Performance Tweaks

fasterfind · Member Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 82

Just read a big article on performance tweaks at rpgexpert.com and then gleamed the seed from the chaff. (yeah, seed from chaff... grew up in a farming community)

HOOYAH!

DMA

Finally, to juice that last bit of performance from your computer, turn on DMA. DMA enables your hard drive to write directly to the RAM, without having to pass through the CPU, and is one of the leading causes of poor computer gaming performance.

If you use a version of Windows other than XP, simply right click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, choose "Properties," select "Device Manager," choose your hard drive, choose "Properties," then "Settings," and finally, click Enable DMA.

On WinXP, again, right click "My Computer," only this time select "Manage." Then choose "Device Manger," click "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers," double-click the IDE channel you'd like to change, click on the Advanced Settings Tab, and set Transfer Mode to "DMA if available" on both devices.

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Good info. If you're running Win98, make quite sure you kill "Systray.exe" processes, it is a perma-crashed memory hog of a program that comes with Windows98, built into the system, and pretends to do something. You can delete it entirely and there won't be any ill effects, and plenty of positive ones.

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You've missed possibly the single thing that can really tune performance. The /viewport command.

Type /viewport x y width height to reduce the amount of space devoted to rendering the scene (e.g. you can move all your UI stuff out from over the viewport).

You can easily double your framerate this way.

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Best advice is a Raid ON & a Raid OFF Hotkey for in game Lag help!
Make Hotkey named LAG
1st Line) Put /HideCorpse AllButGroup
2nd Line) put /ShowSpellEffects OFF
3rd Line) Put /ShowNames 1
4th Line) Put /DynamicLights OFF

then make another Hotkey FIX
1st) /HideCorpse None
2nd) /ShowSpellEffects ON
3rd) /Shownames 4
4th) /DynamicLights ON

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[edited]
Turn off virtual memory during defrag so the computer can defrag the swap file (file used by virtual memory). Virtual memory is where the computer uses a file on the hard disk for memory when it runs out of available RAM. If that file is badly fragmented (spread out in pieces on your hard disk) it can degrade your system performance.

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Dantenx Guildseeker
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The geek shall inherit the earth.

Jenny · Member Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 2916

I'm not sure if it could.
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Heelar · Member Joined: 15 Jul 2003 Posts: 237

Jenny · Member Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 2916

I'm not sure if it could.
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"Enough about me, let's talk about my dress."

fasterfind · Member Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 82

Thanks, Heelar. I edited the entry to be clear.

That one entry seems to say that the swap file doesn't get remade each time that windoze is started. I used to think that it was made fresh with each startup.

I know that a linux swapfile exists as a disk partition.

Today, this is where my tech knowledge ends and someone elses begins. Anyone know how swapfile is managed in windows and if it really does need to be defragged as suggested?
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The geek shall inherit the earth.

ElSancho · Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 12:38 am Post subject:

only thing i would suggest it turn off indexing on all your HDD's before the defrag, PF is good if you do video editing or anything when you search your HDD. I keep mine off on my raid aray and my backup drive. as far as the swapfile, I dont think it really matters.

might wanna let windows manage your page file also, windowsXP specifically. to find it: windows key + pausebreak, advanced, preformance settings, advanced, and at the bottom vitrual memory, change, then set to systme managed if its not, then press SET then restart. do this espically if you have upgraded your RAM.
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ElSancho · Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 12:39 am Post subject:

double posts make baby jesus cry...
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Jenny · Member Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 2916

Where would you look for it windows key + pausebreak advanced preformance settings advanced and at the bottom vitrual memory change then set to systme managed if its not then press SET then restart.
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ElSancho · Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:47 am Post subject:

well its sure as hell not next to the apple key Jenny!
pffft, silly macbot Wink

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fasterfind · Member Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 82

I've been playing with the /viewport command lately and am pretty impressed with the results.

/viewport 100 100 640 480
would make a 640 x 480 display of the world that is 100 pixels down and over from the upper left hand corner. So the card is now rendering many less pixels for the game world. Around the 'view port' is a black area where I can drag my UI boxes.

The way I used to play EQ, my graphics card was rendering a 1024x768 world that was mostly covered up UI boxes. 25% of the rendering was being wasted because I never saw the parts of my screen which were covered up. Now I'm rendering an 800x600 viewport and seeing MORE of the world because nothing is covered up, my UI boxes are placed outside of the viewing area. Things are scaled down a bit for the viewport, but the difference is negligable - does not affect gameplay.

