Seeking Advice for Optimizing Computer

[SophieTheEnchantress]

Hey. So, my laptop went belly up on Thanksgiving, My brother helped me find a new one, which I have now used for about a month.

My old laptop ran Windows 10 and the LOTRO 32 bit client. My new laptop runs Windows 11 and the LOTRO 64 bit client.

The new laptop uses an Intel® Core™ i5-12500H Processor running at 2.5 GHz, whatever that means. Graphics are integrated. I know that sucks but I am poor.

I am not a computer person and continue to wage mortal combat with Windows 11 and the new computer. OneDrive is gone...I hope. Many Microsoft programs are gone...I hope.

LOTRO often makes my computer fan rev super high. I found and installed a program called Core Temp to sort of monitor that, but it does not run quite right.

Every so often, LOTRO goes white screen and crashes. The time between the white screen and the client crash usually takes a minute or two. During this delay, my character remains active in the game world which resulted in some defeats.

When LOTRO goes wonky I launch Task Manager to see which demon is causing trouble. XBox Game Bar always seemed to run right before a crash so I deleted that...I hope.

To keep the computer from getting too hot, I did this thing that set the CPU to 70%. I have no idea if it worked.

My firewall occasionally catches a demon attempting to talk on the internet. When this happens, I look up the program. I managed to kill some more demons that way...I hope.

In LOTRO itself, I set the graphics to very low, DirectX 9, object draw distance to high, maximum frame rate to 50, engine speed to low, and turned off all particle effects.

Even with all that, I get a lot of fan running and 'lag' type stuff: little hangs, stutters, the occasional rubber band snap, quest givers not responding for up to 30 seconds, and weird drawing errors. A couple nights ago, one of my characters became stuck inside/under a flight of stairs. I also get regular sound popping and cut sounds. This often occurs with a brief movement freeze or stutter.

Is there anything else I can do to make LOTRO run smoothly? According to my brother, this laptop is much more powerful than the previous one but it runs LOTRO somewhat worse. I do not care about graphics. The most important thing is to prevent client crashes.

Thank you!

[auximenes]

It's going to be hard to do much about performance with an integrated video chip. I hope somebody can help you...

[Whohaz_Duhrang]

Well All That Was Typed, Is What LOTRO Players Deal With Daily., Good That Your Trying To Optimize But I Think These Issues Will Not Go Away., Even If You Had The Best Optimization And The Best System To Play On., Welcome To LOTRO

[Oghran]

By the sound of it, you took most obvious steps already. What resolution does the game run at? Using Wifi or wired?

Most users (not all) do get some degree of stutter, hitching and what have you. Don't fret about it too much as a large part might be out of your control (i.e. in SSG's).

The blowing of the fan, while undoubtedly annoying, isn't something to worry about from a technical perspective. Lotro is a CPU-heavy game so the CPU runs hot, and laptop CPUs are cooled by compact cooling systems that are relatively noisy.

There are laptop cooling pads around that can add some cooling at a lower noise level. They are generally way overpriced, so I do not recommend them, but they might serve as an inspiration for some DYI project by you or a pal. A supporting structure, some old PC ventilators and a 12V wall wart should be enough. If you hunt your local equivalent of garage sales that shouldn't set you back more than a six pack of lager.

Better cooling might stop the CPU from throttling itself and thus limit lag-like effects. If you didn't notice a positive effect of that 70% thing, whatever that may be, take it away. Modern CPUs are pretty clever about managing power and heat. Best not to interfere if you are not sure you know better than Intel.

As for the crashes, I can't help. I have them myself from time to time and spent many an evening trying to diagnose them (and I have some skills in that area), but that usually ends up at the Nvidia driver or dead end. Did you opt for DirectX 9 out of precaution or based on experience on that laptop? DX9 is so old that it doesn't get the level of support DX11 does. I wouldn't be surprised if DX11 would be more stable on modern hardware.

[Tralfazz]

Sophie, I sometimes play LOTRO on a 10-year-old low-spec Mac, a 2012 Mac Mini. I do have 16gb of RAM in there and it does sport a quad-core processor, but it is old with only Intel integrated HD4000 graphics. LOTRO plays on it very well in most areas (I do have a lot of unsolvable trouble, i.e. very low frame rates, in certain areas like Fangorn Forest but that's to be expected with old hardware that was low-end at the time it was new).

