Where should I start upgrading to handle shatt / outlands ?

[Mac]

I'm wondering where I need to start upgrading. its been fine up till now on azeroth, however I'm having a hard time in shatt, I can only go a few steps and then have to wait on all the alts to catch up or they will loose follow because its so choppy, it was a little better at thrallmar but still choppy when I tried to kill some boars.

You can see my system specs in my link, I can put them here if needed. I'm running 2 alts off one core, 2 off another, and main off one, and leaving one for the system. I have main in one folder, and the alts in another folder. I have alts turned down in keyclone to 15 fps max. My ram graph on my keyboard is showing ~55% on cpu , and 98% of ram used.

So where should I start upgrading? I was thinking start off with a new gpu, but if I get another I'll have two, and was thinking maybe a good place to start would be put main on one monitor/ card, and put alts on the other monitor / card, but don't have the cards SLI linked? Or, will that not work and I'll just need to upgrade the one card.

If that doesn't work, I guess I will need to upgrade to Vista Ultimate 64 so I can buy 4 more gigs of ram and have 8 gigs of ram to see how that goes..

So what do you experts think?

[Naysayer]

Looks like you're starving for RAM. 5 accounts loading up every character in shattrath each is a lot of work for 1 pc with 3k RAM.

I'd say, the best thing you could do is upgrade to Vista64 SP1, then more RAM. What kind of RAM are you running with now? 4 sticks of 1gig? DDR2800? Yadda yadda? Your board should be able to use and would probably love you if you went for at least 2 sticks of 2 gig each DDR2 1066 (4 gigs total) at the very least. If you have money to spend, go for 4 sticks of 2gig DDR2 1066. Go for sticks of 2gig RAM, not 4 sticks of 1gig.

Your 8800 GTS 512 is perfectly fine for now, and SLI'ing it with another will net you almost no improvement in WoW at all. Kicking it up to a Gforce GTX 200 series will only slightly improve your performance in Shattrath. A GTX 200 series will make the game as a whole look much better, but as for lagging in Shatt, you'll still be doing that.

So, vista64 service pack 1 90$, 2 sticks of 2gig each (upgrade that to 8 gigs total if you have an extra 90$) of DDR2 1066 90$. You should have little to no problems in Shattrath after that.

Also, I'll add that if you create separate folders for each WoW account, it will allow you to save different video and sound settings for each account so that you can pump up the settings on your main and lower the settings all the way down on your alts saving you a bit o RAM usage.

[Kicksome]

Just a quick note. I have Vista 64 with 6 gigs of ram, 8800gts, and a 6600 quad core. It's about 20% slower than my Vista 32 bit system with 4 gigs (3.5 usable) of memory. So don't expect Vista 64 bit and more memory to solve anything. It has to translate everything from 32 bit to 64 bit which causes overhead.

What was helpful for me was sharing 1 wow folder and a 10K RPM raptor hard drive. When you go into shat it has to load all the player models for each character in the city (and on each instance of wow) - that's why when there is no one in shat it probably works fine, but when lots of people are on it slows down big time.

[Lyonheart]

i have 64 ultimate and 4 gigs of fast ddr3 and have same issues in shat when its busy. I have a Q6850 extreme cpu as well .. so a very fast system. i think the only REAL fix for shat is going to a 5pc set up. I have tried setting up in dif folders and the same. I run smoother out of one folder for some reason.

I want to add that WotLK seems like it has more dense environments and I have a feeling ill be needing to go the multi PC rout if i want to see all the eye candy and multibox as well. ( I'm in beta )

[BGuru]

If you are wanting to buy hardware I think the most bang for your buck is getting a second hard drive and putting 4 of your 5 box on it. Here is a post of someone that bought a second drive Adding second hard drive made a world of difference. ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=10554')

Here is what you should do to optimize your Vista. First go to http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm and use his safe config settings if you aren't too familiar with Windows services. I used his tweaked settings with no problem, but you might want to play it safe. Second use the graphics macros from wow in-game graphic detail macros (helps performance) ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=6521') I use the medium macro and never have lag.

Goodluck

[Naysayer]

i have 64 ultimate and 4 gigs of fast ddr3 and have same issues in shat when its busy. I have a Q6850 extreme cpu as well .. so a very fast system. i think the only REAL fix for shat is going to a 5pc set up. I have tried setting up in dif folders and the same. I run smoother out of one folder for some reason.

I want to add that WotLK seems like it has more dense environments and I have a feeling ill be needing to go the multi PC rout if i want to see all the eye candy and multibox as well. ( I'm in beta )Could be your connection since your pc is slightly better than mine and I don't have that big of a problem in shattrath. About the only time I notice the pc start to choke up in Shatt is when I am just logging in next to the battleground npc areas and there are 50 people standing around, but the lag clears up after a bit.

vista64 sp1
q6600 2.4
4 x 2gig DDR2 1066
i do run 2 crossfired EAH4850's, but with 1 or 2 cards in the box the difference is minimal with WoW.

The problem multiboxers have with Shattrath is simply loading all the other players and, like RAM, connection speed also has a lot to do with that.

