Radeon + EQ

Hayrab · 03-08-2003, 11:29 AM

Has anyone discovered why the ATI Radeon 9700 pro has such poor performance in EQ? It beats the hell out of the GF4 in every other game on the market yet plays like a GF3 in EQ. Im sure its EQs archaic engine, but someone from the dev team should really escalate this issue with ATI releasing the 9100, 9200, 9600, and 9800 cards Im sure alot more people will be using ATIs.

Sequeli · 03-08-2003, 11:41 AM

Pretty much every computer runs EQ crappy. I dought there is one computer out there that can run EQ with all settings on full at 60 fps per second just because the EQ engine is so old and poorly designed.

Hayrab · 03-08-2003, 11:51 AM

The fact is the GF4 kills the 9700 at EQ but in every other game the 9700 blows the GF4 out of the water. Definately has to be a problem with EQs support for the 9700.

Fris_Leafshadow · 03-08-2003, 12:47 PM

On my 2nd box, my gforce2 mx blows my ati 8500 away in EQ but I leave the 8500 in now because I don't 2 box anymore.

I guess the reason is EQ is a horrible program and ATI's drivers have horrible compatibility. I don't know a game that requires as much power as EQ and runs as crappy.

ericEQ · 03-08-2003, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Fris_Leafshadow
On my 2nd box, my gforce2 mx blows my ati 8500 away in EQ but I leave the 8500 in now because I don't 2 box anymore.

I guess the reason is EQ is a horrible program and ATI's drivers have horrible compatibility. I don't know a game that requires as much power as EQ and runs as crappy.

well when you keep trying to add stuff to an already insanely old engine things start becoming inefficient

Eomer · 03-08-2003, 01:08 PM

ATI's drivers don't have horrible compatibility anymore, that's more or less a myth. They did before sure. But right now, if anything, they are in better shape than Nvidia's.

VelMonk · 03-08-2003, 05:23 PM

My 1.2ghz Geforce2 runs EQ flawlessly long as I don't have particles up.

Nich · 03-08-2003, 05:38 PM

I doubt EQ will ever run as nicely as it used to on a voodoo 3 when the engine was glide based. Their decision to change the graphic API to directx was a bad idea for many reasons. If they had just ported it to OpenGL, it would have been a much cleaner transition and also would give the client the ability to very easily be ported over to macintosh or linux, or any of the other platforms that support OpenGL.

Waralen · 03-08-2003, 07:55 PM

I have the same issue posted above, except my Radeon 7000 absolutely destroys my Radeon 9700 Pro (Which is on a better system).

Main PC:

Athlon 1700+ XP @ 1.47
512 DDR
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

Second PC:

Athlon 1.333 @ 1.2 ghz
512 SDRAM
ATI Radeon 7000

Both computers have the exact same EQ configs and such. Previously I had a GF2 MX400 for my main PC, which ran EQ like a dream. On other games, my Radeon 9700 Pro ran other games with the best results from all my previous computer setups. EQ certainly has no love for ATI

Throes · 03-08-2003, 10:34 PM

Hot damn. I've been saying for months that my 4600 was kicking the living shit out of my 9700 on EQ, and thought i was the only one.

The reason i would thnk is because the engine switched from glide optimised to geforce optimised, which was why voodoo kicked geforce's ass at EQ before the switch.

Ati's drivers are fine, yes they were shitty at 1st, but I guess they heard all the complaints about their driver support and to tell you the absolute truth, their driver support totally rocks now.

If i had to buy a card specifically for EQ though, it would have to be a geforce.

I agree there should be better support for ati cards, seeing how they are a serious threat to take over the market leadership. However, i think Sony will wait until they actually get the market leadership to change the engine again, just like the did with Nvidia.

Jovec · 03-09-2003, 04:59 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nich
I doubt EQ will ever run as nicely as it used to on a voodoo 3 when the engine was glide based. Their decision to change the graphic API to directx was a bad idea for many reasons. If they had just ported it to OpenGL, it would have been a much cleaner transition and also would give the client the ability to very easily be ported over to macintosh or linux, or any of the other platforms that support OpenGL.

