Running 5x WoWs on a capped server using the latest intel X25 SSD

[Evilseed]

Hey all,

I just upgraded my monster gaming rig to include some new fun stuff. A few days ago I got my hands on the fastest commercial SSD (solid state drive) around. The Intel x25e http://www.intel.com/design/flash/na...reme/index.htm are extraordinarily fast.

For example, my prior system setup with 5 wows on 1 PC across 2x30" monitors would yield me a total sum of about 68 combined FPS in an extremely busy dalaran. I tossed in one of those intel x25e 64GB drives and my combined FPS increased to about 140 combined FPS in an extremely busy dalaran. The performance increase is extremely huge.

Today I bought 4 more of the intel x25e 64gig SSD drives on a sata3 raid0/1 controller and now I can obtain 60fps on EACH of my 5 multiboxing wow windows on my 2 30" monitors. My graphical settings are pretty much maxed on each wow window. I have 4x ati 4870 overclocked GPUs and dual skulltrail intel CPUs oc'd as well.

I did some digging into why these intel SSDs provide such a massive performance gain and it is all about the IOPS and seek times. The real strain on a PC is that running multiple wows, symlinked or not, requires a ton of random reads from random files. The more reads that exist, the lower your throughput will be. For example, while 1 read constant may yield you 100mbs, 10 reads will NOT yield you 10mbps per read. Rather, it'll do maybe 1.5mbps per read. The reason for the througput cut is the seek time latency. With my raid0/1 array using 4x x25e SSDs, I'm able to hit over 1000mb/s read *and* write, and can have 10,000 open file handlers reading/writing and still obtain over 400mbs. My wow multiboxing is now insane.

Anyway, for those of you who want to increase your multiboxing framerate and experience on 1 PC, I extremely highly recommend getting an intel x25 SSD. You don't need the E versions, you can get the cheaper 80gig x25 units for $500 from newegg.com. These are the fastest commercial SSD units around.

EDIT: I was succesfully able to 20box on 1 PC using these drives. The framerate was very good, around 560 combined FPS in the starting area of taurens.

My hardware is:
2x intel skulltrail qx9775 cpus overclocked to ~4.98ghz. Liquid nitrogen ftw.
4x ati 4870 overclocked ~840mhz 2gig gfx cards (these things have more horsepower than my cpus lol)
16gb ocz -ee custom ram running in ~3s
4x WD 15krpm SATA3 500g in RAID10
2x WD 15krpm SATA3 1TB (custom drives)
1x Intel x25 80gb SSD
4x Intel x25e 64gb SSD in raid1 (and tried 0)
A big ass power supply which has more mods in it then I care to list

EDIT#2 Hmm I can't remember why I'm running my gfx cards at such a low frequency. I think I could run them at 1.3ghz each. Oooh more funs to be had!

[Hachoo]

Oh lord I can see Sam getting his credit card out right now...

[Evilseed]

Oh lord I can see Sam getting his credit card out right now...

Who is Sam? He had better have a big limit card, I think my rig is approaching $30k lol.

[Starbuck_Jones]

What raid controller are you using? Is it a true hardware controller or a driver based raid controller? I have 3 boxes two of them have 2 disk raid 0's and the third has a 3disk raid 0, all driver based on-board raid provided by the motherboards. Im tempted to just break the raid and have each HDD run a copy of wow. The 3disk raid 0 (my main box) actually takes about twice as long to load screens than the 2 slave boxes running 2 copies each. But once its loaded it never slows down like the slaves do eventualy.

[Wilbur]

Sam is the forums chief egomaniac/douche.

[Multibocks]

Holy crap that is a freakin dream machine! Why have you spent so much on it? Is it a business write off? To each his own, lol. I thought I spent a lot at 4500, but damn 30k is unreal.


P.S. get back to work on your program mister /crackswhip

[Creazil]

2x intel skulltrail qx9775 cpus overclocked to ~4.98ghz. Liquid nitrogen ftw.

Do you run with liquid nitrogen standard? 8|

[Lyonheart]

I get those frame rates on my rig. I play Crysis on very high settings ( original Crysis ) an average of 45 fps. I use 2 24' screens for wow, 5 acnts. all for just under 2200.00. my rig can be found by searching my posts 8) And yes i run through Dal on high settings ( if i want to.. why when im only looking at the main screen? ) with next to zero lag.

[Evilseed]

What raid controller are you using? Is it a true hardware controller or a driver based raid controller? I have 3 boxes two of them have 2 disk raid 0's and the third has a 3disk raid 0, all driver based on-board raid provided by the motherboards. Im tempted to just break the raid and have each HDD run a copy of wow. The 3disk raid 0 (my main box) actually takes about twice as long to load screens than the 2 slave boxes running 2 copies each. But once its loaded it never slows down like the slaves do eventualy.

It is a hardware raid controller with 512M ram and dual lion battery backups. To be honest I don't recall 100% as I don't have the software stuff installed (the card beeps when a raid has an error). I'm pretty sure it is an adaptec I just don't remember which one. It has a bazillion SATA ports on it heh.

EDIT: Its like this one but with twice the memory and an external battery supplies. It doesn't have as many ports tho, so I think it may be a little cheaper. http://www.avadirect.com/product_det....asp?PRID=9419

[Evilseed]

2x intel skulltrail qx9775 cpus overclocked to ~4.98ghz. Liquid nitrogen ftw.

Do you run with liquid nitrogen standard? 8|

Yup it is almost a fanless system. The CPU, GFX and bridges are all cored with unique thermals to an external assembly which handles the pumping, reservoir, and extra storage. It vents to the outside and I fill it up every 2 weeks or so. The unit is completely custom made by some high tech fab company so theres no real names I can give out. It leaked a few times though due to compression seals wearing away in the extreme temperatures. Luckily those were on the external unit not on the thermal conductors or I woulda shit my pants and then cried.