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Few questions about the GPU shadows
nekrothing
Member Posts: 302
PC specs & short story before I get to the questions...
Specs: 8800GTS 512MB, E6850 3GHz, 4GBs @ 800MHz (PC reads it as only 2.8GBs though), Windows XP Pro SP3, 600W PSU
^ This PC is not only the PC that I'm using now, but it is also the same PC I used when I had initially tried the game. No changes have been made to it since my initial attempt at trying to run EQ2.
Story: The first time that I had played EQ2 was about a year ago. When I had initially tried it, I really enjoyed it. I thought the game was really fun. Only problem was that the performance of the game on my PC was less than perfect, to say the least (I would have to run the game on settings at, or below Balanced (usually below balanced if I'm in a town-type area)). Now I'm not one to prefer graphics over gameplay, and so I usually wouldn't mind running the game on at least the default balanced settings, but there was only a certain amount of un-optimization on the games part that I could put up with before I just couldn't put up with it anymore. When I started to group up with other people for quests and other group activities, my frame rate would constantly dip in to the <30 region, and I would have to run the game at extreme/high performance settings at a resolution of at least 1024x768 in order to get a playable frame rate. It was really pathetic, and at that point, I just stopped subbing to the game.
I was really bummed. I thoroughly enjoyed the game, but I couldn't put up with the crap frame rate that I was getting. So every once in awhile (every major update or so), I usually give the trial a go to see what my performance on the game is like. I went ahead and gave the game another try when they started to implement some multi-core functionality (off-putting some of the shadow processing/character animations to the second core in a multi-core processor). Unfortunately, my frame rate really hasn't gotten any better at all. I heard that SOE is trying this whole "GPU shadows" thing on EQ2 now, and I'm sort of interested in finding out how this will affect the overall performance of PCs on EQ2. Since EQ2 is a fairly CPU-intensive game though, I figure that if my GPU can help take some of the load off of my CPU, my PC might be able to run the game slightly better than it did before. But by this point, I've tried the trial probably over 5 or 6 times by now, and I just don't feel like reinstalling/updating the game again, along with having to create another trial account. So this essentially brings me to my set of questions...
Questions: Will the newly implemented GPU shadows drastically improve the performance of the game on my PC? Like, is it something that would improve the frame rate so much, that the game would become playable on at least the default balanced settings? Or has the performance on the game decreased because of this change? Or stayed about the same?
Comments
I run a Geforce 8500 GT videocard (1GB RAM) 4 GB Ram, 3800+ Amtholon Processer And I run it extremley smooth on max Setting, Im also using Vista 32 bit Home, where everybody knows requires 2 times the normal spec because vista is a retarded resource hog.
Just make sure your card and CPU are uptodate. The other thing is windows is notorius for running all your programs from start-up, even closing them manually doesn't mean the program chews up resources.
try using
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310560
And turning everything off from startup, and also choosing to hide all microsoft services and disabling what is left.
What this does is turns everything off that isn't needed to run your computer, your video card and system hardware will all work the same as long as you choose to hide microsoft services.
This only disables programs.
Another thing is firewalls, when playing mmo's they constantly scan every bit of information you pull from the server, i.e movement, items you pick up which will kill resources as well. Anti-viruses and spybots are the same.
People say that you need these software, I for one do not use firewalls, anti-virus o any of that crap and have never become vitim to any viruses. But then again I have a gaming rig and a internet rig.
Most games I played where people were comp[laining about lag and such were these things fixed it up. But thats not all cases, sometimes the heating of unit causes lag.
What I explained are pretty general, if you need clarification of any of this just respond and I will be happy to answer.
Enjoy : )
The first rule of EQ2 is: don't use CPU shadows.
Here are a few things to consider. GPU shadows only work outdoors, in the open environemnt, and they do look pretty slick. The light source is the sun or the moon, and the shadows move across the ground as these light sources move across the sky. You can choose either to leave indoor shadows off or use indoor CPU shadows. "Indoors" includes such places as dungeons and some instances, so if you had trouble grouping with CPU shadows turned on before, you'll probably still have trouble grouping with indoor-only CPU shadows. That being said, the GPU shadow system itself has almost no negative performance impact.
