So at heavy picks/in groups my FPS drops to like 30-40. Real bad. What sliders can I turn down to fix this? 2440p 10070ti
It's most likely a CPU bottleneck. The EverQuest client is very old and is limited by the speed of its main rendering thread. Try reducing the "Actor Clip Plane" slider under the "Advanced" graphics options to reduce overall CPU load. Even with a 9900K @ 5GHz I can drop to around 70FPS in places like the EC Tunnel. What CPU do you?
Are you running multiple EQ instances? I vaguely remember some issues around eq doing a bad job picking CPUs and setting Code: CPUAffinity0=-1 to -1 for 0-4 or whatever in the ini to help out.
I've got mine at -1 currently as well. Is there some guide to that particular setting? I'm running an old 920 I7 cpu...and I also get like 20 fps in some raid instances. I've set settings pretty low and its a stutterfest. I don't recall it being this bad back in the day and I was on like..a pentium 2 or some crap back then if not slower.
I understand wanting to maximize performance, but at 30-40 FPS you shouldn't see any real issues. Or is it obvious to you?
I agree with ZzznakeDoctur that it is probably cpu even though you have an 8th gen processor because EQ's old default was to use just 1 processor. (I think it now is defaulted to using all) To check go in the Eqclient.ini If you run multiple clients, you have to have the CPUAffinity0=-1 on all cpu affinity lines. Like CPUAffinity1=-1 CPUAffinity2=-1 etc... In the Eqclient.ini there is a line for up to 12 clients (you can add more manually). All have to be -1 or only the ones you specify will use all cpus. Setting the affinity should fix it. (you can also do this after EQ runs if you don't want to edit the ini file. Just go into task manager, find EQ in the details tab, right click it and pick set affinity, set it to all. You would have to do this every time EQ is ran though) Also, be sure that your memory settings under the advanced button in the video tab is set to "most" This refers to the amount of video ram eq will use. If it's loading what it needs from the HD because it hasn't cached all it needs in vid ram then you will get frame-rate issues. EQ uses around 400 - 500 megs max per client when set to "most". If you are thinking you need more vid ram, It is not likely. Additionally, despite what people tend to say about EQ and processor usage, it is also heavy on the gpu usage. I max my gpu as well as my cpu when running too many EQ clients. My gpu maxes just as fast as my cpu. EQ uses the graphics card almost as much as the processor. Your card however isn't the issue. (Assuming you meant 1070ti rather than 10070ti). It would absolutely murder 1 eq client and could run 12 no sweat and probably a lot more. For any other people with frame-rate issues: (assuming 1 client) If you are maxing your processor on EQ, you are likely on an older machine (2005 or earlier). Any intel 3rd gen or higher (amd equiv too) should be able to run eq no matter your clock speed or processor class (i3, i5 etc. . ) Even celeron processors should be adequate as long as your cpu affinity is set to -1 that is. But despite what so many other people have said. EQ does indeed use and need graphics cards and requires good enough performance. All new cpus can run eq without issues) What prevents good performance within EQ is on board cards (built into the CPU) On board/built in cards usually don't do the trick unless you have a newer gen processor. To find out if your onboard card is adequet, just google your processor specs and then go to https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php to see if it stacks up to eq's recommended card ( https://help.daybreakgames.com/hc/e...minimum-system-requirements-to-run-EverQuest- ). If it does and you still get framerate issues, it may be because your ram speed or dedicated ram that it is using. onboard cards use and share your actual ram with the processor. They "dedicate" some memory to the card, but usually not very much. You can usually change the amount dedicated but this only helps if you are low on ram. Any 8 gig machine would have tons to spare for the card if you are only running 1 EQ client 4 gigs would probably cut it. You would need a min of 256 Megs of spare ram if you run an onboard card (to see dedicated ram look in dxdiag. Some bios allow you to allocate more, there may be registry edits that you can do to increase it as well) If you can set it higher then do it. but eq will never use more than 500 megs for video needs. For overall total ram usage, I round EQs ram needs to 1 gig per client and then give windows 2-3 gigs then have around 2-3 gigs to spare so 12 clients would need a pc with 16 gigs of ram. EQ uses around 750 megs of ram per client. Moral of the story: For NromDuke and anyone else that has a fully capable machine: 1. In the Eqclient.ini file set CPUAffinity0=-1 CPUAffinity1=-1 CPUAffinity2=-1 etc... 2. Set video card memory usage to "most" either in game or in the ini file. (also, uncheck stream item textures. that streams them from the harddrive instead of loading them into vid ram) For anyone else: 3. If you have no video card, Check your cpu specs and see what onboard card you have. 4. If you only have 4 gigs of ram, set more to be dedicated to your onboard card. Either through your bios. . if it supports it.. or google a registry setting to dedicate more. (6 or more gigs then do nothing) For some there may be another option to improve performance. Load EQ onto an SSD. You can get SSDs for pretty cheap nowdays. ( i got an nvme 256 gig drive for $37 last week) If you have a board with extra PCIe slots, preferably an nvme drive (plugs into a pcie slot on the motherboard) but the nvme option is not likely if you are having frame-rate issues with EQ as anything with a pcie slot for an nvme ssd should run EQ totally fine. (Unless you are maximizing how many clients your machine can run) Anyway, if you are pulling video textures off your harddrive and have low framerate because of that, loading EQ to an SSD even through sata ports would improve your performance by quite a bit. In fact, if you used a raid drive setup, it would probably do the trick to get eq close to 30ish fps under load which should be enough to make it playable for 1 client.
Solid advice Running the game from any SSD will vastly improve zone load times over an HDD, especially if you have multiple clients running. If you have a NVME PCie SSD this will usually be even faster than an SSD (not all games see big improvements from this but many do).
