Tip - Everquest Lag Problem Fix - Processor Affinity (1 Viewer)

[Samagram]

Hey guys,

I was looking around and didn't see any but old references to Processor Affinity and wanted to post something that can help anyone running EQ on a modern OS (Win7+) that has a multi-core CPU; which should be just about everyone.

In some cases, the bottle-neck is waiting for an out-dated video card to catch up to the tasks it's being given. Even though Everquest is old, and contains simpler instructions, it's not optimized, so that could be part of your problem.

What I've noticed, however, is that often Everquest will spike a single processor core and hold it at high utilization, while other cores are barely doing anything. There's a "trick" to fixing this and it can be applied to every instance of EQ you're running.

Doing this splits the processing load across all the processors. A great place to check to see if you'll notice any difference is if you take your toon/s to a high character density location like the Guild Lobby. Even though most modern video cards can handle this pretty well, most people will still experience lag there. The video card is probably actually underworked but it's waiting for a pegged (or high-utilization) CPU to finish its job before taking on another video task.

The fix for this is:

Open up Task Manager, click on the Details tab, locate "eqgame.exe", right-click and select Processor Affinity, and then check the 'All Processors' checkbox, and then click OK.

Repeat this for all instances of EQ you have running.



Immediately after doing this you should notice that EQ is more responsive and less "laggy".

This is NOT a permanent fix. You'll need to redo this (like I do) every time you restart an instance of EQ.

This will not fix all lag issues but reduces one of four types of lag. The four different bottlenecks I'm talking about are Video (GPU), Processor (CPU), Hard-drive, and Network (wifi, routers, Internet).

Keep in mind that this primarily reduces CPU lag and only provides an indirect effect on the other three. You can experience some crossover benefit with the other three if the CPU load is normalized enough so that the CPU isn't hindering the other processes.

Anyway, I hope this helps those who are having issues with lag while running multiple instances of EQ on their machines.

Keep in mind that your results are going to vary depending on the makeup of your computer setup. Hopefully, this will at least be a noticeable improvement for you.

Ttyl, Sam

PS

Please let me know if this helped you, and if I should add anything to make this a better post. Thanks!

 

[Sic]

I believe this is the same as putting -1 for cpu affinity in your eqclient.ini

CPUAffinity0=-1
CPUAffinity1=-1
CPUAffinity2=-1
CPUAffinity3=-1
CPUAffinity4=-1
CPUAffinity5=-1
CPUAffinity6=-1
CPUAffinity7=-1
CPUAffinity8=-1
CPUAffinity9=-1
CPUAffinity10=-1
CPUAffinity11=-1
CPUAffinity12=-1
CPUAffinity13=-1
CPUAffinity14=-1
CPUAffinity15=-1
CPUAffinity16=-1
CPUAffinity17=-1
CPUAffinity18=-1
CPUAffinity19=-1
CPUAffinity20=-1
CPUAffinity21=-1
CPUAffinity22=-1
CPUAffinity23=-1

 

[Samagram]

Excellent. So does this represent what's needed for concurrent EQ clients? Like in your example, 24 (0 - 23) instances of 'eqgame.exe' running at the same time?

 

[Sic]

Excellent. So does this represent what's needed for concurrent EQ clients? Like in your example, 24 (0 - 23) instances of 'eqgame.exe' running at the same time?

correct - check out >>> THIS <<< thread - some good discussion about it there

 

[Darb]

So which is better the -1 on all or like i have below?

CPUAffinity0=0
CPUAffinity1=1
CPUAffinity2=2
CPUAffinity3=3
CPUAffinity4=4
CPUAffinity5=5
CPUAffinity6=0
CPUAffinity7=1
CPUAffinity8=2
CPUAffinity9=3
CPUAffinity10=4
CPUAffinity11=5
CPUAffinity12=0
CPUAffinity13=1
CPUAffinity14=2

 

[Sic]

So which is better the -1 on all or like i have below?

CPUAffinity0=0
CPUAffinity1=1
CPUAffinity2=2
CPUAffinity3=3
CPUAffinity4=4
CPUAffinity5=5
CPUAffinity6=0
CPUAffinity7=1
CPUAffinity8=2
CPUAffinity9=3
CPUAffinity10=4
CPUAffinity11=5
CPUAffinity12=0
CPUAffinity13=1
CPUAffinity14=2

I'm sure others can get more into detail, but I've recently swapped to -1 for everything and with -1 and mq2eqwire it is pretty damn good

 

[AnotherJohn]

Question, when I look in all my characters eqclient.ini all is see is one entry CPUAffinity0=0. If I run 6 characters at a time should I add CPUAffinity1, CPUAffinity2... CPUAffintity5 and set all values to -1? If not what should I do? Thanks in advance, AnotherJohn

 

[Sic]

Question, when I look in all my characters eqclient.ini all is see is one entry CPUAffinity0=0. If I run 6 characters at a time should I add CPUAffinity1, CPUAffinity2... CPUAffintity5 and set all values to -1? If not what should I do? Thanks in advance, AnotherJohn

yup

you'd do

CPUAffinity0=-1
CPUAffinity1=-1
CPUAffinity2=-1
CPUAffinity3=-1
CPUAffinity4=-1
CPUAffinity5=-1

 

[AnotherJohn]

Thanks Sicpro,
Wasn't sure I understood it or not and didnt want to fudge something up by experimenting. Will make the changes now that I know I wont crash everything. AnotherJohn

 

[Grindage]

Or you can just use ISBoxer and let it handle all the processor strategies...

