Performance issues

[davedontmind]

I'm running 5 copies of WoW (from the same folder) on my 3GB Vista system (well, I have 4GB, but 32-bit Vista can only 3GB)

Everything runs smoothly most of the time, but I've noticed that whenever I near places likely to be occupied by other players I get a stuttering. Going somewhere like Stormwind (even with only 1 toon while the others wait outside) causes huge pauses, anywhere from 1 second to 20 seconds. I'm guessing it's something to do with loading all the textures for all the different items people wear.

As far as I can tell from the resource monitor, it appears to be a memory issue. I imagine we're hitting max memory so Vista is doing lots of swapping.

Does anyone have any tips to improve performance in populated areas?

Would Vista's ReadyBoost feature (using a memory stick for swap, instead of the hard disk) help? Any other ideas?

[Jamien]

If you have multiple hard drives, use them.

Put your main copy of wow on a drive by its self, then put the slaves on a different drive.
Move the data/cache folders out of the slave wow folder (move not delete incase you need to move them back to patch).


ex:
c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2\Data -> c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data
c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2\Cache -> c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Cache

You do this with the 'mklink' tool.

1) Remove the Data and Cache directories in each clone wow folder (or rename them)
2) Open up the Command Prompt
3) Change directory to the clone wow
> cd c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2
4) Make the link
> mklink /D Data c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data
> mklink /D Cache c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Cache
5) Repeat for each other clone directory

Doing this reduced my lag in shatrath from horrible to zero.

[davedontmind]

So, just to clarify, you're using 1 installation of WoW per toon, but with shared Data & Cache directories?

You're suggesting:
Drive C:
wow1

Drive D:
wow2
wow3 (sharing wow2's data/cache)
wow4 (sharing wow2's data/cache)
wow5 (sharing wow2's data/cache)
?

Or something different?

[keyclone]

have you dropped your details to at least mid level?

db wiki link: http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Macro:Graphics_Settings

[Alienenduro]

I have 4gm ram and i had the same issue. when i was running around questing everything was fine but as soon as i entered the likes of Stormwind everything started to stutter. I got around this by opening task manager then going to processes, right clicking each of the wow processes and selecting affinity, from here i was able to set all the running wows (5 of them) to use all 4 processors. after doing this all copies ran like a single instance of the game would. i guess this will only really work like this if you have a quad core. give it a try if you do.

[davedontmind]

I have 4gm ram and i had the same issue. when i was running around questing everything was fine but as soon as i entered the likes of Stormwind everything started to stutter. I got around this by opening task manager then going to processes, right clicking each of the wow processes and selecting affinity, from here i was able to set all the running wows (5 of them) to use all 4 processors. after doing this all copies ran like a single instance of the game would. i guess this will only really work like this if you have a quad core. give it a try if you do.I've already configured Keyclone to set the affinity of different wows to different cores. Although with 5 wows and 'only' a quad core, two instances will need to share 1 core.
I get the impression (but I'm not 100% certain) that the problem is one of memory / paging, rather than CPU though.

[zanthor]

I have 4gm ram and i had the same issue. when i was running around questing everything was fine but as soon as i entered the likes of Stormwind everything started to stutter. I got around this by opening task manager then going to processes, right clicking each of the wow processes and selecting affinity, from here i was able to set all the running wows (5 of them) to use all 4 processors. after doing this all copies ran like a single instance of the game would. i guess this will only really work like this if you have a quad core. give it a try if you do.I've already configured Keyclone to set the affinity of different wows to different cores. Although with 5 wows and 'only' a quad core, two instances will need to share 1 core.
I get the impression (but I'm not 100% certain) that the problem is one of memory / paging, rather than CPU though.What you are describing definitely sounds like memory issues and paging. You can reduce the memory footprint by setting your terrain distance to minimal settings, however the unfortunate fact is you'll see this again on busy days in Shattrah.

Personally I'm looking at upgrading to Vista 64 because of this issue, most the time I run smooth enough to get around, but with my 5 shamans I have things setup so I can change the head of the hydra easily, which means each clients at medium settings... this means huge lag in Shattrah... cpu sits at about 65-85% and ram is at 98%...