Tech - Slow zoning and High CPU useage (1 Viewer)

[Diamondmine]

I am boxing 30 accts. I am running into high CPU Useage and slow zoning times. Characters will zone but takes a long time to render all screens. I have great internet service with pings in the 30-40 range.

Sometimes all accts will freeze up and I generally have to reboot.

What can I do to speed up zoning times and fix problems?

System:
3900 Ryzen
3070TI
64 gig
2tb NVME

Software:
Win 11
ISBoxer
RG MacroQuest build

EQ:
New Models off
Low settings for all
Mip mapping/dynamic lighting on
All other settings off

 

[knave23]

Have you followed these steps?

https://www.redguides.com/community/threads/mqnext-framelimiter-demo.78448/

 

[Sic]

I am boxing 30 accts. I am running into high CPU Useage and slow zoning times. Characters will zone but takes a long time to render all screens. I have great internet service with pings in the 30-40 range.

Sometimes all accts will freeze up and I generally have to reboot.

What can I do to speed up zoning times and fix problems?

System:
3900 Ryzen
3070TI
64 gig
2tb NVME

Software:
Win 11
ISBoxer
RG MacroQuest build

EQ:
New Models off
Low settings for all
Mip mapping/dynamic lighting on
All other settings off

framelimiter like knave said
I would check you have your eq and mq folders exempted from file scanning / syncing (like antivirus / one drive etc)

 

[B_I_G__D_A_D_D_Y]

Zoning times are much slower since the July 20th patch in my experience. Something changed for sure.

I know it's routine, but have you ensured that Logging and Journaling are turned off on all clients? Even a few of them attempting to write log files could affect your perceived performance.

Also, it sounds like you have a nice rig, what's your thoughts on adding a 2nd NVMe drive and moving your EQ installation off your OS drive? And I'm finding out the hard way that not all NVMe drives are the same. The better ones implement a lot of standard RAM caching in addition to their fast controller tech. The cheaper models may not have any RAM at all.

 

[Diamondmine]

Knave23/Sic. I am using the framelimiter. I think there was a macro made for it and I ran that. Would have to check the settings but I know I have render game scene on in background.

Bigdaddy. I know I have log files on. I will turn off and see what kind of performance increase I get. I forgot all about them. 30 accts writing logs might be the problem. I periodically delete all my logs.

The NVMe is a Samsung evo 970. I just looked up specs it has 2g cache.

 

[Szazor]

1. Are you using EQBCS, or EQBCS2? After a while these will bog your system down...so I'd recommend getting rid of them. Dannet is much better under load of 30+ toons.
2. Only have one toon with logs on, and keep the log file small.
3. You can turn stick figures on for some of the less important toons.
4. Get more RAM
5. Get a second PC and split everything put your DPS on the second PC.
6. Load ISBOXER, and MQ. Then launch all your toons from ISBOXER.
7. No crashes at all is what you should be aiming for
8. Get rid of Ryzen and use Intel...or Invest in an air conditioner to keep the AMD garbage cool.
9. Use more Trolls - little known fact - Trolls crash less than other races! True story

 

[an_image]

I am boxing 30 accts. I am running into high CPU Useage and slow zoning times. Characters will zone but takes a long time to render all screens. I have great internet service with pings in the 30-40 range.

Sometimes all accts will freeze up and I generally have to reboot.

What can I do to speed up zoning times and fix problems?

System:
3900 Ryzen
3070TI
64 gig
2tb NVME

Software:
Win 11
ISBoxer
RG MacroQuest build

EQ:
New Models off
Low settings for all
Mip mapping/dynamic lighting on
All other settings off

@Diamondmine gently massage your PC...like so

 

[MadaSnave]

ive done 24 accounts at once with a much worse isp connection and using 3700xt and a 1060 6gb im not running into that issue. so not sure why the extra 6 accounts would cause so much more delay when you have a better set up. sorry i cant offer a solution other then the frame limiter and adjusting other settings like maybe setting the accounts to run on certain threads/cores so windows can hit one core or thread and the accounts get spread out instead of them slamming one core and bogging it down to much?

btw how's windows 11 handling eq? was one of the things that keep me from upgrading was worrying backwards compatibility wise i might run into issues with eq and other older games i enjoy.

 

[Sic]

ive done 24 accounts at once with a much worse isp connection and using 3700xt and a 1060 6gb im not running into that issue. so not sure why the extra 6 accounts would cause so much more delay when you have a better set up. sorry i cant offer a solution other then the frame limiter and adjusting other settings like maybe setting the accounts to run on certain threads/cores so windows can hit one core or thread and the accounts get spread out instead of them slamming one core and bogging it down to much?

btw how's windows 11 handling eq? was one of the things that keep me from upgrading was worrying backwards compatibility wise i might run into issues with eq and other older games i enjoy.

both my windows 10 and windows 11 PCs rock multi accounts with no problem. all my windows 11 fears went away (once i got the thing to make the menu/taskbar not derpy)

 

[Shadow]

I am afraid to move to Windows 11 just because of weird patches and little things causing problems when it was first released.

 

[Gekko]

I am afraid to move to Windows 11 just because of weird patches and little things causing problems when it was first released.

How long has Windows 11 been out? The old rule of thumb was too wait a year or two until they patched the bugs they missed during development. Back in the day Mister Softy (ticker symbol MSFT) was notorious for rushing things to market.

