How is Everquest 2 Performing for You?

I upgraded my system and here's some tests I made while looking for best performance. Tests executed as instructed by the OP.
System specs, not overclocked:
Processor: Intel i7-860 (2.8Ghz)
Ram: 4G (1333Mhz)
Graphics Card: ATI HD5850 (Catalyst Version 10.1)
Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit
Screen Resolution: 1680x1050 (Full screen, ProfitUI)


Test 1 (r_aa_blit 1 in eq2.ini):
3D Settings in Catalyst Control Center:
Anti-Aliasing: 8x, Filter: Edge-detect, Samples: 24x
Anistropic Filtering: 16x
Catalyst A.I.: Advanced
Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for vertical refresh: Always on
Anti-Aliasing mode: Super-sample AA

Frames Per Second: 42
Apparently AA is not actually working (noticed this after next tests...)

Test 2 (r_aa_blit 1 in eq2.ini):
3D Settings in Catalyst Control Center:
Anti-Aliasing: 8x, Filter: Edge-detect, Samples: 24x
Anistropic Filtering: 16x
Catalyst A.I.: Disable
Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for vertical refresh: Always on
Anti-Aliasing mode: Super-sample AA

Frames Per Second: 27
Game looks smoother, but then Eq2.exe crashed after alt-tabbing out from eq2 Next test r_aa_blit = 0

Test 3 (r_aa_blit 0 in eq2.ini):
3D Settings in Catalyst Control Center:
Anti-Aliasing: 8x, Filter: Edge-detect, Samples: 24x
Anistropic Filtering: 16x
Catalyst A.I.: Disable
Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for vertical refresh: Always on
Anti-Aliasing mode: Super-sample AA

Frames Per Second: 50
Eq2.exe did not crash this time. Also it seems that AA is working.

Test 4 (r_aa_blit 1 in eq2.ini):
3D Settings in Catalyst Control Center:
Anti-Aliasing: Application controlled
Anistropic Filtering: Application controlled
Catalyst A.I.: Disabled
Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for vertical refresh: Off, unless application specifies (Off in Eq2 performance options)
Anti-Aliasing mode: Super-sample AA

Frames Per Second: 51

Test 5 (r_aa_blit 0 in eq2.ini):
3D Settings in Catalyst Control Center:
Anti-Aliasing: Application controlled
Anistropic Filtering: Application controlled
Catalyst A.I.: Disabled
Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for vertical refresh: Off, unless application specifies (Off in Eq2 performance options)
Anti-Aliasing mode: Super-sample AA

Frames Per Second: 49

Hmm... that's odd. Looks like I get about 50fps regardless of AA... I wonder why?
Anyway, I'm going to play with Test 3 settings in windowed mode.

Bought a new rig...
Processor: i7-920 @2.67GHz
Ram: 6GB @ 1333MHz
Graphics Card: nVidia 295
Operating System: Win7 64bit
Screen Resolution: 1920x1200 Fullscreen
Frames Per Second: 50

Processor: i7 2.67ghz
Ram: 4gb DDR3
Graphics Card: BFG GTS250 1GB
Operating System: Windows 7 64-Bit
Screen Resolution: 1440X900
Frames Per Second: 48 Very High Quality 24Extreme Quality
Can any one tell me if i should have Synchronize refresh, Triple buffer, and Reuse vertex buffers checked?
TY For the help
Gego

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 810 OC to 3.25 Ghz
RAM: 8Gb Viper 1333 DDR3
Video Card: ATI Radeon 5770 1Gb
OS: Windows 7 64-Bit
Resolution: 1920x1080
FPS: 52
I get 52 with all settings maxed with AAx8 and AFx4, no cpu shadows and 60% rendering distance (thats all I really use in normal play). If I max the rendering distance and turn on all the cpu shadows my fps dumps to around 20-24. This is probably because of the smaller L2 and L3 Cache size on the 810 cpu. Going to be getting a 965 Black Edition soon. I built this system on a budget and just spent the high dollars on the motherboard so i could max it out later. Seems to run great in eveyrthing I play. Crysis-1080p, all settings on high, AAx8 and AFx2, 40 FPS. Now, Excellent settinsg turns it into a slide show......

Processor: intel Core2Duo P8600(2.4ghz mobile)
Ram: 4gig
Graphics Card: nVidia Quadra 3700M(driver version 195.81)
Operating System: Win7 x64 Ultimate
Screen Resolution: 1440x900
Frames Per Second: 31

Proc: i7-860 Oc'd to 3.8
Ram: 4gb Ddr3 Gskill Ripjaw Gaming Series 1333 OC'd to 1440
Video: BfgTech GTX 260 Maxcore 55 OC'd edition
150g HDD Raptor
OS : Win7 Home Prem. 64bit
Screen Resolution : 1680x1050
FPS: 15-20

Done every tweak ive seen posted in all these threads and no change in performance Lag is horrible spell casting is 2-3 seconds -- ive even went down to raid settings with no change -- i was expecting with my machine to be able to at least play in balanced with no lag -- Thing i dont understand is people with higher machines than mine having the same issue - people with less systems are saying they are running extreme quality no problem ?

Processor: AMD 7850 Dual-Core 2.8ghz
Ram: 8gb
Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce GTX 275
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit
Screen Resolution: 1680 x 1050, 60 hz
Frames Per Second: 51

Daladfar wrote:

I'm certainly no expert, but I'm wondering how much stuff you have running in the background. Stuff that loads on startup. Also, your internet connection, and how many users share it. Have you tried running a performance test like PC Pitstop or something similar?

