Performance Tweaks

Jenny · Member Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 2916

Do I act like COMING ON to Elsancho you ? I don't mean to come across that way.
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ElSancho · Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 7:02 pm Post subject:

Heelar · Member Joined: 15 Jul 2003 Posts: 237

I know this topic is thoughly derailed now, but about running 2 instances of EQ. I use a program called EQWindows (www.eqwindows.com) when I want to box Talhia. On a P4 3.0 w/ 1gig PC 3200 RAM and a 128MB video card, I can have 2 so called "rich" instances (all modles, spell effects on, 1280x1024 resolution) with very little lag. After playing with voewport some, I now set my secondary instance (Tal) to 400 400 800 600, that gives me plenty of viewing area to do what she needs to do, and also eliminates alll lag. Oh, I set the frame limiter to 45 on each account too.
As far as why yours crashes.. what OS are you using? Using so little RAM on startup, it sounds like 98 or 2000. Also, the P4 may have some advantage here due to hyperthreading. Might want to look into EQwindows too, although it seems buggy to me after OOW release and will sometimes not let me run a second instance, as the second one crashes on startup.
/shrug, multi-accounts seems to be shoddy t best, no matter what your setup.
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ElSancho · Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:05 pm Post subject:

Ive never been able to run eqwindows for more then an hour without a crash. maybe I need to rob more parts from my toaster? Laughing

Best luck Ive had is running it in window'd mode @ 800x600 on 2 accounts, makes it alot easier to go from one to the other.
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Shiloch Veneficus · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:16 pm Post subject:

Defragging:

I've done quite a bit of research on defrag, only to find that there is no solid answer. In my opinion, unless you are a download junkie (someone that downloads and installs 10 or 20 programs per day), or you run some type of database software that grows and shrinks in size quite often, defragging is almost pointless. It will take your disk a very long time to come to the point where it is actually fragmented to the point where it will cause significant performance degredation. I download and install quite a bit of software, and my drive never becomes too fragmented before my 6-month format.

Constant, needless defragging actually lowers the life of your hard disk. It takes a lot of spin-hours to defrag, and the more often you do it, the more minutes you take from your hard drive's recommended spin hours.

Gamers, like EQ players or other games that patch often, might see fragmentation sooner than non-gamers will. For something like this, a defrag might be called for once every 6 months, but I'd say not much more than that.

Page File:

Windows uses virtual memory by default. As soon as Windows boots, it goes into virtual memory, even though it may not be using enough of your physical RAM to warrant needing "extra" RAM. Windows 2000 and Windows XP have a lot of miscellaneous services on a vanilla installation that, once started, aren't needed very often and don't use a lot of memory. These are immediately paged to virtual memory in 4kb "pages."
Is it possible for the page file to become fragmented? Yes. Is it possible that page file fragmentation will degrade system performance? Absolutely. But, rather than disabling virtual memory and degragging, I prefer an alternative solution: deleting the page file and recreating it. Set the minimum and maximums in virtual memory settings to zero, reboot, then set them back to your preferred values.

As far as running two instances of EQ and experiencing crashes, I don't know if that's actually to blame on virtual memory, RAM, or whatever. It isn't very likely that Windows "lost track" of where your programs were stored in virtual memory, it's a lot more likely that the program you were using is trying to access a bit of virtual memory where it thought something was stored but has been cleared and moved to another location by the operating system. This is common in C applications. Sad

ElSancho · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:46 pm Post subject:

might want to try norton speed disk (or system works) for a lil more up to date way to help keep your machine running alil smoother. I have used norton for a long time, some people hate it (I have how much resources it uses to run in the background I.E. firewall/antivirus) but there are alternatives such as the new computer associates suite (CA) that has the same junk norton does but used a fraction of the resources.
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fasterfind · Member Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 82

awesome reply, very in depth knowledge. I wish I was learning this stuff in my coursework.
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Shiloch Veneficus · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:22 pm Post subject:

ElSancho · Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 11:34 pm Post subject:

Like I said, some people dont like them Smile

as far as firewalls go I have I picture somewhere of the "windowsXP Pro, now with firewall" thats great, Ill have to try and dig it up. I am behind a router and still get various IP alerts, basicall people knocking on my door to see if anyone is home. I would highly reccomend use'n a third party firewall.

Depending on where you live and who all is on your hub will effect how many time your IP is attacked, or so my experiences have shown. Maybe you know how to secure your pipeline and box better then johnny hacker but most people dont and I think its a bad idea to suggest that microsofts stock one is good enough.

To touch on the defrag again, if your going to use it you might aswell do it in safemode like its supposed to be done. drivers and Apps. arent started in safemode as they are in normal windows and you will get better results.
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future ADD warcraft player

ZigonZagoff · Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 12:32 pm Post subject:

How about some EQ specific tweaks?
Someone mentioned setting the server side filter on so that other hits are filtered before coming across (I couldn't find this).

These might help some of us with CoX disease - where they disconnect a line because too much traffic is generated so they assume there is a DoS occurring.

Honorkin · Member Joined: 03 Jan 2002 Posts: 262 Location: Midwest

EQ is about all I use computer for anyway, so might as well start here.

I have learned about SpyBot and Ad-Aware. Used them...loved the outcome.

Firewall and anti-virus turned off.

/viewport command is a wonderful thing!

Found a free registry cleaner. Trying to get you a link.

Going to try:
-disabling sound on computer

Looking for tips on:

- ways to help out dial-up connection (all I can get in the boonies). I have heard about 'routing' and 'routers' but no clue on these. I only have one access number(yeah...laugh it up) available on Earthlink(best ISP I have found so far).

- how to stop 'Error-a timeout occured' message when booted from EQ. This used to only show up when I lost ISP connection, but is now happening on boots from the game as well. Not getting much help from Tech support atm.

- common lag reducers. PoV and PoJ were knocking me out of game constantly last Sunday, but other zones were peachy.

Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.

Honorkin