Why have the servers been crashing like mad as of late? To alot of people including me server stability is one of the most important things you expect for your 15$ a month.
LOL@ Video or hard drive lag.... I know you love to champion NC here, and you spend the majority of your L2 expierence posting on the boards than you do actually playing the game (which is shown by your MASSIVE post count, but extremely low level) bottom line, servers have been having alot of problems lately, just again, bartz hiccuped then crashed. GF retail! One of the last things you offered (better server stability) is now in question.
You computer swapping stuff to the paging file because you rather pay for L2 instead of more RAM does exist.
Upgrade you RAM and/or video card and you will not lag.
Also, set a big paging file and avoid shutting off you computer every night.
Computers that restart somewhat often swap alot more often than those that don't. When you keep it on all the time everything that loads that isn't accessed often it swapped to the hard drive and there is more RAM for applications like Lineage II. If you must shut you computer off often, opt for hibernation and utilize power management techniques that way the swapped out services/etc. remain swapped out. You will only have to restart when you exhaust you virtual memory which can take months if you have adequate amount of RAM and know what you're doing when you set your paging file settings. I once went over 3 months without a restart having EverQuest running 24/7 except when there was a patch, and I hardly ever restart my computer when L2 is running. Just last week I finally exhausted my paging file on my computer with only 512 MB RAM (buff box) and had to restart that one. It had been months otherwise (only graphics lag due to a cheap gfx card in it).
Trensharo, Please don't speak of such things that you are not familare with or simple don't know for certain.
Hardrive "lag" (where lag is used loosely as it's definition seems to roll whichever way people seem to want, however it does somewhat fit, as when a machine is waiting for a hardrive to provide the nessary data, that is indeed a form of lag, no different then a computer waiting for the server or network to provide the needed data before proceeding)
More ram = Not solving the problem.
More ram can actually = poorer performance depending on the amount and the system/chipset and several other factors.
Also suggestion to NEVER shut the machine down is a horrid suggestion.
Even with the fastest Hardrive configurations, even i "Hardrive" Lag in one way or another, course i have to really pay attention to it, then again, Lineage2 is a bit of a quirky program to start with that is known to have several issues related to excessive memory useage or poor optimisations in place.
Actually i should update my System specs, they are below my current ones... (give me a second)
Running anything over 2gb of ram for lineage2 is, well, pointless. Trust me i know, and even more so pointless, hell even worse if your running a windows 32bit OS, you just waited a whole pile of cash if your over 2gb with a 32bit os.
Video cards, even with 2x 8800's in SLI or 2x 2900's in crossfire, the frame rate is well, low depending on the orientation/location and resolution. However, guranteed, you won't see any Video related LAG in general play, but on a seige, or massive epic raids, it's still highly unpredictable.
And you completely ignored the orginal LAG, as in internet related lag, even with the fastest Fiber Pipes, depending on other network weather conditions, you could be ending up with worse results when someone still stuck on 9600bps dialup.
You should really look into the whole "swap File System".... Even though setting a swap file size of 4096mb with an intial and maximum, INCLUDING placeing this one a seperate independant drive, on it's own partition, so zero fragmentation occurs, the results are still unpredictable and "lag" for hardrive access will still be there.
Why is it highly suggested to completely shut down a computer? Wear and tear, yes, even with current hibernation, fans and hardrives and motors and such, wear out, has hours, more hours the more likely it'll fail sooner. You don't leave your car running, idling, in the garage, nor does anyone run thier TV day and night (specially Plasmas) on end.
Sure there is a good reason not to constantly shutdown/startup, it's called overdoing it as well, but definitely a shutdown for 8 or more hours at time that it's not going to be in use is highly recommended.
Hibernation and Sleep modes typically don't completely shutdown all the fans, Also some cases, specially with machine over 6 months old, machines that even shut the fans down and throttle back the CPU or other components, tend to get exceptionally warm in this state.
Windows XP swap file system automatically removes and readjusts the swap file depending on the applications used. If multiple applications are in use, the swap file useage increases dramtically as the primary programs and nessary services in use are typically prioritized for physical RAM, as ram is freed up depending on the available percentage (always keeping a bit free for several reasons).
Vista is even more brilliant, while some people don't actually realize what's going on and Claim that "vista is sucking up a pile of ram, [censored], it sucks".. they should really get a clue...
The system actually automatically adjusts itself depending on the installed ammount, and then consumes a considerable ammount, but not for itself, it's precache the most used programs starts and whatnot, Usually it takes a good solid week before vista is familare with your usually tasks, by that time, things instantly open and run smooth as silk.
The swap file system your refering to, i'm not actually sure of, but it's similare to that of predated/unsupported/useless 9x days.
You're right Pvr, I put another 2x512 MB of ram additional to my 2x1024 (to keep dualchannel) and having 3 GB did not improve loading times compared to 2 GB, not a second less. Just swap grew larger if I did not set it to exact filesize.
It was all only about how fast disks were able to feed information - and I have 2x Seagates, not a really slow disks, in raid0 which improves reading times even further. Computer was still waiting for disks to deliver necessary information to memory. And lineage2 files are NOT small - some texture files can have up to 900 MB. Imagine loading that file onto memory to decompress it and send those textures to video ram and you get to need to use swap no matter what.
BTW for windows to swap application it's just enough to minimize it. It will swap and leave memory for other applications. That's how windows work.
And no to hibernating only. Preventive restart when everything is screwing up is useful. Not to mention when putting computer on standby or hibernation mode, nothing changes from point of memory allocation - it stays just like it was before. Standby just keeps memory voltage so that data do not loose there, while hibernation dumps the whole memory image to harddrive (note large file hiberfil.sys) so memory does not need power anymore.
When your computer wakes up, you got memory just as it wasd before - all applications eat their amount of memory, all leaks etc. are there.
Windows puts everything that hasn't been on focus for 30 seconds to swap... it's known. Even if you have enough RAM to have Lineage 2 and your browser at the same time, when you'll go back to the browser after a while, it will take a hell of time to come back from swap because Windows is too ******ed to manage memory properly.
Lineage 2 takes a lot of RAM, that's a fact.
However that doesn't explain the numerous AI Server crashes that occur on Teon. But I'm sure those who were killing Valakas appreciated the full HP Valakas that came back after another AI Server crash.
Whatever...
I don't know if the unkilled pigs become too cumbersome for the server or if some guy reboots the AI Server to get more RBs, but it's rather annoying.
IMO, for Windows XP being the age it is, i think it's memory handling capabilities is quite decent...
Vista however is god in this arena today..
As enless a program is out of focus, completely (pretty much HAS to be minimised and unused for several hours on end), then it oventually gets moved over into the swap space with only the very basics loaded (AKA, i can minimise lineage2, let it sit for several hours, load it up and instantly getting a picture, however the moment i try and say, standup from a sell shop, or move the view, then it's like lineage2 starting up, loading everything again)