Be well. Happy OS'ing.

 

[Sic]

@Diamondmine can you check your guild window. Do you have show offline members and have a really large guild? If so uncheck those offline members

 

[Ottotto]

CPU-Ram:
30 Toons means around 32GB Ram used (worst case, limit)
Swapping should start around 45GB used (dependent on Windows, estimated 70-80% limit).
With 64GB you should be good.
Check your swapping system - if Win11 swaps, you can disable it for testing purposes.
As long as you dont get beyond 35-40+ toons then it should not reach the limit.

Temperature:
If the AMD is getting too hot then he will slow down extremely, so check temperature (the same is true for Intel).
Your GPUs temperature should get a check too:

- Coretemp 1.17
- GPU-Z

The typical throttle area is 75°C to and fro. I am using Intel so I am always good. I rely on watercooling and my gpu/cpu never reaches beyond 75°C even under hot conditions (normally between 30/40-60°C max, depending on rendering/gaming/numbercrunching)
Check your temperature, if beyond 75 then surely you have a problem. Remove dust, check airflow, get additional fans or switch to watercooling.

GPU-Ram
The 3070Ti has 8GB ram. With 30 toons you should be good. With 43 toons, 6GB GPU-Ram is critical, the system likes to swap out and this combination of swapping and bugs in MQNext/64-bit-client makes the system easily freeze and crash.

Software Bugs:
I had freezes all the time since MQNext and Client change to 64bit. There are a couple of bugs which limit system stability if you are going beyond the usual boxing usage. Like some said, EQBC is a catastrophy. I use the V1.3 version because it seems the most stable. But being at the limit of Ram and CPU power (swapping from GPU to NVMe or from CPU-Ram to NVMe costs ENORMOUS Cpu-Power itself!!!!) brings EQBC in a totally unstable configuration. It looses connection, connects erronously with other names and sucks up space. Dannet is much more harmonic with such a config. This is very true at around 30-40 toons, with a whole 54-raid it is utterly cruel. If you use other versions of EQBCS (like the MQNext built in or the older ones), expect utterly cruel effects, worse then even the v1.3-stuff. As long as you are a 6boxer, you will be good. 30 toons, think about that.... Dannet with 54 toons in this config feels like EQBC with around 12-18 toons except EQBC looses toons and Dannet needs a second command because it looses commands. Never be at the limit of GPU-/CPU-Ram or NVMe-Space. The software/EQ/MQ2/ISB cannot handle that properly and need a bit room for their bugs.

Framelimiter:
I used before MQNext MQ2fps. This was a great tool. I could limit every account easily. But it has its flaws because kicking a toon down to around 10-15 frames meant a ultraslow reaction time in a 54-raid-config. The new framelimiter, once got used to, is much better but has his flaws too. You can set them for the background to zero (/dga /framelimiter bgfps 0) and the toons even react with autofollow (/stick) beautifully. Hey Devs: I bow before you for this ingeniuosity, great, thumb up). But.... if you use EQBC then nothing reacts properly except when you once switch the screen so that the commands get active. If they are not reacting or connecting with EQBC then get them active with a window switch to front. But better avoid EQBC. Not everything runs in that way but some stuff dependent on active keys will not work properly. Using "/framelimiter bgfps 1" will safe the day perhaps for 30 toons and such a fast multicore cpu, but my 8/16-core with 54-raid had his problems. I had to up my 64GB ram to 128GB and added an additional NVMe (Samsung 980Pro 2TB) for a faster reaction time and set a swap to a fast SSD because with 6GB GPU-Ram my GPU is completely at the brink of exodus and is using up all the 6GB Ram with 43 toons. I am heading towards a 3090RTX with 24GB to avoid forever this ram bottle neck. 64GB CPU-Ram was too low, Windows starts swapping early and removing the swapping option crashes the whole system due to the limited GPU-Ram.

Plugins:
MQ2mybuttons/buttons is a beautiful plugin but if you are at the limit of the ram then this thing goes haywire. This seems true for a couple of plugins but because I control the whole raid with 9 groups with different buttons, I recognized this plugin as critical if at limit of Ram.

Win11/10/Software/Antivirus/Firewall:
Never tested EQ with that but had a couple of problems with other games. I use Win10 still. No clue why but using Enterprise vs. Pro then I had a couple of strange behaviors with the Enterprise version. But an important thing was: I have an extra SSD with EQ/MQ/ISB ONLY (Win10Pro). Firewall and Antivirus are switched off completely (registry hack!). The same is true for telemetry and updatestuff. I have limited the system to a max so that microsoft does not check or sent any data, neither does updates which would crack the system power into nirvana. I had that in former times. Bill Gates likes to think for other people and force them his will - and its not a good will. I had too much crashes and accidents because of these stupid Updates which kicked even a couple of times my whole system into nirvana. And I HATE Defender. This stupid thing always uses up CPU power and saws in the back on the SSD/NVMe. It feels like a forced vaccination nobody really wants and shows its issues only after a specific time frame. Switch Defender off the hard way (because the stupid updates restart them all the time - this is only a recommendation if you own a hardware firewall which most router have and if you use your system for EQ only). It also recognizes tools analysing the logfiles erronously partly as a virus - stupid, so: "NEVER CHANGE A RUNNING SYSTEM", as long as there is no need for it. Especially if you use 3rd party firewalls or antivirus then this can slow down the whole system more than 30% (perhaps more with GData active in the background). Switch it off, use EQ only if you want a stable system.

