Considering buying a new computer. Not sure if labtop or stationary. How does EQ run, when you use windows 10? Laggy/crashing or ok? Also does EQ run ok on labtop or is stationary still better? Once had a HP labtop and there it was impossible to play eq on.
I'm was running on a Windows 10 laptop using Intel integrated graphics and had no issues except for some slow loading / zoning times due to the slow hard disk. I recently upgraded to an Asus RoG laptop with SSD and it's even smoother and much better zoning / loading times. Any idea what sort of laptop may be in your budget?
I have played EQ on 98, 99SE, XP, XP64, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10. It runs fine on all of them but memory management is better on the later operating systems. You may need to download the old DirectX files as the new ones are not 100% compatible. d3dx9_30.dl
Please remember DBG have stated XP compatibility is due to end soon and it will not continue to run on it. That said, I run EQ on an oldish Asus RoG laptop (i7 / 16GB / GTX860m) an older FX8350 / 16GB / GTX970 an even older FX6360 / 16GB / GTX660ti All on windows 10 and all have run multiple sessions with no worries. The laptop had a phase where it would crash within a few seconds on fullscreen (fine windowed), but that went away with a nVidia or EQ update at the backend of last year - I forget which.
Windows 10 ran EQ like crap when I first tried. I tried a bunch of the standard optimization tips (CPU affinity, vertex shaders,etc) but still wasn't getting acceptable performance. Then I found out the Windows Defender was continually scanning EQ files and pausing the game while it did so. Once I set exclusions for the EQ directory and .exe files, it started running smoothly. So you will probably need to do a little tweaking when you first install, but nothing extreme.
it seems OS is not the issue as much as hardware. Kinda like grouping take the rec specs x 1.5 lol. honestly if you have a decent CPU and a dedicated/discrete GPU/video card with its own RAM (preferably GDDR5) you should have no issues. My only issue upon upgrading to 10 was having to move the install directory to c:\Sony\Everquest (yeah been a while) to avoid issues with launch pad and running 2 clients. that being said i have run EQ without any issues in gameplay on hardware as old as AMD Athlon X2 4200 (socket 939) and 4gb DDR 400 with GT/S 8600 512m Windows 7x64/ 8.1and 10 32 bit (just 2 weeks ago). If you do by chance have an issue. there are more than a few very helpful folks here in the forums, should it come to that but, most dont.
