When I disabled norton antivirus to install drivers (like they said) I didnt bother re-enabling it .. When I re-enabled it today, EQ ran slow again. I disabled it and it runs fast (the instant I disabled it.

So in fact it turns out that norton antivirus slows down EQ significantly.

I still think its a pretty important to know thing .. but apparently doesnt have anything to do with the nvidia drivers it turns out.

Heh I found it weird that drivers would influence zone time.. I dunno about what happened to my friend tho, /shrug.


K I hope that clears things up .. Sorry about the mixup .. heh .. It seemed like the only thing that could have caused EQ to go faster were the drivers .. But looks like it was norton after all.


***UNEDITED MESSAGE:
New drivers were released may 14th.

I recently got around to downloading them (I have winxp)

y friend did as well (he has win2000)

What weve noticed in EQ:


We both zone MUCH faster.. It's incredible..


And for myself, I notice MUCH less graphic lag .. especially when UI windows like bags and inventory came up, there was like a 1/4 second lag but now theres no lag at all, and overall gameplay is much smoother.


If you have an nvidia card and WinXP/2000 .. DOWNLOAD THESE DRIVERS!


That is all.

Excellent!! :D

I wonder if it does anything for the "EQ is unplayable in windowed mode with Windows XP" thing. Downloading now.

This kinda should be in off topic....so il move it there with a moved link here so people read it :)


Tils

The new 44.03 mainly increase performance for the FX series of cards (of which there are very few). There's not much difference with older cards, in EQ or otherwise.

Well, I have a geforce 3 and the above are the results.

y friend has a geforce 4 and he got much faster zoning.


These are most definitely results of the new drivers ..

I have two systems with Ti4600s, and these drivers don't do anything noticeable for framerate or zoning. All the reports I've seen on the new drivers don't show any significant improvement with non-FX cards, however there are possible image quality and smoothness improvements. There's also a big uproar now about "cheats" in the 44.03 drivers to artificially enhance 3dMark 2003 benchmarks, which is still unsettled.

In your case, it's possible that uninstalling and reinstalling drivers corrected some registry settings on your system, or maybe you were upgrading from an outdated driver set which was slower.

I think its wishful thinking.

I have an EGA or whatever ti 4200 128 meg 4x agp. With the new drivers in XP pro I perform identically to what I have with the last 3 or so driver revisions, as well as moving from direct x 8.1 to 9 whatever. I've performed the same everytime through all upgrades, no better or worse, no crashes, no faster zoning, etc.

Hmm I did not uninstall the current ones all the way, though. I still might do that, uninstall and reinstall the 44.03 (though in the drivers window they all show 44.03, but some configuration thing might be left behind)

Yes I did uninstall my current drivers first.

That might have done something. I dont know how my friend did it though. I'll have to ask.

Norton Antivirus can really slow down and generally bork your system. It's unnecessary. If you don't do stupid things (open unexpected e-mail attachments, or download files from suspicious sites), you have nearly zero chance of getting a computer virus. And if you do do these things, Norton Antivirus won't necessarily protect you.

I had to delete norton antivirus because I would always get popups to upgrade my virus coverage or some crap and they would crash eq, even if norton was disabled.

i mainly use norton for kazaa

thx kazaa


ill just disable it while im not using kazaa

It is very rare for me to post this sort of information, and I expect that those of you who work within the IT field may have some knowledge of this, I thought it would be prudent to point out that due to the following you may be experiencing a slow down in operation of your operating system due to a problem with one of Microsoft's Security Patches.

QUOTE ON
Microsoft is revising a security patch for Windows XP systems with Service Pack 1 installed after customers complained that installing the patch slowed their systems to a crawl.

Originally released on April 16, the security bulletin addressed a buffer overrun vulnerability in the Windows kernel, which manages core services for the operating system such as allocating processor time and memory, as well as error handling.