EQ:
Far Clip Plane (option in EQ/graphics) should be set down to minimun for toons which are not in direct use. They suck up GPU-/CPU-Ram and power too much. If I have upped my GPU-Ram beyond 8GB then I can say if the GPU was the last really limit or if CPU power is, but I own a 9900-KF and this CPU should be enough even for 54 toons. After upping from 64GB to 128GB then the CPU power went down from around 70-80% to around 40-50%. So swapping is critical. I expect after GPU-Ram pushed up, then the CPU-Power will go down further and I can increase Far Clip Plane again. If you have problems simply set it to zero and set the main control toon to max and the sub-mains to around 10-20. This should reduce cpu consumption additionally.

ISB/Innerspace
If you have problems with stability or interconnectabilty between a couple of PCs then switch back to version 1.16b6336. I had extreme problems in a heavy network traffic with 3 PCs with that release. If you only use one PC then the lastest one should work - but I never tested them again. I switched/tested around 10 releases to and fro and because the latest versions had all the same issue, I gave up and stuck since years on that old version which may have flaws too but at least I can interact between a couple of PCs and if it does not connect from PC to PC then one of the systems can use ISBoxer Toolkit (still #build42) to export to all inner space and that resets and reconnects all PCs - the only solution so far which worked and still works since years - and ... I NEVER WILL CHANGE THIS RUNNING SYSTEM again.. (never say never, tested it). :P

AMD
"Get rid of AMD garbage" is a strange sentence and sounds like a believer, not a technician - or a technician stuck in old dogmas. AMD had and has always problems with compatibility. Their drivers are mostly buggy and because everything is first released with Intel optimization (exceptions may outline the rule) I would say too - if somebody wants a stable system then choose Intel. But both have their issues. The one is temperature. Cooling them without fluid cooling is always tricky. A bit too much dust, a bit too much air temperature in the summer and these CPU kiss the holy temperature limit for throttling. AMD additionally should be provided with STABLE drivers. Choose one of the first unstable releases and the whole system will be in vain. That was for decades the reason why I always avoided AMD (besides CPU Power). But with the 39xx and 59xx-line CPU power should not be a limit. I know boxers who even use more than 60 toons with such a config (128GB Ram) and are good and stable even with AMD. Additionally (but that is for Intel and AMD alike) check your Rams. If they exceed the usual timing limits or go beyond the usual recommended speed then you should really know how to tune your bios. Using a Memtest and a Primtest will check your temperature and Ram stability. Especially if there are 4 Ram slots filled then both CPUs will behave sometimes like and insulted spouse.

After a couple of months break, the boxing of older raids was no fun anymore. But with the mentioned ideas I can now control again all toons. I still need a couple of tuneups (GPU Ram, MQ-Plugs) but I am good. Check the ideas, some have been mentioned by others in this thread and you should be good for 30 toons. They are "one-pc-able".

 

[Ninjapickle]

I love all the replies talking about the gpu as if it's relevant. EQ doesn't use your gpu at all, only the cpu and ram are relevant. I have 2 pc's running amd ryzen 5 5700 with 64gb ram on win 11. Both will run exactly 57 accounts at once before I have any issues, which usually comes from cpu usage. I don't use anywhere near all of my ram. I've also had far more success with amd vs intel because amd is better at multitasking.
I use eqbcs. I've never turned off logs or journaling on any accounts. I'm using a 1 tb ssd on one pc and a standard 7200 rpm hard drive on the other. I haven't exempted files and folders from scanning.
Maybe I'm just an anomaly. Between the 2 pc's, and occasionally 2 laptops when I'm away, I've never once seen any gpu usage at all, so it can't just be me.
Edit: I guess it is just me. Just talked to 2 friends running lots of accounts and they see some gpu usage from eq. Really weird that I get zero on 4 different machines, but I stand corrected. My bad.

 

[Knightly]

There's a lot of misinformation to unpack there. I appreciate the enthusiasm but there's a lot that's not correct in that. That Windows Defender detects MacroQuest is a GOOD THING. The purpose of an antivirus/antimalware solution is to detect some of the things we're doing. Exclude it for sure so that it doesn't impact, but the idea that an antivirus shouldn't touch a running system is crazy -- if it didn't, your system would be compromised without your antivirus interacting and that would entirely defeat the purpose.

A home router and antivirus also don't cover the same thing. You should have both but even if you're using an enterprise grade firewall with antivirus I would still recommend running antivirus on your system. It's going to be rare that antivirus these days is the source of your performance issues (and even then, look into it and exclude what you need to exclude). Defender especially is ranked among one of the best antivirus suites.

I'll admit there have been a lot of update missteps, but not updating is also a huge issue. Both on the security side and the performance side. It's possible that your stance on not updating is the reason you have those stances on things like antivirus -- you're not taking advantage of any of the bug fixes.

Regardless, running out of system resources and having performance issues totally makes sense. There's not going to be a set of "code solutions" for that, since none of the versions of programs you're talking about are making changes with regard to resource allocation of other applications. The operating system is controlling resource allocation and it's going to be down to how optimized that is (which, again, if you never update...) and how the programs recover from it (none of the versions of the programs you mentioned have specifics for that).

