The final Upgrade Choice.. Need Tech Advice

[pinotnoir]

Goal: Run 5 warcraft games without getting crap fps. Current FPS is avg 5-10 fps in dalaran and 30-1fps in wintersgrasp.

Current setup: alts fps set to 15. main set to 40 in keyclone. All graphics settings set to low.

Addons: atlasloot, autoprofitx, bagnon, bankstack, beancounter, cartographer, cast time, chronos, combat caller, easy mail, equip compare, informant, jamba, khaos, ac2 library, outfitter, proximo, titan panel, vanaskos, & deadly boss mods.

• Vista 64 installed on Seagate Barracuda
• Intel q6600 processor default clock
• One Wow Folder installed on WD Raptor Drive
• Keyclone with 5 maximizer windows. One on the 24inch and 2 each on the 20inch lcd’s.
• 3 lcd monitors – 24inch main & two 20 inch sides
• Asus p5w dh deluxe motherboard two pcie slots. Main slot 16x second slot 8x.
• 8gig of corsair ddr2 ram
• Two Sapphire 3870 Toxic 512meg ram video cards.


Option #1
Buy a 4850x2 Sapphire card with 4 DVI outs. Or buy two 4870 1gig cards using them the same way I have the 3870’s setup.

Option #2
Buy Option #1 and a SSD IBM 80g and move my warcraft folder to it.

Option #3
Gut my old AMD 64 3500 machine and use it for a new system. Combine my current system and the new system to 5 box with 2 pc’s. Host 3 warcrafts on the new system and 2 on the current one. Crossfire my two 3870’s to run one of my 20 inch monitors with 2 wows.

Purchase the following:

• I7 920 chip
• New i7 motherboard
• 12 gigs of ddr3 ram
• 4870 video card
• SSD drive for my wow directory
• WD raptor for storage/windows vista 64 install
• KVM switch
• Keyclone register for new pc
• 16ft DVI cable so I can reach my second pc.

Option #3 is going to be the most costly of the options. Let me know what you guys think would be my most bang for the buck upgrade. At this point playing wow is hell. I get 5fps in dalaran and during heavy battle in wintersgrasp I get 1fps. This is unacceptable and needs to be fixed. Thanks for any help.

[Tsunami]

since i am a value shopper.

everyone is doing crap FPS in dalaran and wintergrasp. if you are sure it is something wrong with your system i would go to best buy and get the 2 4850's or 4870's and try it out in your system. if the problem is fixed than great, end of thread. if you still have the problem or a small increase than you can always return those cards and get your money back. free troubleshooting. just say your system doesn't support ati, bye bye.

here is another free trouble shoot for you. switch your monitors around. get rid of one 20". put your main on one card with the 20" and your alts on the other card with the 24"...see if that helps.

[pinotnoir]

since i am a value shopper.

everyone is doing crap FPS in dalaran and wintergrasp. if you are sure it is something wrong with your system i would go to best buy and get the 2 4850's or 4870's and try it out in your system. if the problem is fixed than great, end of thread. if you still have the problem or a small increase than you can always return those cards and get your money back. free troubleshooting. just say your system doesn't support ati, bye bye.

here is another free trouble shoot for you. switch your monitors around. get rid of one 20". put your main on one card with the 20" and your alts on the other card with the 24"...see if that helps.

I took your advice on the free trouble shooting. I disabled a 20 inch monitor. I setup my 24inch on my first 3870 card with 4 maximizer for wow. I setup my 20 inch for 1 maximier wow on my my second 3870 card. So I have 1 card running 4 1 card running 1. I made sure all my graphics settins were low. I disabled all addons and logged into dalaran. The fps went up a small amount. I have fps capped at 15fps for alts and 40 on main. I have two characters who have around 5fps no matter if they are mains or alts. The other 3 float around 13-15fps as alts just standing in place. Those two characters who are low fps have something messed up I cannot find. This test should have put them all the same fps when they are alts and more fps if they are mains.

At this point I dont know how much a new video card would do to help. This is a high pop server and this test should have increased the fps more.

[Yo-Yo Freak]

have you tried anywhere other then dalaran? i have read on here some where that some people have had alot of trouble there, like they couldn't log more then 2 charaters at a time on in Dalaran. they would have to log 2 on at a time and move them out of the city then do it again till all there characters were on. maybe someplace other then there would produce better more even fram rates, i mean nobody gets good fps in dalaran, even single boxing lol.