[HPAVC]

Many warlocks to summon has its benefits :)

[Mac]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I was hoping working toward a solution would be a little more straight forward, but apparently not. Money's not really the issue here, but it just makes sense to me to start with the lowest cost improvement first, and see what makes it better as I go.

The cheapest thing I can do is try running all from one folder. I had two so I could keep the setting separate for my main and clones, but I can try that to see if it would be playable, but it appears that just might be a bandaid looking at the expansion comming soon.

The ram I have right now is 2 x 2g DDR2 800. I suspected the ram running at 98% was not a good thing, so expected I would need to upgrade the OS so it would handle additional ram. Although some are saying it won't solve it because of the translation issues from 32 to 64 bit, looking around these two hardware forums it has helped more then those who said it didn't help. So, I think I might try that and see how it goes. Can I put 2 more 2g sticks of DDR2 1066 in with the DDR2 800 , or do all 4 sticks need to be the same 1066 ?

The HD I have is a Western Digital WD1600 Serial ATA 160 GB 7200 rpm , reading the other thread about adding another HD, do you think my HD is too slow? Swapping that out for a 10,000 rpm might help? I guess I could buy one and then that would give me two to try the other suggestion of moving alts to the second drive.

As for the OS, it looks like I will have to do a complete re-install, what folders from wow should I back up in order to copy back over when I do the re-installs to make the set up go faster, is it just wtf and addons? I just realized I'm not looking forward to re-installing everything again :wacko:

I wouldn't mind going for the 5 pc set up, but I'm concerned about the heat and electricity use, plus added complexity and maintainance of 5 pcs just for doing this, if I can do 5 on 1, it would be better I think.

[Mac]

ok , wen't shopping today, bought Vista Ultimate 64, but nobody had 4 g of 2x2g@1066, lots of 800, no 1066, so I guess I'll be buying that ram online.

Bought the second drive too, got a WD3000GLFSRTL Veloci Raptor SATA/300 10k rpm 16 mg buffer.

Question is, since I'm going to be reinstalling the OS, should I put it on the original drive and save this new faster one for the alts, or would I be better off making this the main drive, installing the OS on the new drive, and making the older drive the one for the alts? Also, I read somewhere people partition the drive and put the OS on one part, and install the applications on the other, would that help multi-boxing performance?

[Memn]

I have a similar setup that I was having the same issues with. (Q6600, XPSP2, 3GB Ram, 5 boxing) Basically, everything worked fine most of the time, until I went to a capitol city or Shattrah. I was already running off of a single install folder, and I have a top notch internet connection. I found the upgrade to a 64 bit OS + more RAM (I had 3 GB, I now have 6GB) made an IMMENSE difference. The Resource Manager tool in Vista is showing my memory usage with 5 clients at around 4.75 GB, so that is 1.75 GB worth of memory that my system was previously having to shuttle back and forth between RAM and a page file. I can now do mounted loops around the city without loosing a clone, whereas before I had gotten in the habit of stopping every few meters to let stragglers catch up. My disk usage is extremely low, so I don't think hard drive speed effects performance once you eliminate the page file hits.

[Mac]

ty for the reply with your experience so far. I was thinking a wiki page on performance might be nice to have.

The OS + ram was going to be my first steps to improve the problem, like you and some of the others, I feel the ram starvation is the main culprit here. I also found the answer to my ram question. You can mix ram speeds, but it will only run at the slowest speed. So, I have 4g DDr2 800, I'm trying to decide if I should buy the whole 8g of previously reccomended 1066, which nobody seems to have around here, or just get another 4g of 800 to match what I already have.

I still have this question.

I have this shiney new raptor 10k rpm 300g hard drive, and since I am going to have to do a complete OS re-install anyway, does it make more sense to make the 10k rpm the master that I put the OS on and possibly move the alts to the slower drive that is now the master, or the opposite, keep it the way it is and move the alts to the secondary faster drive?

The secondary question was if there was a performance benifit of partitioning the master drive and loaded the os on one partition and the apps on another, or would that slow things down ?

[BGuru]

I would leave the old hard drive alone and install Vista64 on the new drive and just switch the boot drive in the bios. That way you can boot to Vista32 for any game you might want to play in the future that wont work with Vista64. I would put my pagefile on the D drive also.

[Mac]

Ok, let me see if I get your idea.

Install the new 10k rpm drive and make it the master so now its the C drive. Keep XP ( don't h ave vista there atm) on the old drive, now its the slave D drive. Then move pagefile to the D drive, did I get that right?

Question is, if the master drive is Vista 64 bit, will it recognize the slave as XP 32bit?

I guess this means you don't think I'd get much performance out of having the alts on the second drive.

Note: Got the 8 gig of DDR3 1066 ram, now its just a matter of reinstalling the OS.

[Mac]

Still have the question about re-installing everything once I get the OS re-installed.

What of my current wow set up can I back up to make the re-install go faster so I don't loose keybinds, macros, etc.

I know I will BU my Keyclone folder. I was thinking of just backing up each wow directory I'm currently using , but at a minimum I think the WTF and Addons folders, anything else?