 

[an_image]

ive done 24 accounts at once with a much worse isp connection and using 3700xt and a 1060 6gb im not running into that issue. so not sure why the extra 6 accounts would cause so much more delay when you have a better set up. sorry i cant offer a solution other then the frame limiter and adjusting other settings like maybe setting the accounts to run on certain threads/cores so windows can hit one core or thread and the accounts get spread out instead of them slamming one core and bogging it down to much?

btw how's windows 11 handling eq? was one of the things that keep me from upgrading was worrying backwards compatibility wise i might run into issues with eq and other older games i enjoy.

I’ve noticed overseer on multiple boxes 12 box will jack up the cwtn plugins when they’re all going full blast.

I know…i know avoid running macros…but bleh…

 

[Sic]

I’ve noticed overseer on multiple boxes 12 box will jack up the cwtn plugins when they’re all going full blast.

I know…i know avoid running macros…but bleh…

You might have eq hiccups with overseer running as it is doing overseer things and at least appears that it has potential to hiccup your client., but the class plugins don't have anything to do with it. I frequently have 30+ running with class plugins and many with overseer running.

But this has nothing to do with the OP either.

I would really like to hear about the guild members question I asked.

Also, if you are using eqbcs please use the version that is shipped by redguides. Let mq try and help keep you safe from prying eyes.

 

[Diamondmine]

You might have eq hiccups with overseer running as it is doing overseer things and at least appears that it has potential to hiccup your client., but the class plugins don't have anything to do with it. I frequently have 30+ running with class plugins and many with overseer running.

But this has nothing to do with the OP either.

I would really like to hear about the guild members question I asked.

Also, if you are using eqbcs please use the version that is shipped by redguides. Let mq try and help keep you safe from prying eyes.

All,
Sorry for the late responses. Below is a screen of everyone sitting idle in PoK. I am not running any Overseer. I only run a macro to handle bots and lootly to handle all the sweet sweet loots. I shut down all log files except the tank and purged the eq folder. Not sure if I mentioned this but I rarely log out of eq and generally idle in PoK. I dont see issues where the high system uptimes effect my problems.

The only other thing I can add to describe what is happening, sometimes I will run into large groups of people on expansion release days and that will lag me out. So, I drop off 12 bots and run 18 to get done what I need to do and after a system restart it handles 18 very well. I will turn down Clip plane on the bots and see if there is improvement.

Ottotto - pretty spot on with system assessments. See below.

Knightly - I keep my system updated with the newest windows patches.

Sic - Guild: we have 80 characters in the guild and I dont think any of them are ever offline /shrug

Szazor - Umm, I dont know what to tell you on that. I like Ryzen. AMD Ryzen is extremely good at handling workflow and graphics.

EQBC/Dannet - I am running the RG version of EQBCS that is activated by the launcher. I do not know which version it is but as Sic suggested it is the RG supplied version. I am also running Dannet and I need to run both. (This is the way it must be)

CPU - I do have water cooling for my CPU. Corsair H100. I generally do not have CPU temp issues. I normally run between 30-35c.

Power Supply/GPU - This wasn't mentioned but I am using a 750w power supply which should have no problems powering the system. GPU is a PNY 3070TI 8gig and tends to run around 50c.

 

[Knightly]

I assume you’re using just one EQ directory?

Slow zoning in general is going to be most related to hard drive and network. Since you’ve eliminated network, things that cause your drive to run slower would be the next thing to look at.

Given that you rarely log off, chances are your crashes are memory fragmentation.

 

[B_I_G__D_A_D_D_Y]

View attachment 41061

Most programs incorrectly display AMD core temps. The displayed temp is actually the temperature RISE over ambient. So if it's 22C in your room then your CPU core is actually running close to 52C. Which still is outstanding for the load.

 

[Diamondmine]

Knightly - Yes just 1 eq directory.
BD - temp is set to 74 in the house. 23 + 29 would make the processor 53c. I will monitor during high load times to see if I am getting above 40c on ICUE software.

I will turn down more settings in game and see it the problem is actually settings.

 

[knave23]

You could try running a disk defrag like (I think) Knightly is suggesting

 

[Diamondmine]

You could try running a disk defrag like (I think) Knightly is suggesting

Windows does not have a defrag option for ssd. I took it as ram memory fragmentation. I use windows cleaner. Cleaner generally releases about 1-2 gigs of memory after a few hours of playing.

 

[Knightly]

Memory fragmentation is different from disk fragmentation and Diamondmine is correct, I was talking about memory fragmentation. While you're troubleshooting this problem I wouldn't use anything external that tries to clean up memory. At best you're getting a display bump and at worst you're going to make the problem worse.

 

[knave23]

Ah my mistake. I learn so much hanging out with you guys!

 

[Ottotto]

Do you witness around 5 Edge-Tasks working in the background with nearly no CPU-Power used? I sometimes wonder if it is possible to run heavy tasks while the task-manager is showing no load.... task-manager compared to Coretemp show different numbers regularly.... I uninstalled now Edge because he behaved even with disabled updates/defender in the background actively and it is normally only needed for Microsoft Products (Office and such). I don't like action in the background without knowing what they do. And for the record and the mentioned danger in not using Defender: I check my system via Boot-USB from time to time for virus/trojans. And my system is clean like a virgin (checked today again).

