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48 Box Unplayable Performance: Troubleshooting for 12 hours.

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Boxes

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Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2020 12:39 pm

Post Sun Nov 22, 2020 4:19 pm

48 Box Unplayable Performance: Troubleshooting for 12 hours.

Greetings,

I'm a 48 boxer on EQ that has been 48 boxing without using ISBoxer. I've learned the error in my ways and I am extremely excited to join this community and start ISBoxing! There is a catch though, unfortunately. Every time I load my crew with ISBoxer, I am having extremely poor performance and my entire machine turns into a slide show. Even tabbing out into Windows is extremely laggy, to the point where it takes ~10 seconds to do a single click.

Without ISBoxer, I run smooth as silk. I average 10-20% in both CPU and GPU utilization. I really want to utilize a few of the features of ISBoxer, however. I totally understand that some features would cause extreme performance issues for my setup, which is why I want to ensure that ISBoxer is tuned to force-disable those performance-hungry features so I can continue to 48 box in happiness :-).

Goal: Just use the software to launch my groups and use hotkeys to switch between windows. I don't want any tiled windows or anything fancy, as I don't believe my machine can handle rendering all 48 accounts at once. I also absolutely do not want ISBoxer touching CPU Affinity or anything FPS related.
Problem: I've spent literally 12 hours at this point troubleshooting (each config change takes ~45min to load and test). I've attempted numerous configurations and each one results in horrendous lag of 0.1-0.5 FPS and turns my machine into a slide show.

Before anyone asks -- Yes, I am exporting my config to Inner Space before relaunching all of my clients. It would be a great question though :-).

CPU Strategy: I've literally tried every single one. I would prefer not using this though and let eqclient.ini handle CPUAffinity#=-1.
I've tried disabling and enabling foreground/background FPS on a per-character slot basis.
I made a regex find/replace pattern to fix the fact that ISBoxer appears to have overwritten a ton of my CPUAffinity#=-1 entries in my INI files.
I've also deleted all of the virtual eqclient.ini's, edited the base eqclient.ini and relaunched to generate new ones (I think that is how its working).
Window Layout: I've been using "Stacked Full Screen" with "Enable Swapping: False" and "Instant Swapping: False".

Something is making me believe that ISBoxer is forcing every one of my windows to render like they were "Foreground" and that is what is killing my performance, however this is just a hunch. I don't know what is going on.

At this point I've wiped and rebuilt my configuration from scratch twice, which isn't fun with 48 toons.
My configuration XML: https://zerobin.net/?2cfbdfcca844e666#z ... /DWZ7f4xU=

I am a paying customer and purchased a 2 year license in hopes to force myself to figure this software out. I've thrown 12 hours of my life at it this weekend and have thus far failed, so I'm really hoping that I can get some customer support on these forums. I cannot stress enough how much I want to reap the benefits of using this software, as you might be able to imagine.

Thanks for your time, take care!
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bob

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League of Extraordinary Multiboxers

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Post Sun Nov 22, 2020 5:13 pm

Re: 48 Box Unplayable Performance: Troubleshooting for 12 hours.

Boxes wrote:Without ISBoxer, I run smooth as silk. I average 10-20% in both CPU and GPU utilization.

And what are the numbers when using ISBoxer?

Boxes wrote:CPU Strategy: I've literally tried every single one. I would prefer not using this though and let eqclient.ini handle CPUAffinity#=-1.

One of the options is No Strategy, Let Windows Do it. This would cover this requirement.

Boxes wrote: I also absolutely do not want ISBoxer touching CPU Affinity or anything FPS related.

As per above. Also you can set the FPS limiter for Foreground and Background to 9999. Then there is effectively no limiter (well with todays available hardware anyway). If you prefer the negative settings, you can set it to 0. Make sure you also update InnerSpace's configuration if setting ISBoxer to 0 though.

Boxes wrote:I made a regex find/replace pattern to fix the fact that ISBoxer appears to have overwritten a ton of my CPUAffinity#=-1 entries in my INI files.

ISBoxer does not change the Affinity setting of the EQ files. If using the Quick Setup Wizard, each of the characters in ISBoxer would have ended up with a different EQCLient-CHARNAME.ini file, which is only used when loading with ISBoxer. You might have changed this? That said, the Affinity setting in the ini files is written by the game, not ISBoxer. I've double checked to make sure! Plus, if ISBoxer were to amend these files, it does tell you, as the only time it does anything like this would be on Export to InnerSpace, and there is a specific popup where it will ask to amend anything it thinks needs amending.

