This whole this isn't so much a performance issue.

I went budget on the GPU (didn't like 8800 prices then) and got a quad OCed to 3ghz. The 8600GTS, despite of what I've read, works great with current games which includes EQ2.

HOWEVER, EQ2 has an issue with 8xxx NVIDIA cards. NO MATTER WHAT THE SETTINGS ARE (I can run the game fine on high), after 45min or so playing, the stuttering starts. They are little freezes, every second or so, more often during combat. The game pretty much gets into a slide show. When that happens, the only thing that will fix it is to exit to the desktop and run the game again (selection char screen won't fix it) . Once the stuttering starts, lowering the settings won't make a difference either.

This can either be an NVIDIA driver problem (unlikely since EQ2 is the only game with problems), or an EQ2 bug/design issue with NVIDIA 8xxx drivers (very likely). it could even be a multi-core issue with the drivers or even a leak here and there that eventually hits a threshold  (which would explain why it only happens after the game is running for a while). * All guesswork on my part as I have no idea about the code or its design.

Just a bit of info for you guys.

I too have this problem, 8800GTS and nvidia chipsets while sli enabled seems to be the biggy for a lot of people.  Even if you have SLi rendering in the game profile turned to single GPU the game still recognizes the second card.  I had to turn off SLI all together.

Second, This is a problem according to a dev that involves a certain driver/hardware configuration with the 8xxx's and how DirectX unloads textures from the memory.  They have not given an exact date as when they expect it to be fixed, but at the speed other issues like the shadows turning on and off by themselves thats over 2 years old and them saying they know what the problem is, yet still not fixed doesn't give me hope.

Problem #2.  This game does not care what brand new GPU you buy.  Why?  Because its CPU bound on a lot of processes.  This means that no matter how big and bad arse your GPU is, shadows, flora, cloth and water are ALL bound to your cpu for processing, nothing you do can change that... why they decided this was a good idea? Who knows, maybe they gambled that CPU clocks will get faster and faster, and what happened was clock increases slowed down, and they just started adding more cores.

Problem #3.  EQ2 is NOT Multiple Core ready.  They can not change this with out a complete re-write to the code.  This means you in some instances will get better performance if you set the affinty of EQ2 to one core.  I usually choose core #1 not #0... it doesn't really seem to make a difference to be honest.

You guys will hear people tell you how its your system, and the 8xxx series GPU they have works and so its not the game, this is very false.  There are THOUSANDS of configuration possibilities, and its a mix of both a very bad engine with hardware and drivers that are having issues with it.  At this point the settings that work the best for 8800GT and my system (AMDFX60, 2GIGS of OCZ 3-3-3-5 DDR400, 2x8800GT G92 GPU's, Raptor 10krpm drive, X-fi sound) is the following:

Set EQ2 to use one core.

Disable SLi in the control  panel, not in the game profile by setting single GPU Rendering.

I run 1920x1080 (32" Aquos 1080p TV/Display) so I set EXTREME QUALITY then I go to water, and turn ALL water options off.  I turn LOD Texture Resolution to Minimal, Turn Shadows off, Turn cloth simulation off, and turn Flora Displacement off.

I then turn every other option ON, run AA 8xQ, AF 8x, I disable bloom, run torches to 1 and everything else is jammed to the brink.  Disable Bloom and whatever setting is right under it,  can't remember but there is 3 check boxes, I disable the top 2.

This nets me 30-40fps in most area's that are highly populated.  This is NOT acceptable in my opinion as with my system I can run CoD4 @ 1920x1080 with max settings (and I mean max) and stay at 60fps with vsynch enabled and triple buffering.  Crysis in the same resolution w/ no AA, can run with a mix of High, Very high and Medium settings (medium being the obvious shadows, water)

This game needs an engine rewrite but I doubt with the restructure of SOE into SCEA they will get the funding or man hours they need on it.  So you can bet that we will be having this issue with every single new card to hit the market.  And yes, the 9600's exhibit the same problem as they use the same GPU as the later 512+ GTS/GT 8800's (G92 core)

Originally posted by Koroshiya

Just a bit of info for you guys.

I too have this problem, 8800GTS and nvidia chipsets while sli enabled seems to be the biggy for a lot of people.  Even if you have SLi rendering in the game profile turned to single GPU the game still recognizes the second card.  I had to turn off SLI all together.

Second, This is a problem according to a dev that involves a certain driver/hardware configuration with the 8xxx's and how DirectX unloads textures from the memory.  They have not given an exact date as when they expect it to be fixed, but at the speed other issues like the shadows turning on and off by themselves thats over 2 years old and them saying they know what the problem is, yet still not fixed doesn't give me hope.

Problem #2.  This game does not care what brand new GPU you buy.  Why?  Because its CPU bound on a lot of processes.  This means that no matter how big and bad arse your GPU is, shadows, flora, cloth and water are ALL bound to your cpu for processing, nothing you do can change that... why they decided this was a good idea? Who knows, maybe they gambled that CPU clocks will get faster and faster, and what happened was clock increases slowed down, and they just started adding more cores.

