Video Cards

[Kozinad]

One of our machines is in the shop. My wife and I have 4 machines, as we each 2 box. Well we did when all four computers could be used reliably.

The video card seems to be breaking our computers. We have that video card on two machines, and on one machine it crashes the machine fairly quickly, on the other it results in random fractals filling the screen overwriting the stuff thats supposed to be there. The one that quickly crashes is currently in the shop, where I worked with the tech guy there and here is what we came up with.

Test Task: run around in Dranik Scar.

Video Card FX 6200 AGP 256 MB - choppy performance (going around around in a circle is like jumping 90 degrees at a time rather than circular motion), and in about 5 minutes the machine would just crash. This crash happened every time we tried it (3 trials).

Video Card FX 5200 AGP 128 MB - WOW what a performance improvement!!! It was BEAUTIFUL. All of a sudden I could see what the Sony Development team was trying to create from a visual and audio standpoint. Going around in a circle was awesome, with the scenery changing smoothly and at the correct angular rate of speed. Not only that - no crashing. Well I only ran around for 10 minutes, but that seems to be long enough and of course the real test will be when I bring the machine home and we use it for hours at a time.

Questions: Is the 5200 going to be good enough going forward? Or will the POR expansion areas basically overwhelm it? Will 128 MB be good enough for future expansions?

(Note: the machine itself has 1G of memory)

I thought of calling Sony customer support on this, and decided I would get much better information here. Any help on these issues would be appreciated.

[HuacaWuaca]

A 5200 with less memory was running better than a 6200 with more memory? Were all of the video settings set the same?

[Zaviax]

Sometimes it can be something as simple as your video drivers that's causing problems.

I have a Radeon 9600XT 128mb card. Decent, not the best but works fine with EQ and I'm not worried about any furture expansions... future games, yes, nothing with EQ though.

Funny thing is I downgraded my drivers several months ago and EQ runs better now. I used to get such bad lag that I had to play with all mods off except my own and I had the texture quality set to low.

Then I was playing in VG beta and I kept crashing every 5-20 mins of playing. Crashing so bad the computer would just reboot out of the blue. After some researching I found out other Radeon 9xxx users were running into the exact same problem and someone mentioned downgrading the drivers to a certain type would get rid of the problem. I did and sure enough the crashing stopped, but stranegly enough when I returned to EQ I noticed I was getting absolutely no lag what so ever. So I toyed around a bit and ended up putting on all mods and set my textures to high and I was still getting less lag than before with lower settings.

So I've been kinda scared to upgrade my drivers since then, lol.

[Kozinad]

Tests were run with different video cards, everything else the same.

Thank you Zaviax.

Sounds like your experience matched mine to a tee.
I will be downgrading my video card and using one with less memory.
Next week after I've played it for a week or maybe a bit later I'll post back and let you know how it worked out.

Yes the video card that was a later version with more memory worked substantially worse than the older one. If I had to venture a guess I would say that Sony tested out the graphics parts of the game and tuned them to the older versions, which were top of the line when the testing was done. The newer video cards presumably have newer parts of them that are not compatible with the coding in EQ that is tuned to the idiosyncrosies of the older cards.

[Kozinad]

Oooops reread Zaviax's post again.
He just downgraded the drivers not relaced the whole card.

I will check with the shop tech to see if different drivers were used.
However since the old card works so well (at least in the shop it does) I am quite content to just use the lower version video card.

I'll keep the newer card for when the old one becomes obsolete (if ever).
Presumably by then Sony will have tuned the graphics for the newer cards and the issues I am having will be ironed out.

[frott]

I would try installing the lastest version of Directx(c), reboot, then install latest drivers from nvidia. If there is still an issue try swapping the cards between machines, if card is still having issues there is probably an issue with the card.
Does the 6200 have turbo cache?
It might also be worth checking to make sure the fan on the bad card is running properly.
I've heard a lot of issues with ATI drivers which is one reason I've stuck to nividia, but they do make so great hardware.
Good luck!

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

How the heck do you downgrade drivers? You crazy kids and your new fangled ways!

[michael_rem]

[Kozinad]

Thank you for all the good advice.

What is turbo cache?

When I get the computer back (the tech guy at the shop has it atm) I'll have 2 5200s and 2 6200s.
I'll check out all the stuff you all suggested on the second machine (using each 6200 and 5200 in succession).

If nothing else I'll learn a lot

At least I feel confident that in say 2 weeks we'll be up and running with all 4 machines so we can 2 box together with all 4 computers working smoothly. Best outcome would be both machines running smoothly with 6200s, but if they are both running smoothly with 5200s then C'est la vie.
At least I'll know I tried everything I could to get the 6200s working and the learning experience will be invaluable.

[frott]

Turbo cache is basically shared memory, which means that when the video card says it has 256 it means you can use part of your system memory. If yours is a FX i THINK that means it doesn't, but it's worth checking.
Nvidia recently starting monkeying around with their versions and adding things like turbo cache so unfortuntly higher number no longers means better performance. Good site for checking out benchmarks (how well stuff performs) is

[Kozinad]

Right now the shop tech has my 6200 (hopefully testing it out), while the one computer has a new 5200 in it. Here are the preliminary results:

1) No crashes. At least with 6 hours of use so far. With the 6200 it would have been many many crashes at this point, regardless of zone.

Conclusion: the rest of that system is fine. I wondered if there was something wrong with that system causing the crashes. It seems to be a negative - any adverse results were caused by the video card.

2) All zones except for POR work fine. POR works fine but is VERY laggy.

Conclusion: the 6200 has increased performance over the 5200. Although in Dranik Scar the 5200 was smoother and had a more aesthetically pleasing display (the 6200 was a bit jerkier, though that was when we used older drivers, which also seemed to delay how long it took for the 6200 to crash).

3) As indicated above, we tried older drivers with the 6200. Crash time running around in Dranik Scar was on the order of 5-10 minutes for each driver.

The shop tech has our 6200 card atm, and is hopefully doing some diagnostics. I did check that the heat on it was not too high (he used the finger test - if it burns his finger its too hot and it wasn't) (I think I"ll try and find a different test!). I also verified that he was hooking it up to the powersupply to give it the extra power it needs to run properly.

I'll do further tests when I get the card from him (next Friday). Until then here are my current conclusions:

The 5200 will work for non-POR zones, and will be marginally ok for POR, especially once the options are toned down on that machine. I doubt it will be playable in the new zones starting with the new patch in the Fall. We now have a machine with a 6200 that works ok (few crashes and not TOO too many fractal breakups), and a 5200 that seems to be very reliable but laggy in POR. It will do for now, but will really only be useful until the next patch, at which point it may not even be usable for older zones when they upgrade the underlying graphics code for all the zones. So I have a bit of time before I need to replace the 5200 - but not too much time!

Thanks for all the replies. I have been pretty inactive in EQ For quite a while, and looking forward to getting all our machines in playable condition. The "get my machine to work" quest is harder than any of the other EQ quests by far.

[Ailith]

[Aruman]

[Rivitingribbit]

[Kozinad]

[Jenguran]

[Kozinad]