I was also pleased to find that I had a LOT of black area available, more than my UI boxes could take up. So I played with my chat windows a bit and found a configuration that puts more data on my screen. It's awesome to have enough space to view damage scrolling by.

I set up a few hotkeys to switch between viewing ports of 800x600, down to 320x240. In areas where video lag is traditionally a problem, it can be virtually elliminated. 320x240 is definately small, but suprisingly enough, I can navigate over and under bridges with it, though doors etc. So sometimes I like using it in the POK or bazaar rather than looking at my feet. My trader accounts are all now running really small view ports (160x120 or 80x60) so that I have tons or room for chat windows. (I split market channel from OOC and then also like to keep a guild channel open to help pass the time.)

I like to keep two instances of EQ running at all times on my main computer (one of the instances is a trader running in a minimized window.) I figured I would see a big boost when my trader was set to a viewport size of 80 x 60 pixels. The improvement in my primary instance of Everquest was marginal at best. This supports the conclusion that if something is minimized, that your graphics card isn't going to use resources thinking about rendering it. But apparently my CPU and or system RAM are still thinking about it. I know that I still had RAM to spare, so I think I can safely say that my CPU is my biggest bottleneck. (heh, Athlon 2200)

All EQ settings are running at about absolute minimum except that I still have armor models enabled, 2 races, and horses.

So, in summary... Using /viewport can
1. Give you more room for your UI and chat boxes
2. Greatly reduce graphics lag
BUT it probably won't reduce burden on processor or RAM.

I will continue experimenting with different settings in an effort to discovere the best way to comfortably run a lot of instances of EQ on the same computer.

My next experiments will probably involve the use of a RAM scrubbing program and or EQwindows. I will also see if I can't determine the amount of system resources used per instance, under different conditions.

Currently, I'm using windows 2000 and am unfamiliar with the tools for viewing system resources / processes in realtime. If you know the name of the program I want to run to view them, please let me know.
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The geek shall inherit the earth.

Heelar · Member Joined: 15 Jul 2003 Posts: 237

Funny ting, Maxium PC had an artivle on exactly what we were talking about with Defrag. In smmary: There is no way to get Windows to defrag pagefile, but it makes no diffrence at all. There are Third-party apps that will defrag pagefile on startup, but even they admit that it's virtually useless.
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fasterfind · Member Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 82

I think the pagefile is just a short amount of RAM that is accessed at any one time. I don't know what the big part of RAM is called once it's holding all of your currently running programs.

One of the leading causes of blue screen of death, I believe is from computer having lots of programs write to RAM and then losing track of what is where and starting with untouched RAM until all of remaining RAM is taken up with crap - then it's time to reboot.

I think RAM scrubbers are supposed to constantly look for the 'crap' and take care of it so that this doesn't occur and you don't run out of RAM beacuse a program isn't managing it well.
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Dantenx Guildseeker
(my actual surname)

RL Computer Tech
The geek shall inherit the earth.

fasterfind · Member Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 82

I just got home and logged into my accounts on EQ and I found that when I started up, that it was with the small sized windows that I had specified with the /viewport command. From a fresh start, I'm noticing a dramatic difference. It used to be that if I had two trader accounts in background, that even surfing the web or opening text editors would crawl - everything's going pretty quickly right now.

Adding to the mystery of system slowdown is that when EQ is minimized, if I'm not doing anything, my processor shows about 0% activity. Of course, when I try to access things, I can notice the speed difference when I have EQ running. So now I'm back to being baffled about what the major bottleneck is and what resources EQ uses when it's hanging out in the background.
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Dantenx Guildseeker
(my actual surname)

RL Computer Tech
The geek shall inherit the earth.

Heelar · Member Joined: 15 Jul 2003 Posts: 237

No, the Page-file is what virtual memory uses, it's a prtion of your hard-disk set aside specifically for that purpose. To maximize it's benefit, MaximumPC reccomends setting the minimum and maxium amounts the same (I've always heard it reccomended you use 2x the amount of RAM in your system, IE if you have 512RAM, set page file to 1024).
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Jenny · Member Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 2916

I want to become smarter than humans.
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