f13.net

I've not been playing EVE (and am not really able to access the EVE forums at the moment -- stupid firewalls) but EVE's been behaving weirdly for me when I log in to change skills.

It's slow. Horrendously slow. We're talking obvious graphics lag at the username/password splash screen. I haven't changed squat about my video setup in months, but I've been training long skills and I just noticed it a few days ago.

I'll try the eve-o technical support forums later, but since I'm so out of date (other than routinely applying patches) has there been any changes in the last few months that mgiht cause problems?

That login screen is absolutely awful, my PC is pretty wicked and sometimes it lags the shit out of me, too.

That planet rotates and there may be volumetric fog effects that rotate with it, too.  How good is your graphics card?  Hit CTRL-Shift-Alt-M for the FPS monitor, see what it says.  And/or log into the game and go to a place that has dust clouds, see if your computer slows to a crawl.

Do you have a dual-monitor setup?

The login screen grinds the crap out of my PC too. Once I get my character logged in things are ok though.

The login screen is horrendously processor-intensive for everyone.

Clearing your cache might help.

Well, the problem persisted into the game. (I logged into change skills and needed to fly around to pick up some new ones). I turned off Windowed mode and it went away.

Which irks me, as I prefer playing it in windowed mode.

That's very odd. I run in windowed mode with no problem and my PC is horribly obsolete. After one of the patches they recommended that people with older PCs with less memory reduce or eliminate their caching. You might give that a try.

I've got three gigs of RAM, although now that I think of it my cache was set to "low" for some reason. I moved it back to normal, didn't seem to help. My video card is really old, but not that bad -- 128 MB 9800  Radeon Pro, which I'm still meaning to replace with a specific Nvidia card, since realizing that while ATI can make good cards, apparently they hire monkeys to do their drivers.

My try resetting the cache to a higher value. I've never had a problem in windowed mode before.

Hmm, my graphics card is a little newer but it's still an ATI. It's a 1650. I run on low cache because I've only got a gig of memory.

Edit: Are you using the Omega driver? Since I discovered those I never use the official ATI drivers anymore.

I'm similarly specced (HIS 9600XT 256MB) and remember having the same issue, but hazy on the specifics. Why I asked about dual monitors is that when I have part of a windowed EVE client less than an inch in my secondary monitor framerate drops on both screens to what you described.

I don't recall doing anything miraculous to fix the issue you are having other than reinstalling the game client or updating the drivers. I think the latter is the safest bet. I have used both Omega and the official Catalyst drivers on and off, but can't seem to ever lean on both of them, as when one has failed me the other has arrived with a solution. The current ATI drivers seem pretty darn good in my opinion. The first year or three my card tended to kick the bucket randomly and the only diagnosis was the card is faulty from birth, but it's been ok for a long while now even while overclocked. I'm guessing the Saudi investment is paying off.

I might try upgrading my drivers. OTOH, I've been getting odd Blue Screen of Death crashes the last couple of months -- it's obviously some driver conflict somewhere, but can't figure out where.

I'll update the Catalyst stuff again, see if that helps. It's getting close to time for a new machine anyways.