Major graphical lag

[iamSnippa]

I'll start off with my computer's specs:
cpu: Intel Quad Core Q6600 2.4ghz
ram: 6gb
video: ATI/AMD Radeon 4850 HD (1gb)
harddrive "c": total size: 116gb, free space: 16gb (this drive is partitioned for linux and windows)
ext. harddrive "e": total size: 232gb, free space: 73.8gb (UOSA is installed here)
OS (used for UO): Windows Vista 64bit
Direct X version: 11
desktop (and game) resolution: 1680x1050
refresh rate: 60hz
internet: cable - 1MB+ downstream, 100kb+ upstream

Alright I think that's about all the basics, I'm not going to provide a dxdiag dump or any other info dump at this time, if it's requested I will later on.

Now, running the Enhanced Client sitting still or walking around my house I have 0 lag whatsoever, then again, my house is currently unfurnished, and is in the middle of nowhere in Felucca.
However, if I decide to take a stroll down the road, the game will slow my character down to a standstill as houses load up. This problem is far worse (obviously) in Luna, where it can take what seems like forever to get to a vendor house on the southern or northern sides of the city.

I have been using this client while working on my new tamer since I returned to the game about 3 weeks ago, farming daemons in the fan dancer dojo I get absolutely no lag, even with tons and tons of corpses littering the ground on my screen. I get no lag while running around taming bulls in Delucia either (I mention this because of how many more creatures there are moving around on my screen that also have to load up). I haven't attempted to check if there is any lag at champion spawns in either Felucca or Ilshenar, I don't think I really need to, the issue doesn't seem to be related to creatures, only houses.

I have attempted everything I can think of to reduce the lag; I changed every graphic setting in the game, I changed my desktop resolution, I closed all non-essential programs, I defragged, I cleared up space on my hard drives, moved the EC install to my main HD, I ran updates. Nothing I do seems to remove the lag when I run near these houses.
Oh, it isn't just houses either, I just remembered that when loading the new ships the client will lag as well.

With the classic client, I have 0 lag running around these same areas, everything loads seemlessly, no hiccups or anything like that.

What I find strange is I downloaded the enhanced client to my laptop this morning which has far worse specs that my desktop pc and was able to run around these areas with significantly reduced lag - though it was still noticeable. The only real advantage my laptop has over my pc is that it's running Windows 7 64bit.

I would love to make this client my permanent client, but there is no way I could possibly pvp on it, and I'll likely eventually get sick of the lag running around luna and other places.

Oh, I don't know if it's related at all, but with Grid style containers I do get a little lag when trying to drag an item out of a container - this could be a completely separate issue... when I switch over to legacy containers dragging items is no problem. This sucks because I love the right-click loot feature that comes with the grid, but when I get back to my house and want to put my new loot into a secure container it can take far longer than it should.

The enhanced client has a lot going for it, if these issues could be solved I can easily see the classic client becoming obsolete.

There is one other thing I dislike about the enhanced client though...
The Blood Elemental... It looks more like a disgusting flesh elemental than a blood elemental, I highly prefer the art from the classic client for it.

I could have posted this in the tech forum, but I'm not really looking for any help, I just wanted to share my experience with the client so far. If anyone can help or wants to try and help though, you are more than welcome to.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I can run games like World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, StarTrek Online, Age of Empires online, and some other high graphic demand games at the highest settings without any lag.

 

[Pinco]

Vista is huge and cause lag on everything, you should switch to win 7 that is better...
Other than that you should try to defrag your disk as Old Man has suggested in the other post.

Also I see that your connection is not very fast... I mean in my country the basic is 7MB down and 1MB up and works perfectly without problems, maybe 100kb in up is a bit tiny for the EC packets

 

[iamSnippa]

While I would love to, I can't afford to upgrade to windows 7 any time soon. As I stated in my post I did defrag both harddrives.

1MB downrate is actually a decent connection... not the best obviously, but you don't really NEED more to play a game, infact I highly doubt that I hit 1MB down during gameplay at any time, and I'll never hit 100kb upspeed while playing a game. If the EC was maxing out my upspeed bandwidth, I wouldn't be on the internet very long - Comcast has this cap that if you hit it, your service is turned off.

I did monitor pretty much everything I could while running around these areas... my cpu usage, memory usage, bandwidth... cpu obviously went up but was an expected amount, memory did climb as I circled luna, but once I went around the city once, the memory stopped going up. The bandwidth usage was minimal.

Also, since I'm speaking with you, I should mention that I did load up your UI, unfortunately it gave me far more issues, causing the client to crash more often and making the game completely unplayable. Even though this is the case, I do love what I was able to see that you added into your UI... made me not miss UOAssist or UOAM one bit.