Here are a couple of settings you might try:
–Most important of all, reduce your resolution to as low as you can tolerate. The more pixels your hardware has to control to show all the game elements, the harder your computer has to work (that means slower frame rates and hotter temperates). You can adjust the resolution from within the game by going to OPTIONS->GRAPHICS.
–Go to OPTIONS->GRAPHICS and set GRAPHICS HARDWARE LEVEL to DIRECTX11. DirectX 9 can result in slightly higher frame rates but isn't as well supported as DirectX 11 so a minor performance hit is worth it as long as it is working well – i.e. not the cause of crashing – on your specific hardware.
–Go to OPTIONS->GRAPHICS and set OVERALL GRAPHICS QUALITY to MEDIUM. This isn't actually a setting, it is a group of presets for the actual settings.
–Go to OPTIONS->GRAPHICS and disable ANTIALIASING. Antialiasing set to at least 2x does improve the appearance of all 3D objects; it removes the "jaggies". But it's a big hit to performance when enabled.
–Go to OPTIONS->ADV GRAPHICS and turn FRILL DISTANCE to LOW and turn FRILL DENSITY to 0.25. Frills are non-interactive decorations such as undergrowth in a forest. A value of 0.25 is still pretty, it keeps things from looking too bare, but it is low enough that it will take a lot of pressure off your processor.
–Go to OPTIONS->ADV GRAPHJICS and set TEXTURE FILTERING to ANISOTROPIC and ANISOTROPIC FILTERING QUALITY to 4. More than 4 involves diminishing returns and will stress your processor a lot. You can also experiment with other filtering schemes such as TRILINEAR but even though Anisotropic is best it is also often the most efficient depending on the specifics of your hardware.
–Go to your OPTIONS->ADV GRAPHICS and disable ENVIRONMENT STENCIL SHADOWS. This has a lovely effect in most areas but the effect is fairly minimal. And in some areas with multiple light sources and objects creating shadows, it can bring even a more powerful rig to its knees. You might not notice the difference with this disabled unless you know to look for it by turning it on and off while examining a particular scene in the game, so best to keep it off on a low-end rig.
–Go to OPTIONS->ADV GRAPHICS and turn POST-PROCESSING EFFECTS off. Post-processing really makes the game beautiful, especially the bodies of water. Unfortunately, it also has the largest impact on overall performance.
–Go to OPTIONS->ADV GRAPHICS and look for TEXTURE CACHE SIZE. If you have more than 8gb of RAM, set it to maximum, 1.00. If you have less than 8gb of RAM, set it to minimum, 0.00. Texture Cache Size only has an effect on the length of time it takes for the game to initially render a scene, with less RAM set aside for the cache it takes longer to load in the assets before the scene is rendered. With 8gb or less RAM, setting this to the maximum value will cause the game client to run out of memory and it doesn't handle that situation well, often crashing when it happens. If you have 8gb or less, setting this to the minimum value won't impact your play very much but will reduce or eliminate your crashing.
–Go to OPTIONS->ADV GRAPHICS and be sure that SYNC TO REFRESH RATE is disabled. Then go to OPTIONS->TROUBLESHOOT and set your MAXIMUM FRAME RATE to 30. LOTRO is not a shooter, frame rates over 30 aren't going to make you a better player and you will barely be able to tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps. With a low-end rig, set to 30fps so that your computer won't strain itself trying to give you higher frame rates that won't make much of a difference.

I hope some of this helps!

[SophieTheEnchantress]

Thank you for all the replies!

By the sound of it, you took most obvious steps already. What resolution does the game run at? Using Wifi or wired?

The graphics tab contains the following information:
# Screen Mode: Windowed
Full Scree Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Windowed Resolution: Custom
Aspect Ratio: Auto
Antialiasing: Disabled

I connect to the internet via a wireless connection to a home router but know nothing more about it.

There are laptop cooling pads around that can add some cooling at a lower noise level. They are generally way overpriced, so I do not recommend them, but they might serve as an inspiration for some DYI project by you or a pal. A supporting structure, some old PC ventilators and a 12V wall wart should be enough. If you hunt your local equivalent of garage sales that shouldn't set you back more than a six pack of lager.

A friend made the same suggestion so I added a cooling thingy to my Things to Buy list. I currently play in bed with my laptop on my artist drawing board. When things get really hot, I set the room fan to blow across the laptop.

Better cooling might stop the CPU from throttling itself and thus limit lag-like effects. If you didn't notice a positive effect of that 70% thing, whatever that may be, take it away. Modern CPUs are pretty clever about managing power and heat. Best not to interfere if you are not sure you know better than Intel.

Okay. I made many changes to settings over the last few weeks so it is hard to know what actually worked.

As for the crashes, I can't help. I have them myself from time to time and spent many an evening trying to diagnose them (and I have some skills in that area), but that usually ends up at the Nvidia driver or dead end. Did you opt for DirectX 9 out of precaution or based on experience on that laptop? DX9 is so old that it doesn't get the level of support DX11 does. I wouldn't be surprised if DX11 would be more stable on modern hardware.

