Running WoW in Windowed mode takes severe performance hit?

[Hachoo]

Not sure if this happened when I was running XP or not but heres what I noticed now that I'm running Vista 64. I haven't tried loading up multiple copies of WoW yet, but I have 2 different WoW installations for my main account, for solo or MB play. For Multiboxing my main account is in windowed mode at 1280x960, 2x FSAA, all graphics details on minimum except view distance at 1/3 and object distance at 1/2.

On my solo boxing WoW, I have 1680x1050, 8x FSAA, EVERYTHING maxed out except shadows at minimum.

Now, heres the kicker, I get HIGHER FPS on the solo boxing WoW, even when I run the MB WoW by itself with no other copies running! WTF? Something is seriously wrong with that picture. Aside from above, the only difference is that I run the solo boxing WoW in full screen. In org near the bank I get ~45-50 fps on the max settings solo wow, and ~25-30 fps on the MB WoW with low settings.

Now the question is, why the hell does this happen and how do I fix it, because I'm sure this is causing me a huge performance hit while 5 boxing.

[keghia]

Well, I can't say that I know the exact solution to your problem but I can tell you how I have mine setup.

I am running Vista x64 as well, and all clients have to have vertical sync turned off and make sure that the Aero toolbars is turned off as well. I found that even with the one client running maximised, the aero toolbars in the background would cause it to run terribly slow.

Hopefully your problem was as simple to fix as mine. ;)

[Hachoo]

Well, I've had aero off, and oddly enough before I read this post I was goofing around with graphics settings and noticed when I turned off vertical sync on my clients my FPS jumped by almost 15. (WTF?) LOL. So anyway, that helped a bunch, but now I'm discovering another issue.

Vista doesn't support hardware sound acceleration. When I run 5 copies of WoW the sound is poppy and crackles especially when I'm in org or dalaran. Its almost unbearable but I can't turn the sound off, I like it too much :(

[Yamio]

Hachoo, I too like the sound, but I turned it off on all my guys cause of the performance hit I was getting. Now that I've turned it off, my performance boost is too much to turn it back on. The only sound coming out of the speakers on my clone PC is the keyclone sounds for pause, and my newly found favorite, pass mouse clicks. Those two sounds are like music to me ears.

[Hachoo]

Hehe. Well I only turn sound on on my main window, the other 4 have it disabled. Its really invaluable for PvP and addons that give boss warnings etc. I don't think I can play the game w/o it on even if its crackly, i dont like listening to music when I play, only the sounds in-game.

[keghia]

I think this is either a driver problem or a 'settings' problem. Again, Vista x64 is kinda to blame. Try changing your audio settings to a lower quality in the control panel. I dont have the same problems as you but I do have another unrelated game will bring up errors if the audio quality is too high; bump it down a setting, and the world is fine.

All I can recomend is to play with the quality settings, as I defintely think this is more of a simple 'change some quality settings' problem.

[Hachoo]

Well I did a lot of googling last night. Turns out the sound blaster audigy cards have massive vista driver issues that creative refuses to fix. But there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. A guy named Daniel K in brazil a long time ago re-engineered and fixed the drivers. He was sued by creative but his driver versions are still floating around the net. I installed them last night and made sure I still had sound coming from my speakers but it was too late to test WoW - will find out tonight if I can now 5 box without sound issues.

Aside from that I'm not hitting a CPU bottleneck so I have to decide if I want to upgrade my CPU/motherboard :\

[FIra]

for your followers in chat type /console maxfps XX

XX = max fps you want that client to display. I personally set my followers to 20 and let my main go wild.

This should give you some performance gains.

[Bloodcloud]

Well I did a lot of googling last night. Turns out the sound blaster audigy cards have massive vista driver issues that creative refuses to fix. But there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. A guy named Daniel K in brazil a long time ago re-engineered and fixed the drivers. He was sued by creative but his driver versions are still floating around the net. I installed them last night and made sure I still had sound coming from my speakers but it was too late to test WoW - will find out tonight if I can now 5 box without sound issues.

Aside from that I'm not hitting a CPU bottleneck so I have to decide if I want to upgrade my CPU/motherboard :\Cool, after you try them, I would like to give them a go too, if you can point me to the DL URL :)

[Bloodcloud]

for your followers in chat type /console maxfps XX

XX = max fps you want that client to display. I personally set my followers to 20 and let my main go wild.

This should give you some performance gains.If you use keyclone, you can set the min/max FPS there as well per client.
works as a charm :)

[Hachoo]

Yeah I have my alts set to 10 background FPS and my main is set to max 50 foreground.

Looks like my CPU is the biggest issue now and is limited my FPS/performance in Dalaran. Thinking I'm going to upgrade to a 3.1GHz dual core Athlon X2 6000. Right now I'm using an X2 4200+ overclocked to 2.53GHz so I think that will be a decent performance upgrade considering the processor is only $73. Too bad I have to buy a new motherboard too which will run another $60 :\

[Bloodcloud]

Yeah I have my alts set to 10 background FPS and my main is set to max 50 foreground.