Users reported that Windows XP can take up to ten seconds or even more to start an application after installation of the patch. Removing the patch brings system speed back to normal, Windows XP users wrote in dozens of postings on several online discussion boards.
In response to the performance issues, Microsoft has lowered the Windows Update ranking for the security patch so it does not automatically install on systems that have the auto-update feature enabled. Also, the Windows Update Web site no longer displays the patch as critical, but as recommended, according to a Microsoft spokesman who asked not to be named.
QUOTE OFF

THIS only applies if you are running Windows XP (or a direct derivative of) WITH SP1 (Service Pack 1).

Security patch 811493 (Security Update), when installed on computers with Windows XP and SP1 (Service Pack 1), whilest runing an antivirus program in the scan all files active mode, or "real time", will suffer a degredation of performance.

Further details in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 819634.

Reason:
- the security update, installs replacement kernal files which are a regression for those in the Service Pack 1.

So far, Microsoft have NOT re-issued this patch with updated or fixed files.

i mainly use norton for kazaa

Eh, bad karma coming back at you then.

There's a HUGE patch regarding Q811493....make a big difference. Hold on, let me find it, it's an unbundled, non-public patch that's made it s way out into the world, fixes a horrendous memory leak.

*dig dig dig dig*

www.warp2search.net/artic...?sid=11377 (http://www.warp2search.net/article.php?sid=11377)

The link is @$$-slow, but it actually has the patch on there, if you scroll downa little bit. My firewall here at work is playing problematic, so I can't tell you exactly where, but it's there.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
When I disabled norton antivirus to install drivers (like they said) I didnt bother re-enabling it .. When I re-enabled it today, EQ ran slow again. I disabled it and it runs fast (the instant I disabled it.

So in fact it turns out that norton antivirus slows down EQ significantly.
[/quote]

Primary reason for Norton (and many other antivirus softwares) slows down EQ is due to the default settings. It scans the exe each time it is used, as well as other files being opened, created, closed, accessed.

As for the newest 44.03 drivers, the previous 4x.xx series had a bug that may not have turned on/sped up the on-card fan (viewable with the FX-series cards) when playing EQ. The system wasnt recognizing EQ as a 3D game.

From personal experience (running a GF3-Ti500) I was reduced to using ver30.82 drivers since all the newer drivers(except for 44.03 now) caused both system and gaming problems.

If you don't reconfigure Norton, the real-time protection component will scan every single incoming packet to your computer.

That's pretty much the definition of a bottleneck.

Turn off real-time protection and you won't have any more problems.

Everyone used to joke that Microsoft's #1 solution to anything was "turn off virus scanning," well having worked at Microsoft for over five years, I can tell you that it solved a hell of a lot of problems :P

You worked at Microsoft? Hmmm....

/em casts a wary glance at Stormhaven

:)

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>If you don't reconfigure Norton, the real-time protection component will scan every single incoming packet to your computer.[/quote]

Falamil -

Are you sure this is Norton Anti-Virus? Or are you talking about Norton Internet Security?

My Norton Antivirus Corporate edition scans incoming packets (i think)


ive downloaded stuff on kazaa, and ive had viruses detected while the files were still being downloaded (not even fully files yet, let alone being accessed)


im not sure though .. i dont know all the specifics on virus scanning software

/shrug

Storm, Norton slows down a lot of things. It has for a long time. It's not just norton though. There are so many programs out there that run in the background and a lot of people never even know they have.

I would just disable Norton while you are doing anything that might be system intensive. That includes EQ. If you are surfing web sites with no concern to whether they might not be exactly safe or not...then leave it on. If you go to some place like e-bay, bank sites, any place that has info like your credit card numbers, SSN, bank accounts...leave on whatever protection you have.

Use some judgement, you don't want 10 virus/firewall/security programs running full swing at once. If you don't trust the site, then maybe you shouldn't be there.

Video drivers could potentially effect your perception of how fast you zone.

Before I got a new video card, I would actually be in zone for about 5-15 seconds before I could see anything. There was a few times I had been hit several times before I even could see. If your drivers, or card, don't work fast enough, you could experience something similar to this.

When you start having problems like you stated at first, generally virus/firewall/pop up blocking software is one of the easier things to check out though. A lot of that stuff makes even sending mail from a local mail client slower, since it scans before it even lets it get to the outbox.