Graphical freezing issue / driver failure

[Nightblade]

Specs :
Intel Centrino2 (dual core)
GeForce 9800GTS
Windows 7


I'm currently experiencing a frequent slowing of frame rate, command/action lag, and a serious loop of driver failures.

Steps I've taken to correct the issue :
I've tried limiting in-game FPS in a range of everywhere from 30-60, already slaved my dual core to work off of a single processor, updated drivers, installed WinEQ2 and EQPlaynice (built in) to limit graphical issues from outside of the box, but it still happens. I've tried completely killing all graphics, spell effects, clip plane, shadows, and actor-fed clip-planes to a minimum, but it hasn't had any sort of effect on my issue.

Right now, it's....bearable, but I wouldn't want it to happen at a critical time that causes the death of my character or that of my wife's, which has almost occurred a few times. The game will freeze, the screen will go black until the driver autocorrects itself and restarts, resulting in anywhere between 5-30 seconds of me either running off a cliff, into a tree, or into mobs_that_want_to_rape_me04.

I'm failure computer literate, but all the normal fixes that I've had the time to do or research have turned up dry.

Thoughts, advice, questions?

[parlay1]

might want to try rebooting, going into your bios and disabling "SpeedStepp"

[Nightblade]

Took a look into that option, but either my laptop's BIOS is severely limited in what information it really wants to show, or I don't have Cool'n'Quiet or Speedstep.

I'll have to go digging around to see if I can find any sort of work around...my wife plays just across from me on her desktop and has no issues whatsoever, and without having to tweak the game at all.

[Malrubius]

Plugged in?

[Nightblade]

Yep, plugged in with High Performance options enabled. I even tried something a different thread suggested (start the game, unplug, let sit for a moment or seven, plug back in), though I wasn't sure if it effected anything.

My main problem is I can't recreate the crashes by any means that I can figure out. They just sort of happen at random intervals, and don't seem to follow much of a pattern.

[Nightblade]

In experimenting with new ideas and what other people have tried, I gave a whirl to what Epicentre did in this post. (http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=118149&postcount=6)

So far, so good. Full speed run, minimal clip out when turning quickly, and so far, no black screens or graphical freezes.


Ain't that a bitch.

[Thulghor]

That's a common Intel Speedstep issue. Swapping power modes from AC to battery resets it momentarily to default. But if it works for you, that's cool. Anything based off of the Centrino platform has speedstep built into it to conserve power when it is in battery mode or generally not in use.

If it's a prefab laptop, such as a Dell or something, you'll have to kill it in BIOS, remove the stepping program, and then scour the advanced section of your power management to get rid of the settings that changed. Sometimes selecting the high performance profile doesn't cut it.

I actually wrote a *.bat file that would swap my power modes (power modes actually have OS signatures), disable Speedstep via software, and set the executable to a "high" resource priority every (in this case World of Warcraft) every time I opened the shortcut. I wrote a guide for my raiding guild at one point, but they decided not to pay their website bill.

I'll have to dig around and see if I can find it.

I have a similar problem with my XFX Radeon 5970 Black Edition. EQ doesn't put enough load on it, so it throttles down it's GPU + Memory clock speeds because it doesn't feel like it's being used enough, which causes some dumb lag (although not enough to make it unplayable). I had to actually force AA + AF to get it to maintain a high enough load to get it to stop. Not too much AA though, as the font gets really blurry in P99 EQ for some reason.

P.S. Another thing to consider if all else fails is the temperature. Most notebooks have thermal throttling on both CPUs and GPUs, so if it gets too hot, it will tone itself down to cool off.

Edit:

Article on Intel Speedstep, Cool & Quiet, and C1E states. http://www.anandtech.com/show/1975

Vista/7 have additional features that can control CPU speed.
Open the Control Panel, then open System and Maintenance.
Go to Power Options, pick High performance.
Click on Change plan settings underneath it, then click Change advanced power settings.
Go to your Processor power management section and change both minimum and maximum processor states to 100%.
Hit OK

Edit 2:

Here's that batch file thing, but modified for Windows 7. Seems to work just fine for me. Make a new file in your Everquest directory (usually C:\Everquest, since putting it in Program Files is generally a bad idea) and name it something like EQstarter.bat or whatever. Make sure it's something.bat and not something.bat.txt, as that can be an issue if you don't have file extensions enabled.

Put this in it:

start /high /wait /affinity 1 eqgame.exe patchme

That will start the program (eqgame.exe), under a higher priority than normal, while setting the affinity to only use one processor core.

Here is how to configure it to use high performance power settings automatically, then have it switch back to a regular power mode(such as power saver) for normal operations.

1) Press Windows Key + R to get the run box, then type in "cmd".
2) Type in powercfg /L > powercfg.txt
3) Type in notepad powercfg.txt

The one you are currently using has an * next to it. You want to find the "High Performance" or "Max Performance" out of the list, and the one that is currently set to. Example:

Existing Power Schemes (* Active)
-----------------------------------
Power Scheme GUID: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e (Balanced)
Power Scheme GUID: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c (High performance)
Power Scheme GUID: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a (Power saver) *

Once found, adjust the batch file we made earlier with your settings. They will be different than the ones listed above, so be sure to use yours and not the ones listed here. For example, mine is set up kinda like this:

powercfg -S 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c
start /high /wait /affinity 1 eqgame.exe patchme
powercfg -S a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a

8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c is "High Performance", while a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a is "Power Saver". So while gaming, it's on "High Performance" mode: 100% CPU power, no underclocking (provided you adjusted the settings in the high performance profile previously). When not gaming, it's on "Power Saver" mode -- 5% to 50% CPU power, saving precious energy and letting laptops increase the battery duration.

[Nightblade]

In looking around the BIOS for anything even resembling that, I couldn't find it. All in all, the BIOS I have on this laptop seems extremely simple. There's not a lot you can really change, and no real sub menus to go exploring in to find it.

But, if the unplug/plug works..well, I'm not going to look a gift-horse in the mouth.