Boxes wrote:Something is making me believe that ISBoxer is forcing every one of my windows to render like they were "Foreground" and that is what is killing my performance, however this is just a hunch. I don't know what is going on.

That is pretty much how it works in order to broadcast keystrokes (and if you untick the option for this and it is needed, then you no longer have broadcast capabilities). It also synchronizes the resolution, if this might also impact you (possibly not if you have Instant Swapping turned off).
Generally the way to deal with this to make sure there are no other things going on that might be impacting performance.
Another option is for EQ is to stop rendering on background windows. You can use EQPlayNice for this, but is does have drawbacks. https://isboxer.com/wiki/EQPlayNice#EQPlayNice Better to figure out whether there is something else you can change though.

Boxes wrote:I've also deleted all of the virtual eqclient.ini's, edited the base eqclient.ini and relaunched to generate new ones (I think that is how its working).
ISboxer will copy the base eqclient.ini file when you create a team using the Quick Setup Wizard. If you delete them and launch the team, the Game will create the new files. ISBoxer just repoints the games to a specific file name.


p.s. I should point you to https://isboxer.com/wiki/HOWTO:Tweak_your_framerate It may have a few pointers of things to look out for.
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Boxes

Posts: 5

Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2020 12:39 pm

Post Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:18 pm

Re: 48 Box Unplayable Performance: Troubleshooting for 12 hours.

Salutations Bob,

Thank you very much for taking the time to provide articulate responses to my questions. You will find my answers and additional thoughts in-line below.

bob wrote:
Boxes wrote:Without ISBoxer, I run smooth as silk. I average 10-20% in both CPU and GPU utilization.

And what are the numbers when using ISBoxer?

20-30% CPU and 30-50% GPU, however the key takeaway here is that my entire OS is lagging to hell now. It's pretty strange.
Image

bob wrote:
Boxes wrote:CPU Strategy: I've literally tried every single one. I would prefer not using this though and let eqclient.ini handle CPUAffinity#=-1.

One of the options is No Strategy, Let Windows Do it. This would cover this requirement.

That is the one I'm presently testing with. It gives me literally zero difference regarding performance than the other two, which is strange to me.

bob wrote:
Boxes wrote: I also absolutely do not want ISBoxer touching CPU Affinity or anything FPS related.

As per above. Also you can set the FPS limiter for Foreground and Background to 9999. Then there is effectively no limiter (well with todays available hardware anyway). If you want to be really sure, you can set it to 0. Make sure you also update InnerSpace's configuration if setting ISBoxer to 0 though.

Setting the FPS limiter to 0 within ISBoxer Suite sets the values to "10" on my end. Regardless, I unchecked all the boxes for FPS limiting within ISBoxer Toolkit, then saved+exported. Unchecking this also suffices correct?

bob wrote:
Boxes wrote:I made a regex find/replace pattern to fix the fact that ISBoxer appears to have overwritten a ton of my CPUAffinity#=-1 entries in my INI files.

ISBoxer does not change the Affinity setting of the EQ files. If using the Quick Setup Wizard, each of the characters in ISBoxer would have ended up with a different EQCLient-CHARNAME.ini file, which is only used when loading with ISBoxer. You might have changed this? That said, the Affinity setting in the ini files is written by the game, not ISBoxer. I've double checked to make sure!
Yeah, I noticed that the eqclient-charname(servername).ini had incorrect cpu affinity settings. It's quite possible that a i/o conflict from 48-boxing out of the same folder caused this, as it's definitely wiped my eqclient.ini settings in the past. This is part of the reason I want to use ISBoxer :-).

bob wrote:
Boxes wrote:Something is making me believe that ISBoxer is forcing every one of my windows to render like they were "Foreground" and that is what is killing my performance, however this is just a hunch. I don't know what is going on.

That is pretty much how it works in order to broadcast keystrokes. It also synchronizes the resolution, if this might also impact you (possibly not if you have Instant Swapping turned off).
Generally the way to deal with this to make sure there are no other things going on that might be impacting performance.
Another option is for EQ is to stop rendering on background windows. You can use EQPlayNice for this, but is does have drawbacks. https://isboxer.com/wiki/EQPlayNice#EQPlayNice Better to figure out whether there is something else you can change though.
I'm using something similar yet more powerful than EQPlayNice under normal circumstances to achieve zero draw calls to background windows, which takes me from about 60-80% CPU and 80-90% GPU (not using ISBoxer) down to what I mentioned above. Is there a way to disable the keystroke broadcasting functionality (I literally do not require this)? The only hotkeys I want are for setting a character to foreground.