Cleaner programs are sometimes a mess, I don't rely on them anymore, they do more harm than good and checking every release for bugs is too much time and I had once a case where I had to newly install Windows because of such a tool. But Windows or EQ or the Tools - anythings which runs in the background for a couple of days can make problems (I partly never quitted EQ because without autologin and with the unreliable login server I don't wanted to waste my time loading). In my case 1-3 days was the limit. I had times with over 7 days straight login (traders, only staying in GH), but playability will decrease after such a time. For traders in bazaar this is unrelevant. For playing a raid or a couple of groups this can be critical.

I also use a mixture of EQBC and Dannet but due to the limitation of EQBC and lazyness to rewrite all the macros I mix it. Hard load on Dannet, orga on EQBC. And because I change my setups very often, all two together are a great help. But if I have more time then I will switch completely to Dannet.

Pretty "cool" system btw., I assume that the graphics card is not included, but still pretty cool.

and P.S.: sorry for some not proper translated sentences... at moment I write from scratch...

 

[DriveCrash]

View attachment 41060

Right click the big graph on the CPU monitor and "change graph to" , select logical processors and see if there are a bunch of cores sitting idle while the others carry a heavy load. The Utilization is the average of the overall CPU package, and you can have 4 cores maxed out but the rest are "available" so the overall utilization is low, yet the programs locked onto those cores are struggling for cycle time.

Just something else to look at.

 

[Diamondmine]

Right click the big graph on the CPU monitor and "change graph to" , select logical processors and see if there are a bunch of cores sitting idle while the others carry a heavy load. The Utilization is the average of the overall CPU package, and you can have 4 cores maxed out but the rest are "available" so the overall utilization is low, yet the programs locked onto those cores are struggling for cycle time.

Just something else to look at.

Looks like all cores are carrying the load. This is with 30 accts up, in game and playing.

 

[DriveCrash]

Edit: Incorrect assumption. Corrected in post below.

From what I've seen / read I don't think this is a hardware issue, but a configuration issue or limitation of software. To my knowledge MQ does not spin up a new process thread for each injection. At 30 injections running through one central process thread, it wouldn't take much in the way of poor code or wasted macro time to start clogging up the works. I've seen this in debugging where when a macro starts spamming debugging info into the MQ window, the other clients will start getting really sluggish to respond to events.

What about spinning up a virtual machine or two each running their own MQ process to divide out the load on MQ? have each VM run 12 clients or something.

Of course if MQ *DOES* Spin up a new processor thread for new injection loads, then it's a moot point.. but I really doubt MQ is that multi-thread optimized.

*edit* See the physical & logic core that have the saw blade teeth in it? I'm fairly certain that's the core that is handling MQ. If it's load swinging like that under normal routine, during a loading event that core could get maxed for a bit processing the flood of events from zoning that many characters at once. Just a thought.

On the topic of multithread.. the EQ client is pretty heavy on hard drive reads during loading. There might be an issue with so many clients trying to read the same physical files. I don't run near as many accounts as you do, and I have to divide my clients into my driver (main) accounts, and two dummy account folders. Even on the same SSD I saw a marked improvement in zone times, but it got MUCH better when I added two SSD's to my system and moved the dummy account folders off my main SSD drive. Even though the added SSD's are just sata connections, it seemed to free up some overhead in the pipeline.

Hope any of that helps somehow.

 

[Knightly]

From what I've seen / read I don't think this To my knowledge MQ does not spin up a new process thread for each injection. At 30 injections running through one central process thread, it wouldn't take much in the way of poor code or wasted macro time to start clogging up the works.

Your interpretation here is incorrect. MQ is not centralized. Each instance of MQ (injected into EQ) is running independent of any other instances, save for whatever other communication (process to process) is happening. The icon that you see when running MQ is used to inject into the game, it is not controlling anything much beyond that. You can confirm this by closing out of the tray icon and noticing that nothing with MQ changes.

I've seen this in debugging where when a macro starts spamming debugging info into the MQ window, the other clients will start getting really sluggish to respond to events.

This can more likely be attributed to the overall system load caused by one process bogging down the entire system.

It’s not an issue of multithreading MQ, the EQ instances we inject to are independent processes themselves.

Regardless, the issue here is almost certainly running emulated virtualization from m1 to x64 across a platform that has a customized hardware to shoehorn directx support. Something is going wrong there, but it’s not something we’d be able to fix without an m1 test machine (and maybe not even then).

 

[DriveCrash]

Your interpretation here is incorrect. MQ is not centralized. Each instance of MQ (injected into EQ) is running independent of any other instances, save for whatever other communication (process to process) is happening. The icon that you see when running MQ is used to inject into the game, it is not controlling anything much beyond that. You can confirm this by closing out of the tray icon and noticing that nothing with MQ changes.

Ahh, thank you for clearing that up. That would explain how MQ can run so many clients. My post is completely incorrect then and VM's would not resolve the problem. Can't even run a VM win7 to have more native direct X either so no point there.

This can more likely be attributed to the overall system load caused by one process bogging down the entire system.

I'm sure it is. My EQ client boxes are not high end hardware. On a really good day they might be able to handle 12 accounts, and that would be pushing it hard.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Is there any chances it's a file accessing issue from the client itself? Since the problem described seems to be only related to zoning and the client does a fair amount of file access during a zone?
Even if the client is virtualized the files sitting on the drive aren't. Just throwing thoughts out there.