 

[Pinco]

While I would love to, I can't afford to upgrade to windows 7 any time soon. As I stated in my post I did defrag both harddrives.

1MB downrate is actually a decent connection... not the best obviously, but you don't really NEED more to play a game, infact I highly doubt that I hit 1MB down during gameplay at any time, and I'll never hit 100kb upspeed while playing a game. If the EC was maxing out my upspeed bandwidth, I wouldn't be on the internet very long - Comcast has this cap that if you hit it, your service is turned off.

I did monitor pretty much everything I could while running around these areas... my cpu usage, memory usage, bandwidth... cpu obviously went up but was an expected amount, memory did climb as I circled luna, but once I went around the city once, the memory stopped going up. The bandwidth usage was minimal.

Also, since I'm speaking with you, I should mention that I did load up your UI, unfortunately it gave me far more issues, causing the client to crash more often and making the game completely unplayable. Even though this is the case, I do love what I was able to see that you added into your UI... made me not miss UOAssist or UOAM one bit.

Well then probably it's time to format the pc, as all we know when everything starts to slow down it's always windows that is sinking
I do not experience that kind of lag and neither crash with my laptop (that is not even comparable with yours, is a core 2 duo 2ghz with 2gb ram and 256mb video with win 7 64bit inside...)

 

[iamSnippa]

See, the thing is, it's not everything slowing down, as I said, I can run other games that take a larger toll on the processor, memory, and video at maximum settings than UO with no lag at all. The only issue I have is the enhanced client.

 

[Pinco]

Maybe there is some kind of antivirus/antispam/firewall that is messing up something, also start it as administrator because if you don't when the client try to write a log could crash due to the lack of privileges.

 

[iamSnippa]

I wish I could say one of those things was the issue, but that isn't the case.

I'm installing it in Linux right now to test it out... if it runs better in Linux, well then hell, I'll be one happy camper cuz I've been dying to get out of Windows and back to Linux for some time.
I'll post the results.

I'm thinking at the moment that the enhanced client might not like my video card or some other piece of hardware, no clue why though since it's all pretty decent and works well with other games.

 

[Storm]

Another thing is you say you installed to a external drive! Is the drive a usb? if so maybe the problem is there I installed on my usb at one time but was very laggy untill I had moved over to my main drive!

 

[Pinco]

I wish I could say one of those things was the issue, but that isn't the case.

I'm installing it in Linux right now to test it out... if it runs better in Linux, well then hell, I'll be one happy camper cuz I've been dying to get out of Windows and back to Linux for some time.
I'll post the results.

I'm thinking at the moment that the enhanced client might not like my video card or some other piece of hardware, no clue why though since it's all pretty decent and works well with other games.

As I said vista is the great problem... that OS is a shame and should be removed from the face of the earth

 

[iamSnippa]

Another thing is you say you installed to a external drive! Is the drive a usb? if so maybe the problem is there I installed on my usb at one time but was very laggy untill I had moved over to my main drive!

It is usb, but I also tried it while installed to C: and had the same issues.
The ext. drive runs smoothly.
My main harddrive has shown conflicts in the past with other games (BF2142, WoW), which is why I have the external now, only issue I ever have with the external is if I accidentally bump the port, and then that only requires fixing the connection and then restarting the game. All my games are installed on the external drive and in most cases have never been attempted to run on my main hard drive. (So all the results I mentioned in previous posts were of games that are on this external drive)

I do appreciate you guys trying to help out, I'm sure you can understand if you guys are running the client fine that it can be pretty frustrating for me to have issues especially after having weeded out so many possible problems already.

 

[iamSnippa]

Can't get UO to run with WINE... not sure why, but I'm not gonna bother with it anymore, goin back to Vista, I'm bored.

 

[Pinco]

unfortunately I'm not a big expert of linux, I'm just able to do the basic things

However last time I tried EC in a linux virtual machine I had ubuntu, but can't be installed directly, there is a guide on stratics on how to make it run...

 

[Old Man of UO]

Can't get UO to run with WINE... not sure why, but I'm not gonna bother with it anymore, goin back to Vista, I'm bored.

I could never get it to work under WINE either, but as Pinco said it works with VirtualBox. You just need to make sure you set the video acceleration to pass through. And setup is much easier with the newest versions of VB. BUT - you need to install Windows on VB first from your own source.

 

[Pinco]

I could never get it to work under WINE either, but as Pinco said it works with VirtualBox. You just need to make sure you set the video acceleration to pass through. And setup is much easier with the newest versions of VB. BUT - you need to install Windows on VB first from your own source.

I have a virtual machine on windows where I have setup ubuntu with wine

It works, but linux is just an OS for who like a lot of trouble for make something works