slow zone and bad lag

Ggel · Member Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 123 Location: ct

hi, maybe someone can help me. I don't really know to much about the computers and the internets and what not. Anyway my problem is, i get terrible lag in pok and bazaar. so bad i can hardly move. i have the farclip plane down all the way and the sky turned off and spell effects off etc....
then the other problem is sometimes it can take me 5 minutes to zone. it seems the longer im playing the game the worse my zone times get . i dont have the worlds best computer but i think it should be able to run better than this. the processor is 1.something ghz and i have 256mb ram. i'm not sure about the video card all i know is it came with the computer and i have a cable connection. i do know that i have some programs running in the backround , ya know when you press ctri alt delete is shows you whats running, well if i turn those off eq will not connect. i've tried just turning a few off but it seems anything i turn off in the startup programs makes eq unable to connect. any suggestions other than buying stuff since i dont have alot of dough at the moment. thanks

Jorlana · Member Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 820

I have these problems too, Dane (who is my resident computer geek) says it's because I have a slow/old hard drive. One of these days I'll manage to save the money to get a new computer! The best way I've found to speed things up a little is delete everything you don't need (which may sound like common sense but over time I accumulate alot of crap on my hard drive), then do a defrag. That usually helps out my zoning times for a little while, it's not a permanent fix but it helps out a little if you don't have the money to upgrade your HD.
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Ggel · Member Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 123 Location: ct

do you mean just delete files and programs on my harddrive that i dont need? i'm sure i have a bunch of crap on the computer i dont need. i'll give that a try.

Jorlana · Member Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 820

Yes, everything you aren't currently using I would get rid of. Including games that you might have installed but don't really play anymore but might someday play again. I know that was taking up lots of my drive space, all I did was make sure to keep the saved game files if I was intereted in going back to the game someday, but otherwise just clear out everything you don't use on a weekly basis.
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Daneloire · Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2003 1:43 pm Post subject:

As a suggestion, like Jorl mentioned, deleting old unused things is good, but don't just go deleting the folders in your C: drive. Use the 'Add/Remove Programs' function, since that will also remove files that are in a bit more obscure places. Similarly, it will pull out old registry entries that do not need to be there anymore.

The Add/Remove Programs tool is found by:

Clicking the Start Menu
Selecting Settings
Selecting Control Panel
Doubleclicking "Add/Remove Programs"

-Dane

Ratbart · Member Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 76

The amount of memory you have and the speed you can get stuff off your hard drive can have a large impact on how the game preforms for you. Let's look at what happens when we zone. (No I don't know the what the code really does but this is what I think.) When you hit a zone line your PC tells the server that you need to load the next zone. The server would then send back all the things that need to get loaded from your hard drive into memory for the next zone to work. So first you would load the zone files. Zone geometry and the textures that go on everything. The zone objects same deal, geometry and textures. Next you might get the stuff for the MoBs in the zone: geometry, textures, emotes/movement, sounds. Then you need to load the same kind of stuff for all the PCs as you did for the MoBs. If there are a lot of people in the zone that makes up a lot of different things to load for every race and type of equipment. Different races have different emotes/movement and sounds too. After all that is done your PC would load any extra stuff like music and such. All of that is a TON of data that needs to come from your hard drive and go into memory. Anything that you can do to speed up that load time should help. The ideas already posted are good ideas.

Now to the next problem. Windows has a feature that will "help" you when it starts to run low on memory. When your memory starts to run out it will swap things from memory to your hard drive in what is called swap space. The big problem with this is that it really slows things down. Every time you need to use something that got swapped out to the hard drive it has to be pulled back into memory and something else pushed down to the hard drive to make room for it.

Other things that can cause lag and slowness are how fast your processor, video card and hard drive are. Those you can't do a lot about with out replacing hardware. The hard drive you can speed up a little by deleting stuff and defraging as the other posts talk about.

Adding more memory is one thing that you can do to help speed things up. This helps on the memory swapping problem. Also you can make some changes to make it so you need to load less or have more room to start with. Turning off Luclin models, emotes and such make a big difference. Where you have 256 meg of ram I don't think the game will let you turn much of that on anyway. Another thing is the high quality textures. If you can stand to scale those back it will help some as well.

Something else that might help is clearing out the stuff that may already be in memory before the game starts. Turning off things like ICQ, QuickTime, USB devices and CDBurnign software can make a big difference on how much memory EQ has to work with. If you look in the lower right hand corner of your task bar by the clock you can see the icons for a lot of the stuff that is loaded when you turn on your PC. A lot of them you can right click and tell them to shut down or exit. After you have done that you can hit Control+Alt+Delete and it will give you a list of other things that may still be running. You don't want to kill all of them but the smaller you can get that list the more room EQ will have. When I run EQ I usually get it down to three things: Explorer, Sage (System Agent) and my Video Card software. I know you have tried to eliminate some of of the stuff there and it has caused you problems. What do you have showing there when you run EQ?

