I just returned to EQ2 after 6 years only to find out its performing a lot worse on my currents pc's than it did on the pc i had 6 years ago. Im getting 10-20 fps on extreme performance and 5 - 10 fps on balanced on my desktop @ 2560x1600 OS : Windows 7 professional 64 bit CPU : AMD phenom quad core 3.4 ghz RAM : 8 GB GFX : ATI 5850 1 GB HDD : OCZ Agitity 240 GB sata 3 No problem running other mmo like rift , AoC , GW2 etc with much higher framerates than eq2 . I tried both eq2 clients , if anything tha non streming version just made it worse. On my acer 7730 laptop i get 3-10 fps on extreme performance. OS : Windows 7 professional 64 bit CPU : intel dualcore T5900 @ 2.2 ghz GFX : Nvidia 9600 gt m HDD : OCZ agility 120 GB sata 2 Network is 50/50 Mb/s fiber with cable to desktop and wifi to laptop. So EQ2 runs equally bad for me intel / amd , nvidia / ati alike. The only common factos between setups is both have Win 7 and SSD disk, but is this a probable factor? Is there any other things i can try ?
EQ2's engine is primarily based off of a high single core processor as almost everything runs off the processor aside from animations I believe is on the GPU. This is why it probably ran better on your old computer as this game runs terrible on quad cores because they tend to be smaller ghz then your older duo or singles. I personally run my game at High or Very High quality as the ultra or top one seems to really push it over the limit of capability of holding good framerates. Only way you can run this game at max in a high populated situation would be with a very high processor. Otherwise just turn graphics down a bit and don't expect to run it on full and you should be fine.
As i write in OP im already playing in extreme performance so no more room to turn down settings. Also the cpu i used 6 years ago was amd athlon 3000@2.2 ghz and i dont understand how that should perform that much better than my current cpu that runs @3.4 ghz per core under any circumstances.
On my laptop with an i7-3840 I'm only getting around 30fps on very high quality in EQ2 (3.8ghz, even overclocking to 4.2). I'll be pushing 80-90 in GW2 or Skyrim, so yeah the optimization for this game is just not there. On my desktop with eyefinity running at 6048x1080 I'm lucky to get 15 or 20fps on very high quality. Turning off particle effects and flora helps, but extreme quality takes a nosedive regardless. Would be nice for them to update the engine but I don't realistically see that happening for eq2 with most resources already shifted to eqnext.
the game evolves over time. as stated the game only uses a single core of the processor but added multiple core support(check advanced options and be sure multi core is turned on). keep in mind that 6 years ago, while the engine hasn't changed it was built to not need engine changes for graphics, so over time as the game evolves it eats more resources within the environment. i remember playing on 512MB memory, that simply isn't possible anymore and 2 gigs is basically a standard minimum and gives you an idea just how much more the game eats now versus then. you may need some troubleshooting(not in the general gameplay section) if the multi core support does not help. yes it sounds like you have an issue but this will give you a little more perspective of an '8 year old game'. downside is you will never see 80-100FPS even with the newest systems playing this game, its design was long term programming. if you jumped back on your 6 year old system you probably wouldn't even be able to log into a guild hall without crashing to desktop, let alone the 1-5FPS you would be getting in most zones. the minimum system requirements are a bit outdated and misleading. some systems have issues drawing certain things, like shadows. try playing with the settings versus using the broad brush that the preset adjustments make in basic/balanced/extreme performance.
Silly question: What type of shadows are you using? My system is similar to yours, but I'm pretty sure I'm not dipping down to 5FPS. GPU shadows speed things up considerably.
Quad core has absolutely nothing to do with it. A current processor will beat a processor from 6 years ago in single threaded applications with no problem. Not only are the processors able to do substantially more work per cycle, but outside of the old Pentium 4s, the clocks are actually running faster currently. As Lygerr stated, that old computer probably would crash EQ2 in its current state, though that would mostly be due to not enough memory. Still, the old version of the game was not the same as it currently is. Beyond the changes to the engine itself, it is obvious that performance is worse in newer zones than older ones.
