it sound like the CPU is the fault of something the GPU should be handling, some code problem perhaps?</p><p>it would be great if you could take time to look at this soe <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> id like to play with sm3 enabled</p>

[deadcrickets2]

<p>Mine takes about 30 seconds but I have an older system.  This is a rather old bug that hasn't been addressed but hopefully after the Expansion comes out they can start focusing on SM3 as they stated they would.</p>

[kirara]

<p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>oddly enough you make it sound like the CPU is the fault of something the GPU should be handling, some code problem perhaps?</p></blockquote><p>I don't know if it's really a CPU problem but I changed nothing else. BTW - I have the same problem on my Acer Aspire Laptop (has a 2-core CPU and it takes around 5-7 minutes too). Maybe it's not really game related - both have a ATI/AMD Radeon 4xxx series card and it can be something buggy between card <-> driver <-> and a 2-core CPU. But I really don't know it exactly.</p>

[deadcrickets2]

<p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>oddly enough you make it sound like the CPU is the fault of something the GPU should be handling, some code problem perhaps?</p></blockquote><p>I don't know if it's really a CPU problem but I changed nothing else. BTW - I have the same problem on my Acer Aspire Laptop (has a 2-core CPU and it takes around 5-7 minutes too). Maybe it's not really game related - both have a ATI/AMD Radeon 4xxx series card and it can be something buggy between card <-> driver <-> and a 2-core CPU. But I really don't know it exactly.</p></blockquote><p>Test something for me please.  I want to see if it's related to the multi-core code.  In the game client under Options, Display, Advanced, Performance could you uncheck mark the option for Multiple cores and restart the game client?  Then after doing that try going from full screen to desktop.</p>

[kirara]

<p>Ok - something has changed between my last test and now. It's now better on my laptop but still far away from my 4-core PC.</p><p>Switching from game to desktop with alt+enter (until the game reacts again):</p><p>Test with multicore support: 38sTest without multicore support: 29s</p><p>I tried to test the time when the destop ist available too but unlike the game has the desktop nothing with motion in it. So I had to interact with the laptop to test this and couldn't handle the stopwatch on my PC right. I think in both tests the desktop ist around 5-10 seconds earlier available as the game.</p><p>I hope this helps.</p>

[deadcrickets2]

<p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok - something has changed between my last test and now. It's now better on my laptop but still far away from my 4-core PC.</p><p>Switching from game to desktop with alt+enter (until the game reacts again):</p><p>Test with multicore support: 38sTest without multicore support: 29s</p><p>I tried to test the time when the destop ist available too but unlike the game has the desktop nothing with motion in it. So I had to interact with the laptop to test this and couldn't handle the stopwatch on my PC right. I think in both tests the desktop ist around 5-10 seconds earlier available as the game.</p><p>I hope this helps.</p></blockquote><p>Got a feeling it's the multiple core support code that is buggy and causing issues.</p>

[Jacquotte]

<p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok - something has changed between my last test and now. It's now better on my laptop but still far away from my 4-core PC.</p><p>Switching from game to desktop with alt+enter (until the game reacts again):</p><p>Test with multicore support: 38sTest without multicore support: 29s</p><p>I tried to test the time when the destop ist available too but unlike the game has the desktop nothing with motion in it. So I had to interact with the laptop to test this and couldn't handle the stopwatch on my PC right. I think in both tests the desktop ist around 5-10 seconds earlier available as the game.</p><p>I hope this helps.</p></blockquote><p>Got a feeling it's the multiple core support code that is buggy and causing issues.</p></blockquote><p>could be OS related too, since quadcore is faster than dualcore when doing this, and single core is faster than dualcore, perhaps because the 1 free core, when disable multicore support, is availible to the OS</p>

[deadcrickets2]

<p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok - something has changed between my last test and now. It's now better on my laptop but still far away from my 4-core PC.</p><p>Switching from game to desktop with alt+enter (until the game reacts again):</p><p>Test with multicore support: 38sTest without multicore support: 29s</p><p>I tried to test the time when the destop ist available too but unlike the game has the desktop nothing with motion in it. So I had to interact with the laptop to test this and couldn't handle the stopwatch on my PC right. I think in both tests the desktop ist around 5-10 seconds earlier available as the game.</p><p>I hope this helps.</p></blockquote><p>Got a feeling it's the multiple core support code that is buggy and causing issues.</p></blockquote><p>could be OS related too, since quadcore is faster than dualcore when doing this, and single core is faster than dualcore, perhaps because the 1 free core, when disable multicore support, is availible to the OS</p></blockquote><p>Possibly.  That would mean that when the coded it they attempted to take over duties from the OS in handling the threads instead of passing the threads to the OS to decide which is best.   Less efficient and would probably cause frame rate issues too.</p>

[Jacquotte]

