Greetings, I am relatively new to EVE. Been playing for about two or three months until my PC died, and it is permanent. So, I’m stuck on this here old and low-end (even for its time) laptop, here are some of the specs:
CPU: Intel B960
RAM: 4gb DDR3
GPU: Radeon HD7400M
Integrated graphics are something like Intel 4000 or that kind, very old and underpowered.
Buying a new PC is not an option for the next three or four months, but like any new player I just can’t get enough of EVE. This was my plan: run it on the lowest possible settings, with everything disabled, on the lowest playable resolution.
But no, altering ingame options gave me 26 FPS at most, very unstable and choppy, and it also heats up my laptop to about 70 degrees quite quick.
So, is there any way to tweak EVE client to even lower graphics? Like with some kind of graphical mod that, say, disables rendering completely everything but the UI? Or can it be that turning graphics down won’t help, and it’s just my CPU or HDD are so underpowered?
Please, help me stay connected to EVE!
You can login, manage your skill queue, chat with corp mates, etc… you should only experience problems when you undock and put some stress on the graphics subsystem. With the discrete Radeon graphics chip you should be in better shape than most machines of that vintage - make sure you’re actually using a Radeon graphics driver and not the windows generic driver. FPS isn’t as important in Eve as other games - you have a 1 second server tick so nothing happens faster than that. Try clearing out any background processes and see if that helps - use your task manager to see what’s running. Also get a can of compressed air (or a compressor) and clean out the cooling vents on the laptop - after 8 years they may be blocked by dust.
My game is running on dedicated GPU and drivers are not outdated (they are as new as they can get for an ancient GPU).
And yes, all background processes are killed when starting EVE, that was the first step.
And also yes, I know how to clean laptops, and this one was cleaned relatively recently (about three months ago).
It’s not the low FPS that bothers me, I can handle it, It’s the freezing and unstable FPS, and overheating (although some may say that 70-80 degrees is OK for old laptops).
I just thought that there are some tweaks outside the ingame options that new players don’t know about.
I don’t think there is anything you can do with settings. A memory upgrade is fairly inexpensive and may help but - whether it’s worth it depends on how long you intend to keep the old machine.
Inexpensive, yes, but is it really the RAM that is limiting laptop’s performance? Is 4gb not enough for casual solo PvE (sec missions, comb sites, etc)? Not even thinking about something big like massive PvP, of course.
What windows are you running on it? Win 7/10 running on 4 GB of ram can easily lead to weird issues during higher load due to the ram running out.
But looking at the processor, it may be as good as it gets with it.
It’s Win 7. But what is considered “higher load” in EVE, exactly? So I would know what to avoid.
Yeah, that CPU is real low-end, even for its time.
Simply undocking and moving to a dynamic environment from the static hangar environment will put pressure on an older machine - the art department has been busy upgrading the game visuals over the past few years. With 4Gb RAM, you’ll be swapping stuff to/from disk which slows the machine down even more. Upgrading the memory only makes sense if you have 64 bit windows and can run the 64 bit client. For the $20 cost of a 4Gb DDR3 sodimm it may be worth a try.
With old machines like yours, even having multiple pages open in a browser can be considered tough. Windows 7 uses about 2 GB of ram on idle (depending on the programs running in the background), and while it can limit the amount it uses, it’s still going to be an issue.
If the machine runs out of ram, it will start swapping information in and out of your normal storage to keep the most relevant information in ram. Any extra thing your CPU has to do, will bog it down even further. What you want is a situation where it’s impossible to run out of ram to make sure your CPU is as free as possible to be able to keep up with the game. I’d also suggest checking your power-settings to make sure you are getting everything out of the CPU.
Downgrading resolution to 1280x7xx might help
Going to task manager (while game is running)and seeing what is pegged to 100% can pinpoint bottleneck.
Okay, great news everyone, looks like my problems kinda solved themselves.
The key was:
- enabling something called “Simple Communications PCI-controller”, which was disabled for some reason (it is a PCI slot thing of some sort, so I guess it helped this laptop communicate with the dedicated GPU better)
- downgrading resolution to 1600 by something (this resolution used to be not fullscreen, by the way)
- running 32-bit client
Now I get stable 60 fps even during combat and while zoomed all the way in. All the graphics settings are lowest/disabled, of course. So, thanks to everyone’s help, I will be able to play EVE, even with relatively high FPS.
See you in game!
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