There is also a utility called MSConfig that you can use to select what things get loaded when you startup your computer. If you never or rarely use something you might as well not give it resources every time you turn on your computer.

Hmm, that grew bigger than I had planed. I hope this helps. Good luck.
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Yarclic 57 Cleric (Retired)
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Ggel · Member Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 123 Location: ct

thanks for all the tips. i deleted some programs i wasnt using, but then theres some stuff that i don't know what it is so i just left it alone. as far as the msconfig thing goes, i've played around with that a bit and it seems anything i uncheck from startup eq wont connect. so before i play i turn all running programs off. i found my video card specs and it's an intel...
it has 32mb . i think the best thing i should do maybe is get another 256 of ram and a better card. any suggestions on a fairly cheap but good video card? hope to see you all in game soon. i been hanging out at butcherclock lately doing ldon.

Jorlana · Member Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 820

Ggel!

This tip just in! If you are using the default UI try changing it. I know this kind of runs contrary to everything I said up above, but I think you should take a chance on it, you can always /loadskin default 1 if you absolutely hate it or causes more lag. With the thread on the General board I decided to try changing mine, basically thinking "The lag is probably going to be so bad I can't see, but I can always set it back".

I downloaded this one and loaded it:
http://www.eqinterface.com/sdownload/fileinfo.php?s=&id=1931 and my lag is about half what it used to be. I was actually in the grimling forest and could walk around without looking at the ground!! Bazaar is still laggy, but I can walk around in PoK almost without a problem at all. Give it a shot and see if it helps for you as much as it did for me.[/url]
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Ggel · Member Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 123 Location: ct

Jorlana thanks! im gonna give it a try right now.

Rebeneaux Glittergold · Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2003 5:36 pm Post subject:

I don't see it mentioned so I thought I would add this as well. Turn off the new character models for your system. They are VERY memory intensive and can cause the problems you are describing.

If the game is simply not working well for you, and lag is so bad, and you cannot move, then giving up some of the "pretty" is worth your while.

Hope this helps!
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Rebeneaux Glittergold - 65 Enchanter
Skyle Mygarian - 61 Magician
Ulath - 49 Shaman

Ggel · Member Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 123 Location: ct

so i downloaded that UI and hasnt changes much of the lag problems, but i like it alot better than the default so that's good. Vacendik, which are the new models? when i got eq i started with pop then i got evolutions. is that something you turn off on the options screen.
i've found that best thing for me so far with the lag is when i go in zones like pok and bazaar i turn the farclip place down all the way. i still get lag but can move around easier. i think i might just bite the bullet and get more ram.
on another topic, how many chat windows do you all use? i was using 2 but now im back to just one. my problem is i find when in groups its impossible to keep track with everything going on. any recomendations?

Ggel · Member Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 123 Location: ct

Vacendik!!
that totally fixed all my problems. since i pretty much got every expansion at once i wasnt aware about the luclin thing. so i turned them all off and the difference is amazing. im zoning in a few seconds rather than a few minutes. pok lag is there a bit but nothing like before. the improvment on zoneing is the real difference. i even turned up farclip plane and some of the other effects and its still running great. so all in all the game looks better, other than the characters but what do i care, well ggel does have a mustache now but thats ok. thanks so much for the tip. it's crazy that out of all the internet searching i did about zone problems and lag noone mentioned that.
Jorlana, you should do this if you're still having problems, it's a good fix until theres more ram. hope to see you all in game soon. thanks!

Guest · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 9:11 am Post subject:

Ggel get some more ram and a new video card, I'd be sad if i couldn't see my Luclin models Smile

You can buy Ram for like $40 for 512mb and you would GREATLY improve your lag by getting a Video card with 128mb and I bet you could get one of those now for less then $100.

Also, you may try turning on some of your models one at a time and seeing how each one affects your performance. It may not be necessary to have them all off.

TheNerple · Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2003 9:36 am Post subject:

Also, if you play in windows mode I have noticed each time you switch to a different application its adds a bit of lag to the system. I'm addicted to multi-tasking so by the end of each night I am taking ages to zone.
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Ratbart · Member Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 76

Now that your problem is solved I don't know if this is of any use but I just found a post about some problems that could cause lag much like yours.

http://necro.eqclasses.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23168