 

[Akatora]

or can just use

https://www.redguides.com/community/threads/mq2cpuload.45707/

edit* I have the cpuaffinity in my .ini all set to -0 already for all my accounts but i have played around with cpuload and it works pretty well

 

[levox]

Look up process lasso. Neat utility program. Can set up custom rules so each time a program is launched it sets affinity among other things.

For example rather than going into every eqclient.ini I just have a process lasso rule to look for eqgame.exe and have it set to use all cores for each instance of the .exe. It is always running in the background

 

[EQman0311]

I know this was asked in discord but maybe some fresh eyes on it. Will doing this fix the lag you encounter from leaving EQ clients up for a long period of time or is resetting the game the only way to fix that. I notice lag from EQ if my accounts are running for a long period of time. Even just sitting in Guild Lobby. I have 32GB RAM is there a program to download or is just restarting the only way?

 

[eqtrader74]

If it's that slow creeping "stealth" memory usage, I"m not sure of an easy way. William12 had a couple technical points or tips in this thread and this one.

• I also use rammap to empty working set and standy memory. It honestly helps. -william12 - Link to RamMap (microsoft)

I run Memory Cleaner by Koshy John and it will reduce memory after zoning and confirms the memory usage in Task Manager. But it can't help with that "stealth" stacking memory issue that is from leaving a toon running for a long time.

 

[EQman0311]

It's not slow i just get lag spikes after leaving accounts up for multiple days. Not afk or anything I could just be sitting in lobby for a few then when I come back I am lagging. I'll check his posts out thanks

 

[BigDorf]

There are two things that have helped significantly with my running Everquest, on it's own and also with multiple instances of it for 'Alt-Tab' boxing.

At the top of the list, this thread discussing 'CPUAffinity' is spot on.
Entries in your 'eqclient.ini' file should be changed to have the value "-1".
Mine were found in the "[Defaults]" section of the ini file. Note, they weren't necessarily together.


This greatly improved my game play experience in terms of responsiveness.



There is a second element and this is for running multiple instances of EQ on the same computer.

When the group is running the extras are on "/follow" to go with the character being played manually. From time to time, one or more of them will break off and run in circles.
Whilst it can be funny that once, it can lead to trouble. Such as training mobs, wandering off a cliff or perhaps just getting stuck.

The setting, also in the 'eqclient.ini' file and can be adjusted in game as well in options, is to do with the Background Frames Per Second (FPS).

Personally I amended the file to have:
MaxBGFPS=60


The basic view is this. If a program is in the foreground, you want it to have priority. It's what you are looking at, it's what you are using. Being in the background, it's left to do it's own thing but not at the expense of what you, the user, are doing. If you 'alt-tab' away from EQ, perhaps you're looking at some web pages. The game doesn't need to be doing all it's rendering as fast so they tune it down. Let the computer do other things you want.

Doesn't quite work like that for boxers though does it! Boxers want their instances running and responsive.
Thankfully, bumping up that 'MaxBGFPS' helps with just that.

 

[jimmy6154]

Process Lasso has what is called instance balancer which you can set your affinity too.

just set it for eqgame.exe and in the drop down you can specify how many cores your want to allocate to each instance or set it to equal out. Below, I have it set to equal out.

You go to option>CPU>instance balancer

 

[Smokeybear72]

I usually link this URL when folks talk about lag or CPU at 99% :

Fanra's - Graphics and performance settings guide

It discusses several things.

Mq2FPS or Mq2EQWire are also Redguides plugins that change CPU usage as well as others have pointed out.

 

[jimmy6154]

oh forgot to mention CPU throttling turn off can help improve things for you as well if its a think on your machine. Mostly laptops I think.

Reg Edit section is the best imo.

CPU Throttling

Maybe also called Intel Stepdown and can be disabled in the BIOS on some machines..

 

[Dragonslayer]

I know this was asked in discord but maybe some fresh eyes on it. Will doing this fix the lag you encounter from leaving EQ clients up for a long period of time or is resetting the game the only way to fix that. I notice lag from EQ if my accounts are running for a long period of time. Even just sitting in Guild Lobby. I have 32GB RAM is there a program to download or is just restarting the only way?

I have a Hotbutton on all my toons with the basic eq command /reloadui
This shall clear all memory consumed by the UI and loads it from scratch.
I use the hotbutton, once I notice, that chats or other ui-elements are not anymore completely rendered.

After /reloadui the client reacts, like freshly logged in from char-select

 

[microscope]

-1 means let the game automatically manage it. Unfortunately I found it to not work, so on a 12 core CPU it was showing the first 5 or so at 100% and then a bunch of cores barely being used. And I was planning to play 36 at once so I needed to get it right, so -1 didn't cut it. But for smaller numbers of characters it is probably fine. There is also MQ2cpuLoad but that didn't seem to work in automatic mode. The solution for me was to load several characters into the game, then I watched my cpu load, and used MQ2cpuload to manually move characters to other cores. That told me exactly how many characters each core could cope with, and then I manually set that up in the eqclient.ini file. Now it is perfect every time!

Sounds convoluted but the result is 36 characters spread amongst the cores and none of them reach 100%. So I'm happy with that.

p.s. If you do the same, remember to leave some headroom on each core for when the characters are fighting etc.

p.s. My CPU cores seemed to cope with 4 on each core so a snippit of my eqclient:

CPUAffinity0=-1
CPUAffinity1=1
CPUAffinity2=1
CPUAffinity3=1
CPUAffinity4=1
CPUAffinity5=2
CPUAffinity6=2
CPUAffinity7=2
CPUAffinity8=3
CPUAffinity9=3
CPUAffinity10=3
CPUAffinity11=3
etc.

 

[zuesizgod]

The other thing is log files. If you have /log on and your log files are huge, that can lag you as well.