[Powerwar]

Here is my setup. I do steady 45 - 60 fps in dalaran with my main and 30 fps with my slaves because seems they get capped on 30 fps when "minimized".


MoBo = Assus Striker Extreme (comparable to yours)
8 Gb RAM ddr2 @ 800 (worse than you)
1 x Nvidia 8800 GTS (you have two comparable video cards, so you should do better)
Intel q9650 cpu default clock (yours is comparable to mine)

What you need to do is configure core affinity in wow. By default all your wow instances will use only the first two cores, so you will have 2 cores at 100% and other 2 cores at 0% usage. This alone will give you a significant boost.

Then buy more hard drives. I have one system HD with the main wow instance, then a secondary HD with two other wow instances and then a raid 5 array with other two wow instances. This will not speed your game much, but will reduce the load time when you hearth to dalaran or zone/instance loads.

The only upgrade you need is to buy more hard disks (one more will do the work, but two more will give you similar performance that playing a single toon (no multiboxing) on this same machine you have.
The CPU affinity will fix the frame rates completely.

[pinotnoir]

Here is my setup. I do steady 45 - 60 fps in dalaran with my main and 30 fps with my slaves because seems they get capped on 30 fps when "minimized".


MoBo = Assus Striker Extreme (comparable to yours)
8 Gb RAM ddr2 @ 800 (worse than you)
1 x Nvidia 8800 GTS (you have two comparable video cards, so you should do better)
Intel q9650 cpu default clock (yours is comparable to mine)

What you need to do is configure core affinity in wow. By default all your wow instances will use only the first two cores, so you will have 2 cores at 100% and other 2 cores at 0% usage. This alone will give you a significant boost.

Then buy more hard drives. I have one system HD with the main wow instance, then a secondary HD with two other wow instances and then a raid 5 array with other two wow instances. This will not speed your game much, but will reduce the load time when you hearth to dalaran or zone/instance loads.

The only upgrade you need is to buy more hard disks (one more will do the work, but two more will give you similar performance that playing a single toon (no multiboxing) on this same machine you have.
The CPU affinity will fix the frame rates completely.

I have the cpu affinity setup in keycone for each character. Right now I am running everything from one wow directory off one drive. That may be my problem. I am thinking of 2 boxing and creating a media center with all my dvds on the hard drives. My playstation 3 can find the media center on the network. I still have more reading to do on the subject. Before I upgraded to vista I had xp media center to access my mp3's from my home theater system via the playstation. I should be able to put all my movies and mp3s on 1t drives and access it through my playstation. That would be a good reason to gut my amd 3500 and build a nice system for 2 pc 5boxing + dvd/mp3 media center.

[mikekim]

have you tried SET processAffinityMask "15" in each of your config.wtf files in the WTF folder (change the setting from "3" to enable quad core rather than dual core mode)

[pinotnoir]

have you tried SET processAffinityMask "15" in each of your config.wtf files in the WTF folder (change the setting from "3" to enable quad core rather than dual core mode)

I will check this when I get home. Changing it to 15 instead of 3. I dont know what its set to right now but I will give it a shot. Thanks

[Gares]

have you tried SET processAffinityMask "15" in each of your config.wtf files in the WTF folder (change the setting from "3" to enable quad core rather than dual core mode)

I have changed this too in mine as it was set to 3 so I changed mine to 15 as well to see if I get an improvement.

Will advise.

[pinotnoir]

Mine were set to 3 and I changed it to 15. I have since installed 5 wow folders symlinking them all. It seems to help alittle however the two accounts that are on the same core affinity get bad fps. My accounts on their own core affinity get from 10-15fps in dalaran. The 2 that are on the same core get 3-5fps.

I am specing a new system and plan to raid 0 2 of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319 ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319')

I will then use one of these as my storage/backup drive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337 ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337')

[Ellusionist]

Mine were set to 3 and I changed it to 15. I have since installed 5 wow folders symlinking them all. It seems to help alittle however the two accounts that are on the same core affinity get bad fps. My accounts on their own core affinity get from 10-15fps in dalaran. The 2 that are on the same core get 3-5fps.

I am specing a new system and plan to raid 0 2 of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

I will then use one of these as my storage/backup drive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337I did some testing for you yesterday, just forgot to post the results.