 

[Knightly]

In this very specific case (parallels and m1) it’s using both emulation and virtualization. I’m no expert on macs so I may have this wrong but I believe that Parallels uses hardware virtualization to run Windows ARM64 which then uses built in emulation for x86_64.

DirectX is a special case and, if I were trying to figure this out, one thing I would look to is how we’re interacting with DirectX as well as the dlls we’re shipping to interact with DirectX. It’s possible it’s as simple as some ARM issues that need to be handled. However, given the emulation layer on top of the virtualization layer it’s likely more complicated than that.

However, it’s mostly theoretical as there’s not really incentive to drive this forward and none of the MQ devs have an M1 mac we can test on even if we had a theoretical fix. It would take way too much time and iteration to try to ship prospective fixes without that piece, but also — it’s a very niche use case. Most people run MQ on x86_64.

 

[Diamondmine]

I appreciate all the answers and things I should check on and try. It seems I may have been wrong in what I should have been stating.

Turns out my characters zone extremely fast. (a friend and I tested this while on discord and zoning from one zone to the next. he stood on one side and I zoned to him). What is happening is the accounts (I use ISBoxer) stay on the splash screen for a long time before rendering all of the graphics.

Second question for the day. I noticed this the other day. EQBC is showing up in my Task Manager. The EQBC command promt window is randomized but I thought it would also be in the task manager.

Thanks again for any insight into these questions.

 

[Knightly]

The window title isn't currently randomized.

 

[Ottotto]

Perhaps some feedback here because I announced it and some said the usual that the GPU is not important which is in fact not so true when at least boxing at the limit and the screens are not squeezed into nothingness. At least for me such a post would have been a good help for fixing problems:

43 toons in full HD (second system with another 11 to complete to 54-raid, connect via 1GB, all cards are standard, no RDMA/Mellanox luxury - perhaps future expansion with 25GB/s).

Setup A:
- CPU Intel 9900-KF, 64GB Ram, NVidia GTX 980 Ti 6GB, Smooth temperatur far below the usual average throttle temperature of 75°C
(watercooling), no overclocking, no overclocked Ram (standard DDR4-2666), 100MBdown/6MBup/ping 16ms via cable, 1GB intranet

Setup B:
- CPU Intel 9900-KF, 128GB Ram, NVidia GTX 980 Ti 6GB, 100MBdown/6MBup/ping 16ms via cable, 1GB intranet

Setup C:
- CPU Intel 9900-KF, 128GB Ram, MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X 24GB (still air cooled, until the waterblock arrives in September), 100MBdown/6MBup/ping 16ms via cable, 1GB intranet

Setup D (new one now):
- CPU Intel 9900-KF, 128GB Ram, MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X 24GB (still air cooled, until the waterblock arrives in September), 1GB down/54MB/up ping 9ms via cable internet, 2.5GB intranet

Setup A:
- 54 toons, no problems, before client update to 64 bit and before MQ Next
- 43 toons, a couple of problems like freezing which went worse and worse the last months down to around 36 toons stable
-> disable windows swapping -> instant crashes, not only freezing
-> /framelimiter bgfps 0 (no /framelimiter 1 possible, instant crash/freeze -> hard reset)

Setup B:
- 43 toons, the same problem like Setup A, only around 1-2 more toons and crash
-> disable windows swapping -> instant crashes, not only freezing
-> /framelimiter bgfps 0 ok, /framelimiter 1 not really possible without a hard reset after some minutes

Setup C
- 43 toons, no problems, 1 usual crash of a toon which seems misconfigured, but after reloading no problems
-> enable windows swapping so far (next test would be disabling it)
-> /framelimiter bgfps 0 -> CPU load 30-40%, sometimes up to 58% -> GPU load 2-35% depending on zone
-> /framelimiter bgfps 1 -> CPU load 100% -> GPU load 89% -> GPU Ram 8.3GB

Setup D
- 43 toons, no problems, 1 usual crash of a toon which seems misconfigured, but after reloading no problems
-> enable windows swapping so far (next test would be disabling it)
-> /framelimiterbgfps 0 -> CPU load 30-40%, sometimes up to 58% -> GPU load 2-35% depending on zone
-> /framelimiter bgfps 1 -> CPU load 100% -> GPU load 89% -> GPU Ram 8.3GB
-> feels like having slighty better reaction and a little faster loading time, but due to long delays in the autologin.ini because of strange issues with delay 1000 (missing toons, no autologin) I don't expect much differences

The crashes and freezes started at Setup A/B when the system reached the limit of the GPU Ram of 6GB. It seems that windows tries to swap out a part of it and has very limited safety mechanisms to avoid freeze/crashes when ressources getting low. Now with 24GB I can even load the whole enchilada without any freezes and lockdowns of the whole system which was not possible after the 64bit client update and the change to MQ Next.

While GPU may be not the first limiting factor, it is still something which should not be ignored. Especially if Windows needs to use CPU power for swapping even onto a NVMe of the latest generation (Samsung 980 PRO, Gigabyte 2TB NVMe PCIe4) then performance goes down the drain. I will test the system again after some modifications without giving windows the chance to swap around on the NVMe because in the past I had success with that when on the brink of the CPU power of the system. Window likes to swap early - too early with that setup.

