Upgrade video card for Everquest 2, or other component?

L

Lancid

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 4, 2006
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I currently have a 6800GT, Athlon 64 3200, 1GB ram. I've read that EQ2 is more CPU intensive than the average game. Considering this, and that the upgrade would be solely for EQ2, which component upgrade would give me the most performance increase? I would upgrade all of them, but am looking to spend the least amount possible.

I have two motherboards, one of which is the Asrock 939 with a PCI-E and AGP slot. I'm currently using the K8N neo2.

I would like to spend less than $250.

Thanks in advance to anyone who replies.
 
I have run eq2 with an athlon 3200+, 512mb ram, 6800gt. And then upgraded to 1.5gb of ram, and that helped immensely. Faster load time between zones, more detailed textures, and farther rendering. Able to walk around towns without my computer playing a slideshow.

This is on a socket A system, agp 6800gt, and value kingston ram. Just my experience, you may in fact be better off with a faster processor, depending on the resolution you play at.
 
Toss another gig of ram in there for $100.


Sell your 6800GT for $95 shipped. grab an X1900XT or something similar :)
 
aZn_plyR said:
Toss another gig of ram in there for $100.


Sell your 6800GT for $95 shipped. grab an X1900XT or something similar :)
Click to expand...


That is actually exactly what I have been considering. However, I have three questions. First, with price being equal, which would be a better choice between a X1900XT 512MB and a X1950XT 256MB? I've read that the benefit of higher ram would have greater affect on games with high resolution textures, such as Oblivion. I'm unsure whether EQ2 would also benefit, since I believe the textures aren't as large as the ones in Oblivion. This post, http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1125043 , says the two are about equal.

Second, I have 2 sticks of 512 corsair value select, which ram would be a good match?

Third, if I upgraded the two previous listed components, how much would my processor be limiting me?

Thanks again for any replies.
 
I was in a similar situation as you. I was on a venice overclocked to 2.4 on a 6800GT with 1gb of value ram. I upgraded to a 8800GTS and was very dissapointed with its perfromance when running EQ2. I still had to run at about the same settings as on my 6800GT. I also run 1680 x 1050

IMHO its not worth you upgradeing to a better videocard for EQ2. I would save your money to upgrade your whole system down the line.
 
/agree with everyone else about upgrading the ram. With 2 gig of ram, I normally sit at 70% utilized in qeynos harbor and when in certain raid zones, my mem usage will go up to 90%. Get more ram first, then maybe a faster cpu or better video card.
 
Brent Justice tested EQ 2 with an 8800GTX and a top-line Conroe system. It was able to go higher than ever before on the image quality settings, but average framerates were still way below expectations because of severe lags and dips from time to time. A totally top of the line system would let you raise the settings above High Performance or Balanced to High Quality and maybe Very High Quality, but you'd still see major slowdowns in some situations.


When EQ 2 came out, it was believed that the engine was simply capable of producing more eye-candy than current systems could support. Now that both CPUs and GPUs have made major strides in performance without a corresponding improvement in EQ 2, it's pretty clear that the game is simply not coded very well. GPU advances do help it to fulfill some of its potential, but there is obviously something hinky going on that bottlenecks even the best hardware.

All that to say, improve where you can with RAM and maybe a better GPU, but don't expect a huge return on investment in performance with EQ 2, especially if you were hoping to up the visual quality settings.
 
My experience mirrors what many are saying here. Over the course of the past year, I have gone from:

3200 / 6800gt / 1g ram
to
same system an 2 gb ram
to
opty 170 / 7800gt / 2g ram
to
same system with another 7800gt for sli
to
same system replaced the gt's with a 1900xt
to
E6600 @ 3.8G, 4G of ram, and an 8800GTX

with Eq2 being the game I spend the most time on. There was very little improvement over the course of the upgrades in playable settings.

Most noticable upgrades for me were the RAM, followed by the CPU, and least noticable were the Video Cards. Even things you would think a GFX card would help, like for instance shadows, seem to be offloaded to the CPU by the game.

Watch your RAM and CPU useage as you play. Mine still peg 100% in some situations (of course utilizing only 1 cpu core)

If I were you, utilizing the $250 budget I would get another G of ram first and formost, then see about upgrading to a really fast S939 processor, you can probibly snag a used one for a really nice price.
 
Commander Suzdal said:
it's pretty clear that the game is simply not coded very well.
Click to expand...

QFT

Same thing happened with AC, AC2, etc. The devs blamed poor performance on everything but the coding. People with high performance (for the time) systems and high speed interenet still had problems with server-side slow downs and coding inefficiency.
 
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