So I've been back for a few months now and recently upgraded my system. I loaded Windows 7 and EQ fresh again on the new system. Gaming in other games is awesome, BF3 for example; 1920x1200 High Options ~ >= 75 fps. I typically play EQ in 1280x1024. Yet , I still experience intensive graphics lag when I zone into the Guild Lobby and run past the entrance and into the Throne room area or if I attend a large raid. To compound the issue, after several hours of gaming, I lose some textures from models, they become grey, shaded shapes. I also experience a graphics lag when I turn > 90* in some zones. The only thing that came over from the older system was the dual 460 GTX's in SLI. I have the latest Nvidia drivers installed and a fresh load of DX9. I also experienced this issue in the older system at the same impact, FPS would drop to between 1 to 5 FPS in the above scenarios. Geek Speak/System Specs: Intel Core i7 3770K stock (not OC'd yet) MSI Z77A-GD65 Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB SSD 16GB (8GB x 2) Micron Ballistix Tactical 8-8-8-24 (1T) Dual MSI N460GTX Hawk GeForce GTX 460 1GB in SLI At this point I've been comtemplating a upgrade to a 4GB 670 or 680 GTX, but I don't want to pull the trigger on the purchase if this is a software issue. Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated.
If you upgraded specifically for EQ, you made a mistake. EQ's engine was developed at a time when single core CPU's ruled the roost and outboard graphics cards were just gaining widespread popularity. Furthermore, the way EQ loads zone assets and players are what cause the lag you mention, not your computer. There is no way to 'fix' it. Also, EQ and SLi/Crossfire do not make good bedfellows. You will experience graphics anomalies, hitching, stuttering, and other types of performance issues. You would be well-advised to disable SLi for EQ. Unfortunately for us, SOE has deemed any upgrades to EQ's engine to be cost-prohibitive. Meaning any improvements we see to EQ's engine will be/have been the work of creative programmers, but the necessary overhaul to bring it to a multicore-aware status is out of the question. I play BF3 myself, and have a system similar to yours. For BF3, I can wholeheartedly recommend the GTX 670 or 680. For EQ, stick with what you have already and just disable SLi before logging in.
I was getting about the same performance with the Intel on chip VGA (core i5-3570K) that I am getting now with an AMD 5770 GPU installed. Guild lobby still lags me, just not nearly as much as before with a dual core AMD chip. I think that a big part of the problem is that EQ is simply CPU heavy, plus most of the newer GPU's are going to be optimized for DX11+, not DX9. So any improvements you get are going to be from raw clock cycles. Perhaps someone else has a different experience.
I hate running through the Guild Lobby to get to my Guild Hall for that exact reason. It would be convenient if they added/moved the Guild Hall exit to the entrance of the Guild Lobby because of all the AFK people there.
Thanks for the response! My upgrade was driven by other reasons /cough <BF3>, but I did suspect that SLI in EQ made no sense. I'll disable SLI for the game and give it a shot. Setting the processor affinity to all did improve performance a little bit, but not by much, then again it is a single threaded game. I've been reading some of the other posts below and another suggestion which may also improve some of the ancillary issues I'm experiencing with the mouse is to set the background FPS to > 50. Yet to be tested and may yield additional improvements. I was going to write something about an intermediate asset cache, but realized that it's beyond the scope of this conversation and the bottom line is the devs don't care to improve the game engine for other than bug fixes. I believe you're right. I think I'll bite the bullet and wait for the black friday deals coming soon and jump into a 4GB 670 GTX or wait until Jan '13 for the new AMD 89XX series. Anyways keep the tips coming, we may have missed something!
Yes, I wish they could give the game a multi-threaded option, at the basic level it's not hard, just requires a few compiler switches. To really optimize the game for multi-threading work would take some reprogramming of the game engine itself.
I think that's a worth while suggestion, especially if they added them there! I wonder if we can submit that to the Devs in some form?
Just realized this thread was started in the in-appropiate forum. It should be moved to: Forums>The Norrathian Herald>Support Forums>Performance Support
If they change where's the Guild hall enters/exits then where everyone stands will just change. What would help would be if people who are going straight to the guild hall would actually use the area that is intended for that, instead of running right through the middle.
I say this as someone that's written single thread games and multi thread games. Your completely wrong about being able to flip some compiler switch and magically it's threaded. The coders have to exclusively create threads, write the functions those threads will use as their main body, as well as design for scenarios that a single thread program would never see (like one thread writing data while another reads the very same data). It's an incredibly complex concept that is easier to do if you start with the goal of threading instead of adding it later as an afterthought. If you spend a bit of time googling threading on programming websites, you will see a lot of post from people that put together a program and put off threading support until later in the project's development cycle. You wind up seeing a lot of facepalming where various programmers realize the biggest mistake they made was coding for a single thread and then trying to work threading into it instead of coding for a threaded environment from the start. I believe the myth that you flip a switch and the program magically becomes multi-threaded was created by marketing departments for multi-core processors. After all the things would not have sold as well if people heard the truth, that the programs they know and love would not have threading support until the developers got around to rewriting massive parts of the code base.
Why would they do that? I'm talking about putting two doors at the ZI spot in Lobby. Why would everyone try to crowd in that little corridor?
They would be at that end of the middle area and over flow into it far more than they do on the other end for the same reason that people do now they are lazy. Really why is it so hard for people just running thru the zone to use the halls designed for that?
Even going through the side tunnels, I get the graphics lag. While turning, it's smooth...smooth...JUMP...How did I end up facing backwards?
That sounds like an issue other than too many models, as your computer should not be loading those models which are not in your view.
There really is no solution...what created this was the buff timers not expiring. The only real solution would be to return the buff timers to normal in that zone, and create another small zone off of the lobby where everyone could gather and wait. Honestly it wouldn't even have to be a big or fancy zone.
I think making the guild lobby throne room larger, and putting a door between the zone in corridor and the throne room would work. Or do a F9 until you are looking down at your character's head, as soon as you zone into guild lobby, and then go to the side hallways and go back to first person.
This may have already been mentioned but EQ can only use 2GB of ram and is best run on winXP, windows 7 eats all the extra resources up.
Ummmm, no. Win7 runs EQ far better than XP. I never even get EQ close to 2GB of memory per instance, and I often run up to 6 instances without an issue. It's just too many player models to show in one area. It's the same problem we had in the old bazaar. Best to CoTh yourself across this terror zone.
