EQ2 3 box on one computer possible?
Moderators: Lavish Software Team, Moderators
EQ2 3 box on one computer possible?
Hi, I was wondering if anyone out there has experience running 3 simultaneous sessionsof EQ2 on one system , and what stats are they using to allow that to happen. I currently 2 box myself, and with a 2.6 ghz p4, 1.5ghz ram, 128mb aiw radeon 9800, it runs around 20-30fps indoors with low/med settings, and 30-35 in outdoor zones. I want to consider making the leap to 3 boxing, but before I do that . I'd like to hear from any of you. Would upping the ram to around 2ghz and video card to 256 mb and bump up the processor to around 3ghz allow me to do this? Lasty, can anyone recommend a GOOD Keyboard-Video-Monitor switch that is capable to switching computers instantly without the 2 second lag that seems to plague most KVM switches including the Belkin 2port one I currently own. Thanx for any help
All you really need the video card to do is store the front buffers -- the game can't be loaded if that doesnt happen. The rest can be picked up by spare system RAM using the AGP Aperture set up through BIOS. In other words, a 128MB card can easily be just as good as a 384MB card if you have enough system RAM and a big enough AGP Aperture Size 
Lax, about that AGP aperture thing ...
Lax, I just got a geForce 6800 (128) and in the setup suggestions it says that I should set my AGP aperture to 4mb! My new m/b doesn't go that low so I have it set to 32mb (lowest it allows). How do you think this will impact my multisessions (I only play EQ1)?
You really, really should have it set to 128MB or 256MB if you're going to multi-box. I dont know why it would say 4MB, but then again they are operating under the assumption that you're playing 1 session of 1 game at a time, not several copies of EQ, and probably also assuming a low amount of system RAM. I can't imagine a reason to have it as low as possible, particularly considering it doesnt come into play until the video card's physical RAM runs out. My recommendation is still 128-256MB.
As far as impacting multiple sessions, the main thing is being able to load the game and being able to load textures. The main screen must be on physical video card RAM (or DirectX gives an error), but textures can be in system RAM by using the AGP Aperture. If the video card has enough free RAM to load, it will at least load. If it has enough free RAM between it and the AGP Aperture, it will be able to display all the textures... if it runs out of RAM, it will either be missing textures, or it will fail to load in the first place.
You can always keep an eye on the WinEQ memory indicator. If you have free system RAM and free texture memory, you're fine
As far as impacting multiple sessions, the main thing is being able to load the game and being able to load textures. The main screen must be on physical video card RAM (or DirectX gives an error), but textures can be in system RAM by using the AGP Aperture. If the video card has enough free RAM to load, it will at least load. If it has enough free RAM between it and the AGP Aperture, it will be able to display all the textures... if it runs out of RAM, it will either be missing textures, or it will fail to load in the first place.
You can always keep an eye on the WinEQ memory indicator. If you have free system RAM and free texture memory, you're fine