When that decision was made, there were more video chipsets than there are today. What exists today? NVidia, ATI, Matrox? Add the built-in Intel graphics chipset that many pre-built boxes come with, and those four probably have over 90% of the market. Previously, there was also 3DFX, Verite, S3, Permedia, and probably a few others. OpenGL implementations were half-ass on everything but Permedia and Nvidia, and the MS hype-machine was in full effect pushing Direct3D (if it wasn't for Carmack and id software, would OpenGL even be used today on any Windows games?). Remember also that even most OpenGL Windows games use other parts of DirectX, and probably a lot of folks figured why not use the whole thing. Microsoft also probably paid out rewards if you choose Direct-3D at the peak of the "war", and certainly sent out D3D code experts to help major game company programmers learn it while they were making the transition from 2D to 3D. OpenGL is guided by a spec board, and the only help you are likely to get is RTFS or some newsgroup help if someone was kind enough to try to help you.

OpenGL goes a long way towards portability, but it also takes experienced coders in portable code and having that goal in the design from the beginning, both of which I doubt Verant had. I, for one, wouldn't want to work with the EQ codebase in the state we all guess it's in on multiple platforms, especially when you factor in frequent patches, testing, and the attempt to limit exploits. The reality is that most linux users dual boot or have a Windows computer for games, and financially it just isn't worth it to spend resources developing for anything else. The few that do support multiple platforms probably do it for two reasons; portable code is generally better code, and they feel some sort of pride and personal satisfaction supporting Linux cause. With the death of Loki Games, notice that the only ones releasing Linux clients are those with the financial freedom to do it (primarily id, Epic, and derivitives of their engines) I'm still waiting for the NWN Linux client...

-Jovec

Torrid · 03-09-2003, 05:06 AM

I bought a 9700 pro recently, because I had one of the defective gainward 4200s. EQ runs better on the 9700 pro, but not by much.

It is LAUGHABLE how poorly EQ runs on modern hardware. With a freaking 9700 pro, and no PCs on my screen, inside the fort with all the white cons in pofire, my frame rate slows down to 10 fps or so. Meanwhile I get nearly 200 fps in quake 3.

Sinshiu · 03-09-2003, 05:43 AM

While EQ engine kind of sucks, you cant really compare it to the Q3 engine.

Ever played a map in Q3 with big outdoor areas, and i'm talking lots of Terrain and hills and such, that go into the distance almost as far as you can see? 5 players in the map I played, and it brought my p4 2.4ghz w/ 512mb ram@400mhz and GF4 4200. to its knees. My system is very overclocked too, it can go higher in stable fasion than I have it set, but I like it this way for stability.

Truth is EQ's engine really isn't THAT bad, for the most part. Most zones do ok as far as lag goes, but a lot of Luclin zones with those fancy trees will bring any computer down hard if you look at a big clump of them, there's simply too many polygons and textures in 1 places.

PoP brought about a new type of Wall though that the engine has a hard time with in some places. It used to be you needed to have a line of sight to cast a spell, no longer the case with PoP, because they're not "true" walls. They block your movement, but you can cast through them, AE's go through them as well.

Its like, they took the type of "walls" used to make an object like a chair, and made the whole damn zone out of them, and apparently the engine has a hard time with the Z buffer because of it.

PoWater is the best example of this type of wall biting Sony in the ass that I can think of, the whole zone instead of being Underwater caves and tunnels, is just a bunch of normal tunnels and caves Submerged in a pool. They are not REAL walls and the engine isnt programmed yet to z buffer them correctly or even use the proper collisions for spells and AE's or anything for that matter.

Really looks like Sony wanted to stop people from blocking AE's using walls, well they succeded but they broke 1 major rule of casting(shouldn't be able to cast without a LoS) and until some code gets fixed your computer will draw a huge chunk of the zone that you cant even see.

If they'd fix a lot of that shit, EQ would actually run pretty good, except for places in Luclin where the dumbasses put too much stuff in the same place.. like those trees i mentioned in places like Dawnshroud and ME... etc...

edit: i'm running 768 megs of ram not 512. its basically a p4 1.6a overclocked to 2.4ghz by using a 150Mhz FSB(600mhz effectively). Geforce 4 is overclocked to 300mhz GPU and 560Mhz on the RAM. My point is though, Q3 = Indoor engine, EQ is an outdoor engine for the most part, Q3 engine could never be used to run outdoor EQ zones better than the EQ engine does.

I remember when the makers of Tribes were bragging how their engine combined both types of engines and were used on the fly as you went in and out of buildings.. its really not as simple as people using the Q3 argument make it sound.

Anaxagoras · 03-09-2003, 10:14 AM

the problem with EQ is that the maps are not designed with z occlusion terribly well. the reason that the radeon is slower than the GF4 in EQ is because the Radeon has a better z occlusion engine and attempts to render out occluded pixles more so than the GF4. hence, the GF4 is faster in EQ.

