UI and FPS relationship

[Jatiro]

Hello - I've been searching the Sony tech forums, this site and others looking for any information regarding the relationship between the UI and the game's framerate, and just can't seem the answer, though it's gotta be out there somewhere I'm sure. Being that it's a UI based observation, I consider you guys to be the experts... so I'll try posting here first

I've run EQII on two different machines, and typically while playing have some pretty decent graphics lag. My home machine is an older model - PIII 1.2GHz - dont remember the rest of the specs, and I'm away from home so I can't add them in this post but anyway I figured since it just passed the minimum requirements for the game, that would explain the majority of lag I encountered while playing.

The machine I'm on here at work, is a little more modern - I dont have all the specs on it, basically they should be stock settings for whatever is loaded on a Dell Latitude D620 at time of sale. Not top of the line, but a bit better than my ten year old tank/paperweight.

So as I've been playing around the last month or so on this machine, I'm still encountering the same amount of graphics lag. I've gone down to "Extreme Performance" options and still see even less improvement that were I at home.

BUT I was mucking around with my UI today, and noticed that as I turn off each window, my FPS improves slightly. So I used F10 to cycle to all windows off and low and behold, 26-38 FPS. I switch up to balanced, high, and very high performance settings, turn off UI and it's like being IN the movie with Arnold... As soon as I need to see my health bar however vvvvvvvvvt down to 3-5 FPS... Extreme Performance / Very High Quality doesn't seem to matter.

So my observation / question is, obviously there's a relationship between system resources and the UI. I'm having a tough time understanding why it is enough to drop the games performance down to such a reduced rate. Does anyone have an explanation? I'm currently just mucking around with the default game UI - does anyone have any recommendations on a UI that might be less of a pull on system resources?

Thanks much
Sir Jatiro Rotija The Loyal
71 Ranger, Antonia Bayle

[lordebon]

Have you tried fighting with the ui still off and do you still see the huge gain?

The UI does add some resources for each window displayed. My guess is that is your GPU probably doesn't support something used in the UI -- check your video card against what's supported by EQ2. If thats the case its likely being offloaded to the CPU which is then being taxed and slowing everything down. I recall a user having this issue with shaders or something on the hotbars.

[gm9]

As I once explained

[Jatiro]

Originally Posted by lordebon

Have you tried fighting with the ui still off and do you still see the huge gain?

OH yes, I've been leaving the UI almost completely off -with exception to my health and my targets health. Even gone so far as to print off a screenshot to see what my first 3 hotbars are set up as and playing entirely using the keyboard this evening because the difference is so great.

I'll double check the smooth fonts setting in the AM to see if that helps. Thanks for the link and contained tip gm9.

[Vitargo]

Thanks for that rundown gm9.

I read it awhile back and made some changes to the better. I appreciate the info. And your efforts on ProfitUI. Been using it for ever now, and not sure if i've ever gave you a big iksar sized thanksss yaaa.