Additional changes in this setup:
- no MQ2mybuttons -> changed to Lua (Buttonmaster) because of some issues with the ini files which are big. Only minor errors in the ini files can result in crashes instead of error messages (which is sad because I like the tinyness and the tiny font and the possibility to have 2 different texts for one button).

The toons have all the same setup except the limitation of the "far clip plane". I didnt changed that but with the 3090 Ti this should be far better.
The toons are not crippled. I want to change into the screen of every toon and have identical full control over the whole raid and all groups with the buttonmaster (or before that with MQ2mybuttons). All run in full hd and are not minimized.

Disadvantages:
- CPU power limitation to 95-100% results in problems with connecting or distributing commands/connects with EQBCS (a know issue for years) but even Dannet needs a couple of tries to get commands going in a zone which is more crowded/complex like the GH.
- CPU update to 13900K or overclocking would perhaps bring a bit more smoothness but the difference of around 30% compared to the cost is not worth the hazzle at moment. I doubt that a PCIe4/5-Setup (NVMe) and a bit faster Ram does make the whole enchilada perfectly round but at least with all options it should bring a complete raid into being on one system.
- at /framelimiter bgfps 0 EQBCS likes to not take commands or at least slows them down extremely (what a pity, I would love it at zero...)
- at /framelimiter bgfps 1 EQBCS works but some macros like fragmentfarm crashes the toon
- at /framelimiter bgfps 30 - e.g. macros like fragmentfarm work flawlessly in the background

Oh, perhaps a note: I have a 4k screen. But it runs at FHD for EQ (because EQ is soooo 4k-compatible and I was too lazy to start a gui catastrophy). I doubt or hope that Microsoft/Nvidia is not so stupid to use CPU power to downsize 4k to 1k (this should be solely a GPU-thing). But if so then this would be an explanation why a couple of guys pretend they run 50+ toons smooth on one system (which I highly doubt, at least not without crippling all the toons).

I avoid AMD because I have some Render-Stuff for work for which I need a 7/24-uncrashable system which was not possible in the past with AMD. But the new CPUs are so charming and promise to have more ressources free even if all the benchmarks in all the gaming press hypes 13900K more.

What would be highly interesting if somebody is really running more toons on ONE machine, what is the setup, what is EXACTLY the trick there, the resolution, the plugins for minimizing traffic/CPU load/GPU load, what plugins to avoid, etc AT THE CURRENT 64-Bit-Client and MQNext(!) not at a system from 2021 or 6 months ago. A post with "my setup works" is as useless as the plague. Concrete data would help everybody to estimate at which edge of the system somebody might try to tune around to get a better system running.

my two cents....
have fun...

 

[Ottotto]

like promised here the next test-row:

Setup D:
- correction for longer playtime: after a while (after zoning into different areas and having a bit fight) -> CPU-Ram went to 70GB, then down to 48GB -> the whole system was in a kind of slowmotion. No real freeze but CPU-power was in the limit. I assumed the usual swapping problem because Windows likes to go early into a swapping mode (about 70-80%, not really sure, rough estimation).

Setup E (like Setup D, only swapping disabled)
- disabled all swapping, with 128Gb CPU-Ram and 24GB GPU-Ram
-> stable playground, when CPU goes into the limit (100%), then the whole system felt slow but it is at least playable. No freezes anymore, no reset necessary. Now the only limit is the CPU-Power

The next setup would be either overclocking, a new faster CPU or optimizing the system with other plugins/parts than framelimiter. I would like to know if the number of cores have more influence than the overall typical gaming or business performance of a system. So far I had the impression that 1 core/thread can sufficiently support up to 2 EQ clients at full HD. With that rough estimation (without crippling the accounts very much) there is a reason why in this case (EQ) the 3950/5950-AMD would have a better performance than the Intel 99xx/10xxx/11xxx/12xxx-CPU (cost/performance). I would like to have that confirmed by people who are using AMD. Perhaps I have to add that I have a dual screen with 1x 4k downsized to 1k (EQ) and another screen with 1k (no EQ, information only) which could have some influence (while it should not have due to theory). With that in mind the best CPU for a multi-client application in the 54+ raid area could be a 16/32 core/thread CPU (AMD 3950X/5950X/7950X). The new Intel 13900K will have 24/32 cores/threads but there are only 8 high speed cores and 16 efficiency cores present. But this one could be a suitable opponent for the AMD CPUs with such a config and Everquest seems to be in a raid config one of the very rare cases when "massive multi core CPU power" will indeed make a difference in a "real life application" and the GPU power cannot compensate that like the usual engines in games/rendering/photo applications.

How many cores/threads and how many EQ clients do you run without having to cripple the visuals too much? My system can support around 43 clients with 8/16 cores/threads but honestly this is no fun when doing raid. Without much action in a zone this is no problem but in a raid action the whole graphics enchilada brings the cpu at the limits.

so my rough estimation at moment is (full HD) with NVMe/SSD without loosing fun while actively playing:

2 clients per 1 core/thread
200MB GPU-Ram per client
1,2GB CPU-Ram per client

This is self-explanatory for the GPU itself because the more GPU-ram, the bigger the GPU (so GPU is no thing to think about very much in that combination and with these presumptions).

my 2 cents again...
have fun...

