Any EQ2 Isboxers out there? Need help!

Ok, I am at my last straw with EQ2 and ISBoxer. Well, ISBoxer is amazing, moreso EQ2. I am just going to lisy my issues and questions:

For those EQ2/ISB Users out there that use 3 or more accounts at once -
1. In the EQ2 in-game options, what reso do you use and is it set to windowed or full screen?
2. Do you use different resos on the slaves than you do the master?
3. How are your windows setup (i.e. Main on top and 4 below, main on one screen and the 5 slaves o n the other etc etc)
4. Do you use multiple monitors or just one?
5. Do you keep the main character/instance at a higher reso than the slaves?
6. Do you distribute the CPU Cores or on that same page in ISBoxer do anything with the "Limit framerate in foreground" and background?
7. Other than the default settings in the qizard (other than hotkeys and macros) do you make any changes that would effect framerate?
8. Is there anything you do in EQ2 game that you found gets better frasmerate.

I ask these questions because I am having a horrible time with framerates in EQ2. With every setting turned to minimums in game, my main instance/toon fluctuates between 4 and 40 FPS... I am running 6 instances on one screen (1 on top, 5 below) I have tried 4 other ways also (2 monitors, 5 slaves on the side, behind etc). My computer can 5 box WoW all on Ultra settings and Rift with no lag whatsoever. So I know I have the right computer setup, it is very uber.

I have used multiple screen resos, windowed and full screen. I have assigned just about every combination of cores to instances and FPS limiting...

but to no avail. No matter what the settings I still get a totally fluctuating FPS on my main toon... usually my slaves are just fine when they are considered background... but the main insance seems to always have issues throttling between as low as 4 FPS then like 5 seconds later going up to 40 FPS then going back doe and then back up...and this isnt me moving around, this is staying still looking at a wall in game (where i sshould get the highest FPS).

HERE IS THE PART THAT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY: - If I load up 5 instances of EQ2 on my computer WITHOUT using ISBoxer/Innerspace and put them all in windowed mode and the lowest graphic settings I get a very steady 35 FPS on my main.... and I am talking a fluctuation of maybe 2-3 FPS tops. WTF?! I am completely dumbfounded!

Anyone help me with this? It makes absolutely no f'n sense... to me at least. Maybe I am missing something very basic /shrug

[lax]

It would really help me, to help you, to see your configuration. See the sticky that says "How to share your configuration for better support".

It would also help to know what version of Windows you are using, what video card(s) you are using and how many monitors. I see from your previous posts that you are using Windows 7 64-bit, and an ATI Radeon 5700-series video card (but no specifics as to which card, or if you have multiple of them). I also see that you have a quad-core CPU (also no specifics).

While I don't play EQ2, I can give you relevant details on all of your questions....

1. Windowed vs Full screen in the game is probably not relevant to framerate. ISBoxer forces it into a window anyway. However, the higher the resolution the more GPU power it will take to render. What it's set to in the game is mostly irrelevant, unless the game is set to full screen mode. If it's set to windowed mode, EQ2 bases the resolution on the window size.

2. 99% of ISBoxer users, in any game, use Insant Swapping. This syncs the resolution of the game windows. EQ2 users in particular would notice that, with Instant Swapping disabled, any window smaller than 1024x768 will NOT render correctly due to the design of the game. EQ2 has a minimum resolution that will work correctly with their scaling algorithm, and when ISBoxer forces the resolution to be smaller, EQ2 messes up display-wise. (I sent them an e-mail about that years ago, regarding WinEQ 2 at the time, and got no response. I don't think they care, because the game usually prevents this behavior from occurring via the minimum size) Therefore, I will tell you that it'd be very rare for an EQ2 player to have a layout with small windows and Instant Swap disabled. However, doing so would indeed "improve FPS", potentially by a massive amount. Someone recently told me that they fixed this scaling issue in EQ2 by adjusting EQ2's Letterbox setting, but I haven't tested that personally yet.

3 and 4. There are MASSIVE performance hits that are possible if you use multiple monitors, particularly if you use Windows XP as opposed to Vista or 7, or if the monitors are powered by separate video cards. If you use 2 monitors, and they are both powered by the same video card, and you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, this is mostly irrelevant to your framerate except as covered by #2. If they are powered by different cards, OR you are on Windows XP or earlier, you should disable "Cross-monitor Swapping" during the Window Layout Wizard to avoid these performance penalties. The penalty comes when a window from one monitor/card is moved onto another monitor/card, in the specific scenarios described. This is also explained in the following guide: http://isboxer.com/index.php/guides/21-using-multiple-video-cards. Since you are using Windows 7, this paragraph ONLY applies to you if you are using MULTIPLE VIDEO CARDS.

