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Question - High CPU usage (1 Viewer)

wackawacka

Active member
Joined
Jun 18, 2006
RedCents
992¢
I run 5-6 accounts with I-5 3570k and getting 98-100% CPU usage while even using wineq with Playnice on and idea why my CPU usage is so high?
 
I happened upon this posting for the first time this morning and wow, I feel noobish again, just coming back from a near 3 yr eq hiatus, and have been struggling boxing on my laptop, mostly I could get 5 going, but once in a while would lag horribly, basically locking all the way up, and now finding this I have gone back through and changed alot of things that I was clueless about, which is sad with 18 years of EQ now, just waiting for the updater to work to really try this out and see if I can run 6 fine-Thank you to all whom posted all of this information, even if it doesnt allow me to box better, it did allow me to tweak alot of settings...stick figures who the hell figured that out hahahahah, never even heard of it. Maskoi, you said to turn playnice off, that means no wineq at all correct, I dont see a function to turn it off, but I am a moron, well im just a moron in general and with computers, thank you once again folks.
 
Hi guys,
First I must say that this is a great thread.
I used stickfigures for the first time today and something really odd happened. I loaded 9 accounts. Of the 9 only 7 loaded stickfigures.
I logged off the two that were not using stickfigures and re-logged them. No luck. They are still using regular images.
Any ideas?
 
Hi guys,
First I must say that this is a great thread.
I used stickfigures for the first time today and something really odd happened. I loaded 9 accounts. Of the 9 only 7 loaded stickfigures.
I logged off the two that were not using stickfigures and re-logged them. No luck. They are still using regular images.
Any ideas?

Some toons have no stick figures. The Drakkin I know do not turn into red stick figures. I suspect it is because the race was developed after the stickfigure hack was introduced............

As always,
Playbetter
 

I get that and according to the intel site threading is a software method of passing instructions though a single core and on that particular processor you linked it has 4 threads per core so from that I would mean it can thread 4 instructions per core ( 4x2 would make 8 instructions at once.). but don't get how that equates to 4 cores.
 
how do you hyperthread a dual core to run as a quad core?

scotsbiker you are correct. I misstated a core increase.... there is no core increase.

The way I understand cores and threads is; cores are actively computing while threads are data deliverers..ers.. A thread is a data conduit and there are redundant threads for each active one. So a quad core with the ability to hyperthread actually has 8 threads with 4 in reserve to kick in if any of the working 4 fails. When you activate the dormant ones you improve throughput to the cores.

We have many tech minded people here that can explain this more eloquently.

If I am incorrect this will be a great opportunity for me to learn.

As always,
Playbetter
 
Great post.
However, if i don't load mq2 my eq screen is black. I can see the windows in my eq screen like group window, chat, ect. However, i can not see the world. It is just black.
Any ideas?
It has made it impossible to play on patch day.
 
Same issue of visible UI, but world is blacked out on loading. World appears when I use this command in the macro window:
PHP:
/viewport reset

If it continues, you can also try turning off viewport in the plugin section of your macroquest.ini file.
 
It doesn't surprise me on this. Since that viewport plugin came out it utilizes the EQ function for that and just calls it and automates turning it back on and off between your screens. Since it doesn't reset back viewport reset if game crashes or whatever it gets stuck.
 
EQ isn't really using 100mbs of memory from the pics above. Windows 10 will compress unused memory (virtual memory) and use that instead it wont show for each process though it will show under system process.
 
EQ isn't really using 100mbs of memory from the pics above. Windows 10 will compress unused memory (virtual memory) and use that instead it wont show for each process though it will show under system process.

if you mean the system processes from the task manager im averaging about 150mb with each instance in that process tab
 
I had the same problem with my intel i5.

I bought an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 and now with 12 clients I have 40% cpu usage. It might be 4 cores/ 4 threads vs 6 cores/ 12 threads.
 
I had the same problem with my intel i5.

