Advise for boxing more in EQ1

[ronis]

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Ive read through alot of the forums (but there are 17+ pages) and I just want suggestions if anyone can help.

I can 3 box on my computer with no problems (other than the memory leak), but once I try and load a 4th version of EQ1 my computer grinds to an unplayable halt (extraordinary choppiness and horrific lag). I recently heard that people with lesser computers can 4 box or 5 box no problem and im completely confused because I cant. I have gotten tons of advise about how people seem to lower their settings to get more boxes up but they dont seem to work for me.

I have an AMD 4000+ proc with 3 GB of ram-Asus A8N-SLI. I have an 8800 GTX 784 MB VC. I have a 19" Flat panel that runs at 1600x1200 resolution (native). I run on a cable connection at well over 6mbps.

The only programs I run on my taskbar is Norton System Works (with antivirus disabled), my onboard sound, and my logitech mouse/kb program.

My Wineq2 settings have cpu affinity on, pip and tiling off.
EQ1 Settings are all off except Memory Indicator on and EQ Play Nice on
My EQPlay Nice settings are Auto Expand off and FPS on, in foreground FPS limiter set to 40 and rendering limiter 1 of x frames with a rendering limit of 1, background its CPU limiter with all settings at 1.

My EQ1 Setup Options are All Models on and high-social animations are off, mip mapping off, dynamic lighting off, texture compression on.

Please Please Please suggest good ideas on how to get a 4th or 5th box up (esp if my friend can get 4 up with a 3200+ and 2 GB ram). Im used to 6 boxing across 2 computers but im recovering from back surgery and can only get 1 computer on my bed.

On a side note, ive noticed Wineq2pro shows my video memory at over 950+ MB when I know for a fact that the card is 784 mb...is there a way to reclaim the 200 mb? this would prevent me from hitting my page file (at least a little) and would probably speed things WAY up-ive already checked all my visible bios settings and there are none to adjust this (im thinking 256 mb of system memory are reserved for video memory but am not sure).

I will be happy with ANY and ALL suggestions, no matter how obvious or silly they may appear (if there are processes I can kill in the task manager - awesome, but tell me which I NEED to keep because I have 45 running). I will try everything. Also, I format and clean install win xp home every 6 months or so, and obsessively update everything (drivers and programs). I run win doc/disk doc/speed disk at least 2x per week.

Much appreciated.

Ron