Your CPU is very weak, designed more for longer life laptop use, for that purpose it was excellent, really a very poor choice for gaming. It also dates to 2008 so its 13 years old. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-2100-vs-AMD-Athlon-X2-4450e It is around 66% weaker in performance than the desktop 2nd gen intel i3 that I use in my box pc - that's a huge difference in performance vs an entry level desktop processor from 2011. The CPU you use also runs hot typically idling at 78C while the i3 i have runs at 68C when busy. It is actually well below the recommended minimum spec for EQ - https://help.daybreakgames.com/hc/e...minimum-system-requirements-to-run-EverQuest- http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Duo-E8400-vs-AMD-Athlon-X2-4450e
In theory its weak but its not bad in practical use. I am not a big gamer anymore so its more than ok for old games. Its near idle temperature is currently at 34° C in desktop/browser environment and I have not cleaned the CPU-cooler since months. Usually my CPU does run at 55° C when being half busy like playing EQ in older zones. Underclocking does even help with temperature and performance.
Its weak not just in theory, it can run EQ but it is probably doing so at close to full CPU capacity, therfore it will have little headroom for displaying busier scenes that's why you will experience hard slow down in newer zones or when more players are onscreen, especially if they are all moving around. Underclocking will only exacerbate the performance problems while saving you some heat dissipation issues. You should definitely consider upgrading to something more modern even a dirt cheap PC will blow your current setup out of the water performance wise.
No, we don't. You might, but a lot of us don't. Many of us have years, if not decades, of history, friends, etc, in this game. I don't know about you, but that's not something to throw away just to get pretty graphics in some new game.
For example (Re: my above reply) https://media.giphy.com/media/5tMX3AGXnBBcs/giphy.gif check that out, IF EQ was this.. amazing.
My preference would be a game engine overhaul to finally divest DX9 (already planned), and move to a 64-bit client (implied in JChan discussion). Once these are completed, would LOVE to see a remastered graphics engine or port to an off-the-shelf solution like Unreal Engine 5. Unfortunately the scope of this work is impossible under current staffing, and would require hugely expanding the studio. Likely will never happen.
The post I replied to didnt sound like a hopeful post to me. Very much the opposite. Did you think it was hopeful?
Could you imagine the amount of content, staffing and other things Everquest would have gotten if Everquest 2 and especially EQ landmark never happened? I hate the idea of an EQ 3. With this being such an old game with such a inherent depth and content to it, one day, maybe not soon, a whole nother generation of people will be attracted to it. Whether that's the retro gaming crowd or what not I'm not sure, but I could see Everquest seeing a wave of popularity again sometime in the future, and I'd hate to see whatever revenue that comes with that be wasted on anything other than Everquest and changes like you mention here not happening cause of those resources being wasted elsewhere.
I like the idea of an EQ 3, just don't go stupid and stay true to the original. An updated engine could be amazing for the things they have wanted to do and actually attract new players.
Wow, how are you still using that and not losing your mind? I was stuck on an Athlon X2 dual core 2.2ghz processor with 2gb of ram for a long time, and during those years PC gaming was more of a wish than a reality. At some point I got a Radeon HD 5770 and that made some stuff more playable, but still slow. I could only run one EQ client and had to turn stuff down, even at 1440x900 resolution. In 2017 the opportunity to upgrade came along so I jumped on the Ryzen train with a 5-1600, 8gb DDR4 (not even dual channel), and bought a used GTX 770. Then I could run two clients at 1080p without having to turn down any settings. I've since bumped up to a Ryzen 7-2700X with 32GB DDR4, a GTX 980, and now I barely notice EQ is even running. The thing is that the Athlon X2 is very old at this point an suffers from the trifecta of low core count, low clock speed, and low IPC (instructions per clock). The Radeon 5450 might be sufficient, but even if it's not showing high utilization it still might be slowing you down. Using DX9 means EQ can't really tax the card the way it's designed to be. A newer card with faster memory and higher clock speeds could still provide faster performance, simply by processing EQ's lighter load faster. Now I'm curious so I'm going to have to benchmark mine and see how much of a hit EQ makes and what performance I get from it.
I know it has been said over the years and I remember coders confirming this that EQ does more work CPU side versus GPU side so having a more powerful graphics card does not bring as much benefit as it would in other games. https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Graphics_and_performance_settings_guide