Edit: Found answer here ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=10970')

[Mac]

I would leave the old hard drive alone and install Vista64 on the new drive and just switch the boot drive in the bios. That way you can boot to Vista32 for any game you might want to play in the future that wont work with Vista64. I would put my pagefile on the D drive also.I had a question about this, when you have two drives in the same box, don't you need to set the jumper on one to be master and one slave? How does that work in your suggestion?

Edit: disabled the old drive, installed the new drive and the os, enabled the old drive and it can be seen in vista. So my question now is, do I have to go to the bios if I want to boot in windows XP that was installed on the original drive, or is there a better way to do that?

[Mac]

upgraded to vista ulti 64 on new raptor 10k rpm drive, 8 gig ddr2 800 ram.

Game is multibox playable again for me in the outlands. Frame rate still drops down in the 20s though in shatt, but alts don't drop follow, and I don't have to stop and wait for them to catch up every couple of steps.

Thanks for the help all.

[entoptic]

upgraded to vista ulti 64 on new raptor 10k rpm drive, 8 gig ddr2 800 ram.

Game is multibox playable again for me in the outlands. Frame rate still drops down in the 20s though in shatt, but alts don't drop follow, and I don't have to stop and wait for them to catch up every couple of steps.

Thanks for the help all.

Wow I am running almost the exact same thing you have and my preformance is way WAY higher. Do you have your FPS setup correctly in keyclone?

[Mac]

upgraded to vista ulti 64 on new raptor 10k rpm drive, 8 gig ddr2 800 ram.

Game is multibox playable again for me in the outlands. Frame rate still drops down in the 20s though in shatt, but alts don't drop follow, and I don't have to stop and wait for them to catch up every couple of steps.

Thanks for the help all.Wow I am running almost the exact same thing you have and my preformance is way WAY higher. Do you have your FPS setup correctly in keyclone?By the way your asking the question, I would guess I am not. Can you explain how you do it and I'll follow up with what I have when I get home. I think I just followed the recommendations that others have mentioned about their clones min and max fps settings, but I could have totally screwed that up. I'm not above admitting I'm not as good at this as everyone else seems to be around here, but I keep trying :)

[letxtc]

I too was struggling with low fps while trying to box my 4 accounts. Here is the long story of my setup and the different things I tried to boost FPS.

Vista ultimate 64-bit
Q6600 @ 2.4
8gb ram (800mhz)
500gb 7200rpm 32mb cache HD
BFG 8800 gtx 768mb
Running main on 22” LCD ( 1680*1050 )
Running bots on 17” LCD ( 1024*768 )
I run 4 wow folders (wow1, wow2…) with symbolic links on the data and cache folders from wow1. This allows me to run different mods on each account and set different video settings on all accounts. My main will run with fully loaded settings apart from the terrain view distance that I have that set to half. Bots run with everything set to the lowest.

The mods I use are as follows:
Main:
Bongo bars
Xperl unit frames
Questhelper
Titanbar
Whisper Relay
Cartographer

Bots:
Bongo bars
Xperl unit frames
Questhelper

Running the symbolic links may have given me a few extra frames note sure as I was not taking notes. However the load times were greatly reduced.

I run core affinity set to the following.
Core 0 – OS only
Core1 – Main
Core 2 - Bots 2 and 3
Core 3 - Bots 4 (and some day 5)

Running an account across all four cores had a negative impact on my performance. Doubling up the bots on single cores corrected it. My single core that runs two accounts right now will fluctuate from 70-100% for that single core. Now that is not total system usage just what is registering from the single core graph. For me this seems high but I have not figured out how to reduce it. I have a lemon of a q6600 and have been unable to OC it very high. I am testing running at 2.6ghz right now and can see that it buys me a few fps. I just have to see how stable it will be and go up from there.


Now I am in no way proficient with configuring octopus so those with more experience please do chime in.

Running main full screen on the 22” and bots use ¾ of the 17” I was getting poor frame rates. I had capped my bots to 15fps and my main at 60fps. Yet I was only able to get 20-30 fps. In Shatt I would go into the single digits.

Now when I say I was running the main at full screen it really was not. I play in windowed mode so that I can move my mouse from one screen to the next to perform manual tasks on the bots. Choosing loot, quests dialogues ect. In windowed mode the start menu and taskbar would always show as the option in windows was always on top. This bothered me as it covered part of my wow screen. I modified the maximizer so that the main screen was compressed a tiny bit to accommodate for the task bar and start menu. I thought that it was unavoidable as I did not really want to turn of the taskbar always on top option off.

However after some experimenting I found that if I set the screen resolution to the full 1680*1050 of the monitor and turn off the always on top option I gained a significant performance increase. My FPS went up to 30-60fps on my main. In shatt my FPS can go into the 30s. I guess rendering the game plus the taskbar was too much for it.

Anyway I thought I would add my experiences thus far to this thread, as some of the fixes seemed quite obscure to me.

I am at work trying to write this on the sly. Sorry for typos and such.
Oh and sorry for the wall of text.