<p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok - something has changed between my last test and now. It's now better on my laptop but still far away from my 4-core PC.</p><p>Switching from game to desktop with alt+enter (until the game reacts again):</p><p>Test with multicore support: 38sTest without multicore support: 29s</p><p>I tried to test the time when the destop ist available too but unlike the game has the desktop nothing with motion in it. So I had to interact with the laptop to test this and couldn't handle the stopwatch on my PC right. I think in both tests the desktop ist around 5-10 seconds earlier available as the game.</p><p>I hope this helps.</p></blockquote><p>Got a feeling it's the multiple core support code that is buggy and causing issues.</p></blockquote><p>could be OS related too, since quadcore is faster than dualcore when doing this, and single core is faster than dualcore, perhaps because the 1 free core, when disable multicore support, is availible to the OS</p></blockquote><p>Possibly.  That would mean that when the coded it they attempted to take over duties from the OS in handling the threads instead of passing the threads to the OS to decide which is best.   Less efficient and would probably cause frame rate issues too.</p></blockquote><p>the multicore support did improve framerates with alot of people when it was offered in eq2.</p><p>funny enough, people reported that quadcore was slower than dualcore - same cpu, but with cores disabled in bios</p>

[deadcrickets2]

<p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok - something has changed between my last test and now. It's now better on my laptop but still far away from my 4-core PC.</p><p>Switching from game to desktop with alt+enter (until the game reacts again):</p><p>Test with multicore support: 38sTest without multicore support: 29s</p><p>I tried to test the time when the destop ist available too but unlike the game has the desktop nothing with motion in it. So I had to interact with the laptop to test this and couldn't handle the stopwatch on my PC right. I think in both tests the desktop ist around 5-10 seconds earlier available as the game.</p><p>I hope this helps.</p></blockquote><p>Got a feeling it's the multiple core support code that is buggy and causing issues.</p></blockquote><p>could be OS related too, since quadcore is faster than dualcore when doing this, and single core is faster than dualcore, perhaps because the 1 free core, when disable multicore support, is availible to the OS</p></blockquote><p>Possibly.  That would mean that when the coded it they attempted to take over duties from the OS in handling the threads instead of passing the threads to the OS to decide which is best.   Less efficient and would probably cause frame rate issues too.</p></blockquote><p>the multicore support did improve framerates with alot of people when it was offered in eq2.</p><p>funny enough, people reported that quadcore was slower than dualcore - same cpu, but with cores disabled in bios</p></blockquote><p>My old system is only a dual core.  I see no difference in framerates between having the option on and off.  Mind you this is on Windows 7 and the code for SMP has improved since XP and even Vista.</p>

[Jacquotte]

<p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok - something has changed between my last test and now. It's now better on my laptop but still far away from my 4-core PC.</p><p>Switching from game to desktop with alt+enter (until the game reacts again):</p><p>Test with multicore support: 38sTest without multicore support: 29s</p><p>I tried to test the time when the destop ist available too but unlike the game has the desktop nothing with motion in it. So I had to interact with the laptop to test this and couldn't handle the stopwatch on my PC right. I think in both tests the desktop ist around 5-10 seconds earlier available as the game.</p><p>I hope this helps.</p></blockquote><p>Got a feeling it's the multiple core support code that is buggy and causing issues.</p></blockquote><p>could be OS related too, since quadcore is faster than dualcore when doing this, and single core is faster than dualcore, perhaps because the 1 free core, when disable multicore support, is availible to the OS</p></blockquote><p>Possibly.  That would mean that when the coded it they attempted to take over duties from the OS in handling the threads instead of passing the threads to the OS to decide which is best.   Less efficient and would probably cause frame rate issues too.</p></blockquote><p>the multicore support did improve framerates with alot of people when it was offered in eq2.</p><p>funny enough, people reported that quadcore was slower than dualcore - same cpu, but with cores disabled in bios</p></blockquote><p>My old system is only a dual core.  I see no difference in framerates between having the option on and off.  Mind you this is on Windows 7 and the code for SMP has improved since XP and even Vista.</p></blockquote><p>probrably your OS or graphicscard driver overrides the eq2 setting, try setting the cpu affinity in taskmgr with relatively high graphical settings, you will see a difference, i am sure</p>

[deadcrickets2]

