EQ2 Performance Advice

mangar

Hi there, after trolling the forums for a bit I can not help but notice that the latest complaints center around performance issues. 

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In an attempt to help us help ourselves I have started this thread to provide a listing of helpful links.

 

Please add your own helpful links, as additional links are added I will edit this post to move them all to the top.

 

To get the ball rolling here is a good player posted guide for maximizing your performance from the EQ2 forums:

 

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tech_support&message.id=151897

Ranma13

Honestly, I would recommend just using the preset defaults. Since you get different performances in cities, zones, and groups/raids, I would just change the graphics setting as the situation demands it.

mangar

While defaults are convenient they tend to add things like shadows and higher water textures that just suck the life out of your performance if you are running a less then par computer.  I know of many people that complain in game that they cannot run on balanced but after a little coaching they are able to play on balanced and sometimes at higher settings.

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First three things I recommend:

 

1). No shadows (with the exception of character model texture shadows… those are worth it)

 

2). Lower your water settings to the lowest setting you find acceptable

 

3). Turn off ground cover displacement and maybe even ground cover all together. While ground cover is nice I once turned it off to look for ground spawns and have never turned it back on since

 

However when raiding I do highly recommend dropping to max performance.  Even if you have an ungodly computer that can handle the load chances are that targeting will be a mess since there will just be so much going on your field of vision will be cluttered darn good looking but cluttered.

 

One thing that I would really like to try and collect some good helpful information on is solutions to some of the perceived memory leaks.  So far I can only speak from my own experience with an ATI 9600 card and it was completely an issue with the drivers that I had installed.  Has anyone else arrived at different solutions?

 

Please refrain from flaming this thread is meant to be helpful and informative not another argument.

Weioo

Changeing the graphics so often keeps the game from being fun though. I played EQ2 for a little under 2 weeks. I played EQ for years, however. The game seemed like great fun and I enjoyed it (Even though the system is very much like WoW), but I got bored of messing around with the graphics so often. The highlight of EQ2 is the graphics engine. Why play if the highlight of the game is so FUBARed??

mangar

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Originally posted by Weioo

Changeing the graphics so often keeps the game from being fun though. I played EQ2 for a little under 2 weeks. I played EQ for years, however. The game seemed like great fun and I enjoyed it (Even though the system is very much like WoW), but I got bored of messing around with the graphics so often. The highlight of EQ2 is the graphics engine. Why play if the highlight of the game is so FUBARed??

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This is a help and advice thread not an opinion thread

liquescent

I am going to have to try these out and see how it works for me.

mangar

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Originally posted by liquescent

I am going to have to try these out and see how it works for me.

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Please post what does and does not work for you when you do.

BennyRop

When looking for new video cards for our systems, I was trying to balance price with performance. I found very spotty results for cards tested with EQ2 benchmarks to base my suggestions on. Is there a compiled list of various nVidia and ATI chipsets and their relative performance that's been done on similar agp motherboards (and pci E motherboards) by someone trustworthy?

We bumped up my brother and sister-in-law's ATI cards 2 generations; and my nVidia card 1 generation. They're running WinXP on 3Ghz P4s.. my AMD athlon xp 2600+ nvidia chipset eq2 machine has Win2k. Same priced cards - and my EQ2 system is much more fluid. (Less lag at same video settings.)

It might help to see a comprehensive list of graphics chipsets and their relative performance - (so end users can tell how much improvement they'll get for the extra money... as well as a comparison of Athlon XP/Athlon 64/Intel p4 - and Win2k/WinXP. 512Meg/ 1Gig/ 2 Gig ram - to see where the sweet spot for Ram is..

mangar

I have started to look around for you but have not had much success.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

One thing that I have ran across is an overwhelming consensus that if you are getting a new computer then you will want to look at one with an ADM dual core processor and about 2g RAM.

 

From my own experiences I must agree for a few reasons:

1. 
   
   EQ2 is very stressful on your processor
2. 
   
   Anything more than 2g RAM is overkill if your processor can take the load
3. 
   
   There is nothing really domination about the most recent generation of graphic cards that justifies the cost when you can spend the price difference on a dual core processor.  

Ever since my beloved uber PC took a dirt nap I have been running on an ATI 9600 Extacy graphics card, 2g RAM, and an ADM 3200+ 2.19 GHz processor and after withdrawal I am quite happy with it.....for now but I should get my tax return soon

 

If I get any nibbles on the lines I have tossed out I will reply to your post and add it to the OP in the thread.

 

BennyRop

I'm fine playing on a 1Gig ram, 256Meg nvidia 6600 agp card, with an Athlon 2600+ cpu using an nforce2 chipset.
My sister in law, however, with the 1 Gig Ram, 256Meg ATI card (don't remember if we went with an x800 card or not.) on a 3Ghz P4 is whining about the poor performance when all the graphics options are maxed out to "make it look pretty."

The request is so we can get an idea of the relative performance of various hardware options. And I already know I failed on the last recommendation because moving her from the ATI 9800 based card was based on the assumption that she'd use fairly normal settings, not max everything out.

snewrtz

I used to run a freeram type utility, and it drove me crazy evrey time it started to free ram. I actually run EQ2 without any freeram programs now and I have no problems. I know everyone wants the game to look pretty, but we don't have the hardware to do it, my best advice is to change the settings until you find what works, and leave it at that. Upgrade when you can, then rinse and repeat.

gravin

First of all I will state my setup here.

This is a brand new comp, only a week old. I have a 3.4ghz P4 Processor with 1 gig of XMS Corsair 5200 ram, the one with LEDs on them. I got the ATI All-In-Wonder X800 256 mb card.

I have to keep the graphics at balanced, I haven't actually gone to tweak anything YET. What I'm having the problem with is when I put it on High Quality, the next step up from Balanced, EQ2 crashes. It says it ran out of memory. I have since discovered a virus on my comp (damn music heh) and had to do system restore. I reinstalled the game last night and got it online. Seems to run fine on the balanced setting.

I'll go do some tweaking tonight on it and give the update on how it runs on higher settings.

gravin

First of all I will state my setup here.

This is a brand new comp, only a week old. I have a 3.4ghz P4 Processor with 1 gig of XMS Corsair 5200 ram, the one with LEDs on them. I got the ATI All-In-Wonder X800 256 mb card.

I have to keep the graphics at balanced, I haven't actually gone to tweak anything YET. What I'm having the problem with is when I put it on High Quality, the next step up from Balanced, EQ2 crashes. It says it ran out of memory. I have since discovered a virus on my comp (damn music heh) and had to do system restore. I reinstalled the game last night and got it online. Seems to run fine on the balanced setting.

I'll go do some tweaking tonight on it and give the update on how it runs on higher settings.

mangar

Here are the reviews I have gathered sofar but I am not sure it will give you everything you need. (ganked from my EQ2 forum post)

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/02/vga_charts_viii/index.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/05/vga_charts_vii/index.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/05/24/vga_charts_vi/index.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/12/22/vga_charts_v/index.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/10/04/vga_charts_iv/index.html

The most recent cards is in the top link and its going down from there.