Okay, I've been trying to figure this out for years now, basically, I have serious performance problems on EQ2 no matter what PC I use. I end up with severe lag in both Qeynos and Freeport regardless of the graphics settings, we're talking about major FPS drops and it actually affects my ability to play the game. So, here's my current setup: Video Card: AMD Radeon R7 370 Ram: 8 GB OS: Windows 10 Home 64 Bit Processor: AMD A10-6700 Across all of my PC's over the years, the only thing they've all had in common is their use of AMD processors, so could that be the issue?
Yes. AMD processors are generally less powerful than intel ones on a core-by-core basis. So, naturally, intel processors will be far more powerful for this game.
Actually, graphics settings are still more likely. The EQ2 game engine was designed at a time when everyone thought CPUs would continue doubling speed and capacity. That didn't happen, instead we got multicore machines and powerful GPUs. But the game engine is still using CPU to do most of the rendering. Probably the number one thing you can do to boost performance is go to a solid state drive (no seek time). If you're not on solid state, make sure you occasionally use a tool like CCleaner and defrag your hard drive. If there's any chance you might have caught some malware by visiting a gaming site, or (ahem) adult sites, I recommend running through the whole Major Geek's Malware Removal Guide, step by step (it's actually not a bad idea to do this every 6-12 months anyway). Beyond that, I'd point you to the Guide to Optimizing Display Performance, Rebooted. Since you've tried everything else, give it a whirl at setting all your settings down low as the guide recommends, then boost one setting at a time. There are a number of items you can set in display options that don't give you much "bang for the buck" visually but instead just eat RAM and processing time.
Actually, this is not really the case, the Ryzen line has made leaps and bounds compared to the AMD of old and giving Intel some much-needed competition. Etox's problem is his whole set up is old and aging, besides his OS which is current. His CPU and the chipset it is running on is dated and on top of the OS, the game is not going to run all that swift. His Graphics card is using tech circa 2012. One thing to remember is the drivers are no longer being optimized for his hardware so I am sure somewhere his system is using baseline generic drivers. He can try running his system in Game mode which may help especially after the Windows 10 fall creators update coming OCT 17 that is supposed to be bringing tweaks to Game Mode. Before I get called out as an AMD fanboy ALL my systems run Intel and Nvidia with my main gaming system running a i7-6800k and a GTX 1080 I am however intrigued with AMD Ryzen and Threadripper line of CPU's and I personally would avoid the new AMD GPU's because they still way fall behind just about anything Nvidia has to offer at a comparable price point.
Okay, you can misgender me, and I'll excuse that...and you can insult my PC, that's fine, but dammit dude...no one accuses me of running generic drivers. I'll fight you.
LOL, ok sorry for the misgender, and I really wasn't downing your system I was just stating what it is ( I am a computer engineer BTW ) Computer tech changes all the time and hardware developers and manufacturers will only optimize, if at all, the drivers for their hardware for a short time after it is released. And you may have downloaded all the latest drivers for your system configuration but how OLD are they? This game is old as well and I am willing to bet it hasn't been optimised to run more efficiently on current gen tech either.
win 10 is probably not helping much either right now, it's a system hog. they made me give up 98 and xp, but damned if I'm going to give up 7 any time soon, I despise 10 with a passion... as I used to work tech support.
Over the years, there have been a couple of times I actually had to uninstall newer drivers and roll back to an older driver version, nVidia in my case. The game engine is more than a decade old,and it does not take advantage of the GPU, except for GPU shadows, and it doesn't know much what to do with multiple cores. It doesn't hurt to check your drivers and update them, as long as you are aware of how to uninstall the old drivers/reinstall the new ones and are confident you can back up a version or two if needed. A specific problem we've seen under Win10 with EQ2 is that EQ2 wants DirectX 9.0c, while Win10 comes with DX11. That wouldn't be causing this particular performance issue, I don't think, that problem tends to throw DirectX errors.
