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[Tech Help] System Bottleneck?

F

Fink

Guest
Is there any way to tell EC to use my third or fourth drive for disc cache?

I've done this with most of my other applications via the software, but I don't readily see the option in EC. Is there a config or text file I must "just-open-in-notepad" like so many other issues? Or can I tell Windows to override it?

tl;dr...

I'm pinging 28 and I have zero packet loss, my computer otherwise quite capable of running EC. It was fine a week ago.

I'm having lockups every few seconds while moving around, houses loading in bursts, and so on. It's as if it's stopping to get all the data it needs in massive chunks before updating the screen, which is different from how connection latency looks (tile by tile loading).

I think I might have an issue with disc drive access or the like. I only had around 4GB free on the installed drive, which I'm sure EC is using for scratch disc. I'm offloading a bunch of data right now, and cleaning up, emptying trash, and I'll be running a defragmentation just to keep my apps drive in good shape. Even if this isn't the issue, I'd like to set it up properly.
 

Hildebrand

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I have an Intel 2nd Gen SSD 160GB and this thing is super fast. My EC can't run any faster (disk wise). But occationally my char will run, then pause a split second, then run, then pause. For example running from the Compassion Ilsh gate to the champ spawn all the way to the right of it. Happens even if no spawn around.
It's almost like the server is trying to catch up to ME on my client. My connection is good though.

So I'm not so sure it's the drive. But it would be interesting if you can designate an alt drive like you're asking.
 

Cear Dallben Dragon

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Try running the game on one core of your processor. works wonders for me. I couldnt play the sa client without doing that.
 
F

Fink

Guest
Try running the game on one core of your processor. works wonders for me. I couldnt play the sa client without doing that.
So just one core would be better than two?

I see how core affinity is set for processes in the WinXP Task Manager. Is there a way to assign this permanently or must I do this after every launch?

Regarding solid state drives... I've already spent more money on my current rig than EA has on the entire client rolleyes:, so I'm not ready to upgrade specifically for the EC, again, just yet. I have the money, but this endless game of tag is getting ridiculous. Besides which, the old mantras of "It was working fine last week" and "My PC runs everything else just fine" ring true. It's a good suggestion, but I'm settled on my current rig for at least the next few months. :thumbup1:
 

Cear Dallben Dragon

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
I have a four core 2.83GHz processor.
The new client lags out massivly unless its running on one.
Hell if i know why....
 

Cear Dallben Dragon

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Not sure, i rarely tun two instances of the new client. Just set the affinity and see if it works for you.
 
F

Fink

Guest
It seems to have helped, somewhat. Thanks very much for the suggestion. :thumbup1:

I would never have considered more cores = more lag but, as I find with all things digital, the less time I spend trying to understand it the better off I'll be.
 

RawHeadRex

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Is there any way to tell EC to use my third or fourth drive for disc cache?

I've done this with most of my other applications via the software, but I don't readily see the option in EC. Is there a config or text file I must "just-open-in-notepad" like so many other issues? Or can I tell Windows to override it?

tl;dr...

I'm pinging 28 and I have zero packet loss, my computer otherwise quite capable of running EC. It was fine a week ago.

I'm having lockups every few seconds while moving around, houses loading in bursts, and so on. It's as if it's stopping to get all the data it needs in massive chunks before updating the screen, which is different from how connection latency looks (tile by tile loading).

I think I might have an issue with disc drive access or the like. I only had around 4GB free on the installed drive, which I'm sure EC is using for scratch disc. I'm offloading a bunch of data right now, and cleaning up, emptying trash, and I'll be running a defragmentation just to keep my apps drive in good shape. Even if this isn't the issue, I'd like to set it up properly.
how big is the drive that has 4GB's free ? you need to have 15% clear just to run defrag, something tells me you are below that and the virtual hd is running into the wall. instead of swapping swap files(virtual hd,) delete or MOVE the junk that is causing your primary to trip over itself. Offloading music and video as you said is whats needed.
 

RawHeadRex

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I have a four core 2.83GHz processor.
The new client lags out massivly unless its running on one.
Hell if i know why....
errata data ? this is interesting cause it doesn't effect everyone, amd or intel ? speed tells me intel but just making sure.
 
F

Fink

Guest
how big is the drive that has 4GB's free ? you need to have 15% clear just to run defrag, something tells me you are below that and the virtual hd is running into the wall. instead of swapping swap files(virtual hd,) delete or MOVE the junk that is causing your primary to trip over itself. Offloading music and video as you said is whats needed.
Already done. :thumbup1:

Regardless of scratch settings, it seems Adobe and EA love to leave files all over the drive. I freed up about 20GB in Spore patches alone. Most of the rest were Adobe pre-renders and so forth.
 

Llewen

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Supporter
I have an Intel 2nd Gen SSD 160GB and this thing is super fast. My EC can't run any faster (disk wise). But occationally my char will run, then pause a split second, then run, then pause. For example running from the Compassion Ilsh gate to the champ spawn all the way to the right of it. Happens even if no spawn around.
It's almost like the server is trying to catch up to ME on my client. My connection is good though.
That's just what happens when you experience lag in the EC. In the CC you slow down, in the EC you momentarily stop. It could be for any one of a number of reasons including network or server issues and many of them unrelated to your own computer or the quality of your local network connectivity.

Try running the game on one core of your processor. works wonders for me. I couldnt play the sa client without doing that.
So just one core would be better than two?

I see how core affinity is set for processes in the WinXP Task Manager. Is there a way to assign this permanently or must I do this after every launch?
If you are using Windows XP you should set your process affinity for your last processor. If you are running two clients at the same time you'll need to set each individually and they should be different. However if you are running only one client at a time you can use Mz Cpu Accelerator to do it automatically.