Reading these forums, when someone has a computer issue, the first two pieces of advice are often--switch to the 32-bit client and switch to DirectX9. I figure if something works, leave it alone.

To my surprise, this became an issue as I am about to describe in my next post.

[SophieTheEnchantress]

Thank you very much for the detailed response, Tralfazz!

So, I set my graphics options exactly as you described with one exception--I did not change the screen resolution. Upon logging in a character, the game looked better than it has in years. That was no surprise since I keep graphics set very low as described in my original post. The computer fan immediately began to run at a higher speed. I turned in some tasks and puttered around the house.

I decided to run some missions and logged in a second client. I do this from time to time and was curious how it would go. The fan sped up some more but everything was fine as I ran some missions in Trestlebridge. Next, both characters traveled to Rivendell. Client 1 immediately crashed. There was no white screen, it just went *POOF!*.

I closed the client 2, launched client 1, set graphics back to very low, then closed client 1. I could not remember the original settings so I turned almost everything off. After doing that, I logged in both clients, put character 2 on follow, and headed across the bridge. Client 1 crashed halfway across the bridge, *POOF!*.

Well! Once again I closed client 2 and logged in client 1. I switched back to DirectX9 and closed the client. Then I launched client 1 and client 2 a third time. This configuration was stable when running missions for the rest of the evening.

Over the course of the evening I fiddled with more things as I closed and launched the client many times, often in pairs. Thirty frames per second was bothering me so I went back up to 40. I also raised one of the draw distances one notch so I can see enemies father away.

.....

A couple weeks back, during a period of crashing, I read that lowering screen resolution really helps. You may have written the post I am thinking of. For two evenings, I set the resolution of my desktop to approximately 1300 x 900. I then did the same to the game. This worked for a time but, eventually, I experienced another crash. That led me down the road to killing XBox Game Bar.

.....

Is there a way to save different graphics configurations, sort of how "/layout load/save blahblahblah" works?

My computer has 8 RAM. I forget where I found that.

[Whohaz_Duhrang]

Golly

[Tralfazz]

Is there a way to save different graphics configurations, sort of how "/layout load/save blahblahblah" works?

Not using an in-game tool, no. However, all of that is saved locally – not server-side:
If you set a config using the in-game tools, you can quit out of the game and then make a backup of your *\My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\UserPreferences.ini file. Then you can go back in the game, set another config, quit out of the game, and make another backup of that file. You can then switch between graphic configs by swapping the appropriate backup of your UserPreferences.ini file into your *\My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\UserPreferences.ini folder while the game isn't running. Note that you can backup your entire *\My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online folder instead, and that is a good thing to do regularly, anyway.

My computer has 8 RAM. I forget where I found that.

Definitely run with Texture Cache Size at 0.00, quit out of any other applications you aren't actively using while running LOTRO, and keep in mind that running two clients simultaneously will be pushing the envelope in terms of your available memory and therefore will make the game much more prone to glitches and crashing. Remember that with integrated graphics, some of your RAM is set aside by the system for use as VRAM, plus some is used by Windows and any other running processes be they background or foreground; leaving you with a lot less for the game than you might imagine.

As for the rest: I think you've found, experimentally, what is going to work best for your hardware and personal preferences. DirectX 9 is fine, it is usually more compatible with older/lower-end hardware and is a bit less demanding both of which means less likelihood of glitches and crashes, it's fine to use with LOTRO. Note that the 32-bit client has been retired, it will launch after you click on PLAY in the LOTRO Launcher application but will then almost immediately crash out with no error message most likely because its connection attempt is being rejected by the authentication server.

[Oghran]

Thank you for all the replies!

The graphics tab contains the following information:
# Screen Mode: Windowed
Full Scree Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Windowed Resolution: Custom
Aspect Ratio: Auto
Antialiasing: Disabled

You could try lowering the resolution to 1280x1024 or even lower, just to see if that helps. Could make things ugly though

I connect to the internet via a wireless connection to a home router but know nothing more about it.

If you have the option, wired connection is always more stable. With wifi you might have interference from neighbors, fridges, all kinds of stuff.

Okay. I made many changes to settings over the last few weeks so it is hard to know what actually worked.

Classic, I fell into that one plenty of times. Of course, if you want to test properly you change one thing, then test.

Reading these forums, when someone has a computer issue, the first two pieces of advice are often--switch to the 32-bit client and switch to DirectX9. I figure if something works, leave it alone.

