I recently upgraded from a i5 6500 to an i7 7700k, my framerates went way up. Since Everquest2 is totally a single core CPU game this is what I got. i5 6500 = 3200MHz, Boost 3600MHz i7 7700k = 4200MHz, Boost 4500MHz I played around a bit and it ran great. Things are running way better. I have since overclocked my machine to: i7 7700k = 4600MHz all the time. Playing at my overclocked settings during heavy raid fights I was getting as low as 25FPS but it wasn't like before the CPU upgrade when I was running at like 10 or 13 FPS in the same battles. Most of the normal playing around in game is nice clear with around 100 FPS.
Yup, in the early days before multiple cores was a big thing for cpus... Chip makers were striving for more and more MHz's.. EQ2 bet on more MHz over Cores.. But then Cores became a much bigger thing.. and high Mhz leveled off.. Over time there has been multi-core improvements but the game still loves high and super high Megahertz.
They originally rendered shadows using the CPU, if that tells you anything. This game was designed to use high clock speeds, it was never meant to use multiple cores although they did add some functionality for that. The assumption in 2002 was that CPU speeds would simply rise and rise and rise. Instead, CPU power grew via multiple cores. An extremely unfortunate progression from the standpoint of the custom engine they had built for EQ2, which was already nearly impossible for 90% of folks to run on anything other than potato settings, in 2004. They've made good improvements over the years, though.
I have an update for getting better FPS. Since I mostly play EQ2 I had an idea that really worked well. I changed my processor from SYNC ALL CORES to PER CORE for the ratio. My i7 7700k normally sits at 42 for the ratio and boosts to 45. I modified it so the first core sits at 50 and the other cores sit at 42. This keeps the processor heat from going crazy, and the core that EQ2 runs on is always at 5000MHz so it runs a hell of a lot better than my above settings.
I just wanted to bump this to the top so people coming back to the game for the expansion will know how to get and keep the high framerates!
