Hardware issues multiboxing 16 clients with 5960X, 980 x3 sli

[lovesbunnys]

Thank you again my computer is now running great with 15 clients at 1600x900, 60/30, all cpu's, default nvidia settings but max performance. See the perf monitor you can see i'm maxing out of VRAM and fps is dipping to 36fps when i mount in circles in Warspear. Also with these nvidia settings perf monitor is showing all video card core load! =)
http://postimg.org/image/6jnjamxsv/

The bad news is when I launch 16 to 20 clients my computer throttles hard to 1 - .7 fps, where I can't even close the clients. No data is refreshing on monitoring apps to tell what's maxing out. I tried lowering the resolution and anything lower than 1600x900 I get this throttling symptom. Any idea what is going on?

Any guides on how to push more than 15 clients, including detailed description of settings to achieve.

Thank you <3

[mbox_bob]

You may have said it yourself.
When running 15 clients you are maxing out your VRAM, so if you add more clients, then performance will drop dramatically as the VRAM does not have enough room to deal with them, and resorts to swapping in and out of system RAM, which might also end up paging (although probably not seeing as you have a fair bit free).

Your CPU is fairly high with 15 clients, and adding more game clients and then frame swapping to the list, you might be nearing the maximum effective there too. CPU's are a bit weird in that once you start to get over 90% sustained utilization across the board, they start to become inefficient and less likely to respond well to spikes.

With CPU limits you get hit with a double whammy. 1. the scheduler starts chewing more kernel time ordering and querying processes to see if they need a time slice (effectively the number of context switches increases disproportionately to the number of processes added) 2. you have more processes that want to use their time slice because it is not coming up as often.


When you say "anything lower than 1600x900 I get this throttling symptom", this means you've tried lower resolutions? It would be weird that lowering the resolution causes a problem on a working setup, but if you are adding more clients at the same time, then it may be a CPU limit rather than a video limit.

For the graphics you could go down to 1280x720. This keeps the aspect ratio, while lowering the number of pixels per client by around 33%. This won't help if your problem is the CPU though, but it could alleviate some pressure if that is coming from frame swapping.

1600x900 = 1440000 pixels
1280x720 = 921600 pixels.

[lovesbunnys]

I believe this is the best I can do with my 5960X, 980 X3 SLI system (overclocked through asus bios) 20 wow clients running with 1280x720, directx9, instant swapping off, nvidia settings default but power management to max, win theme to classic, areo peak off, wow quality low, new character models off, fps 30/30, no master slot, all cpus with every window. Can I go lower with resolution? I tried 800x600 and performance didn't improve.

The bottle neck now seems to be the CPU all sitting from 94%-100%. Vcard core loads 26%-34%, VRAM 84.8%.
http://postimg.org/image/gsfd4xhfp/

I was hoping to get at least 30 clients playable with this monster rig. Any other things to try is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Is there a reason you're running the background windows at 30fps? I set my background windows and dxNothing windows all to 12fps, since they're just there for at-a-glance status anyway; it's very noticeable on my older video card and 5x clients at 1080p high detail. Also, if you haven't already configured a "high-detail/low-detail" console variable macro tied to your window switching mapped key, that might be impacting things needlessly.

[woloss]

I run 25 clients on my I7 4770k @4.2 GHz + GTX 770 2GB + 24GB RAM. I have low detail, with ultra distance on my main char. Sometimes laggy in Big Cities, but not much. Also, I still haven't got my SSD for multiboxing,(15 clients at 1 HDD, 10 at another) i wish SSD will help. I set background fps to "7", at this fps all slaves flying, walking and so on w/o problems and stucks. Main windows set to 40 fps. If i go down to 20 clients, I can set main char to Max settings with Ultra Distance and slaves at low as well.

So, you can setup Macro through isboxer and when you use instant Swap, graphics will change. The best solution ever! + lowering background fps.

P.S. Somebody got 980 TI? How it is for 4K multiboxing (5-7 boxes)?