Video Card

[conradd]

I'm trying to increase my raid force with more toons and I have some FPS trouble.

What video card are you using ? How much RAM do you have ?

I'm currently using a nvidia 560ti with 1Go and I'm beginning to think that it's not enough for more than 6 toons.

[Ydiss]

I'm trying to increase my raid force with more toons and I have some FPS trouble.

What video card are you using ? How much RAM do you have ?

I'm currently using a nvidia 560ti with 1Go and I'm beginning to think that it's not enough for more than 6 toons.

It's not likely your GPU and lacking RAM is more likely to introduce chop and slow loading times than reduced FPS on your focused client. It is easy to know if you don't have enough RAM, however, by looking at task manager and working out how much RAM your clients are taking in total. If it gets near to your RAM capacity, you need more RAM to run more clients. Otherwise, you're fine.

What CPU do you have? Boxing multiple clients in EQ is way more taxing on your CPU than GPU.

I had trouble with FPS with my Q6600 quad core but only when my heatsink conductive paste wore away (after years of use). FPS would start off ok but after a short time it would drop dramatically. I worked out that this was caused by my CPU getting too hot and being throttled to prevent my system crashing (which it still did sometimes). This meant EQ ran low FPS.

Once I bought a new heatsink and re-applied the conductive paste, everything was fine. I can run over 14 clients without taxing my CPU (except I only have 8GB RAM, so I get chop and bad performance when I top 12 clients). My CPU is relatively ancient, these days. So if your CPU is equal or better, then I'd do some diagnostics on CPU temperature.

[Nilbus]

Like Ydiss said, it's likely not your vid card that's the bottleneck.

From your other post - 2 THF installations (main ~600Mo RAM + toon ~400Mo RAM), 1920x1080 for everyone on a i5 4670K, 16Go RAM, SSD, geForce 560Ti and Win7. -

versus my setup - i5 3470 3.2ghz, 16gb DDR3 memory, GTX 660 with 2gb vid ram, same resolution, non SSD

the main difference is the vid card, but EQ puts so little on to the video card it's not even funny. It could be overheating as was suggested though.

I run between 18 and 24 and don't notice any issues (other than memory usage if I leave them running for >3 hours without shutting down and restarting clients)

[conradd]

My computer configuration :
i5 4670K (socket 1150) with Noctua NH-U12P SE2
16Go RAM DDR3 CAS 9
SSD Samsung 840 EVO
GeForce 560Ti 1Go DDR5
Win7 64bits

My EQ installations :
Main : 1920x1080, Luclin model on, Velious armor on, Texture quality normal, Clip plane 75%, no spell effects, sound on, default GlobalLoad.txt. ~600Mo RAM
Toons : 1920x1080, Luclin model off, Velious armor off, Texture quality low, Clip plane 25%, no spell effects, sound off, Nilbus GlobalLoad.txt. ~400Mo RAM

I made a try tonight :
1 main + 17 toons loaded with your (@Nilbus) configuration globalLoad.txt -> FPS on main was at 5 !!! and on toons, under 20, MQ2 loaded but no macro running.
~1Go of free RAM, CPU at 80%, CPU jumped to 66°C when loading everyone, back to 60°C after

1 main + 11 toons loaded -> FPS on main was ~30 and toons maxed at 30, MQ2 loaded but no macro running.
~3Go of free RAM, CPU at 50%

That's why I was thinking about the video card...

[Nilbus]

That's very strange. It could be card is going bad. The 500 series should definitely be able to handle it.

[Noren]

Back from vacation now

CPU at 80%

Yikes!
I can load up 18 players and still be < 15% CPU usage for the entire system with an i7 3770 (which is insignificantly different), so I suspect something is amiss software-wise.

How much CPU usage does each EQ client cost? Better yet, what are the top consumers in task manager?

For reference, my clients usually take 0.3-1.5% CPU usage.

[Nilbus]

Good catch, I don't think I've seen mine jump over 20ish even with all 24 running.

[conradd]

i7 3770 (socket 1155) specifications :

Code: Select all

Intel® Turbo Boost : Yes
Max frequency on 1 core : 3,90 GHz
HyperThreading : Yes
Total of threads : 8 threads

i3 4670K (socket 1150) specifications :

Code: Select all

Intel® Turbo Boost : Yes
Max frequency on 1 core : 3,80 GHz
HyperThreading : No
Total of threads : 4 threads

1. If I log 18 toons, I have 4 toons on 2 threads and 5 toons on the others.
2. If you log 18 toons, you have 2 toons on 6 threads and 3 on 2.

Not an insignificant difference for me

[Ydiss]

As a process of elimination, download Afterburner overclocking tool for your GPU. It shows GPU load and temperatures. You should see very low loads and temperature should be below 70-80.

If that checks out fine, it's definitely the CPU load (80% is high - I have a Q6600, which is several iterations below yours, and I can run 11 clients with only 40% usage idle, focus on my main client; with the same number of clients, your CPU is using more than mine). You can try changing the cores to all for each client (use task manager to set affinity). See if that helps. I had to do this to improve stability when I had a throttling/heat issue.

At 80% load, your CPU cannot be running at full capacity. Even with 60 degrees temp, it may be a throttling issue.

[Nilbus]

Could you have run into the CPU parking issue that was brought up in the third party forums?

http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/D ... ng-Utility -