<p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok - something has changed between my last test and now. It's now better on my laptop but still far away from my 4-core PC.</p><p>Switching from game to desktop with alt+enter (until the game reacts again):</p><p>Test with multicore support: 38sTest without multicore support: 29s</p><p>I tried to test the time when the destop ist available too but unlike the game has the desktop nothing with motion in it. So I had to interact with the laptop to test this and couldn't handle the stopwatch on my PC right. I think in both tests the desktop ist around 5-10 seconds earlier available as the game.</p><p>I hope this helps.</p></blockquote><p>Got a feeling it's the multiple core support code that is buggy and causing issues.</p></blockquote><p>could be OS related too, since quadcore is faster than dualcore when doing this, and single core is faster than dualcore, perhaps because the 1 free core, when disable multicore support, is availible to the OS</p></blockquote><p>Possibly.  That would mean that when the coded it they attempted to take over duties from the OS in handling the threads instead of passing the threads to the OS to decide which is best.   Less efficient and would probably cause frame rate issues too.</p></blockquote><p>the multicore support did improve framerates with alot of people when it was offered in eq2.</p><p>funny enough, people reported that quadcore was slower than dualcore - same cpu, but with cores disabled in bios</p></blockquote><p>My old system is only a dual core.  I see no difference in framerates between having the option on and off.  Mind you this is on Windows 7 and the code for SMP has improved since XP and even Vista.</p></blockquote><p>probrably your OS or graphicscard driver overrides the eq2 setting, try setting the cpu affinity in taskmgr with relatively high graphical settings, you will see a difference, i am sure</p></blockquote><p>Nope.  I tend to do a lot of testing of all sorts of things.</p>

[Jacquotte]

<p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kirara@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok - something has changed between my last test and now. It's now better on my laptop but still far away from my 4-core PC.</p><p>Switching from game to desktop with alt+enter (until the game reacts again):</p><p>Test with multicore support: 38sTest without multicore support: 29s</p><p>I tried to test the time when the destop ist available too but unlike the game has the desktop nothing with motion in it. So I had to interact with the laptop to test this and couldn't handle the stopwatch on my PC right. I think in both tests the desktop ist around 5-10 seconds earlier available as the game.</p><p>I hope this helps.</p></blockquote><p>Got a feeling it's the multiple core support code that is buggy and causing issues.</p></blockquote><p>could be OS related too, since quadcore is faster than dualcore when doing this, and single core is faster than dualcore, perhaps because the 1 free core, when disable multicore support, is availible to the OS</p></blockquote><p>Possibly.  That would mean that when the coded it they attempted to take over duties from the OS in handling the threads instead of passing the threads to the OS to decide which is best.   Less efficient and would probably cause frame rate issues too.</p></blockquote><p>the multicore support did improve framerates with alot of people when it was offered in eq2.</p><p>funny enough, people reported that quadcore was slower than dualcore - same cpu, but with cores disabled in bios</p></blockquote><p>My old system is only a dual core.  I see no difference in framerates between having the option on and off.  Mind you this is on Windows 7 and the code for SMP has improved since XP and even Vista.</p></blockquote><p>probrably your OS or graphicscard driver overrides the eq2 setting, try setting the cpu affinity in taskmgr with relatively high graphical settings, you will see a difference, i am sure</p></blockquote><p>Nope.  I tend to do a lot of testing of all sorts of things.</p></blockquote><p>crazy stuff...</p><p>if you have nvidia, there is an option in their cpanel for multithreading too</p>

[deadcrickets2]

<p><cite>Jacquotte@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>crazy stuff...</p><p>if you have nvidia, there is an option in their cpanel for multithreading too</p></blockquote><p>Yep.  The higher app priority though wouldn't affect the frame rates unless you have other applications running in background.  I shut everything down for play and then run a program like Game Booster to knock out services.  Higher application priority is meant to keep a consistent CPU time slice.  Which is why it makes no difference in my case.If you turn off the setting in the GPU panel it can cause a performance loss; particularly if you are on a SLI setup.  If you only have one monitor you should set it to Single Display Performance Mode as well. </p><p>There are literally dozens of little tweaks that can be made.  Some are command line tweaks to the operating system that affect caching and others are command line tweaks to the game client combined with advanced display tweaks.</p><p>That being said there is an issue with their coding here.  It might be as simple as  how SM3 (which is already buggy) interacts with the multiple core coding.</p>

[Amanathia]

<p>I can confirm this happens in win7 32 and 64 with sm3 on, as well.  Takes >10 seconds or so.  Almost instant with SM1.  My theory is that it re-compiles the shaders everytime you do this.</p>

[TSR-JoshuaM]

<p>This has been reported and I also get the same behavior with shader 3 switching between modes.  We'll do our best to get that worked out as soon as possible.  I'll provide any updates as they come my way.</p>

[deadcrickets2]

<p>Last night I did some further testing.  I set the game to single core usage and the performance dropped a little.  This is on a dual core system.  BUT, when I used a program called FlipTIB to set the executable to single core with game client set to single core I gained nearly 20 FPS.  That tells me that the multiple core coding is faulty and may be causing performance degradation.  This is on a Windows 7 box.</p>

[TSR-JoshuaM]

<p><cite>deadcrickets2 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Last night I did some further testing.  I set the game to single core usage and the performance dropped a little.  This is on a dual core system.  BUT, when I used a program called FlipTIB to set the executable to single core with game client set to single core I gained nearly 20 FPS.  That tells me that the multiple core coding is faulty and may be causing performance degradation.  This is on a Windows 7 box.</p></blockquote><p>I'll see if I can put together a report on that, reproduce it, and submit it up.  Thanks for the info!</p>