Awake · 03-09-2003, 11:01 AM

Quote:

My 1.2ghz Geforce2 runs EQ flawlessly long as I don't have particles up.

Funny, I have always experienced some glitches with the EQ framerate, a raid with 50 to 70 people and spell effects off but particles on and 32bit color, medium texture quality and 3 new SoL models on tend to lag for me now and then. Running it in 1024x768 resolution.

I get framerate drops in the castle area in pofire, none in powater though. Also at zonein to poair can be real slow.

Certain spots in Plane of Knowledge and Tranqulity can at random times drop or 'freeze' my fps for a short second of time. Yes even with Vsync off.

Although.. the main issue I have with EQ lately is after a few zone changes, let's say I raid pofire, then powater and uhm end with poair. And I die once in each of those previous zones to poair, then I tend to zone superslow after this, it can take up to as long as 5 minutes. No idea what is wrong, my thoughts on this would be a possible memory leak, or maybe my system isn't good enough. I've always been curious if changing from my current 256mb ram to 512 or more would remedy this 'problem' or am I alone having it running the system i do, or do others have it?

After I zone it all run smooth again though... And Emerald Jungle and Trakanons Teeth can take up to 10 minutes to zone into, although while i had a p2 400 and a voodoo3 it took 30 seconds?!

I run a athlon 2100
gf 4 128mb
256mb ddr ram
155mbit connection (LAN)

-edit-

since i posted this i have installed 256mb more ram, and now I zone in 5 seconds of time, and i have zero issues~

03-08-2003, 11:29 AM	#1 (permalink)
Hayrab Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 139	Radeon + EQ Has anyone discovered why the ATI Radeon 9700 pro has such poor performance in EQ? It beats the hell out of the GF4 in every other game on the market yet plays like a GF3 in EQ. Im sure its EQs archaic engine, but someone from the dev team should really escalate this issue with ATI releasing the 9100, 9200, 9600, and 9800 cards Im sure alot more people will be using ATIs.

03-08-2003, 10:34 PM	#10 (permalink)
Throes Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: UK Posts: 9 -1 Internets	Hot damn. I've been saying for months that my 4600 was kicking the living shit out of my 9700 on EQ, and thought i was the only one. The reason i would thnk is because the engine switched from glide optimised to geforce optimised, which was why voodoo kicked geforce's ass at EQ before the switch. Ati's drivers are fine, yes they were shitty at 1st, but I guess they heard all the complaints about their driver support and to tell you the absolute truth, their driver support totally rocks now. If i had to buy a card specifically for EQ though, it would have to be a geforce. I agree there should be better support for ati cards, seeing how they are a serious threat to take over the market leadership. However, i think Sony will wait until they actually get the market leadership to change the engine again, just like the did with Nvidia. __________________ Sage Throes/Phantasmist Sage Flintnilf/Sorceror Harmonium Xev Last edited by Throes : 03-08-2003 at 10:39 PM.

03-09-2003, 05:43 AM	#13 (permalink)
Sinshiu Special Mapper Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Midwest Posts: 114 -1 Internets	While EQ engine kind of sucks, you cant really compare it to the Q3 engine. Ever played a map in Q3 with big outdoor areas, and i'm talking lots of Terrain and hills and such, that go into the distance almost as far as you can see? 5 players in the map I played, and it brought my p4 2.4ghz w/ 512mb ram@400mhz and GF4 4200. to its knees. My system is very overclocked too, it can go higher in stable fasion than I have it set, but I like it this way for stability. Truth is EQ's engine really isn't THAT bad, for the most part. Most zones do ok as far as lag goes, but a lot of Luclin zones with those fancy trees will bring any computer down hard if you look at a big clump of them, there's simply too many polygons and textures in 1 places. PoP brought about a new type of Wall though that the engine has a hard time with in some places. It used to be you needed to have a line of sight to cast a spell, no longer the case with PoP, because they're not "true" walls. They block your movement, but you can cast through them, AE's go through them as well. Its like, they took the type of "walls" used to make an object like a chair, and made the whole damn zone out of them, and apparently the engine has a hard time with the Z buffer because of it. PoWater is the best example of this type of wall biting Sony in the ass that I can think of, the whole zone instead of being Underwater caves and tunnels, is just a bunch of normal tunnels and caves Submerged in a pool. They are not REAL walls and the engine isnt programmed yet to z buffer them correctly or even use the proper collisions for spells and AE's or anything for that matter. Really looks like Sony wanted to stop people from blocking AE's using walls, well they succeded but they broke 1 major rule of casting(shouldn't be able to cast without a LoS) and until some code gets fixed your computer will draw a huge chunk of the zone that you cant even see. If they'd fix a lot of that shit, EQ would actually run pretty good, except for places in Luclin where the dumbasses put too much stuff in the same place.. like those trees i mentioned in places like Dawnshroud and ME... etc... edit: i'm running 768 megs of ram not 512. its basically a p4 1.6a overclocked to 2.4ghz by using a 150Mhz FSB(600mhz effectively). Geforce 4 is overclocked to 300mhz GPU and 560Mhz on the RAM. My point is though, Q3 = Indoor engine, EQ is an outdoor engine for the most part, Q3 engine could never be used to run outdoor EQ zones better than the EQ engine does. I remember when the makers of Tribes were bragging how their engine combined both types of engines and were used on the fly as you went in and out of buildings.. its really not as simple as people using the Q3 argument make it sound. __________________ exit light enter night take my hand we're off to never never land Last edited by Sinshiu : 03-09-2003 at 05:54 AM.