Q6600 OC'd to 3.2GHz, 4GB, Geforce 9800 GT 512MB (not GTX), Vista x64
Two monitors: 1x 22" Asus LCD (1680x1050), 1x17" Dell LCD (1440x900)

Normally I run the main character with all graphics cranked up, but I can't do that in Dalaran. :) So to make it apples-to-apples, I cranked all my video settings down to their lowest and went to dalaran. I was seeing about 19fps on all clients.

This is without framerates capped. I run everything wide open at all times. My characters seem to respond better to strafes, forwards, backward, follow, etc. when my framerate is uncapped. When I had it capped, some would strafe X amount, while the others would strafe Y amount. But that's a whole 'nother issue. :D

I guess this still doesn't explain why your system is doing what it is, but it should at least give you an idea of what you should be getting. I would expect a little higher framerates given the fact that you're running multiple cards. I'm only running one.

[pinotnoir]

Mine were set to 3 and I changed it to 15. I have since installed 5 wow folders symlinking them all. It seems to help alittle however the two accounts that are on the same core affinity get bad fps. My accounts on their own core affinity get from 10-15fps in dalaran. The 2 that are on the same core get 3-5fps.

I am specing a new system and plan to raid 0 2 of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

I will then use one of these as my storage/backup drive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337I did some testing for you yesterday, just forgot to post the results.

Q6600 OC'd to 3.2GHz, 4GB, Geforce 9800 GT 512MB (not GTX), Vista x64
Two monitors: 1x 22" Asus LCD (1680x1050), 1x17" Dell LCD (1440x900)

Normally I run the main character with all graphics cranked up, but I can't do that in Dalaran. :) So to make it apples-to-apples, I cranked all my video settings down to their lowest and went to dalaran. I was seeing about 19fps on all clients.

This is without framerates capped. I run everything wide open at all times. My characters seem to respond better to strafes, forwards, backward, follow, etc. when my framerate is uncapped. When I had it capped, some would strafe X amount, while the others would strafe Y amount. But that's a whole 'nother issue. :D

I guess this still doesn't explain why your system is doing what it is, but it should at least give you an idea of what you should be getting. I would expect a little higher framerates given the fact that you're running multiple cards. I'm only running one.


I cant figure it out either. I am not overclocking my cpu maybe that will give a big boost in performance. My windows rating is 5.5. My graphics are 5.9 disk 5.9 ram 5.5 processor 5.9. I dont know what could be causing me to get such crappy results.

[Erron]

Have you considered there may be other factors causing your lower performance than your configuration?

Strange things that have caused my systems to "under perform"

#1 External FPS thieves:
SOUNDCARDS - especially onboard sound with hardware acceleration. This is a quick and easy test. Disable the onboard sound card in BIOS. Re run your tests. Even if it's disabled in WoW, hardware acceleration can cause all kinds of performance issues behind the scenes, even crashes. The Asus P5K gave me all kinds of troubles with Vista64 until a software driver update.

USB Devices - "a good USB device is an uplugged USB device". I spent weeks in Vanguard tracking down troubles, ended up being conflict with my G15 keyboard and a headset. Try testing with a straight USB mouse/keyboard and no other USB devices plugged up.

RESIDENT PROGRAMS - Antivirus, firewalls, crap that loads when windows launches. Try disabling all those, including the autorun's and test again. I had issues with Free AVS antivirus software, and a media center extender for the 360 3rd party.

#2 System temperatures:
One thing I have been learning about 3870's and in all cases multiple 3870's is they are hot. Too hot. Use a software based temperature monitor to keep track of both GPU and CPU temps. SpeedFan was a savior for me, when I had a 3870 that during peak times would puff out 150 degree heat into the case. Most CPU's like your quadcore, and some motherboards, will put in Throttling to protect the CPU from overheating. This can look like stuttering or complete slow downs for no reason.
Open up your case and place a floor fan on it while running, test it and see if it helps.

Bad hardware Settings
Having weird refresh rates or odd driver parameters. I had one of my computers hooked up to a rear projection HDTV during game downtimes to watch movies. Having VSYNC on and an odd 59Hz refreshrate to be compatable with this TV was wrecking havoc when I toggled back to my LCD monitor and playing games. Removing all those settings (and a program called powerstrip) made these issue go away. Set and double check all your settings regarding refresh rate, let the game API set the defaults for you, don't override anything in the control panel. Test again.