Looks like my CPU is the biggest issue now and is limited my FPS/performance in Dalaran. Thinking I'm going to upgrade to a 3.1GHz dual core Athlon X2 6000. Right now I'm using an X2 4200+ overclocked to 2.53GHz so I think that will be a decent performance upgrade considering the processor is only $73. Too bad I have to buy a new motherboard too which will run another $60 :\Don't forget the memory m8. MEM speed is far more important than cpu speed.
check out my build :)

[Hachoo]

I just upgraded my memory, and I do not agree that memory speed is far more important. I have DDR2-800 and no plans to increase that anytime soon. My CPU is definitely the bottleneck at this point since both cores are pegged at 100% when I'm anywhere with other people. This also explains my FPS limitation while single boxing as CPU clock speed affects max FPS (oddly enough). When I overclocked my CPU from 2.2GHz to 2.53GHz I gained over 15 FPS, so I would imagine going up to 3.1GHz from there would give me quite a significant boost, and hopefully ease up the lag in Dalaran as well.

Plus upgrading to a dual core 3.1GHz athlon is actually fairly cheap $73 - whereas any intel processor near that same clock speed is >$200.

[Catamer]

I use Vista x64 on all of my machines and I use multiple PC's so I never have lag.
I take an extream hit when running more than one copy of wow on this laptop, at beast I get 30 fps on each copy when running two copies of wow.

I have a desktop that has a 8800gtx and I can run two copies of wow and usually get 60 fps on each copy outside of a city.

It just depends on your video card sometimes.

I usually setup keyclone maximizer to limit FPS on side copies of wow.

[Petturik]

Check your multisampling in video settings (wow)

turn em down from 24-bit 8x to 24-bit 1x, that might improve loads.
Also, Viewing distance and Shadow Quality are resource chompers .. turn those down aswell.

lemme know it it worked

[Hachoo]

My clones already have view distance to minimum, shadow to minimum, and 24bit 1x multisampling.

My main window has view distance 1/3 or so, shadow min, and 24bit 2x. I've tested dropping the main window to 1x and going back to 2x and running various stress tests and I can say I get literally the exact same FPS whether its 1x or 2x multisampling on the main window so I like to leave it at 2x for less jaggies.

[d0z3rr]

Yeah I have my alts set to 10 background FPS and my main is set to max 50 foreground.

Looks like my CPU is the biggest issue now and is limited my FPS/performance in Dalaran. Thinking I'm going to upgrade to a 3.1GHz dual core Athlon X2 6000. Right now I'm using an X2 4200+ overclocked to 2.53GHz so I think that will be a decent performance upgrade considering the processor is only $73. Too bad I have to buy a new motherboard too which will run another $60 :\

OMG a 4200+? That's still on DDR right?! Jeez, upgrade that mofo fast dude, I remember my x2 and it was horrible for multiboxing. I got a phenom quad core and that thing frickin rules. Get the phenom quad, they're cheap.

[Hachoo]

Nah the 4200+ uses DDR2-800 which is what I would continue to use if I got a new processor.

I thought about a phenom but the clock speeds on the phenom are a LOT slower than the current X2s which limits framerates and ALL non multiboxing activities. Also the phenom is still more than twice as expensive as the X2 6000+.

[Hachoo]

Good news, I 5 boxed for quite awhile this evening and the new sound driver has completely removed any crackling and popping noises. I have no idea where I got the driver from but I still have the rar file so I am uploading it to my webserver right now and I will make a new thread and post the link in here with a description of what it does when its done uploading in an hour or so (its 70mb and my upload speed sucks).

[d0z3rr]

Nah the 4200+ uses DDR2-800 which is what I would continue to use if I got a new processor.

I thought about a phenom but the clock speeds on the phenom are a LOT slower than the current X2s which limits framerates and ALL non multiboxing activities. Also the phenom is still more than twice as expensive as the X2 6000+.


Ummm...ok. Nevermind that it has 2 more cores, and a completely different architecture, and also overclockable (if the "low" clocks bother you that much). And the fact that you can use keyclone (or another program) to run WoW on each core.....enjoy the x2 6000.

[Hachoo]

Nah the 4200+ uses DDR2-800 which is what I would continue to use if I got a new processor.

I thought about a phenom but the clock speeds on the phenom are a LOT slower than the current X2s which limits framerates and ALL non multiboxing activities. Also the phenom is still more than twice as expensive as the X2 6000+.


Ummm...ok. Nevermind that it has 2 more cores, and a completely different architecture, and also overclockable (if the "low" clocks bother you that much). And the fact that you can use keyclone (or another program) to run WoW on each core.....enjoy the x2 6000.I understand how cores work, I've been a Sr System Admin (and System Admin) for over 11 years. Doesn't change the fact that a quad core 2.6GHz costs over twice as much as a dual core 3.1GHz.

[Hachoo]

Ok the following is a link to the vista drivers that will fix popping/crackling in WoW. Please note these are ONLY for audigy series cards (audigy, audigy 2, audigy 2 ZS/platinum, etc).

http://www.vonderbecke.net/files/SBAX_PCDVT_LB_2_15_0004EQ.rar

[Sam DeathWalker]

4200+ uses DDR2-800 which is what I would continue to use if I got a new processor.

The 4200 is junk. DD2-800 is ok.

Dont go to 4 core, get the 6000 (they are like 78 bucks now), Ill know in a few days if the motherboard chip set is a big difference (my 590 sli runs WAY faster then my 8200).

Run at the same resolution as your desktop.

Get Sisoft Sandra and run the memory bandwidth test.

My computer that can close FIVE instances of WoW FASTER then my quad core closes ONE instance has a (amd 6400 x2):

Nvida C51 2X2G and is at 8.86GB/s on Int and Float buffed memory bandwidth.

Front side Buss Speed is 2G. Ram is PC2-6400 (ddr2-800 like you have).

Once you get above 8GBs yur fps problems is over.