5. This is the same exact question as #2

6. If you're having performance issues that you want to solve, then yes these are good candidates. One thing that might be important is that some games include their own FPS limiting. I don't know the specific details of each game's FPS limiting options, so I can't tell you much about EQ2's, but I believe it has such a feature at least for in the background -- but that wouldn't harm the foreground (active) window. Anyway, you want to use EITHER the ISBoxer FPS limiting, OR the EQ2 FPS limiting. You can uncheck the Foreground FPS limit in ISBoxer to be sure that it's not contributing to the problem. As far as CPU, try doing a round-robin sort of assignment as I suggested to you for RIFT. But in this case you have 5 slots for your 4 cores, so at least one core is going to be working with more than one window.

7. No other ISBoxer settings should even apply here...

8. Set the video settings to Best Performance.

but to no avail. No matter what the settings I still get a totally fluctuating FPS on my main toon... usually my slaves are just fine when they are considered background... but the main insance seems to always have issues throttling between as low as 4 FPS then like 5 seconds later going up to 40 FPS then going back doe and then back up...and this isnt me moving around, this is staying still looking at a wall in game (where i sshould get the highest FPS).

If you're staring at a wall in the game, and the FPS fluctuates down to 4 and back up to 40, back down, and back up again, it's probably not related to monitors, resolutions, etc. Those things wouldn't cause wide swings in FPS when staring at a wall, they would give you poor overall performance and it would stay like that. (you can stop messing with your window layouts if this is the behavior you are trying to correct)

This sounds related only to CPUs and FPS limiting. To start with, this is expected behavior if your PC has CPU Throttling enabled -- here's how to disable it or make sure it's not enabled: http://isboxer.com/index.php/guides/79-guide-howto-disable-cpu-throttling. If CPU Throttling is enabled, then FPS limiting will cause the CPU power to increase, then decrease, then increase, then decrease, just as you have described. That happens because when FPS limiting kicks in, the OS detects that it can lower the CPU power because it's not hammered anymore. Then when the CPU power drops, FPS limiting drops off because it wants your FPS to increase to meet your desired FPS, not decrease it... so the CPU gets hammered, and the OS detects that it needs to raise the CPU power again.... thus resulting in FPS limiting kicking in again, the CPU power dropping again, which drops FPS limiting again, the CPU power increases again, and so on (rinse and repeat).

Similar issues can be experienced depending on the design of the game, if it's on multiple CPU cores. I think EQ2 has a multithreaded or multi-core option? I'm not 100% certain on that. If it does, you could try messing with that as well.

Thanks for the response.

Everything you suggested i have done numerous times... I probabbly shouldnt have listed all that other stuff and only :

HERE IS THE PART THAT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY: - If I load up 5 instances of EQ2 on my computer WITHOUT using ISBoxer/Innerspace and put them all in windowed mode and the lowest graphic settings I get a very steady 35 FPS on my main.... and I am talking a fluctuation of maybe 2-3 FPS tops. WTF?! I am completely dumbfounded!

So regardless of everything I posted previous to that statement.... the fact is this: With 5 instances in ISBoxer, all at minimum graphics settings, I get a fluctuation of 4-40 FPS that goes up and down constantly and will actually sit at like 7 DPS for 5-10 seconds at a time. With 5 instances of EQ2, all in windowed mode, and no ISBoxer/Innerspace running I get a consistent 35FPS with little or no fluctuation.... That is why I am totally confused. It runs like a champ without ISBoxer, and with ISBoxer it is severely crippled. Hence why I tthink it must be some settings in ISBoxer I either haven't eneabled or didnt' enable right. I will post all the settings later... thanks Lax, you rock.

[lax]

You pretty much just said what I was going to say in the first place, which is that all your numbered points were kind of a waste of time and don't relate to the fluctuating. If you ignored my CPU Throttling link at the bottom that's the only part that comes close to what you're saying about wild fluctuations

Also, if you're playing with the streaming client, it might help to let it download the full client

No. puter set to 100% and not streaming.