Status of memory leaks and system requirements

[highlander_133]

I started earlier this year, then was forced to give it up due to the ridiculous memory issues that EQ2 was having (see the SOE Support Board for details, if you're interested). I know Rothgar put a lot of work into fixing these, but I was curious what the boxing community's experience was as of late. I would like to come back, but don't want to pay for 2+ accounts and ISBoxer, just to deal with the same old crap.

My system specs, fwiw:

3Gb RAM, Vista 32bit
Intel Core Duo @2.5Ghz
512Mb 9800 GTS

Can I pull off dual boxing yet with that machine? If I could 3 box on it, I'd resub in an instant.

Thanks for any replies.

[Twiz]

That was close to what I used to run and I had 3 instances going without many problems. You'll probably have to play with all the settings minimized, but it's doable.

If you're curious, just start 3 new trial accounts and if it runs fine, then resub with an existing account. Easy way to test!

[Lokked]

I've not been able to determine if this event is due to a memory leak, but I get a BSOD (which leadsd to an auto-reboot) after roughly 2 hours of AFKing while running 3 sessions of Innerspace'd EQ2 under Vista x64.

Other then this, I'm able to play continuously and have never had any other interruption. I've also not noticed 1 or more instances using a ramping amount of RAM either.

[Captive2]

I’m running 6 instances on something like a 6600+ - I can’t recall for sure and am at work so I can’t check. I built the machine about 18 months ago – I just can’t remember what CPU I put in it. I’m running 12 GB of RAM, which helps a lot. I run 5 instances on the lowest possible setting on the second monitor, and my main session is usually on something like balanced or high performance. I turn off particle effects and that makes a big difference.

Sometimes InnerSpace launches sessions with the wrong sessions. It’s never predictable – it might be the right session one time and any of the other 5 the next. I am using the virtual file feature which attempts to keep track of each session’s graphical and sound settings. It’s a lot better than nothing – it just doesn’t work perfectly.

Sometimes, it seems as though that causes performance to lag even after I reduce the settings to their proper minimalist levels. Performance on my machine is not consistent; I always run 5 machines on extreme performance and 1 on something slightly higher – but the difference in lag can vary significantly even in the same zones. I attribute this to those startup config problems - loading too many textures into memory, etc. That’s just a guess, however.

I’m running Vista 64, and haven’t run into that BSOD problem. I don’t have power saving turned on – could it be an issue with that?

I think you could run 3 instances with your machine without too much trouble. I would terminate any unnecessary programs – especially the gawdawful IE which I still use simply because I’m too lazy to download a decent browser. Like someone else suggested, with the trial account option you don’t have much to lose.

If you do take the plunge, I highly recommend InnerSpace. It’s not free, like some other options, but works pretty well and is apparently approved by SOE so you don’t need to worry about getting banned. Good luck.

[Lokked]

If IS is loading the incorrect instance, you may not be running EQ2 with the NOPATCH option. With NOPATCH (the launch path points to eq2.exe rather then everquest2.exe) your instances will load sequentially, rather then attempt to open the EQ2 Launchers all at once.

[Milque]

Running a 6 headed hydra as an experiment on the i7 920 rig I built this year. ATI 5870 video card (which is overkill for this game, GPU is not the limiting factor). CPU is oc'd to 4.2ghz, hyperthreading on.

Currently I have 6gigs of memory and running all 6 toons pushes the limit. I think I can run all sessions with higher settings when I get to 12 gigs, which I should know tomorrow when the extra memory shows up.

Other performance issues:

- The recommendation to set CPU affinity in ISBoxer actually hurt my performance significantly. As soon as I took these off, performance went back up.
- Disk thrashing. With 6 toons (main with most visual settings dialed up), I actually get pretty good performance until I hit a moment of heavy texture loading. Then it bottoms out. Even an SSD drive that runs the game doesn't fix this. I'm hoping the extra 6 gigs of memory will help, but this is probably EQ's biggest speed killer.

ISBoxer has been a champ.

[Milque]

New memory and new game update don't mix. Something they've changed has added a lot of texture loading lag. Is anyone else having problems with this after yesterday's update?

[highlander_133]

Figured I'd state what everyone else likely already knows; if you have an inactive EQ2 account, check it and see if they have given you any free time until the end of the year.

That comes at the perfect time for me to give 3-boxing a shot... :)

[keesjan]

I run 6 instances on:

Windows 7 64bit
i7 920 @ 3Ghz, no HT
12G mem
Ati 4870 1G
2x OCZ vertex ssd in raid 0

I have 5 boxes at semi minimal settings and no multicore from 1 folder, and one at max graphs options with multicore from a seperate folder.

With my old graphics card (8800GT 512Mb) i had trouble with textureloading, after the upgrading to a new gfx card i now run smooth, bar the odd loading time when i run very fast through open space with abnormaly many textures loading.

The reuse textures option in the graphs setting help to minimize textureloading.

I detect no memory leakage whatsoever, even when leaving the team logged in fer more then a day.

I should say your system could run 3 boxes at minimum settings.

[Milque]

I run 6 instances on:

Windows 7 64bit
i7 920 @ 3Ghz, no HT
12G mem
Ati 4870 1G
2x OCZ vertex ssd in raid 0

I have 5 boxes at semi minimal settings and no multicore from 1 folder, and one at max graphs options with multicore from a seperate folder.

With my old graphics card (8800GT 512Mb) i had trouble with textureloading, after the upgrading to a new gfx card i now run smooth, bar the odd loading time when i run very fast through open space with abnormaly many textures loading.

The reuse textures option in the graphs setting help to minimize textureloading.

I detect no memory leakage whatsoever, even when leaving the team logged in fer more then a day.

I should say your system could run 3 boxes at minimum settings.

Agreed, I'm not seeing memory leakage. I am still struggling with some very noticable slowdown in crowded zones (cities mostly) that was not there before the last patch. I've managed to get it tolerable, but I hate when performance goes backwards.

[highlander_133]

Three-boxed on min settings last night with ISBoxer running. I didn't turn off any background programs (AV, steam, etc.) just to see what would happen, and it ran without a hitch. I was very pleased. Total mem avg usage was 3.25Gb, and pretty stable over about an hour. Neriak spiked it, but even that only brought it to 3.6 or so.

3-boxing it is...I just need to get the hang of hotkeying macros for three toons now.