Ive done the msconfig thing and dropped everything on startup not needed -- internet is 16mb connection speed test actually shows 25mb board usesa 10/100/1000 nic -- only have 2 pc's me and my wife both play she gets lag also but not bad like mine and she is playing on a 3-4yr old amd system

from looking at the rest of the posts and also from my own experience on the game... more ram... 6-8 gigs seems to smooth things out but i guess you can do more research.

Daladfar wrote:

The first question I'd ask is "why are you running 4gb of triple channel ram?" In this set-up the only thing you're doing is running very expensive dual channel ram as if there are not 3 channels available the processor will revert back to dual channel. In order to take advantage of the triple channel the processor and memory offer, you need to run it in multiples of 3. Up your ram to 6gb or drop it to 3gb.
Second: reset your processor to stock settings, OR see if you can enable the dynamic overclocking while it is OC'ed (you probably can't on the 8 series) on the I7 - usually when you overclock the i7, this gets disabled. This is probably the biggest boost you can give to EQ2. On single core processes the i7 will automatically overclock ONE core itself if there are no other loads on the other cores in order to handle the load of demanding single core programs. If you OC the processor yourself, this feature gets turned off so the chip doesn't fry itself.

Processor: AMD Opteron 170 (2050 MHz)
Ram: 3 gb
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Operating System: Windows 7 64bit
Screen Resolution: 1680 x 1050
Frames Per Second: 15

Loxus@Everfrost wrote:

The Gskill ram i have isnt triple channel its dual channel supporting the I5-I7 proc. specifically and i just recently up'd to Gskill Ddr3 1600 4gb dual channel also for the i5-i7 proc -- and i have also run the proc at stock settings with turbo on and all the other settings for it -- still get the lag
The Ram -- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16820231277

• Processor: i7 920 OC'd to 3.4GHz
• Ram: 6 gb 1600MHz DDR3 Tri Channel
• Graphics Card: GTX 285
• Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
• Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1020
• Frames Per Second: 47-48

Processor: Intel Core Duo 6400 @ 2.13 GHz
RAM: Corsair 4x2GB (yes, I know 32 bit windows doesn't see it all, count me for 4 GB)
Video: BFG Tech GTX280OC w/ latest drivers
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate w/ current SPs
Resolution: 1920x1200 (Dual monitors)
Bandwidth: 50Mb down, 12 Mb Up
FPS: 7-110 depending on zone Ykesha, SF zones are at 8-20 FPS on High(including your benchmark - 16), Kunark is 30-50 and original zones are 70+
FYI, on extreme, your benchmark is 8-10 FPS
my normal play settings are at high + max on a few settings for custom. I get 16 FPS on the benchmark location.

BTW, Off Topic, when are you going to come up with a 10+ year reward for those of us that have been station members since the original EQ release? My EQ character was created July 21, 1999 on Brell. I'm sure there are some others that are around that have been here as well. I know there are several in my guild as we were one of the original Brell guilds and we're still playing.

Processor: Intel Core Duo 6750 @ 3.47 GHz
RAM: A-Data 4x2GB @ 868 mhz 5 5 5 18 and 2T
Video: BFG Tech GTX260 OC w/ latest drivers
OS: Windows 7 64
Resolution: 1680x1050 (Dual monitors)
Bandwidth: cable comcast
35 FPS

Processor: E6600 @ 2.4ghz
Ram: 4GB
Graphics Card: 275 GTX
Operating System: Windows 7
Screen Resolution: 1280x1024
Frames Per Second: 20 on High Quality with shadows and flora off, 30 with Extreme Performance.

^Is this normal? This really doesn't seem right compared to some other posts in this thread.

Results -

Processor: E8400
Ram: 8gb
Graphics Card: 8800GT 512mb
Operating System: Vista64
Screen Resolution:1600x1200
Frames Per Second:17 Shader Model 3/Full screen; 8 SM3/Windowed; 42 SM1/Full Screen; 22 SM1/Windowed
Also shader model 3 makes switching any setting in display painfully slow, took a minute to switch from windowed to fullscreen only takes a second without shader model 3...

Pocessor : intel Core I7 950.
Ram: 12gb
Graphic : AMD 4870x2 (does EQ2 see this card as one card or 2?)
Operating : Win7 64bit Pro.
Resolution 1920x1200
Average FPS 20-30 (Depending on zone). When using a flyer. FPS 15-20

MartinusPe wrote:

It is truely abysmal that you can have such a nice setup, and get such poor results.
Seriously SOE, how can a 5 yo game run SO poorly? I've played since launch and EQ2 has always been the worst running game on any system I have had. Over the years I have upgraded my system, sometimes it was cutting edge, sometimes not quite. Games have improved, all except EQ2. it's the same performance dog it was 5 years ago.
A quadcore system with 12 GB of ram and 2 video cards running a 64 bit OS should NOT be getting 20-30 FPS.We can't even crank the game up to it's maximum settings, which by the way still look like crap compared to modern games.
You have some of the best core game mechanics and lore, zones, instances etc around, but you've tied it to the lamest poorest performing engine of any MMO I have seen. really, take a look at some of the free2 play MMO's coming out, even they perform and look better.
Please, undertake a SERIOUS upgrade to the engine, not just the Shader stuff you recently did (which looks like crap mostly).
(FYI your awesome "Waiting for zone server" message is what gave me the time and come and rant)