I bought an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 and now with 12 clients I have 40% cpu usage. It might be 4 cores/ 4 threads vs 6 cores/ 12 threads.

Upgrade to the 1700x :) I got 28 eq clients up with 42% CPU usage I had to upgrade my GPU because that was starting to cause FPS issues. I wouldn't recommend going with 1080ti like I did though its overkill.
 
Windows update 1803 has helped me out. It just launched a few days ago. New setting Graphics option under display section. It fixed a lighting problem I was having for quite some time.
In game under general tab, you can hide afk players, mercs, and pets. Turn off environment sounds, combat music, and randomize Loading music.
Display click off show pc, npc, pet, and merc names. Click off 3d target ring. Leave on Level of detail. Click off all buff and song options. Set Load Screen to none, sky off, New armor none. Turn off Particles. Don't for get to hide chat you not using. Here is a link for basic maintenance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttiA0zRbzko
I know some of you use steam and have
razer products. Razer Cortex works with both of them and has a game boost tab. Here are video and download links.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0a3z8-j3vI
https://www.razer.com/cortex
 
Either manually set affinity every time you load an EQ instance by using "Task Manager" under the Details tab........ or
use "Process Lasso" by "Bitsum" to set affinity automatically for you... at https://bitsum.com/. I have it use the same three cores on all and leave one for spikes. It works. I figured it out..... so can you.

That is it.
As always,
Playbetter

Sorry to pull a cleric on this thread but I would like to know what settings or options you used in Process Lasso? It has a ton of options and I want to be lazy and not figure them all out! Thanks! :)
 
CPUAffinity0=-1
CPUAffinity1=-1
that is in the eqclient.ini in your eq folder.. -1 means it will use all processors.

where the 0 and the 1 are is each client, if you have 18 you will go up to 17 *CPUAffinity17=-1, just make sure you have all set to -1
 
Hi All
Don't mean to necro this thread, but I was reading through it and started looking at my eqclient.ini and my eqclient-CHARNAME(servername).ini files, and found something disturbing. I was particularly looking for CPUAffinity's and changing them according to the post above, explaining how you need to have affinity for EACH client that your running. I found that in all ini files that I had this:

CPUAffinity1=1
CPUAffinity2=2

at the bottom of the DEFAULT section in each ini. NOT at the top of the section where you expect to see CPUAffinity. I didn't like the redundancy so I commented them out. So my question is, why have 2 separate line items counteracting each other? I am using ISBoxer for my char sets and the standard CPU setup in their wizard. Could that be where the redundancy comes form? But I have a 4 core CPU, why list only 2 affinity's. I don't understand lol.

But I will say this was a real eye opener type of thread, for me. Thanks to all who contributed to this wealth of information.
 
CPUAffinity applies to each instance of EQ if I recall correctly. So if you have 2 accounts then each account will get assigned a CPU, otherwise if you're using 4 accounts and you have 4 cores, then you assign 1 of each of those 4 cores to each of the 4 instances.

The Entry in the INI can be located at the top of bottom or middle, really doesn't matter.

For example. In my eqclient.exe it goes to cpuaffinity 13 because I have at some point ran 14 toons at once.
CPUAffinity0-1 is closer to the top of the INI, whereas 2 is located somewhere in the middle, and 3-13 are located near the bottom.

It doesn't really matter where in the file those are located. Also, you should probably check again as you also have a CPUAffinity0

Basically this keeps you from using the same core for multiple instances of EQ unless you lack enough cores to assign one to each instance, in which case it will start the count over.
1550364637080.png

Beyond the above I'm not entirely sure of the uses for this.
 