Appreciate all of the diagnostic assistance, but trust me, I've already tried everything to get my performance up on EQ2 over the course of my time playing the game. I tried getting some assistance from the support forums on EQ2s home site, and I've even talked to the highest tier support techs from SOE via the IM chat system on their site & email support. They were astounded that my performance was as bad as it was, even after all of the suggestions they had given me, which included...
-Updating to the latest drivers for everything (which I do on a monthly basis)
-Defragging (again, I do this on a monthly basis)
-Using the recommended video driver for EQ2
-Updating my BIOS
-Turning off certain programs when my system starts up (via msconfig)
-Reinstalling the game
-Turning off my AV program
...and many other things which I forget. You name it, I've done it.
Nothing I do is going to improve the performance on the game (except getting a new PC of course, which I'm not doing), which is why I was asking if the whole GPU performance thing improved the performance of EQ2 at all.
Also, as I understand it, GPU and CPU shadows are separate correct? If I only use GPU shadows, and not CPU shadows, will I see a boost in performance at all?
The new GPU shadows are a wreck until they work on it some more. It's even talked about in regular chat occasionally and most people still just use cpu even though it is less fps. Why are gpu shadows a wreck? They just don't really work. Many cpu shadows just don't exist at all in gpu shadow mode so it's kind of like you just cut out a bunch of your shadows, and other times they are very buggy, flickery, jaggy, etc. I was VERY disappointed in them and hope they improve them.
I have an amd 940, with an nvidia 260 core 216 and I run on the highest level with no problems whatsoever.
Two thing I have had issues with that hurt performance dramatically.
I'm at work so I can't lookup the setting but there is a setting called something likedynamic displacement. It is a setting related to ground cover. Basically it tries to have things like grass and bushes move as you walk through them. Disabling this one setting in a place like EL caused my fps to go from 10-15 to 30+
The second issue I had was with memory usage. This isn't a problem since I upgraded but with winxp it was a problem. With winxp I had something like 2-3gb ram usable. Then I had some stuff in the background etc. So to eq2 I had like 1.5gb or so free and what I found was in certain areas like Neriak my fps would die again and I'd get hitching. Further investigation showed that on high setting eq2 was trying to use 1.7-1.9gb which was causing swapping. I ended up going through my system startup stuff and pruning things but in the end I ended up selecting lower texture maps which got me down to 1.3-1.5 which was better.
---
Ethion
My performance got better after they implemented it, although Neriak still isn't perfect.
However the biggest improvement I got was when I changed server from a brittish server to a US one. Someone said that the Us servers performed better, and I did a try, it was like playing on a different computer...
To me it seems like SOE still have a few old crappy servers running from the EQ time, if you still have problem, try playing on Lucan D'lere (US, RP-PvE). I have good performance there. And just do a free trial to see if your performance is good or bad, no need to pay for a month before you know that.
Appreciate all of the replies. Glad to hear that the GPU shadows can somewhat improve the performance of the game. It's interesting to hear that depending on what server you choose, your performance on the game could vary. I'll have to go ahead and try out one of the US servers then when I (sigh) give the trial another try.
As for the dynamic displacement setting, I think you're referring to the flora displacement thing. I found that setting to eat up a lot of my frames too. Unfortunately it didn't matter though, as I would have to turn flora off altogether. The flora displacement thing ate up about 10 frames, where as flora would eat up about 20.
I saw a video in this thread that pretty much restored my confidence in the GPU shadows though. It was the 6th post on the 2nd page. For anyone who watches the video, my performance was essentially the same as person in the video from 0:00-0:11. So I'm hoping that I can get as much of a FPS boost when switching from CPU shadows to GPU shadows as the perosn in the video did.
I'm running EQ2 on Vista 64-bit with a 512Mb Radeon 4870, 3.16 GHz dual-core, 4GB memory. With most of the settings turned up to max, I usually get between 50-80 FPS outdoors, depending on where I am. I haven't noticed any appreciable difference between GPU and CPU shadows in terms of performance on my machine.
My overall feeling is that EQ2 now runs exceptionally smoothly on decent hardware.
for what its worth
this slideshow presentation was shown at Fanfaire regarding EQ2 Shader 3.0
www.youtube.com/watch
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