Also, I just tested the following related to this:
I made a new window layout, with 1 big window and the other 47 on the bottom and right of it (corner/tiled i think its called). I disabled instant-swapping also. I was active on my 1 character watching in-game performance while I was loading everything. I got about 23-24 chars into the game while the other 23-24 clients were still loading. Main window had 60FPS (my max) and absolutely zero input delay/frame lag. Once I got to about 35 characters actually loaded into the world, I dropped to about 20FPS on my main window. By the time 48 were loaded, I am sitting at 0.5-0.9 FPS. This is roughly the same as when I was doing Stacked Full Screen, which is extremely non-intuitive, as I thought if I had 1 window visible the others would get backgrounded. Your explanation makes a lot of sense and I really appreciate it. My main question now is, can I turn that functionality off so only the primary window thinks it is foregrounded?

bob wrote:
Boxes wrote:I've also deleted all of the virtual eqclient.ini's, edited the base eqclient.ini and relaunched to generate new ones (I think that is how its working).
ISboxer will copy the base eqclient.ini file when you create a team using the Quick Setup Wizard. If you delete them and launch the team, the Game will create the new files. ISBoxer just repoints the games to a specific file name.
Thank you for this explanation as well, this clarifies a lot!

PS - I'm about to read that link you posted about increasing performance/fps, just to ensure you guys don't know something that I don't. However, I will say that to get my setup working I've already done an incredible amount of optimization, including turning off character model rendering via "StickMode" in eqclient.ini (it turns everyone into a stick figure).

Again, Bob, I really appreciate your help. Thank you very much. I really hope I can figure this out today.
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bob

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League of Extraordinary Multiboxers

Posts: 4585

Joined: Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:14 am

Location: In the dining room, with the lead pipe.

Post Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:42 pm

Re: 48 Box Unplayable Performance: Troubleshooting for 12 hours.

Boxes wrote:I'm using something similar yet more powerful than EQPlayNice
Depending on how this is being achieved, it may conflict with ISBoxer.


Boxes wrote:Is there a way to disable the keystroke broadcasting functionality

Well, it's not really about disabling Broadcasting functionality, but rather make game believe it is foreground option on a character set.
Image
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Boxes

Posts: 5

Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2020 12:39 pm

Post Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:58 pm

Re: 48 Box Unplayable Performance: Troubleshooting for 12 hours.

bob wrote:
Boxes wrote:I'm using something similar yet more powerful than EQPlayNice
Depending on how this is being achieved, it may conflict with ISBoxer.


Boxes wrote:Is there a way to disable the keystroke broadcasting functionality

Well, it's not really about disabling Broadcasting functionality, but rather make game believe it is foreground option on a character set.
Image



Wow, I feel dumb. I glanced over that setting probably 10 times and it didn't click until now :-) I'm trying it now, will post back if this works. It generally takes like 30-45min to load my crew. Thanks again Bob!!!

Edit: This definitely broke the corner/tiled window functionality, however I don't need that so it's OK. I'm loading right now with Stacked Full Screen.
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Boxes

Posts: 5

Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2020 12:39 pm

Post Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:05 pm

Re: 48 Box Unplayable Performance: Troubleshooting for 12 hours.

This made absolutely zero difference with my performance issue unfortunately. What's even stranger... I just streamed via Discord to 2 friends who watched the entire thing unfold. The Discord stream ran flawlessly, even while my entire OS GUI appeared to become completely unresponsive and EQ clients got down to <1 FPS. Task manager took 10-15 seconds to bring to foreground and was (Not Responding) for ~30 seconds while it populated my performance charts. My friends watched it all unfold and I was verifying that they weren't lagging by moving my mouse to certain positions while talking to them.

This is one of the strangest performance problems I've ever encountered.
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Boxes

Posts: 5

Joined: Sun Nov 22, 2020 12:39 pm

Post Mon Nov 23, 2020 4:49 pm

Re: 48 Box Unplayable Performance: Troubleshooting for 12 hours.

Just wanted to update this thread and say that I gave up last night and requested a refund after speaking with Lax on Discord. This thread should be considered closed/unresolved.
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jilazee

Posts: 14

Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2015 11:32 am

Post Tue Nov 24, 2020 4:11 pm

Re: 48 Box Unplayable Performance: Troubleshooting for 12 hours.

Boxes are you using <redacted>?

I'm running 54 toons without a problem using ISBoxer.

I only use ISBoxer for CPU managment and virtual files. I don't use any other features really. It's important to ensure that you don't have any deidcation when selecting your CPU strat. I have front set to 60 FPS and background set to 20. Anything lower than 20 and the toons won't respond as they should. I run everything from a single installation.

I'd also highly advise using <redacted>. This helped me a lot with some FPS issue.

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