EverQuest 2 performance discussion thread

[Sgt_Pitt]

force AA/AF off, You will get a nice performance boost. I set my CP to High Quality and turn off AA and AF. Ingame I play on Very High Quality with custom settings and once set I never had to touch them, The game runs smooth for me. Poeple who are complaining on performance, either lower your settings or defrag your PC The game can and will run smooth if your PC is kept nice and optimized.

Sorry don't blame the games great engine on your ****ty PC's.


****TY PC'S ???? i get a higher 3dmark 05 score than you, how is my pc **** ?


GIVE US SOME FRAPS SCORES IN FREEPORT ?

I agree with the all knowing chris, more ram may help, alot more ram

[|MaguS|]

So you get better scores the me in a Synthetic Benchmark yet my PC preforms better on a more demanding game? Optimize your PC for gaming not for numbers...

Im running around usually between 20-40 FPS in the game... That is GREAT for a MMORPG especially with graphics of this calibur. Go play WoW if you want a useless 60FPS.

[Sgt_Pitt]

yes im running 15-40, however its the minimum that counts, and you cant say that 20 is acceptable on nvidias 2 flagship cards.

object LOD hardly even works in EQ2, there should be really low texutures and geometry for far away objects and nice textures and objects up close, however everything in the distance to be seems clean and sharp which IMO is the cause of the great stress to the 6800

yes i do have crappy ram, but hopefully that will be fixed soon.

look i dont want to argue about it, im just saying many other people are having this problem, i know a decent amount about pc's and i know a monster of a game engine when i see one, yes EQ2 has a monster engine but when nvidias top of the line and the current best card on the market runs it at 15fps ( in certain areas) with most sliders to the left, then what does that tell you ? as i said before i hardly notice any difference from running the game at 16x12 with all settings or 640x480 all settings. theres just not that much the sliders do to increase performance, while maintaning a decent picture.

meh i just wanna run this game at 30-60 fps constantlty, is that too much to ask ?



anyway mate i read one of your old posts here http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=39309

did the problem get sorted out with sm3.0 or do the bugs still need ironing ?

[Tyr-Sog]

They state that they designed the game the future in terms of graphics.

IMO they should have designed it for the current graphic card could have been optimized well with leaving in mind that a patch in the future could increase visuals. I think to many people are having problems because they want the beauties after seeing them on extreme and are having a hard time turning them back down or off completely.

If Sony would have just left it out or not able to turn up to extreme in the first place we would never have known what we are missing. :drooling:

Again, that guideline is a great guideline if you're having problems. Just set it by his specs if you have a similar pc and forget about what the game can look like, we bought it to play it. It still looks great at those setting anyways. Besides, who not to say they won;t iron things out so those higher options work.

[|MaguS|]

The SM3.0 bug is gone, It was an issue with shadows and certain textures appearing incorrectly. The engine is very optimized, I would seriously check for AdWare and defrag your PC. My friend with a P1.6 and Geforce4 is running it smooth, I don't see why you cant.


I uploaded my settings, back up yours and place mine in the EQ2 Dir. See how mine work for you. These give you great graphics and good frame rate without sacraficing too much eye candy.

[Ghosthunter]

btw on my machine I now started playing at 1600x1200 now and I got to tell you it looks AWESOME!!!!

I use that guide above and for most part it runs great. I do notice it accessing my hard drive a lot when I am in queynos and lots of people, but outside the city it is very smooth.

I am thinking of throwing in another 1 gb of ram just not sure if it iwll make huge difference yet.

but all in all...except in the cities i get no stutter..and combat is smooth..

[Ghosthunter]

ARRGH GAWD not that bloody guide again, everytime someone has troubles with EQ2's crappy unoptimized game engine someone throws that guide in your face.

I saw a gamespot video with one of the devs, saying if you own a 6800 you'll be able to have most of the sliders pushed to the right. LMAO what a fat joke, more like all the sliders to the left and still crappy performance with a $500 dollar top of the line vid card "NVIDIAS FLAGSHIP" my ass :(

well i was trying to help people out..and it seems some have used it and it helped.

No reason to complain about it..

and i really think people are expecting way too much for the first week...the main reason for the slowdowns is the overcrowdedness....give SOE some times to fix the issues

[Sgt_Pitt]

yeah thx for all your help, im fussy when it comes to gfx, and i get good frames when outside cities and at night, its just that i have to keep running back into town for quests, and when it drops to 15fps in the small corridors of freeport, thats when it really bugs me.

ill try out your ini file, thx for that.

