New Computer - Less than expected performance

[Kram337]

<p>I thought this system was top of the line. Friends have told me they can run EQ2 on extreme quality on lessor systems and only need to turn it down to raid/enter a city. Any idea why I'd be getting choppiness when say turning in a cirlce when in a zone like DLW's starter area?</p><p>Here's the system I built:</p><p>i7 2600k 3.4 ghz processor (4 cores)8gb Crucial Ballistix RAMTwo 128GB SSD Crucial M4 hard drives in RAID 0nVidia GTX 580 SC graphics card (driver 280.26)Maximus IV Gene-Z motherboard (6gb per second access to hard drives)850 Watt Power Supply (up to 70 amps)</p><p>Win7 Ultimate 64 bitOnly a few programs installed, not much running in the background</p>

[Banedon_Toran]

<p>Which launchpad are you using?  The only other factor I can think of is internet speed if you are on the Streaming version of the client.</p>

[Kram337]

<p>I downloaded the free version to get it installed. But then copied my game files from the other computer and dumped them into the game directory on the new computer.</p><p>The launch pad is different than the one I'm used to. However it doesn't have the running dinosaur that indicates it's still downloading data in the background. I've also launched the game just with EverQuest2.exe skipping the launcher all together and get the same results.</p>

[Loxus]

<p><cite>Kram337 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I thought this system was top of the line. Friends have told me they can run EQ2 on extreme quality on lessor systems and only need to turn it down to raid/enter a city. Any idea why I'd be getting choppiness when say turning in a cirlce when in a zone like DLW's starter area?</p><p>Here's the system I built:</p><p>i7 2600k 3.4 ghz processor (4 cores)8gb Crucial Ballistix RAMTwo 128GB SSD Crucial M4 hard drives in RAID 0nVidia GTX 580 SC graphics card (driver 280.26)Maximus IV Gene-Z motherboard (6gb per second access to hard drives)850 Watt Power Supply (up to 70 amps)</p><p>Win7 Ultimate 64 bitOnly a few programs installed, not much running in the background</p></blockquote><p>That's a pretty kicking computer there, however you're not giving too much info on option settings details.</p><p>First thing, is your CPU overclocked or stock freq?</p><p>Do you have shadows set for GPU or CPU?</p><p>Are you trying to max everything?  IE. select extreme from the drop down and that's it?  I don't think there's a system (more like a CPU) built yet (Nor will there be if current tech trends continue) that can handle the pure extreme setting without tuning down at least some of the effects.  It's still a very intensive single core app.  However, most of the things you do tone down, you probably will never notice anyway.  I guarentee you, that anyone who says they are running pure extreme without toning nothing down and still getting high 80's or above is probably stretching the truth a bit.</p><p>Do you have your in-game logs turned on?  SSD's don't like constant writing... it tends to slow them down and burn them out faster.</p><p>I'm running a i7 975 extreme 3.33 (stock clock), with 12 gigs of 1600 memory on a GTX295 X2 with 2 1tb drives in Raid 0 and I'm running high 90s to 110 in open world and 60 to 90 in raid/group/guild halls/  40 to 50 for heavy population ring wars. </p><p>I running on extreme with heat blooms off, gpu shadows, water effects turned off, flora off (better to see shineys), complex shaders set to -1 (because I still get the "your grapics card has recovered from a fatal error" in certain areas and this is the only thing that stops it), and spell effects set to 1 per toon minimum effects, shader 1 setting and I never have to adjust anything for any situation.  The game still looks great.</p><p>Your best bet is this thread <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=444036">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=444036</a>  follow the instructions but set it to extreme and tweak down and just tweak your settings until you find a fps you can enjoy.</p><p>Edit to add:</p><p>Here's the numbers I was getting when i first build my system without tweaking any settings.</p><p>Processor:  i7-975 Extreme @ 3.33 (for this test)Ram: 12 Gig of DDR3 1600Graphics Card: Nivida GTX 295 @ 1.8 GigOperating System: Windows 7 UltimateScreen Resolution: 1680X1050Frames Per Second:  On High Quality 50 FPS (Cpu Shadows)</p><p>Frames Per Second: On Very High Quality 52 FPS (Cpu Shadows)</p><p>Frames Per Second: On Extreme Quality 18 (cpu shadows) 40 (Gpu Shadows)</p><p>All in Windowed mode, running Profit on a dual monitor display.</p>

