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WinEQ 2 Frequently Asked Questions |
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Most users requested that the task bar be underneath the window because it interferes with gameplay, so it should be under the window by default. The trick is that when the game window is placed high enough on the screen, the task bar is actually placed over the game window. When the game window is placed a little lower, the task bar is placed under the EQ window. Play around with moving the window slightly up or down and the taskbar will reposition itself over or under the window.
With WinEQ Pro, you can skip playing with window positioning, and simply toggle Lock Size (found per window in the game window context menu, or can be set in the Normal preset to cause this to be default behavior).
Picture-in-Picture (PIP) must be enabled in two separate places -- the tray menu, and for each profile (or individual window). This is so PIP can be turned off entirely by changing a single setting, and so PIP can be disabled for specific profiles or windows. If you would like to enable PIP for all windows, first enable the global setting found in the tray menu's Options submenu. Then, for each profile you use, turn on "Allow Picture-in-Picture". If the change does not take effect immediately, simply restart each session and PIP will be used.
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Short answer:
Same folder
Long answer:
It is a common myth that game performance can be increased by using mulitple folders, possibly even on separate hard drives. The thinking goes that using separate copies of the files will allow them to be used independently and hopefully faster than trying to use the same files. However, this is not the case. A relatively simple concept in computer science says that hard drive accesses are slow, and memory accesses are fast -- about 10 milliseconds for hard drive access, and under 100 nanoseconds for memory access (as low as about 5ns depending on if the memory is stored on the CPU or if it is system RAM, etc), a ratio of 10 to 10,000,000. That's a pretty big difference. The point of explaining this is modern computer systems employ several "cache" systems to reduce the amount of file accesses as well as file access times by reusing unchanged data directly from memory, or by predicting the next data to be retrieved (for an easy to understand example, if you read the first half of a file, you can be expected to also read the second half). By using a separate folder, these cache systems cannot recognize that the data being read is actually the same. This means that instead of 10,000,010 nanoseconds for loading time for two sessions, it will probably be 20,000,000 nanoseconds because the entire data must be read twice. In terms of loading time, you have absolutely nothing to lose by using a single folder on a single hard drive, and can reasonably expect it to be faster than using multiple folders, regardless of whether it is on another physical hard drive. Note that it may be possible in some cases to see performance increases by using a separate hard drive, but the hard drives MUST be on a separate IDE channel, or they are competing for the same resources anyway (or use SATA, etc), and it is still unlikely that this will show improvement over a single folder.
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You need to actually enter the game, hit ALT+O to bring up the in-game options, select the "Display" tab, and click the "Video Modes" button. Change and accept the resolution there. If you are a subscriber, this list will contain many added resolutions that you may find preferable.
We have once again revised our figures, updated for Omens of War. With low textures and no models at 800x600 16-bit color, EQ uses about 29MB of video RAM and 300MB system RAM per session. With high textures and all models, EQ uses about 45MB of video RAM and 500MB system RAM per session. Note that these figures will vary depending on which zone you are in and how many players are near.
This may seem a little overboard considering your video card may only have 32 or 64MB of RAM, but video RAM also includes AGP memory. AGP memory is part of your system RAM that is assigned by BIOS to be used by the video card for extra video RAM when necessary. The setting in BIOS should you need to increase it, is called AGP Aperture Size (our step by step guide with photos from 3 different computers may help you adjust this setting) -- be aware that raising this value can harm your system stability. Newer systems may typically have this set to 64-128MB by default. The setting may also be hidden in newer BIOS -- it took me about 30 minutes of wondering why the setting was nowhere to be found and looking through my motherboard manual to determine where to find it. In my case, I needed to hit CTRL+F1 in BIOS to show all of the "advanced" settings, and AGP Aperture Size was then available for me to set. The AGP memory is not used until the RAM on the video card is running low.
Use the table in the section below, titled "How can I minimize the amount of RAM each EQ session uses to aid multiboxing?", to aid in your hardware requirements research. Determine the graphics quality you require for each desired session, and add the totals from the table. If you want to run 4 full quality sessions at 1600x1200x32 resolution, you will need 4*(283+314)MB of system RAM and 4*(29+16+15)MB of video RAM (2388MB system and 240MB video), keeping in mind that extra system RAM will be used to cover the video RAM if necessary. Also, the figures listed are just to enter the game, the actual requirements for playing the game past that point increase as you move around, zone, etc, and certain zones require more resources than others. You should also allow for system overhead and other programs running.
Some EverQuest graphics options significantly increase the amount of RAM required to play the game. Most of them can be turned on or off through the options editor (click the Options button at the first menu in EverQuest, not the patcher), and some require manually editing eqclient.ini (Velious textures are LoadArmor17 through LoadArmor23 in eqclient.ini and are not found elsewhere). Here is a table of the approximate memory usage of each, according to our testing at 800x600 resolution with 16-bit color. Some options may increase the effects of others (texture quality for example). It is interesting to note that EQ options generally increase the System RAM requirements, while increase in resolution or color depth only increase the Video/Texture RAM requirements. These figures are immediately upon entering the game in Plane of Knowledge. Both System and Video RAM usage increase as you move around, zone, etc. All figures are based off of the "Base EverQuest 800x600 16-bit" value and are added to it.
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| Base EverQuest 800x600 16-bit | 283MB | 29MB |
| Sound | + 22MB | + 0MB |
| Dynamic Lighting | + 4MB | + 0MB |
| Mip Mapping | + 4MB | + 5MB |
| Medium Quality Textures | + 30MB | + 0MB |
| High Quality Textures | + 32MB | + 0MB |
| All Velious Textures | + 51MB | + 0MB |
| 14 Luclin Models | + 90MB | + 0MB |
| 29 Luclin Models | +142MB | + 0MB |
| Complex Sky | + 10MB | + 1MB |
| Shadows | + 13MB | + 1MB |
| Full Options | +314MB | + 16MB |
| 1024x768x16 | + 0MB | + 2MB |
| 1280x1024x16 | + 0MB | + 6MB |
| 1600x1200x16 | + 0MB | + 11MB |
| 1920x1536x16 | + 0MB | + 16MB |
| 2240x1792x16 | + 0MB | + 26MB |
| 2560x2048x16 | + 0MB | + 30MB |
| 3200x2560x16 | + 0MB | + 51MB |
| 800x600x32 | + 0MB | + 1MB |
| 1024x768x32 | + 0MB | + 3MB |
| 1280x1024x32 | + 0MB | + 7MB |
| 1600x1200x32 | + 0MB | + 15MB |
| 1920x1536x32 | + 0MB | + 22MB |
| 2240x1792x32 | + 0MB | + 33MB |
| 2560x2048x32 | + 0MB | + 40MB |
| 3200x2560x32 | + 0MB | + 67MB |
With full options and a conservative 800x600x32 resolution, we were easily past 600MB system RAM used by a single session upon entering the game, with about 43MB of video RAM used.
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