[Tyr-Sog]

Yeah, I was tempted also to run up and get another gig but I'd like to hear some before and after experiences before shelling out $200.

[Ghosthunter]

out of curious for htose with HT proc..do you have HT enabled or disbaled? Try disbaling also make sure Fast writes is turned off that might help with EQ2 as well I been reading on forums

[Tyr-Sog]

Anyone know what causes this? Latest officals drivers.


http://www.slothyville.com/photogallery/albums/userpics/10003/EQ2_000008.jpg

[|MaguS|]

Looks like your card is overheating... Have you tried disabling FW or going back to stock clocks? I had this issue when I ran the game on 8xAGP since my motherboard has a crappy AGP slot.

[Tyr-Sog]

Yeah, I just turned FW off before my last venture out and I haven't seen the spikes. With FW off it seems to be a lot smoother also.

[-=DVS=-]

Check out this guide here:

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tech_support&message.id=3265

Very good detailed on how to customize display settings to get great performance without sacrificing quality

For the most part after a full defrag and on 66.93 my system runs very well except in towns I have to turn everything off..but that is to be expected.

Keep in mind this game was designed for systems that are not even out yet to make it more future proof

This Guide that Ghosthunter , found is very good actually , explains alot of settings and following by suggestions , helps eliminate much unnecessary overdraw , and gives tips what effect eat up moust of FPS , that would be Shadows , Specular Lights ect .
Following all tips , i gained better quality and more FPS , with AA and AF.

[Tyr-Sog]

Just another tip I was reading about is to go in to msconfig/startup and just turn everything off, reboot. I did this and the game is running great but I still think the game needs some work instead of jumping through all these hoops.

[Ghosthunter]

ok here i foudn something interesting..my temps barely go up when playing EQ2 even at 1600x1200 with a lot of high quality settings


How is that possible? I get around 61C, when my normal just running in windows without running any games is around 57-58, but when I played doom3 or most other games I hit around 83-85

[mustrum]

WTF is wrong with that game? I read that people can play that game on balanced setting on a 9800 PRO.
I'm running a 2.6gigs AMD 64 1GB RAM and a 450/1200 6800 ULTRA and no matter if i set balanced or high or very high the game goes to 15 FPS and below as soon some more people are on the screen or i'm fighting.
My system is fresh installed and i'm using 67.02's.
HL2, Doom 3 and many other games run smooth as hell.

FRUSTRATING!

Edit: Ok i followed this guide and it was very useful. I managed to get my framerate up quite a bit without loosing much detail. Shadows have an enormous impac on the framerate but i tend to leave them on since it looks so plain without them. If you have serious FPS trouble they can help you getting playable FPS though.

[Arioch]

Shadows seem to be the biggest frame rate killer in gaming and turning them down in most games improves performance quite a bit without giving up too much IQ.

[Tyr-Sog]

Shadows and flora. I run with both off. It's a bit frusterating at first but once you get a few hours in you don't even notice, or at least you forget about it.

Just another tip. Do the msconfig/startup thing and turn everything off, reboot and play off the fresh startup, helps out. With that and going by that guide I play really smooth ,unless their is major action.

The game does need some major patches imo though.

[Graphicmaniac]

turn all off??? are you sure the pc start with all off?

i use win98 anyway

[Tyr-Sog]

I'm not sure about win 98 but with XP you can turn all of them off.

[SigmaOrionis]

When I used to use Win98SE I would have them all off except for:
Explorer
Systray.

[lognoronon]

Well I keep my computer clean both from adware and viruses ect ect and I can safely say that with my system the game performance sucks major ass. I was in beta though so I knew ahead of time it was running like ass but I had hoped they would have optimized it further which did not happen. If I can't get a constant 30+ fps things are unacceptable. I play as a healer and these low framerates even on the performance settings makes it hard for me to heal effectively. I pretty much gave up now on SOE ever optimizing any engine they release. They have a history of this for the person saying don't blame the engine. You sir are wrong and the engine DOES need further optimization.

[Sgt_Pitt]

thx lognoronon, you coulda warned us :P

[Tyr-Sog]

Well they shut the servers down for a couple of hours today ad released a patch. I'm getting really good results from it now. I just played for about 4 hours straight with no lag even durning intense battle. Where I did get a bit of lag is in Baubbleshire but nothing like it was. I grouped with a lot of people today and all had similar results, some even saying they bumbed their graphic options up .