Thanks Chat for taking the time to reply. I had redundancy to the numbers, and different numbers in different spots. I wouldn't of been as concerned if they were different affinities. Like I had

CPUAffinity1=1
CPUAffinity2=2

in 2 distinct different places in the "Default" section of the ini. These characters were in the same 5 man group and none of them showed any affinity for cores 0 or 3. And the numbering wasn't consistent across 8 different ini files either. Some had 3, some had just one. So I was questioning the redundancy and the impact of the performance on my PC. Also, which ini files settings take precedence? the EQclient.ini or the one with the char name in it? And how does ISBoxer affect all this? ISB has affinity settings for a Character Set when you create one using their Wizard.

Lol sorry for all the questions but man is this confusing.
 
I don't have character specific eqclient.ini that I am aware of. I am only aware of the eqclient.ini in the root everquest folder. I also don't use isboxer so I cannot comment in regards to that.
Ini's will find the first instance of a key and then use that. If there are multiple instances of a key then the second key wouldn't be used.

[SectionName]
Key1=7
Key1=3

if I do a /echo ${Ini[myFilesName,SectionName,Key1]}
then it would echo 7.

The second value should have no effect at all. But also begs the question, how did you get two copies of the same key because if you /ini "MyFileName" "SectionName" "Key1" 9
Then it would write to the INI at the first found Key1 which would overwrite the 7 with a 9.
Which means that you would have needed to copy/paste that information somehow or another and the values are safe to delete.

Would it affect performance to have multiple copies of the same key? That I can't foresee being an issue. I expect that once the key is found it would get the value and break out of the check returning it's current value at the first instance of the key.

For the character specifics....I know nothing of that as I don't appear to have any character specific eqclient.ini files.
 
Chat

I have these files in my EQ folder. C:\Games\EQ\eqclient-Charname (servername).ini for each character I play. (shrug) I have no idea why? So do you have any idea which one would take precedence? Which one gets read first?
 
Chat

I have these files in my EQ folder. C:\Games\EQ\eqclient-Charname (servername).ini for each character I play. (shrug) I have no idea why? So do you have any idea which one would take precedence? Which one gets read first?

WinEQ2 and ISBoxer both use the concept of a virtualized eqclient.ini file. So that each individual client you launch can have it's own set of unique settings rather than every client sharing a single eqclient. The files with the hyphen were originally created by by a Lavishsoft app from whatever base eqclient was on the system at the time.

What this means in practice is that if you use the DBG launcher to start the game it will use the base eqclient file. Any changes you make to settings in this mode will NOT be replicated to your ISBoxer profiles. When you use ISBoxer to start your crew, each specific client will use it's own custom eqclient.ini so that each client can have a unique setup. For example you could load all armors on your main character for better graphics while NOT loading them on the remaining boxes so that their memory and cpu utilization is lower.

You can use the CPU settings (or wizard) in the ISBoxer application to adjust how your clients utilize the CPU. It is possible over time that multiple conflicting settings got written your your virtualized eqclient files. I would recommend that if you discover this to follow the following steps:

1. Close out of the game completely.

2. Manually edit every virtualized file and set every CPUAffinity line to "-1" and then delete the extra and duplicated entries. If you routinely 6-box there should be:

INI:
CPUAffinity0=-1
CPUAffinity1=-1
CPUAffinity2=-1
CPUAffinity3=-1
CPUAffinity4=-1
CPUAffinity5=-1

3. Run the ISboxer configuration tool and run the CPU Strategy Wizard and then save and export your configuration.

The next time you run the game all should be back to normal.
 
Thank you Dig Daddy for the clarification. That does explain a lot about the differences between ISB and EQ and how they manage their CPU allocations. I did just what you recommended and it worked really good. I do use ISB to start my character sets from, so that explains the extra ini files. My CPU (according to Resource Monitor) usage went from 85% down to 45-50% running 7 clients. I also played around with the 2 Memory optimizer's found in this thread (MoooWindowsPlus and Memory Cleaner) and boy did those help a ton on getting my memory usage under control. Things are certainly looking better on my PC.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. It sure has helped me.
 
Question - High CPU usage

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