03-09-2003, 10:14 AM	#14 (permalink)
Anaxagoras Registered User Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 2 +0 Internets	the problem with EQ is that the maps are not designed with z occlusion terribly well. the reason that the radeon is slower than the GF4 in EQ is because the Radeon has a better z occlusion engine and attempts to render out occluded pixles more so than the GF4. hence, the GF4 is faster in EQ. __________________ Harmonium Retired, Deleted, Just visting

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes	Rate This Thread
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode	Rate This Thread:

03-08-2003, 11:41 AM	#2 (permalink)
Sequeli Registered User Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 11 -1 Internets	Pretty much every computer runs EQ crappy. I dought there is one computer out there that can run EQ with all settings on full at 60 fps per second just because the EQ engine is so old and poorly designed.

03-08-2003, 11:51 AM	#3 (permalink)
Hayrab Registered User Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 139	The fact is the GF4 kills the 9700 at EQ but in every other game the 9700 blows the GF4 out of the water. Definately has to be a problem with EQs support for the 9700.

03-08-2003, 12:47 PM	#4 (permalink)
Fris_Leafshadow Registered User Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 565 +0 Internets	On my 2nd box, my gforce2 mx blows my ati 8500 away in EQ but I leave the 8500 in now because I don't 2 box anymore. I guess the reason is EQ is a horrible program and ATI's drivers have horrible compatibility. I don't know a game that requires as much power as EQ and runs as crappy.

03-08-2003, 01:08 PM	#6 (permalink)
Eomer You mean I can change this? Neat! Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 10,226 +38 Internets	ATI's drivers don't have horrible compatibility anymore, that's more or less a myth. They did before sure. But right now, if anything, they are in better shape than Nvidia's.

03-08-2003, 05:23 PM	#7 (permalink)
VelMonk Banned Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 578 +0 Internets	My 1.2ghz Geforce2 runs EQ flawlessly long as I don't have particles up.

03-08-2003, 05:38 PM	#8 (permalink)
Nich Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 17 +0 Internets	I doubt EQ will ever run as nicely as it used to on a voodoo 3 when the engine was glide based. Their decision to change the graphic API to directx was a bad idea for many reasons. If they had just ported it to OpenGL, it would have been a much cleaner transition and also would give the client the ability to very easily be ported over to macintosh or linux, or any of the other platforms that support OpenGL.

03-08-2003, 07:55 PM	#9 (permalink)
Waralen Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 1 +0 Internets	I have the same issue posted above, except my Radeon 7000 absolutely destroys my Radeon 9700 Pro (Which is on a better system). Main PC: Athlon 1700+ XP @ 1.47 512 DDR ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Second PC: Athlon 1.333 @ 1.2 ghz 512 SDRAM ATI Radeon 7000 Both computers have the exact same EQ configs and such. Previously I had a GF2 MX400 for my main PC, which ran EQ like a dream. On other games, my Radeon 9700 Pro ran other games with the best results from all my previous computer setups. EQ certainly has no love for ATI

03-09-2003, 05:06 AM	#12 (permalink)
Torrid Registered User Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 1,015	I bought a 9700 pro recently, because I had one of the defective gainward 4200s. EQ runs better on the 9700 pro, but not by much. It is LAUGHABLE how poorly EQ runs on modern hardware. With a freaking 9700 pro, and no PCs on my screen, inside the fort with all the white cons in pofire, my frame rate slows down to 10 fps or so. Meanwhile I get nearly 200 fps in quake 3.