Like many people, I leave EQ up when I have to do something else for a little while. This makes it quick and easy to jump back in instead of having to restart the client. But for times like this, what can I do to ensure the EQ client uses as few CPU resources as possible? EQ doesn't really overwhem my system or anything, but I'd prefer to have it waste as little power as possible. For example, one thing I do is change my view to look at the floor or a wall so that the client doesn't have to render the view with a bunch of people and stuff in it. I'm not sure if this actually helps, but I'm just assuming it would use less CPU this way. Ideally, I would like tricks that wouldn't require me to go into the graphics options page and change a lot of settings. I really only want the low CPU mode when I'm AFK. When I return, I wouldn't want to have to undo a lot of settings to get back to normal. One thing I've wondered about is if making a popup window (like Overseer) take up the whole screen would help decrease CPU usage. The static popup window would obscure the view, but I'm not sure if the client is still rendering it or not behind the popup window, so I don't know if it would actually help. Anyway, it'd be great to hear if any of the the EQ experts out there have quick tricks they use to have their background EQ clients use as little CPU as possible.
set your background FPS to minimum, you can set foreground to minimum too if you leave EQ as the active screen or accidentally alt tab to it or something for ram you can turn off all luclin models then turn down some of the settings like least memory usage and stuff
Turn off sound. In any program if you put sound at 0 the game will generally unload the audio system and free up a ton of system resources. You used to be able to manipulate your viewport with a /viewport command, a valid viewport for graphics tech is at least 1x1 pixel in size. Turn particles to off entirely and dial back the actor clip in advanced to stop character rendering very close to you. Leave the shader 2.0 option enable. One of the advantages of SM2.0 tech is pixel kill where any fragments that fail visibility tests either have their shader executed in part or not at all. A mostly automatic benefit since the render states are correctly set to do the rejection process. Some shaders might even have kill operations in them where a programmer seen it may help speed things up, those will silently fail in earlier render tech.
In advanced options I turn the actor clip plane all the way down, and shift my third person camera till everyone including myself disappears.
That's a good idea. I was able to see if a few simple things made a difference or not. * Looking at the ground: Usage went from 4% to 1% * Changing viewport to 1 pixel: No change * Making popup window full screen: No change Is there any way to get into the old spellbook view mode where the book took up 100% of the screen? I wonder if that would have any effect? Does anyone know why the Max Background FPS can't be set to 0? The only time I really want a non-zero background FPS is when I'm boxing. Perhaps they could do something where background FPS goes to 0 for AFK characters.
Remember to also examine GPU utilization, I would expect the /viewport trick to have an effect there. I also think disabling "new armor" and setting the clip-plane to minimum would make a difference.
<insert tongue in cheek>I've found the lowest energy consumption for my clients is Offline Trader Mode</chew tongue>
Yes do remember GPU profiling. I have to use an AMD tool with mine to read the power state, frequency, multiplier, and memory utilization. Some like mine even let you force it into any power state you want, on mine changing back is as simple as hitting 'auto' in the menu for it.
I'm sure these types of changes will help reduce usage, but I'm probably not going to take the effort to change settings before going AFK and then changing them back afterwards. Unless it's a setting I want to be a permanent change. I was hoping there were more things like "look at the ground" which can be done quickly with a minimum of effort when I need to alt-tab out of EQ and then quickly undone when returning. It doesn't seem like there are too many easy ways like that. As for the GPU, my system is an old business computer. I'm not sure what sort of GPU it has or anything. Task manager shows 0 for GPU usage in eqgame.exe. But for those people with a graphics card, perhaps setting the viewport to 1 pixel would help. That would be pretty quick and easy to set with one hotkey to shrink the viewport and another to reset it to normal.
If your concern is saving energy I dont think there is anything you can do that would save enough to matter, aside from shutting eq off.
Lots of great suggestions. I was curious to see how much I could minimize GPU and CPU resources EverQuest consumed on my system. I've never attempted to do minimize resources used so I found it entertaining to work on it a bit. System Specs Generally speaking I approached this by: turning off or minimizing all options in Advanced Options (I left Memory Mode set to max because it had zero impact on resources). lowered resolution to 1080P /showspelleffects off turned sound off IMHO, SM 2.0 should be off to minimize consumed resources. While Shillingworth's statement that SM2.0 can allow pixels to be killed before rendering, this really only yields [downstream] performance gains if the rest of the scene is SM2.0b compliant. In EQ1, SM2.0 is fairly broken and has been for over a decade due to poor implementation. SM2.0 set to OFF saves GPU compute resources in EQ1 - but the higher the resolution goes, the larger the gains are. At 2160P I am seeing a 3-8% reduction in GPU utilization. At 1080P this reduction is 1-3%. Press F10 to make your UI disappear. I was able to get EQ GPU resources down from (2160P + max settings) 38.1% @ 148W to (1080P + min settings) 1.4% @ 27W rendering the same scene (Facing Tavid Dennant in Guild Lobby). CPU went from 3% @ 42W 1.1% @ ~29W. Obviously goes without saying -- YMMV. The 'minimum' settings I used.
^^^^ This guy min/maxes hardware. OMG 38% to 1.4%? OH I see. It's running at a max of 10FPS. On a 3090 no less. I mean honestly on a power hungry card like the 3090 27W power consumption is impressive. Zilendar, that must have taken some time to put together. Thanks for doing it!
Basically setting background frames to zero is everything you need. Everything else has small impact when there are no compatibility conflicts. And do not forget to switch to the desktop because then no frames will be calculated at all and it does not matter if you let you PC (camera) face a wall or a moving crowd.
