system requirements? game runs slow?Follow

What video card are you using? Also make sure you have the most recent video drivers for your card.. that can make a big difference! Only other thing I can think of is, if you run a lot of programs on your computer, try eliminating as many high performance background applications as you can.

your first problem is that you are running a celeron CPU. This line of processors is like intel lite!

your 2nd problem is that you only have 2GB of ram. By design, EQ2 wants to offload textures and other general video jobs from the vid card to ram and with only 2GB total you have no free space for the game to use.

your 3rd problem is that you are running Vista which is a huge resource hog. for the 32 bit version you should have at least 4GB and for the 64bit version you should have 8GB.

you never mentioned the specs on your vid card but I'm willing to bet they are in line with the rest of the system. For reference, to run EQ2 smoothly you would need at least an nvidia series 8000 or 9000 with a minimum of a half GB of dedicated vid ram.

The published minimums and recommended specs are kind of deceiving because when it was released, EQ2 required the best systems available to run at all and nothing on the market would let you play maxed out. It is only in more recent years that systems have caught up to the game enough to let folks run at the higher settings.

As a point of reference, I have the following system:

CPU: i7 920 (quad core) @ 2.67GHz
RAM: 12GB
VID: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 with 1GB vid ram
OS: Windows 7 64 bit professional

I run pretty much wide open with this rig and am getting well over 30 FPS all the time - even in zones with known issues (like Qeynos Harbor)

So you're saying that although the game would work on a 6000 series card, it runs "a heck of a lot better" or smoother on an 8000 series card... hmmm :-)

I think it's simple, the OP specs has a better processor than I do (intel dual-core 2ghz), and I ran with 2gb of ram for many years before recently putting in another 2g. There was no mention of a video card, so go get a dedicated video card with 512 on it.

My pc:
OS: Vista 32 bit (har har, I know)
Ram: 3.25gb ram (only 64 bit users can use a full 4gb or higher)
Video Card: ATI HD Radeon 2400 Pro 512mb vram
Processor: Intel Pentium dual-core e2180


I run the game fine on balanced mode, and can play easily on the next higher (for more glitzy game play) setting in zones without a large population.

Before I added the extra ram I definitely did drop my settings to extreme performance on raids, and still ran fine...and now after I never have to change the setting. In fact I can play on higher quality with a bit of fps lag but nothing that makes the game unplayable in that situation.

Edited, Nov 10th 2010 11:51am by Dyadem

Back in the early days of EQ2 I used to live way out in the country, and only had dialup. Yes I played about 2 years of EQ2 on dialup, and did it on 1 gig of RAM. And I have to say, the lag wasn't that bad most of the time. The only time I really ever ran into problems is when I visited QH. My zoning load times were always long, but not too terrible. Little by little I starte to instal more and more RAM. And noticed a heck of a difference.

I play now on a much more powerful new PC, and about as fast of a cable connection as you can get. The game can be played on some minimal requirements as I can attest to that. But I wouldn't recommend it. If you can make any upgrade at all, RAM is one of the first places I'd start.

It would seem to me, your system should at least minimally run this game. I'm wonding if there isn't something else at play here like do you have the newest version of direct X downloaded maybe?

Also the above poster is correct, you got to run just about everything in Admin if you got VISTA. I used to have VISTA and upgraded to WIN 7 as soon as I could. Which was a definately good move on my part. WIN 7 rules compared to VISTA if your a gamer.

Edited, Nov 27th 2010 8:01am by blakkmantis

Vista is a resource hog in the first degree, a horrid OS for anyone who enjoys gaming online. XP on the otherhand is one of the best OS for folks who online game. Not sure where Windows 7 ranks compaired to XP, but it's darn good also. I recently have upgraded from Vista 32 bit, to Win 7 64 bit, and WOW what a difference!

Edited, Dec 3rd 2010 6:41am by blakkmantis