Multibox System Performance (1 Viewer)

[x333]

I've been multi-boxing 2-3 accounts on my laptop for a while now. With the three accounts it runs very smoothly using normal windowed EQ and a number of graphic improvements turned on. However, there is serious performance degradation when I load up a 4th account.

The computer specs are as follows:

Dell E1705 Inspiron
2.0ghz Core II Duo (T7200 I think)
2GB Ram
Nvidia GeForce 7900 256MB Graphics
5400RPM Hard Drive
Vista Ultimate OS

As it looks, the Hard Drive is the only real data throughput bottleneck in my mind but it is also the last resort of any upgrade I want to do. Also, since I am running Vista there is the option of using the ReadyBoost feature to expand my memory.

Are there any tweaks within EQ or on my OS that I can do in order to fit that 4th account in? Would it help to turn down everything possible or is there something not readily accessible through the game's UI that I can switch in. Do you think the addition of some Flash memory using Vista's ReadyBoost will help with memory issues?

 

[Mooseq]

Aside from turning all your effects, UI enhancements, old graphics and windows background programs you can try:

Look for a file named datarate. I think that the default is set for 5.0. I put mine up to 9.0. There was a write up durring eq beta (late 98'), it should speed things up a bit.

Also make sure you run msconfig from the start menu and turn off all start programs and any other junk that you don't need.

Moose

 

[eqisdead]

That file is no longer used according to what I've read.

eqisdead

 

[captboom]

Upon further research

These ip address connect to soe's universal chat service.

Blocking the ip's and or ports will result in inability to get in game email and join chat channels

 

[playj]

Are You using WinEQ Lite at least? Paid version with rendering limiting is even better.

Also look into /viewport command from EQ
This is pretty old info (and written for Mac) but still relevant:
http://www.eqmac.com/guides/Viewport.html
I use /viewport 100 100 320 240 (if 320x240 was good enough for 80s games then it is good enough for EQ ) on my background EQ sessions and it does help a ton. If there is a session that you don't really need to see game screen at all, then just do /viewport 10 10 10 10 or something equally silly small like that.

Finally, a certain unnamed site (read: competitor of RG), whom I am not a member of, has a post in their general (free) section from a coffee loving user, who has managed to box 18 accounts on a single computer. Some hard core info in there.


Bah, just realized you are running Vista, that might indicate why you are having problems running 4 EQ sessions. Xp handles 4 sessions with 2gigs of Ram with ease.

 

[groovalistic]

Although I retired from eq somewhat recently, what I did was mostly just turn off most models (unless I needed the horses)

also used a viewport on every session. forget what the exact numbers were, but I made it letterbox-esque and kep all UI bits outside the box.

Particle effects tended to cause me the most lag so I turned off absolutely all of them (I even stumbled on a way so it never rained/snowed by messing with a paticular file, although I fear I cannot remember exactly which file that was (eq is no longer installed on my comp).

One thing for absolute certain I had noticed however, is that your UI can play a large part on resource consumption/performance, so I would recommend either modding one yourself (with mq labels integrated of course), or at least try out a few different UIs from various sources.
This also includes keeping an MQ2 HUD (if you use it, but shouldn't need to if ya work on your UI) to only include minimalist info, I tended to notice a bit of performance improvement by omitting some entries and then just fully stuffing it into my UI windows.
Examples of this would be putting a real-time clock onto my buffs window (along with duration per buff) , current loc on the compass window, useful info tidbits on the target window, etc.

Anyway, I guess the best way to improve your performance is simply to turn everything off, and play with one thing at a time... when you notice your RAM usage go up signifigantly or FPS go down etc, you know you should keep that particular setting off.

for reference sake, I have a self built comp p4 3.4 4g ram, 1/2gig radeon 9600xt, and have managed to get up to 7 accounts running on it (used to run a full 6-toon group with no lag, but sony did something to eat up more resources several months back and i started having issues/slowdown with more than 3 toons)

looks like your RAM (gfx included) is the real bottleneck though

ps what resolution you use? i've stuck with 1280x1024, but using lower can certainly help..

 

[Ryzon]

If you're running into video card performance issues WinEQ will definitely help. How much memory are you using? I tried out Vista on a 3.0GHz machine with 1.5GB of RAM and GeForce 7800. 2 accounts ran fine but 3 used up too much memory. Each account was using something like 700MB of RAM.

 

[x333]

Ok, after playing with it over the weekend I have now been able to run 5 accounts at once with no lag whatsoever. Here are the steps I took to improve performance.

Vista Specific:

1) Turn off vista theme enhancements. Right click Computer in the start menu, select properties, you will see the enhancements options in there. Turn it to "Best Performance." Also turned the screen resolution back to 1600x1200(normally run at 1920x1200).

2) Add a flash drive for ready boost. My machine has 2GB RAM. ReadyBoost does NOT add RAM, what it does is gives Vista an alternate relatively fast(faster than the HDD for small read/write) location to cache small files instead of on your physical memory. What this buys you is when you start running out of physical memory, Vista will push some of the pre-cached files off of your RAM and onto your flash drive. Swapping to the Flash drive is MUCH faster than swapping with the Hard Drive. I added a 4GB SanDisk micro Cruzer and it works very well.

3) Paid for WinEQ pro. Probably the biggest factor.

4) Fiddled with everquest graphics options. Turned everything down. Set Resolution to 1280x1024. Only using Horses+Dark Elf(I love DEs, having an enchanter with project illusion feeds my facination).

5) Turned down clipping planes for all accounts except for the puller.

*note: Vista automatically takes up about 600MB(33% or so) of physical memory for SuperFetch. This leads to heavy swapping with the Hard Drive when you start pushing the memory. Ready Boost is probably required if you want to do anything memory intensive with Vista. the 4GB flash I got only cost 49.99.

 

[playj]

Glad to see you got it working!

Cool idea to use Flash as a sort of compromise between adding more RAM and going into HD swapping hell. Hmm, wonder if one could do something like that with XP...

Still, I remember reading somewhere that Flash Drives had relatively limited read/write cycle lifespan (what was it, million cycles?), that is if you use it a ton it would break down fast. Then again, that was a while ago.

 

[x333]

Still, I remember reading somewhere that Flash Drives had relatively limited read/write cycle lifespan (what was it, million cycles?), that is if you use it a ton it would break down fast. Then again, that was a while ago.

Now I'm no expert on hardware life expectancy, but this concern was echoed many times. According to the developers of ReadyBoost, the life expectancy of a flash drive doing this is supposedly measured in years. In my mind, paying 50bucks for flash even once ever 2 years is good enough for me. But I'm willing to try it out and see how long it will last.

 

[[email protected]]

Vista isnt all that good with its mem whoring, i went back to xp untill DX10 actually comes out for vista, as of right now xp you can run alot more then vista