Multicore CPU Support Feedback Thread

Cassea

akuma969 wrote:

Will this affect the quad core owners or will this update only enhance up to dual core?
Please dont tell me i wasted my money.

Wasting money is all relative in that you get far far better return for your money with 2x cores over 4x cores. This will remain for quite some time in that it is always better to have 2 cores that run faster than 4 cores that run slower.

MHZ will "always" speed things up every time. Extra cores will not and it's very hard to get more than one core running at 100%

I too want to move from my 2 cores to 4 cores but it just does not make any sense for most, if not all, games. If you have 4 cores for other reasons then so be it but for gaming the "sweet" spot was and remaine a faster 2x core.

Now even if you bought a 4x core that runs the same speed as a 2x core (MHZ) all this means is that you paid for cores that are not being used. This is not just EQ2 for while EQ2 currently only uses that one core, other games also only use 1 core or maybe 2 cores.

Now with these changes it is hoped that more cores will be used and maybe then 4 cores will mean something over 2 cores but you still will not see more than 1 core used at 100% capacity.

I applaud SOE for taking the time to get some use out of the extra cores but the real problem is EQ2 not using more than about 30-40% of current state of the art video cards. I can't help wondering if we would even be talking about CPU use in EQ2 if the game uses our video cards the way other games currently do.

Now I have heard that the work they are doing to enable multi-core will help later when they (please!) move things back to the video card where they belong. I do not want to rain on anyones parade and I cannot wait to see how the game plays when this is finished.

My nightmare for EQ2 would be for them to finish these tweeks and then pronounce the FPS problem fixed and leave our poor 2008/2009 video cards running in 2003 mode. I have been told that this is not the end and that video tweaks are forthcoming but a gentle reminder every now and then does not hurt SMILEY

Cassea

Amana wrote:

One thing i'm concerned about is with the advances in computer technologies will EQ2 actually phase out single core use requiring computer have dual core processors or better?
Have a single core on my machine and want to make sure the update won't interfer with my computers performance/capabilities.
Also one thing I have to ask is will EQ2 soon start detecting Crossfire/SLI graphics cards for better performance?

Sorry but I had to laugh some because right now EQ2 does not use even 30-40% of a "single" video card. Adding another video card to a game that still thinks it's 2003 and does not know what to do with advanced shaders seems to be adding gas to the fire.

Until EQ2 is reprogramed to move much of the graphics off our CPU's and back onto the much faster video cards we will not see improvement to adding another video card.

SOE hired a graphics programmer and it is hoped that at this very moment some things are being worked on to add proper video card support. If EQ2 did everything on the video card like other games we would not need more than one core.

**Jablambo** · 10/04/2008 18:05:47

Dual Core enabled in game and everything. Have all graphic sliders maxed out (beyond the Extreme Quality setting defaults). 10-20 avg. fps in antonica, 15 most of the time.

CPU usage is the same as it always has been for me while playing eq2.

Then his happened. And has since this patch

**Einadin**

Not sure, but it may have something to do with force_low_mem_mode. When I turn it on, it crashes like that. Try turning off force_low_mem_mode and see if you still get the crashes (/force_low_mem_mode 0).

**Chune**

Since the last patch I am crashing like that often as well.

It happened more often in Vista Ultimate 64 than it does in XP.

My machine has 8G which of course does me no good under XP, but it still crashes. I will try the "/force_low_mem_mode 0" but if anyone has any other suggestions let me know. What does "force low mem mode" mean?

Thanks

**Autenil**

Jablambo@Nektulos wrote:

Dual Core enabled in game and everything. Have all graphic sliders maxed out (beyond the Extreme Quality setting defaults). 10-20 avg. fps in antonica, 15 most of the time.

CPU usage is the same as it always has been for me while playing eq2.

Then his happened. And has since this patch

Hi Jablambo,

Please PM me the contents of the EQ2_crash.log or EQ2_crash_old.log files in your client install directory.

**Mulethree** · 10/06/2008 21:50:42

I reported here on Sept 18 on some tests I did on my old machine which was a P4 with Hyperthreading (HT), not a true second core.

I got a 15-18% improvement on that machine by enabling the multicore support.

Since then, I've build a new machine with 4 cores so I ran basically the same comparison and got 23.5% improvement from turning this on.

This is just watching the biggest Ashen Order martial arts class with 25 monks. They are doing the same animations tho not quite in unison.

Great results running 2 toons on 2 screens at these settings - tho I turn particle effects down some and shadows off, one 1920x1080 and one 1370x768, with synch refresh on they are usually both running at 60 fps and the cpu and gpu both report 60% usage. Q9550 @3.6Ghz, P45, HD4870 1GB, 8GB DDR2 @852mhz.

I never used shadows on the old machine - now I could but they are pretty annoying. I guess it only draws some limited number of shadows? or its related to limiting the number of light sources, but as you walk around shadows will appear suddenly and then vanish again after you walk a few feet. The eye just sees some unexpected change and you back up to see 'what was that' and then you notice it was just a shadow that suddenly appears only on the other side of some invisible line.

