Hello:
I can state absolutely that 128 MB video RAM works, BUT you must twiddle the video settings in game under EQII button: Options: Graphics Options: (working off memory here)
texture resolutions: MEDIUM or LOW but *NOT* HIGH
else there will be excessive swap from system RAM to video card RAM, and performance will be cut around 66%.
Second, you will lag heavily with 512 MB system RAM; you can reduce this partially by setting all the textures per above to lowest detail, which leaves a WOW-like cartoon effect. Setting game performance to "high" won't work at all for your system, both due to processor bandwidth issues (implicitly you're a 400 Mhz Front Side Bus if thats an Intel 1.7 Ghz CPU) and the low RAM. Remember, with low RAM, the game will attempt to use the system swap file as virtual RAM, which means the essentially mechanical disk replaces the purely semiconductor system memory for whatever didn't fit in RAM, a 1000:1 slowdown. !!! Yes!
So, number 1, upgrade RAM to > 512 MB.
Number 2, minimum 128 MB RAM video RAM, and with that you can't load high resolution textures, meaning you can't set performance to "high", but have to hand massage your settings.
At 64 MB video RAM the game is nearly unplayable, and you must resort to "extreme performance" and hand tuning the video settings. The FX 5700 video card would need to be ran at High Performance mode and ideally with the options for bloom effect, water effects,and all shadows DISABLED.
You may have DDR system RAM with a 1.7 GHz motherboard, but you won't have dual channel support on the motherboard. You know, a $59 motherboard like ASUS P4S800D-X with a $75 CPU like Celeron-D 2.4 Ghz (or faster) would be nearly 4 TIMES the processor bandwidth as your current rig:
[1.7 Ghz] * [400 Mhz FSB] * [4 bytes/RAM access]
vs
[2.4 Ghz] * [533 Mhz FSB] * [8 bytes/RAM access] ==>
[1.41] * [1.33] * [2] ==> 3.75
Purists will take me to task for condensing the dual channel effect to 2 concurrent accesses during the same time; its a little more complex, in that the speedup happens when reading from within a memory page, as happens during block moves. But EQ2 uses extensive blockmoves, or rather the MS DirectX 9.0c functions are making extensive block moves of textures and objects from conventional RAM to video RAM, and thence the objects remain in the video card's memory until you move and new objects need to be loaded or unloaded.
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Ok, so lets assume youre really cheap, and don't have 21 years exp as a systems engineer. I've seen Gforce 6800 128 MB selling for around $130; you dont HAVE to spend $220 on a video card, although the GT flavor has fast transfer within the video card (that is, much faster video RAM) than the non-GT cards.
OK, you wanted another opinion. Have to go