EQ2 Performance Issues

Discalced · Post by **Discalced** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:09 am

Running through a city sucks. Fix it.

512MB of RAM just isn't cutting it. And I am laying on a Dell Laptop, with the Nvidia 4200 Go card, which doesn't seem to be supported by the official Nvidia drivers and whose drivers haven't been updated by Dell since 2003 (and - subsequently - wouldn't allow the game to run).

Any ideas, other than the obligatory "buy a new rig"?

Kraegor · Post by **Kraegor** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:14 am

heh heh heh 512MB RAM.....

well turn all the video game settings down to absolute minimum and buy a bigger hamster.

most cities suck. game is tryin to render all those peeps runnin around. more ram should help but i wouldnt expect any miracles.

Discalced · Post by **Discalced** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:18 am

Already have settings as far down as they'll go. It didn't occur to me until about two hours into grouping last night why I was the only mage casting any spells: I had turned graphical options so far down that I wasn't even seeing the combat animations of my group.

Buying more RAM today, knock me up to over a gig, and then we'll see. And my load times are unfreakingbelievable.

Kraegor · Post by **Kraegor** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:21 am

whoops my mistake geforce 4200 go isnt a bad card actually.

well again more ram should help.

turnin off AA or AF would definetely help.

if there is an option for "shadows" i'd change it to "simple" or just turn em off.

if they have that option in the game settings
could cut the draw distance by some
character model detail to medium/low

Charlatan · Post by **Charlatan** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:29 am

Eek, sounds like you have an Inspiron 8500 or such, which is what I have. You're saying the game doesn't run AT ALL with that video card? Or it runs but you have to turn everything off - your descriptions are confusing me.

I've found WoW works fine, though I think having 1 GB of RAM would help a lot (I too have only 512MB).

The only way I got Trials of Atlantis to work in DAoC was to turn off the dynamic shadows.... same too for some other programs I am testing - dynamic shadows seem to give my vid card fits.

Please post impressions after you upgrade your RAM.

How bad are the load times?

Discalced · Post by **Discalced** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:03 pm

Charlatan wrote:Eek, sounds like you have an Inspiron 8500 or such, which is what I have. You're saying the game doesn't run AT ALL with that video card? Or it runs but you have to turn everything off - your descriptions are confusing me.

I've found WoW works fine, though I think having 1 GB of RAM would help a lot (I too have only 512MB).

The only way I got Trials of Atlantis to work in DAoC was to turn off the dynamic shadows.... same too for some other programs I am testing - dynamic shadows seem to give my vid card fits.

Please post impressions after you upgrade your RAM.

How bad are the load times?

I'll post after upgrade as well. Yes, Inspiron 8500. The game runs, just poorly. And the problems are only in the city itself. This is with the graphical settings turned as low as they'll go.

Can take up to four minutes to load. Seriously.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:36 pm

I've got a laptop with 512MB of RAM and a video card probably the equivalent if not worst than yours and it runs fine on the "High Performance" setting - even in cities. Loading doesn't take nearly as long as you describe either.

What speed CPU are you running?

Discalced · Post by **Discalced** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 2:25 pm

2.0 GHz

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 3:45 pm

That's about what my laptop is running at Discalced, but I'm running an ATI Radeon Mobility. I think it might be a video driver problem, if they're no longer supporting it. Also make sure you have DirectX 9.0c installed - it's a requirement after this latest patch.

Sorry you're having so much trouble. I will say this thing is a RAM HOG. I've got 1GB of RAM on my desktop machine. My friend has the identical system to mine, the only difference being he has 2GB of RAM, and you wouldn't believe how much better his rig plays (mine's still VERY playable even at high settings, but the performance increase on his is noticeable). So hopefully bumping up to 1GB will at least smooth out some of your problems.