Some pictures :

Multicore support OFF

Multicore support ON

**Autenil**

Mulethree wrote:

I reported here on Sept 18 on some tests I did on my old machine which was a P4 with Hyperthreading (HT), not a true second core.
I got a 15-18% improvement on that machine by enabling the multicore support.
Since then, I've build a new machine with 4 cores so I ran basically the same comparison and got 23.5% improvement from turning this on.
This is just watching the biggest Ashen Order martial arts class with 25 monks. They are doing the same animations tho not quite in unison.
Great results running 2 toons on 2 screens at these settings - tho I turn particle effects down some and shadows off, one 1920x1080 and one 1370x768, with synch refresh on they are usually both running at 60 fps and the cpu and gpu both report 60% usage. Q9550 @3.6Ghz, P45, HD4870 1GB, 8GB DDR2 @852mhz.
<snip>

Nice!

**Novusod**

The Live Client is NOT giving the same preformance gains I saw on the test server last week.

On Test last week I was getting consistantly over 60% usage of my dual core where now I am getting barely over 50% usage. There are zero FPS gains on live where as before I was seeing a good 20% increase.

Test Client last week:

Live client Today:

Overall a huge disapointment.

**Varvar**

I've read every post in this thread...

I would like some feedback to two questions.

Tomorrow morning, what would be better?

A quad core 2.83ghz, 12mb cache, 1333 FSB processor or...

A dual core 3.33ghz, 6mb cache, 1333 FSB processor.

Six months from now, what would be better?

A quad core 2.83ghz, 12mb cache, 1333 FSB processor or...

A dual core 3.33ghz, 6mb cache, 1333 FSB processor.

I'm in the process of upgrading my wife's computer.... She's the gamer. Thoughts?

**sliderhouserules** · 10/07/2008 23:55:54

Varvar wrote:

I've read every post in this thread...
I would like some feedback to two questions.

Tomorrow morning, what would be better?
A quad core 2.83ghz, 12mb cache, 1333 FSB processor or...
A dual core 3.33ghz, 6mb cache, 1333 FSB processor.

Six months from now, what would be better?
A quad core 2.83ghz, 12mb cache, 1333 FSB processor or...
A dual core 3.33ghz, 6mb cache, 1333 FSB processor.

I'm in the process of upgrading my wife's computer.... She's the gamer. Thoughts?

In applications that don't use multiple cores you're not going to see too much of a difference between 2.8GHz and 3.33GHz.

In applications that do use multiple cores you more than likely will notice a difference between 2 cores and 4 cores, especially if the app is highly threaded.

That quad definitely isn't cheap though. If you're willing to pay for bleeding edge like that, you may want to look at waiting for Nehalem to come out.

**Kandore**

I've been experiencing crashing issues since the update as well (I also have this problem in beta) but my game was fine before that.

/force_low_mem_mode 0 seemed to fix it last night, but I only had a little bit of time to test it. What exactly does that command do? Do I have to apply it each time I start my client, or will it remember that setting?

I also have the 64 bit version of Vista Ultimate (ugh). I posted my crash log in a reply to GU49. It's on the 3rd page.

GU 49 Feedback

Alondnar

The dual core will be better. It's raw clocks on the individual cores is faster.

Very few game support dual core, fewer support quad cores. It's safe to expect that games will start factoring in dual core since nearly every pc has shipped with them for a year now. Quads not so much. Most games that use multicore support are not using both cores to 100% either, they burn one at 100% and the other maybe 30%ish. Some of the high demands FPS's support all the sexy features like 64bit, quad cores, SLI, but most games don't use any of that.

Get the faster dual core, especially for Eq2 it's so CPU heavy and it's same to assume it will probably never make use of more then 2 cores. Hell even with this change it's not making much use of the 2nd core.

**Varvar** · 10/08/2008 10:51:50

Alondnar/Zenithan

Thank you. Your post made the most sense to me.

My wife is the gamer (I retired my characters some time back, although I keep my account active... just in case.) She currently uses a quad core 2.66ghz machine. I built that so I could eventually use it to edit high-def video from our new camcorder. (Quad core neccessary for that task.) I never get to use that computer, however because she is addicted to eq2.

If what you say is true, she would be better off with a faster dual core rather than a semi-fast quad core.

Ok... I'll build her a machine around a dual core 3.33ghz processor and take her quad core 2.66ghz for my own needs. (High-def video editing.) The only hesitation I have is that the cache size for the quad is 12mb and the duo is 6mb. I'm guessing that it really won't matter.

Nice sig, by the way... it sold me.

Edit: Anyone know of any issues I might have if I removed her quad core processor and replaced it with a dual core? (The motherboard can handle either and the machine is running Vista 64.) How much trouble would I have cleaning up the old drivers and such? If I gimp her machine (aka, gameplay)... I'm in the doghouse.

**sliderhouserules**

Varvar wrote:

Edit: Anyone know of any issues I might have if I removed her quad core processor and replaced it with a dual core? (The motherboard can handle either and the machine is running Vista 64.) How much trouble would I have cleaning up the old drivers and such? If I gimp her machine (aka, gameplay)... I'm in the doghouse.

You should be able to swap out the CPU without any fuss at all. If any kind of driver reconfig is needed, Windows will do it on its own. You shouldn't have to do anything.