1 instance of EQ or 2?

[draxshar]

I have a quick question. Would WinEQ run more effeciantly if Profile 1 ran an instance of EQ from the main EQ directory and Profile 2 ran EQ from a copied EQ directory? For example Profile 1 ran from D:\Everquest and Profile 2 ran from a copied directory, say E:\Everquest. Right now I have it set up to run all EQ instances running from the same executable. Was just wondering if there would be any change in performance.

Thanks for you time and GREAT programs.

[Lax]

No, it would most likely run worse. The reason being that computers now have caching systems built in, and caching is many many times faster than reading from disk. If you use multiple directories, you prevent the caching systems from being used efficiently.

Some people claim to see better performance with 2 directories, but the only way that can happen is if it's on 2 separate hard drives on separate IDE channels (assuming theyre IDE). Otherwise, its fighting for the same resources anyway. And this isn't likely to be faster if you have a hard drive bigger than ... i dont know, a few gigabytes (newer hard drives all have fairly big cache, an old cheapo 30GB Maxtor has 2MB, and some now even have 8MB).. or if you have Windows XP. If you have really old 7200rpm hard drives, say .. 5+ years.. and Windows 98/ME, you could possibly see a gain with the case explained above

[draxshar]

Thanks Lax!