Tech - Making the EQ Client lighter? (1 Viewer)

[shazbork]

So I'm at a point where I've got a lot of guys running and it's starting to hamper my ability to use my computer for anything significant at the same time my bots are going. So I am looking for things I can do to lighten the load. Obviously the big ones would be upgrading hardware (not an option yet, but I will be adding a second 280x at some point), config tweaks in game, and perhaps a third party client like WinEQ2?

What should I be looking at in order to increase performance without sacrificing reliability?

 

[Akatora]

how much ram do you have? I can 10 box with ease with a single radeon 7950 3 gig card, but I have 24 gigs of ram, I generally have 20-30 tabs in chrome open as well at the same time.. and no lag..

I turn down all the stuff that would hinder my performance on the game though. I also force eq to use all my cores instead of a single core like its set up to

 

[shazbork]

Yeah I'm at 12 clients now and it's starting to show. I didn't even think to go into the process and enable additional cores, curious as to the effects there. Not familiar with all the super advanced config options, so I wouldn't mind a comprehensive list of things to do just to ensure I'm on track here.

 

[geEQ]

This guide from the EzServer website has some good tips to reduce memory footprint. While I have not tried all of the tips, like using WinEQ, some are pretty good.

http://ezserveronline.com/forums/index.php?topic=2988.0

 

[Akatora]

Yeah I'm at 12 clients now and it's starting to show. I didn't even think to go into the process and enable additional cores, curious as to the effects there. Not familiar with all the super advanced config options, so I wouldn't mind a comprehensive list of things to do just to ensure I'm on track here.

the additional cores increased my speeds alot, since its not solely using 1 core to run 1 instance and it can spread out.. I noticed before I did allow all cores to be used some instances would slow way down and the core processing would be at 100% or damn near...

 

[jestisp]

May sound like a dumb question, but how do I tell my system to use more then 1 core on EQ?

 

[Akatora]

May sound like a dumb question, but how do I tell my system to use more then 1 core on EQ?

in your eqclient.ini in the eq folder you look for something like this

CPUAffinity0=-1

for as many boxes you have you should have 12 of those, I have 10 I had to set to -1, default is 0

 

[jestisp]

So if I want to run 4 accounts, I would just need to set that to -1?

- - - Updated - - -

And do I type the -1 to each after I open up all the instances of EQ I want. Or prior?

 

[Akatora]

it'll be in the client, if not just make it, that way it works for it.

 

[shazbork]

This guide from the EzServer website has some good tips to reduce memory footprint. While I have not tried all of the tips, like using WinEQ, some are pretty good.

http://ezserveronline.com/forums/index.php?topic=2988.0

Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for.

 

[disasteroid]

If you have 4 cores and you're only running 4 clients, disabling CPU affinity may reduce performance. EQ is very CPU intensive but barely uses GPU. When you start running more clients CPU affinity becomes more important because your processor is a lot smarter about load balancing than the EQ client.

 

[vivviv]

isboxer has pretty decent performance enhancements for the different boxes i think

 

[Akatora]

he also only has 4 gigs of ram.. from what hes told me.. I let him know EQ on my system uses about 1 gig of ram for each instance alone.. doubling that should allow for a hell of alot more performance

and depending on the version of windows hes running, like vista uses 1 gig alone to run, it could be bad :P

 

[eqgeek]

I have a really old computer but

- switching from AMD to Intel (of the same speed)
- jumping from XP to Win 7
- going from 4GB to 8GB memory

All has really improved performance for me!

My computer is from 2009, btw.

 

[Maskoi]

MORE RAM is always the correct answer but a lot of people over look or don't know about the graphic/In game options you can turn down to save RAM

Some of these were covered in the linked guide but this is the definitive short list.
One thing totally wrong about that guide though - NEVER - Duplicate Everquest Folder / Hard Drive Usage This is WRONG.


Game Options

1 Open the normal EQ Launcher like when you patch
2 Click advanced tools, 2 little gears in the lower let hand corner.
3 Click Game Configuration from the window
4 Select the video card you play the game on. you may mutiple if you have a multi screen setup Click Next
5 Deselect any models you don't need to see the Luclin models to play. I always leave horses and elementals or they don't work right Click Next
6 Uncheck Social Animations, Mip mapping and Dynamic Lighting. sound if you can handle playing without it
7 Make sure texture compression and texture caching is checked
8 Set Texture Quality to low
9 Click Finish

This can save save 100's of megabytes of ram over multiple instances.

In Game
Alt O to open options
Click on the display tab
Slide your clip plane to 75% on all toons
Change Sky Type to simple
TURN PARTICLES OFF ON EVERY TOON ON EVERY TAB - Spell, Env, Player

Click Advanced button
Uncheck everything below Allow 1.4 pixel shaders - Allow 2.0 pixel shaders, Use adv lighting, radial flora etc,
Terrain Texture Quality select low
Memory mode Balanced
Dynamic Sky reflection Tiny (32)
Max frames per second 40

Use the following command on all toons to make sure your logging is off

/log off

These are the original OLD SCHOOL tricks before we had the insane computers we have today. You will be amazed at the performance boost these settings can have

 

[jestisp]

That dropped my per instance of eq down to about 475mbs......Thanks Maskoi!!!!! That is insanely awesome, and I dont play the game for the graphics, so none of what you had me turn off, really made a difference in my gameplay!