Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge vs eq2

[myeq2b]

<p>does does this cpu do vs eq2?  good performance,  bad, what? </p>

[Lempo]

<p>You want to get the fastest core speed processor you can afford.</p><p>You will not get great performance out of that if you want to run high quality settings but it will run the game acceptably on balanced settings.</p>

[myeq2b]

<p>what would be considered a fast enough core speed?  this runs at<span style="font-size: small;"><strong> </strong>3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) and on the newer Z68 chipset boards can get OC'd to 4ghz.   running my 2.8ghz dual core i was able to run Rift flawlessly on max settings even on rift events (lots of ppl around) no lag at all, 50+ fps.  i now eq2 is old and cpu intensive compared to newer mmo's which are designed better</span></p>

[Lempo]

<p>Rift uses a more modern engine. The EQ2 engine does not play well with multi core CPU's it is not designed to take advantage as when it was designed single core was the norm, things took a turn and here we are. the 3.3 should be better and OC is fine but if you have problems and need support you will have to disable OC to get help from SOE.</p>

[Irgun]

<p>Dont know if its so hard to optimize eq2 for 4cores+ nowadays, but its time to do it since the game gets more and more hungry, more shadows, more effects etc.....</p>

[Felshades]

<p><cite>Irgin@Valor wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Dont know if its so hard to optimize eq2 for 4cores+ nowadays, but its time to do it since the game gets more and more hungry, more shadows, more effects etc.....</p></blockquote><p>It would require an entire engine rewrite to support multi core fully.</p><p>Not to mention not everyone has a quad core. I'm still running dual core currently, and there's no way I'm spending what i spent on this machine on a CPU alone. lol</p>

[Gaige]

<p>Quad core CPUs are a couple hundred bucks or so.</p>

[Amanathia]

<p><cite>Gaige wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Quad core CPUs are a couple hundred bucks or so.</p></blockquote><p>Aye, quads are cheap these days.</p><p>Anyway, 2500k is the best EQ2 CPU you can buy, pretty much.  Overclock it, even with a cheap air cooler you can do 4.4ghz+.  5ghz is doable with say an H100 or noctua dh14.</p><p>Reasons you might want to buy something else:</p><p>1.  If you do media encoding (ie rip dvds, encode movies for mobile devices, etc), get a 2600k instead.  Otherwise save your money, HT doesn't help EQ2 at all (but does help media encoding a lot!).</p><p>2.  If you want to play more than 4 accounts on one computer, look at the Intel hex cores instead (pricey).</p>

[TSR-JoshuaM]

<p>The 2500k stock works incredibly well with EQ2.  I've had a chance to play around on it and can maintain 30+ FPS in Extreme Quality (GPU shadows, everything turned up), in x4 raids.  This is with a GTX260, 8GB ram, regular sata HDD etc.</p><p>My i7 860 with HT does about the same however, maybe 2-3FPS lower on average, but it's overclocked to 4.2GHZ</p>

[Lazaretto]

<p>Josh,</p><p>I don't get it.  I'm running the I7-860 overclocked to 3.8 GHZ, 8 gigs of ram, a SSD and a GeForce 285 at 1900x1200 and I have to turn settings way down to function in raids.  I can't even run around without stuttering in Extreme settings anywhere in the game much less try to raid.  What are you doing so differently?  I'm confused.</p>

[TSR-JoshuaM]

<p><cite>Lazaretto@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Josh,</p><p>I don't get it.  I'm running the I7-860 overclocked to 3.8 GHZ, 8 gigs of ram, a SSD and a GeForce 285 at 1900x1200 and I have to turn settings way down to function in raids.  I can't even run around without stuttering in Extreme settings anywhere in the game much less try to raid.  What are you doing so differently?  I'm confused.</p></blockquote><p>PM me the contents of your eq2_recent.ini and we'll compare settings.  My last PC was a Q9650 @ 3.8ghz with 4GB of ram and GTX260.  I could go most anywhere on extreme quality (several area exceptions) without much stuttering and was still able to function in groups/x2's.  x4's did see a bit of stuttering but it was still a functional FPS. </p><p>I use an 860 now as well, @ 4GHZ, HT still on, 8GB of ram, SSD, and a GTX480.  I get a consistent 30 FPS in raids when the actions heavy, with dips as low as 20 and as high as 35fps during the fight.</p><p>What I'll add from personal experience is that it took a great deal of effort to stabilize my overclock and really fine tune things.  While we don't offer support for overclocked systems I'd be more than happy to at least compare settings.</p>