I have discovered though that if you switch to Windows 7 you shouldn't do this. Windows 7 handles multiple cores better than Windows XP and when I tried to set cpu affinity it actually hurt performance. If you want to improve the performance of the EC one simple way to do it is to upgrade to Windows 7 64 (Pro? I only say this because I've heard Pro handles memory better and it isn't that much more expensive than Home Premium).

However, I realize upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 isn't all that simple, although there are things you can do to make it easier.
 
F

Fink

Guest
Thanks, I'll try that Mz thing. It sounds like it would be a generally useful utility.

I will switch to Win7 at some point but I don't get the kick out of fresh installing an OS that other people seem to enjoy. There has to be a decent stack of reasons for the shift before I'll do it as I find it a tremendous chore. UO isn't nearly as important as all that, and it seems to be running well again for the moment.
 

Llewen

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Supporter
I will switch to Win7 at some point but I don't get the kick out of fresh installing an OS that other people seem to enjoy. There has to be a decent stack of reasons for the shift before I'll do it as I find it a tremendous chore. UO isn't nearly as important as all that, and it seems to be running well again for the moment.
Well, I can tell you, everything runs faster and smoother, and crashes less on Windows 7 64 for me - absolutely everything, including 32 bit programs. Add that to the fact that Windows XP is really coming to the end of it's life cycle.

Now of course when I say everything runs faster, I have 4GB of ram. 32 bit Windows XP is supposed to be able to handle up to 4GB of ram, but the problem is that all forms of ram are included in that, so I was unable to use about 650MB of ram with Windows XP, while with Windows 7 64 I can use all of it.

However, I never maxed out all of my available ram with Windows XP, so I'm not sure that being able to use all my ram is the only reason why Windows 7 is faster for me.
 
F

Fink

Guest
Well, I can tell you, everything runs faster and smoother, and crashes less on Windows 7 64 for me - absolutely everything, including 32 bit programs. Add that to the fact that Windows XP is really coming to the end of it's life cycle.

Now of course when I say everything runs faster, I have 4GB of ram. 32 bit Windows XP is supposed to be able to handle up to 4GB of ram, but the problem is that all forms of ram are included in that, so I was unable to use about 650MB of ram with Windows XP, while with Windows 7 64 I can use all of it.

However, I never maxed out all of my available ram with Windows XP, so I'm not sure that being able to use all my ram is the only reason why Windows 7 is faster for me.
A lot of my legacy software isn't supported by Win7, but I am putting it on my secondary drive as an alternate boot. I will likely switch over at the end of this year when school is out. I've sorted out my caching for all applications, too.

Anyway, I just revisited this thread to say thanks for the Mz CPU Accelerator tip. I'm rendering an animation in Cinema4D while playing flawlessly on EC. I also made a second UOSA.exe (copied & renamed) and assigned it to the other core. Both run very well together, for some reason better than running two instances of the one executable. I don't run the updater (unless I read of a client patch) as it wasn't terminating but eating up my system.
 

Llewen

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Supporter
A lot of my legacy software isn't supported by Win7, but I am putting it on my secondary drive as an alternate boot.
Hmmm, in my experience the compatibility modes for Windows 7 are very good, better than they are for Windows XP. I have yet to find a program that ran on Windows XP that won't run on Windows 7.

And Mz CPU Accelerator is one of my favourite pieces of hardware. There are quite a few of my rivals on Catskills that think I speed hack, but I don't actually run any faster than anyone else, I just very rarely have any problems with lag, and Mz CPU Accelerator is one of the reasons why.

I've actually adjusted my process priorities quite extensively and I think improved the overall performance of my computer and programs significantly as a result, as well as almost completely fixing an audio corruption issue I was having with my Creative X-Fi Gamer hardware.
 
F

Fink

Guest
I can assure you those incompatibilities exist for me as I specifically tested them on a Win7 computer. I really have no reason to invent problems.



Now this is weird, but it addresses the initial problem I was having:

I've noticed the hesitancy when loading things seems to depend on my particular login session. Sometimes it'll be bad but if I log out and log back in, it'll be much better. I don't know if it's something in my specific connection at the time, or my ISP and UO not co-operating, or EC somehow needing a refresh, or what. I don't quit the client, I just log out to the account/password screen, then log in again.

This is a repeatable phenomenon. I can fix a poor loading issue by dis-/reconnecting to the game server. It sometimes takes a few tries but it can be resolved entirely with some luck. It works so well I'm putting a quick logout macro on all my characters.
 

Llewen

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Supporter
I can assure you those incompatibilities exist for me as I specifically tested them on a Win7 computer. I really have no reason to invent problems.
Oh I wasn't saying that. Just different people have different levels of computer awareness, and I don't know what yours is. However, I should have taken a clue from the fact that you set up a dual boot... :)

I've noticed the hesitancy when loading things seems to depend on my particular login session. Sometimes it'll be bad but if I log out and log back in, it'll be much better. I don't know if it's something in my specific connection at the time, or my ISP and UO not co-operating, or EC somehow needing a refresh, or what. I don't quit the client, I just log out to the account/password screen, then log in again.

This is a repeatable phenomenon. I can fix a poor loading issue by dis-/reconnecting to the game server. It sometimes takes a few tries but it can be resolved entirely with some luck. It works so well I'm putting a quick logout macro on all my characters.
I have noticed sometimes I will start to lag, and restarting the client will fix the problem. It doesn't happen often, maybe once every eight hours of game time or so, maybe even less.
 
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