Bad hardware
A single bad stick of RAM is hard to identify. Silly things like a crimped or damaged IDE hard drive cable. A couple bad sectors on a hard drive, can all lower over all game performance and not really be noticed. Most hardware has to attempt to access memory or a file location several times before failing and reporting back to windows there is an error. These things can be a terrible pain to track down. Removing them one at a time, using "known" good equipment to compare performance to can help uncover them. Most the time I only discover it when I upgrade along the way and realize that the part I just traded out was bad.

Bad Karma/The Charlie Brown Theory
Sometimes bad system performance happens to bad people. Often I have bad system performance and will spend some time doing positive things, like taking out the trash, or walking the dog, reading to the blind and try it again. I know this isn't very scientific but alas when all else fails and the choice is to stop playing your favorite games or drop 4 grand on a new computer in desperation, a little good Karma can go a long way.

And you techno nerd out there, please do tear apart my suggestions, these are just some common things I've seen on my computers over the last couple years, that made my head hurt and my games to lag.

[echo]

You mentioned running all wow off of one install folder. I'm not sure if you are junctioning/symlinking the various accounts? For me that brought about a noticeable improvement. :)

[pinotnoir]

You mentioned running all wow off of one install folder. I'm not sure if you are junctioning/symlinking the various accounts? For me that brought about a noticeable improvement. :)

I changed it to symlink. It helped some but it's still to laggy for me. I have 5 wow folders now symlinked. Symlink is the way to go for sure. I found a post that was very confusing to setup but crucial made a post in it making symlinking super easy. This is crucials post...


Not sure why everyone wants to overcomplicate this....

1. Copy Wow directory for each clone (ie. Wow1, Wow2, Wow3, etc)
2. Delete Data, Interface, Screenshots, Cache in the clones folders
3. Paste into text file called makelinks.cmd (change drive letter of course)

mklink /D Data D:\Wow1\Data
mklink /D Interface D:\Wow1\Interface
mklink /D Screenshots D:\Wow1\Screenshots
mklink /D Cache D:\Wow1\Cache
pause

4. Run that in each clones Wow directory, they are now all pointing to Wow1 as the source for those directories.
5. Done "

[Ellusionist]

A couple things you can do to check the hard drive(s) is:

Run HDTune ('http://www.hdtune.com/') - This will tell you the read/write speed of your hard drives. It's free, decently fast, and it'll tell you some cool information. You can compare it here: Tomshardware.com ('http://www.tomshardware.com/')

Run SpeedFan ('http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php') - It's a fan controller. This doesn't sound like it'd do anything to benefit you, but it will read S.M.A.R.T. data from your hard drive. You may need to run it as an administrator in Vista.

Screenshot from SpeedFan (Click on "Perform an in-depth online analysis of this hard disk"):
http://www.em-zero.com/dbforums/speedfan.jpg


Screenshot from SpeedFan's Hard Drive Analysis:
http://www.em-zero.com/dbforums/speedfan2.jpg

[Ellusionist]

Another thing you can do is move everything to one hard drive and use the other HDD to perform a "trial-and-error" process.

1) Install a fresh copy of Windows on it. Install all MANUFACTURER drivers (this is VERY important).
2) Install WoW.
3) Run WoW 5 times. No addons, no tweaking (except for cranking all video settings down), just see if it'll run 5 times.
4) See if it works any better.

Even without capping the framerate, it oughtta run. I'm using one card, and I don't cap my FPS (or maxfpsbk). You have two cards. You should be better off than I am even.

This will determine if your problem is hardware- or software-related. You may not even have to spend a dime to make your computer multiboxable once again.

[pinotnoir]

Another thing you can do is move everything to one hard drive and use the other HDD to perform a "trial-and-error" process.

1) Install a fresh copy of Windows on it. Install all MANUFACTURER drivers (this is VERY important).
2) Install WoW.
3) Run WoW 5 times. No addons, no tweaking (except for cranking all video settings down), just see if it'll run 5 times.
4) See if it works any better.

Even without capping the framerate, it oughtta run. I'm using one card, and I don't cap my FPS (or maxfpsbk). You have two cards. You should be better off than I am even.