Problem #3.  EQ2 is NOT Multiple Core ready.  They can not change this with out a complete re-write to the code.  This means you in some instances will get better performance if you set the affinty of EQ2 to one core.  I usually choose core #1 not #0... it doesn't really seem to make a difference to be honest.

You guys will hear people tell you how its your system, and the 8xxx series GPU they have works and so its not the game, this is very false.  There are THOUSANDS of configuration possibilities, and its a mix of both a very bad engine with hardware and drivers that are having issues with it.  At this point the settings that work the best for 8800GT and my system (AMDFX60, 2GIGS of OCZ 3-3-3-5 DDR400, 2x8800GT G92 GPU's, Raptor 10krpm drive, X-fi sound) is the following:

Set EQ2 to use one core.

Disable SLi in the control  panel, not in the game profile by setting single GPU Rendering.

I run 1920x1080 (32" Aquos 1080p TV/Display) so I set EXTREME QUALITY then I go to water, and turn ALL water options off.  I turn LOD Texture Resolution to Minimal, Turn Shadows off, Turn cloth simulation off, and turn Flora Displacement off.

I then turn every other option ON, run AA 8xQ, AF 8x, I disable bloom, run torches to 1 and everything else is jammed to the brink.  Disable Bloom and whatever setting is right under it,  can't remember but there is 3 check boxes, I disable the top 2.

This nets me 30-40fps in most area's that are highly populated.  This is NOT acceptable in my opinion as with my system I can run CoD4 @ 1920x1080 with max settings (and I mean max) and stay at 60fps with vsynch enabled and triple buffering.  Crysis in the same resolution w/ no AA, can run with a mix of High, Very high and Medium settings (medium being the obvious shadows, water)

This game needs an engine rewrite but I doubt with the restructure of SOE into SCEA they will get the funding or man hours they need on it.  So you can bet that we will be having this issue with every single new card to hit the market.  And yes, the 9600's exhibit the same problem as they use the same GPU as the later 512+ GTS/GT 8800's (G92 core)

I ended up replacing two systems in my home with  a 3870 and  a 2900pro ATI card

To play, I do the following

1. All settings maxed in Control Panel (16x AF and 8x AA)...seems to make the game run faster...and have to use the Catalyst AI solution in the Control Panel

2. Same as above....flora displacement off, disable bloom. I can uses shadows for about a 10 frame hit...

I can get steady 60+FPS in certain area's, it can fluctuate down to 40 depending on amount of mobs and people

The 8800GT would not get above 30+

And the real kicker?

Of the 2 cards above, in power, the 3870 is more powerful....but guess which one runs the game better?

The 2900pro

The game engine is definitely not for new hardware...and if it was not so much fun, and an awesome game, I would be deleting it...but, luckily I found a workaround...but, a $200 video card sits in a box....not cool.

But, AoC is coming...that should LOVE the 8800

This was posted by one of the developers in the EQ2 Tech Forums.

Last post on this page.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=75&topic_id=411077

By Autenil

"Hi guys,

I thought I'd drop by this thread and give everyone an update on where we are with this issue.

As Rothgar pointed out earlier, we've determined that the stuttering happens when we release memory back to DirectX, which, for unknown reasons, can take a lot longer than it should.

Getting a little more technical:
We've been able to reproduce the problem on one of the DirectX code samples adapted to allocate and free vertex/index buffers and textures in much the same way as the EQ2 client does.  We're trying to open contact with Nvidia to get them to look at the problem since it appears to be in the card or the driver.  However, they can take a while to respond and haven't responded to us yet.

Even more technical:
When the EQ2 client requests resources from DirectX, we tell DirectX to manage them.  Therefore, DirectX is responsible for controlling what textures and meshes are on the card, what is in system memory, etc.  This allows us to just have to tell DirectX when we're using something and when we're done with it; it should handle the rest.  That appears to be breaking down somewhere either in DirectX or in the drivers for the video card.  This is why we suspect Nvidia's drivers.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to other games' source code, so I can't tell you why this issue is affecting EQ2 and not other games.  However, we have been able to reproduce the problem outside of the EQ2 client and are working to let Nvidia know about it.

I'm considering a few other options to try and mitigate this in the short term, and we'll keep you posted."

Maybe there is some hope for you guys with these cards.

i had similiar problems to the OP when i joined eq2 in feb. brand new machine ith 8800 gtx 768's in sli

i went from vista, to xp, back to vista. the OS made no difference on this client

the reasons are as follows:

1) eq2 does not support multiple cores. the client will actually run better on a single core P4 than on any multiple core machines

2) the client passes shadow rending to the cpu, and not your video cards gpu - further degrading performance. there are other processes i'm sure that are also dealt with in this manner

basically when in installed eq2 on my 2004 p4 HP laptop i got superb performance - with a 128mb geforce go video card over my dual core extreme, RAID, dual 8800 gtx SLI system

and if you have an SLI system, disable SLI. you'll automatically see an increase in fps - in xp and in vista

edit: i maintain 60 fps in crysis at maximum settings, and my machine got 21k 3dmarks

autenil has more infos about 8800 problem in eq2 in his blog:

http://kriegshauser.blogspot.com/2008/03/nvidia-8800-frustrations.html.

seems to be that  eq2 is not the only game noticing these random slowdowns caused by unloading textures. but in a mmo with many people runing around with different textures to load and unload all the time its probably bigger than in other games.

fixed for easy clicking

kriegshauser.blogspot.com/2008/03/nvidia-8800-frustrations.html

Originally posted by ethion

I've been trying to research this on the support forums but I'm not clear as to if this is really a problem that is serious.  I honestly don't recall if performance has changed or if my performance is just what it is.  I have not been playing EQ2 for long I started with the Kunark expansion.