To my surprise, this became an issue as I am about to describe in my next post.

These types of advice tend to get a life of their own. A windows machine is a very complicated and dynamic system, with a lot of interacting bits that regularly change. What once worked for some people might suddenly stop working or not work at all for others. Be cautious with simple answers to complicated problems.

[Oghran]

Running two clients on an 8 GB machine might be stretching it a bit. On my machine one client can use 3.5 - 4 GB of memory. That is with higher resolution and graphics settings. In your case that wil be lower, don't know by how much, but windows itself needs about 2 GB to function properly. Keep that in mind.

[SophieTheEnchantress]

Not using an in-game tool, no. However, all of that is saved locally – not server-side:
If you set a config using the in-game tools, you can quit out of the game and then make a backup of your *\My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\UserPreferences.ini file. Then you can go back in the game, set another config, quit out of the game, and make another backup of that file. You can then switch between graphic configs by swapping the appropriate backup of your UserPreferences.ini file into your *\My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\UserPreferences.ini folder while the game isn't running. Note that you can backup your entire *\My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online folder instead, and that is a good thing to do regularly, anyway.

Great. Found it. I believe game pictures go there as well. I will try making single and two client preference files and see how that goes.

Definitely run with Texture Cache Size at 0.00, quit out of any other applications you aren't actively using while running LOTRO, and keep in mind that running two clients simultaneously will be pushing the envelope in terms of your available memory and therefore will make the game much more prone to glitches and crashing. Remember that with integrated graphics, some of your RAM is set aside by the system for use as VRAM, plus some is used by Windows and any other running processes be they background or foreground; leaving you with a lot less for the game than you might imagine.

Got it. Cache Size is set as you recommend. I usually close everything accept Notepad when playing and will continue to do so.

As for the rest: I think you've found, experimentally, what is going to work best for your hardware and personal preferences. DirectX 9 is fine, it is usually more compatible with older/lower-end hardware and is a bit less demanding both of which means less likelihood of glitches and crashes, it's fine to use with LOTRO. Note that the 32-bit client has been retired, it will launch after you click on PLAY in the LOTRO Launcher application but will then almost immediately crash out with no error message most likely because its connection attempt is being rejected by the authentication server.

Got it. My preferences now combine your recommendations with some lowered settings so thank you very much. Everything worked fine today running missions (2 clients), Minas Tirith dailies (1 client), and some other stuff. I did get some briefly unresponsive mission quest givers and at one point, I had a long delay entering my hobbit hole, but otherwise, things were pretty smooth, even in Minas Tirith.

This morning, I spent some time doing more research on Windows 11. That led me to entering a lot of rather scary Terminal commands. Some of the demons did not like that very much.

"Sophie. What are you doing Sophie? I cannot allow you to do that. You cannot delete that, Sophie."

I was able to delete a half dozen additional Microsoft demons and today, my fan hardly ran at all. CoreTemp showed things noticeably cooler as well. I guess I will keep chopping at the Microsoft Demon Hydra until something breaks or I lose interest.

[SophieTheEnchantress]

You could try lowering the resolution to 1280x1024 or even lower, just to see if that helps. Could make things ugly though

Did I have a laptop that ran at that resolution? I think I did. Oh! Since my screen is bigger now, I made the quickslot bars bigger. So if I make the resolution smaller, I need to also remove the quickslot bar bigger thingy. That is why my quickslot bars all ran into one another when I changed resolution. Okay.

Question: When I set the game to 1280 x 1024, should I also set the desktop to that resolution? If I do not, the game runs in a small window.

If you have the option, wired connection is always more stable. With wifi you might have interference from neighbors, fridges, all kinds of stuff.

Unfortunately, that is just not an option. The microwave definitely makes the router demon cranky.

[QUOTE=Oghran;8171147]Classic, I fell into that one plenty of times. Of course, if you want to test properly you change one thing, then test.[QUOTE]

I am the girl in the movie who, when confronted with a bomb, reads the first page of the bomb disarming manual and then begins cutting wires.

These types of advice tend to get a life of their own. A windows machine is a very complicated and dynamic system, with a lot of interacting bits that regularly change. What once worked for some people might suddenly stop working or not work at all for others. Be cautious with simple answers to complicated problems.

I am rather quite surprised my computer continues to work.

[SophieTheEnchantress]

Golly

I know!

.....

"This forum requires that you wait 60 seconds between posts. Please try again in 15 seconds."

Stupid demon.

[Oghran]

There are separate settings for full screen resolution and windowed resolution. Set full screen resolution to 1280x1024 and screen mode to full screen et voila.
You don't have to adjust the desktop resolution.