This will determine if your problem is hardware- or software-related. You may not even have to spend a dime to make your computer multiboxable once again.

I can still box fine its the busy areas that drag me down. It's funny you mention hd tune. I ran that the other day. Both my drives were pretty normal considering they were not in a raid setup. I think my problem is the very high population of magtheridon. Boxing with this pc setup is doable but if you want to avoid low fps in high traffic areas you need another pc. Our server is so packed today in wintersgrasp the server was lagging everyone in the zone. You couldnt even rez for 3min due to the lag. There is just way too many people fighting and I think the server cant take it. For Bliz to make over a billion a year they should have super computers.

[Tynk]

I hate to drop this in, but it is not always about throwing top end hardware at it.
My setup has 3 machines.
Machine 1 with primary wow set to makes graphics
$150 from a best buy open box
2.6ghz dual core
2 gigs of ddr2 memory
8900 gt video card

Machine 2 with 2 slaves set at at lowest graphics
3 year old Aleinware laptop
3.6ghz hyperthread processor
2 gigs of memory
6500gt mobile video card

Machine 3 with 3 slaves set at lowest graphics
$150 from a best buy open box
2.2ghz dual core
1.5 gigs of ddr2 memory
8900 gt video card

All three machines are tied into 24" gateway monitors, avast anti-virus, windows firewall active, octupus for km sharing and keyclone. Machine 2 has ventrillo
Machine 1 is not fps limited, machine 2 and 3 have a max fps of 15 for both active and background.
Machine 1 hits around 25 fps in dalaran, machine 2 hits around 10 fps on both characters and machine 3 sits at 15 fps.
Grand total was $300 each for machine 1 and 3, $2.5k for machine 2, but that was 3 years ago and depreciated value puts it much, much lower (cry). $300 each on the monitors, $60 for keyclone.

With the money you have in already, I see no reason why you couldn't take the two computers you have and maybe pick up a a simple third one to split them up a bit more. My general theory is 1 monitor per PC and I have had very little problems. I have always had problems trying to run two games on different monitors of the same machine. That being said, I have heard nothing but great things about running SSD and am planing on doing that myself once the holidays are over and I recover. I will be looking at the suggested disabling of the sound cards on my slave machines though.

[pinotnoir]

I hate to drop this in, but it is not always about throwing top end hardware at it.
My setup has 3 machines.
Machine 1 with primary wow set to makes graphics
$150 from a best buy open box
2.6ghz dual core
2 gigs of ddr2 memory
8900 gt video card

Machine 2 with 2 slaves set at at lowest graphics
3 year old Aleinware laptop
3.6ghz hyperthread processor
2 gigs of memory
6500gt mobile video card

Machine 3 with 3 slaves set at lowest graphics
$150 from a best buy open box
2.2ghz dual core
1.5 gigs of ddr2 memory
8900 gt video card

All three machines are tied into 24" gateway monitors, avast anti-virus, windows firewall active, octupus for km sharing and keyclone. Machine 2 has ventrillo
Machine 1 is not fps limited, machine 2 and 3 have a max fps of 15 for both active and background.
Machine 1 hits around 25 fps in dalaran, machine 2 hits around 10 fps on both characters and machine 3 sits at 15 fps.
Grand total was $300 each for machine 1 and 3, $2.5k for machine 2, but that was 3 years ago and depreciated value puts it much, much lower (cry). $300 each on the monitors, $60 for keyclone.

With the money you have in already, I see no reason why you couldn't take the two computers you have and maybe pick up a a simple third one to split them up a bit more. My general theory is 1 monitor per PC and I have had very little problems. I have always had problems trying to run two games on different monitors of the same machine. That being said, I have heard nothing but great things about running SSD and am planing on doing that myself once the holidays are over and I recover. I will be looking at the suggested disabling of the sound cards on my slave machines though.

I am sure I can run the accounts on my old amd 3500+ with 2gig ram. That option would cost nothing but I would like to upgrade that pc to a fast i7 with great graphics. Sometimes I play FPS games and even on my current system I have to dumb down the graphics for it to play smooth. By getting the second new pc and using this one my wife will be happy because that old amd has its issues. She can use this and I can use the new one as my main gaming system. Plus it should make my 5 accounts fly. 3 accounts on the new one 2 on this one should be smooth. I can thank the stimulus check for the upgrade.