[Kram337]

<p>Wow great response my good man. Firstly I'm on default options, whatever SOE says is Extreme Quality is what my settings are. Also I'm on stock CPU, haven't OC'd yet. Since it's the first system I've ever built I wanted to make sure it was stable before I did anything fun.</p><p>With that said it's been running fine so I'll work on OCing though I bet I can solve this lag issue without doing that. GPU vs CPU shadows, that could very well be my problem. I'll check that out when I return from work today. I'll also do a few other tweaks too based on your suggestion and that of the post you linked.</p><p>Lastly, I usually set spell effects to 1 per toon anyways just because it makes the game look better. If I dont the mobs are always just lit up with spell effects and it's sort of ridiculously overwhelming. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Thanks again for the great response.</p>

[TSR-JoshuaM]

<p><cite>Kram337 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Wow great response my good man. Firstly I'm on default options, whatever SOE says is Extreme Quality is what my settings are. Also I'm on stock CPU, haven't OC'd yet. Since it's the first system I've ever built I wanted to make sure it was stable before I did anything fun.</p><p>With that said it's been running fine so I'll work on OCing though I bet I can solve this lag issue without doing that. GPU vs CPU shadows, that could very well be my problem. I'll check that out when I return from work today. I'll also do a few other tweaks too based on your suggestion and that of the post you linked.</p><p>Lastly, I usually set spell effects to 1 per toon anyways just because it makes the game look better. If I dont the mobs are always just lit up with spell effects and it's sort of ridiculously overwhelming. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p><p>Thanks again for the great response.</p></blockquote><p>I've seen Point Light Shadows on by default which is a huge hit on performance.  Can you double check that this is not enabled?  Click Advanced in the options window, go to Display Options > Shadows > Uncheck Point Light Shadows.</p><p>With GPU shadows set, theres very little difference you will notice, graphically speaking.</p>

[Loxus]

<p>Quite welcome friend,  I hope it helps.</p><p>The need to overclock for EQ2 is an extremely hot topic of debate.  Gaige on AB is running a i7-2600K @ 4.8 I think and swears by it and also gets great results by it.  I'm not a fan of OC'ing for EQ because the i7 architecture has a dynamic overclock built into the chip.  What this does is, the chip will actually overclock one core itself if it detects a heavy single thread program (like EQ2).  Mine will OC one core to a 3.8 ghz as will yours.  I'm not sure of the 2600k settings but it's probably somewhere close.  When you overclock the chip manually, the BIOS automatically disables this feature so it doesn't fry the chip.</p><p>Josh added a good point I forgot (I'm going by memory on my settings being at work) I have all the special effect turned off also and my distance shader set about half way, I think.</p>

[Gaige]

<p><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><span style="direction: ltr;">When you overclock the chip manually, the BIOS automatically disables this feature so it doesn't fry the chip.</span></p></blockquote><p>You can overclock SB chips with Turbo enabled and if you use C1E and EIST with the vcore on auto it'll downclock to 1600mhz and less than a volt while idle as well.  That is usually only good for like 4.4 ~ 4.5Ghz though.</p>

[Loxus]

<p><cite>Gaige wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Loxus@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><span style="direction: ltr;">When you overclock the chip manually, the BIOS automatically disables this feature so it doesn't fry the chip.</span></p></blockquote><p>You can overclock SB chips with Turbo enabled and if you use C1E and EIST with the vcore on auto it'll downclock to 1600mhz and less than a volt while idle as well.  That is usually only good for like 4.4 ~ 4.5Ghz though.</p></blockquote><p>I stand corrected.  Thanks Gaige, I wasn't aware of that.</p>

[Loxus]

<p>Oops Nevermind.</p>