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Hardware
Posted: August 5, 2008, 10:06 pm
by Toalin
Just curious ill be upgrading my pc soon and curious does eq2 run on core 2 Quad core processors under vista 64 bit?
and newish video card perhaps GTX280.
ive had OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of dramas with Eq2 running on my laptop previously just wanted to get a feel for what it will run on and wont run on.
obviously im not just building a new pc to run eq2 but its something i do play regularly also.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 3:20 am
by Truant
my computer is nowhere near that level and it runs eq2 just fine.
But I don't know what specific hardware does and doesn't run eq2, so...take that as you will.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 7:33 am
by Al
I'll second Truant. I bought this computer in '01 as an absolute top of the line model. Since then the only thing I have replaced was the video card, to allow me to play Oblivion. I play EQ2 several times a week, and it runs well. The only times I run into problems it will involve my junk DSL, and that is just slow-zoning.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 10:54 am
by Ashur
I play EQ2 on a Quad-Core with 32bit Vista. I think Coho plays on a Dual-Core with 64-bit Vista.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 11:18 am
by miir
EQ2 is not particularly finicky about hardware.
In my experience, you'll get better performance and stability with an ATI video card.
ive had a lot of dramas with Eq2 running on my laptop previously just wanted to get a feel for what it will run on and wont run on.
Any current (not entry level) laptop with upgraded video should run EQ2 just fine.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 12:35 pm
by Canelek
I run it on dual core w/ SLI 9800GTX Vista 64-bit as well as XP 32-bit Dual core on the laptop.
I heard it runs best on highend single-core, since the engine has not been updated to take advantage of "newer" technology yet.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 1:01 pm
by Kilmoll the Sexy
Canelek speaks truth. One thing we found is that you can fire the game up, then manually force it to run on your second core so any other apps you have running do not suck resources from it. I change it over to core 2 and run ventrilo and web browers and all that on core 1.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 1:23 pm
by Canelek
Ohhh, I forgot about that! Where in Vista can I find processor affinity?
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 1:31 pm
by Boogahz
Not at home right now, but I am pretty sure you can just right click it and choose the affinity under properties.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 2:01 pm
by Aardor
Boogahz wrote:Not at home right now, but I am pretty sure you can just right click it and choose the affinity under properties.
Think you might have to click the "performance administrative tasks" or whatever button first, unless you have the stuff disabled. Other than that, it should be the same as XP.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 2:10 pm
by Ashur
I'm curious about how this would work as well since I think the actual executable for the game is autolaunched by whatever patcher is used (the EQ2 Patcher or the Station Launcher).
I have a quad-core, so I'd love to stick the executable for the game on another CPU.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 2:33 pm
by miir
There was a post on the official forums earlier this year which gave a detailed explanation to why manually configuring CPU affinity offers no benefit to performance.
I just let OS shuffule around my programs for maximum performance. It's a hell of a lot more efficient at it.
Re: Hardware
Posted: August 6, 2008, 2:55 pm
by miir
Why do you always want to run the client on the second core?
Windows treats the cores fairly equally and most applications don't care about their affinity, so Windows will assign them as it sees fit. This would likely see the secondary core utilized about the same as the first core.
The EQ2 client sets the affinity of the main thread for a few reasons, one of which is to load balance multiple clients (i.e. if you run 4 clients on a 4 core machine, each client should get the main thread set to its own core). Another reason is to manage timing irregularities between older multi-core/multi-cpu hardware. The affinity of the rest of the process is left open so that Windows can use the other cores for the several other non-CPU bound threads. Setting the process affinity without knowing the affinity of the main thread could potentially lead to worse performance.
It's my opinion that there's not much to be gained from setting the process affinity since the main thread affinity is already set. Since the main thread is largely CPU-bound, Windows is likely going to put the rest of the processes in your system and other non-CPU-bound EQ2 threads on the other core(s).