My problem is I'm seeing very poor performance in certain areas.  Enchanted Lands will give me an fps that ranges from a low of 5 to maybe a high of 15.  I'm playing on high quality but dropped it to balanced and didn't see much improvement and I just can't believe this is right. 

I have a top end computer.  I have a 2.66ghz quad core intel cpu, 4gb ram, and 8800gtx, 2 raptors in raid 0.  Basically pretty much the top end system.  I'm only playing at 1280x1024 although I have a new monitor coming and expect to jump this up to 1920x1200 soon.  I'm running XP and I have all the latest patchs.  I was thinking maybe this was just something wrong with my system.  But recently I had my OS disk fail and had to rebuild everything from scratch.  All new drivers all new OS install.  After I finished I reinstalled EQ2 and logged into my necro who was camped in EL and again the performance sucks.  No change.

So I'm not getting anything helpful off the support forums and though I'd ask here.  I'm sure their must be people with a similar configuration to mine that have been playing eq2 for a long time and will know if there is a bug causing this problem.  BTW some areas I can get much better performance like Qeynos harbor I'll get like 40fps there.  Bonemire I was getting like 50 in the gnome camp.  Most dungeons I get like 40-50 except during fights when it drops to like 20 or so. 

Another thing if I put my performance setting to max quality I get problems with crashing and things like dxrenderer out of memory etc.  I have all the latest directx also.

I've also played many other games with no similar issues.  Witcher I played quite a bit, I also play vanguard which I'm playing on max settings and getting anything from mid 30s in towns to 60 outside.  Hellgate london I had some antialias issues but that seems like a common problem and support told me exactly what to do to resolve.  Anyway I've played lots of other games with no performance issues at all.  I've also run memcheck for like 15 hours straight with no errors.  So I've done about everything you can reasonably do to make sure my system isn't the cause of the issue...

Anyone have any solutions or if not at least can you confirm that their is a bug and you have the same problems or not?!

Sorry to say but, your cpu is not the best for EQ2. EQ2 engine uses cpu to calculate shadows and other graphical stuff, and it uses only one core. Yeah is a crap, but, for EQ2, you have only 1 cpu running at 2.66ghz, what is pretty low. most of comp. users think that 4 cores are better than 1, but this is not exactly true; 4 cores are able to make 4 task at a time, but each core has the potency of 1 equivalent single core, finally it depends on what you are running, if you runa game able to spread the needed caculations across all the cores... Wooot!!, you have a good optimized engine. I love EQ2 but this is not the case, its not optimized for 4 cores right now.

More info, EQ2 engine has some issues with 8800 cards, they are known issues and the devs are working on fix them. Edit: Forget this last thing I said, just read the post above mine. The problem is not on EQ2 engine, but on Nvidia drivers.

Originally posted by pfloydguy84
i honestly dont know why any gamer would want a quadcore.I dont think any game out there right now even uses all 4.most games dont even use more then 1.dual core both with high clock speeds seems best right now.

i think thats about right, from what i heared the best optimized games gain about 40-50% from having a 2nd core. (most games do only gain in 20-30% range from having additional cores at all). so any cores more than 2 will give even less gains. 

So right now the only ones really telling people that they need quadcores for gaming pcs are intel and amd who try to sell the more expensive quads instead of the cheaper duals.

So unless you have a lot money to spend on those extreme quad editions with 3.2ghz you will probably be better off with getting a 3ghz+ core 2 duo (the new 45nm versions will most likely reach some higher clockspeeds in the next  months too).

You guys are thinking now, but aren't thinking about a few months from now.

Multi-threading and multi-core are the future of computing, by necessity rather than desire. We've been hit here the same way, our (networking) code was single-threaded and I've been working on a MT version of it for the past well several months.

I have a quad (Q6600 g0 $230) OCed to 3ghz at home and it runs all games just fine. Plus, I know that it is as "future proof" as you can get with computers. In fact, I decided to invest on the CPU more so than on the GPU (got a budget 8600GTS) cause I think GPUs degrade in value more quickly and should be upgraded more often. Anyway, new games will be heavily multithreaded, instead of using a single main loop, they will use several main loops (worker thread design), or separate tasks in different threads. THere are several design options.

Back to the topic, perhaps we should have a disclaimer here saying that EQ2 DOES NOT work with the NVIDIA 8xxx cards! It's a piece of information I certainly could've used before buying the game. In fact, this "we hope nvidia fixes it" bit I heard lately isn't that great. It just creates a dependency. And even if it is NVIDIA's fault, perhaps EQ2 is doing something unorthodox that other games aren't doing.