Even fast machines have trouble with Everquest, it is just a massive game with resource requirements significantly higher than most other 3D games. I am assuming that you have a recent 3D card and at least 512 MB of RAM. If you don't, start there. Also, I am going to assume you have the latest video and sound drivers and BIOS rev for your hardware. Here are a few tips I have gleaned from various websites that actually work:

1. Defrag your hard drive. This is simple to do and makes a HUGE improvement in load time and game performance. EQ takes up ton of disk space and it is far more efficient if the files are all contigous. The first time you do this, it is going to take HOURS. Any modern hard drive (20+ GB), even if not very full is going to have a lot of file fragments. You are probably best off running the ScanDisk tool first and then starting the defragger as you head off to bed. This needs to be repeated every one to two weeks, but subsequent defrags should go pretty quickly (an hour or two).

2. Static Swap File. This speeds up paging at the expensive of disk space. Since disk space is somthing you likely have plenty of, this is a good one. This takes some time to do right, so don't try to rush through this before getting online. Actually, a patch day is a good time for this :). Start by defragging your hard drive. Then open up the control panel and find the system settings that govern virtual memory. If you haven't messed with it before, it is probably set to 'let windows handle it'. Set it to OFF and reboot the computer. Defrag again. This will be real quick. Go back in and set the swapfile size to 512 meg min and 512 meg max. Reboot. Windows will now create a large static file to use as the swap file. This will never get fragmented like a dynamic swapfile because the file never gets deleted or modified during use.

3. System Setting changes. There are two modifications that you can make to the System.ini file in the Windows folder that will also help. Locate the '[386Enh]' section and add the following lines:

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
DMABufferSize=64

You will need to reboot for them to take effect.

4. Disable HW acceleration for sound. For some reason the sound stuff is not handled properly with EQ and it ends up in debug mode which sucks down the CPU cycles. Go into the DirectX applet, select the 'sound' tab and move the slider all the way to the left.

5. Edit the dataspeed file. I am assuming you have a broadband connection. If you do, go into the file DataRate.txt in the EQ program folder and change the number from '5.0' to 9.0'. This sets the threshold for LD in the game. You will find the client a lot more lag tolerant especially in raid situations.

6. Enable DMA Hard Drive access. Go into your System applet of the Control Panel, select the Device Manager and make sure the DMA box is checked for you hard drive. This makes a HUGE performance difference. You will need to reboot.

7. AGP Aperature. When the machine is rebooting, enter the BIOS screen. Go to the page dealing with video stuff and check the AGP apperature size. This should be at least 256. Set it to that and save on exit. Reboot.