 

[Ottotto]

A little addon for the guys who could be on the edge of the systempower:

Even after these upgrades of the hardware, the system sometimes slowed down to a jerking stuttering motion. I wondered what this can be because the taskmanager showed in CPU/GPU/RAM/ETHERNET/HDs(NVMe) no significant performance problem. After a couple of weeks with different setups I started to remove Windows parts. The Windows 10 I have was fresh on the system, nearly no real additional software except EQ and some EQ Tools.

I deinstalled the "Game Bar App" with the Powershell (in Admin-Mode):

Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay | Remove-AppxPackage

and while ALL BOXES are running the stuttering instantly stopped and all toons run now smooth. I was highly surprised, that a tool like the Gamebar which is not used in EQ or in any of my setups had such an impact on the Everquest performance.
I only assume that this "Game Bar App" does more than only providing some stuff for games (which are not running) esp. because nothing in the Task-Window shows any sign that the Game-Bar-App sucks any CPU/GPU/NVMe/ETHERNET/Ram in any form. What the heck has Microsoft/Bill Gates installed there? Sometimes the trojans and viruses are parts of the OS itself....

Perhaps that gives another idea how to speed up an EQ-System which is at its limits....

 

[Grpsmashin]

A little addon for the guys who could be on the edge of the systempower:

Even after these upgrades of the hardware, the system sometimes slowed down to a jerking stuttering motion. I wondered what this can be because the taskmanager showed in CPU/GPU/RAM/ETHERNET/HDs(NVMe) no significant performance problem. After a couple of weeks with different setups I started to remove Windows parts. The Windows 10 I have was fresh on the system, nearly no real additional software except EQ and some EQ Tools.

I deinstalled the "Game Bar App" with the Powershell (in Admin-Mode):

Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay | Remove-AppxPackage

and while ALL BOXES are running the stuttering instantly stopped and all toons run now smooth. I was highly surprised, that a tool like the Gamebar which is not used in EQ or in any of my setups had such an impact on the Everquest performance.
I only assume that this "Game Bar App" does more than only providing some stuff for games (which are not running) esp. because nothing in the Task-Window shows any sign that the Game-Bar-App sucks any CPU/GPU/NVMe/ETHERNET/Ram in any form. What the heck has Microsoft/Bill Gates installed there? Sometimes the trojans and viruses are parts of the OS itself....

Perhaps that gives another idea how to speed up an EQ-System which is at its limits....

Hmm interesting. i never really thought to remove this. Ill try this on the laptop and see if i can finally load more than 6 toons. Thanks for the update!

 

[durango773]

A little addon for the guys who could be on the edge of the systempower:

Even after these upgrades of the hardware, the system sometimes slowed down to a jerking stuttering motion. I wondered what this can be because the taskmanager showed in CPU/GPU/RAM/ETHERNET/HDs(NVMe) no significant performance problem. After a couple of weeks with different setups I started to remove Windows parts. The Windows 10 I have was fresh on the system, nearly no real additional software except EQ and some EQ Tools.

I deinstalled the "Game Bar App" with the Powershell (in Admin-Mode):

Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay | Remove-AppxPackage

and while ALL BOXES are running the stuttering instantly stopped and all toons run now smooth. I was highly surprised, that a tool like the Gamebar which is not used in EQ or in any of my setups had such an impact on the Everquest performance.
I only assume that this "Game Bar App" does more than only providing some stuff for games (which are not running) esp. because nothing in the Task-Window shows any sign that the Game-Bar-App sucks any CPU/GPU/NVMe/ETHERNET/Ram in any form. What the heck has Microsoft/Bill Gates installed there? Sometimes the trojans and viruses are parts of the OS itself....

Perhaps that gives another idea how to speed up an EQ-System which is at its limits....

goodbye LUA overlays...

 

[Grpsmashin]

goodbye LUA overlays...

Since i do not use this on my laptop for my farm teams, it doesnt matter much!

A little addon for the guys who could be on the edge of the systempower:

Even after these upgrades of the hardware, the system sometimes slowed down to a jerking stuttering motion. I wondered what this can be because the taskmanager showed in CPU/GPU/RAM/ETHERNET/HDs(NVMe) no significant performance problem. After a couple of weeks with different setups I started to remove Windows parts. The Windows 10 I have was fresh on the system, nearly no real additional software except EQ and some EQ Tools.

I deinstalled the "Game Bar App" with the Powershell (in Admin-Mode):

Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay | Remove-AppxPackage

and while ALL BOXES are running the stuttering instantly stopped and all toons run now smooth. I was highly surprised, that a tool like the Gamebar which is not used in EQ or in any of my setups had such an impact on the Everquest performance.
I only assume that this "Game Bar App" does more than only providing some stuff for games (which are not running) esp. because nothing in the Task-Window shows any sign that the Game-Bar-App sucks any CPU/GPU/NVMe/ETHERNET/Ram in any form. What the heck has Microsoft/Bill Gates installed there? Sometimes the trojans and viruses are parts of the OS itself....

Perhaps that gives another idea how to speed up an EQ-System which is at its limits....

Since ive completed it to the laptop, i can now run 12 toons with no problems and it doesnt sound like a jet engine now.

With the regard to LUA, maybe someone else can jump in for how this is effected. Not sure hot an xbox app would influence this.