Graphics card issue
 

Not sure if somebody can help but I just purchased a laptop with a decent graphics card but when I’m playing EQ, the computer tends to pause every 20-30 seconds for just a slight second in game and the only thing I could find as to why this may be happening is that my laptop has 2 graphics cards and EQ is using the basic one.

Any help would be great!

Thanks in advance

I'm not sure if this will help, but I have had a similar problem with an old computer with other games/programs. I tracked it down to some virus scan process being run like clockwork every 30 seconds.

Open the Windows task manager. Under the processes tab, sort by CPU (you may need to add these columns if they are not there already). As you play, watch it like a hawk for what processes are popping up at the top rows. You can also sort by CPU time to help find it. If it's frequently running, it's bound to accumulate CPU time and slowly make it's way top the top rows. I've also tracked some laggy processes to lots of disk reads/writes and these are also columns that you can add to the task manager list. There's also a resource monitor screen you can use in task manager that might help.

You might also try running the client in Windows XP compatibility mode. Navigate to your EQ folder and find eqgame.exe, right click it and select properties. Then, select the compatibility tab and find where it asks to run this program in compatibility mode. Check the box and then select from the drop down menu, Windows XP Service Pack 2. Apply the settings and continue to launch the game however you were doing so before. Do NOT launch the client directly from eqgame.exe however.

I had this same issue for the longest time, and ultimately this is what fixed it for me.

I have a similar setup (Intel onboard graphics + Nvidia "real" graphics). Make sure that you use the Nvidia program (or ATI, or whatever you have) to make your computer use your real graphics card to run EQ.

The onboard one will probably run fine (EQ is not a hardware-intensive game anymore), but because it's using your CPU to power the graphics, if anything else suddenly makes demands of the CPU (eg. an anti-virus scan) it will impact your graphical performance.

If you switch to using your real card it will be unaffected by such things, and your CPU can stick to doing CPU stuff.