Will adding more hard drives and moving wow folders to said drives speed up performance?

[knopstr]

Here are my hardware specs:

XFX Ultra 790sli MB
Intel Quad-Core Extreme (Yorkfield)
4gbs of 1600ddr3 Memory running on XP pro
1gb Nvidia video card

My question is as stated in the subject line:

Will adding more hard drives and moving wow folders to said drives speed up performance?

Currently I have decent frame rates and little lag to speak of except in Dalaran. I can move all 5 shamans around with relative ease -- occasional glitch now and again but nothing show stopping. Last night I tried WG (winterlag) for the 1st time and I was shocked that I could barely move, let alone participate. Is there a chance that adding the additional drives will boost performance?

Thanks for your help

[Sajuuk]

A solid state hard drive can provide a sizable performance increase. Even the less expensive MLC drives (30Gb OCZ SSDs go for about 90 dollars)

[knopstr]

What I'm asking is will placing individual wow folders on different hard drives improve game performance?

[Yo-Yo Freak]

if i understand your question right then yes, moving your wow folders off of the HDD that hosts the OS could improve performance. if you are thinking about getting another HDD i would highly recommend an SSD. for multi-boxing all we care about is access times. like Sajuuk said you only need a cheap 30G or so 1 that can be had for around $70-90. wow only takes up about 15G of space so 30G is more then enough. you will have to symlink your wow folders but you should do that already even w/o another HDD.

BUT. and this is a big 1. from the specs you listed above. your best upgrade would be 4G more RAM. if your motherboard can support 8G of RAM and you have a 64-bit OS then go with 4G more ram before anything else.

WoW is very RAM intensive. 8G is just about a must for wotlk.

hope this helps some.

~YYF

[Sam DeathWalker]

Putting one wow folder on each drive will not much, putting a single wow folder on raidzero multiple drives will much more.

Access time is very important if wow has character textures scattered all over the data folder. How do you know that wow does not load all character texters into your video card in sequenctial (no random access time needed, only bandwidth) order?

[Greythan]

Off topic: I'd venture to guess that going to a 64 bit OS and upgrading RAM would be a bigger boost. (Agree with Yo Yo)

[knopstr]

Fur,

Yes, your assumption about what I was wanting to try was correct. Thanks for pointing it out for the others.

Let's try this again...for optimal game performance based on further reading, here's my new plan.

1) Begrudgingly put Vista64 (which I bought and shelved) on say a new 10,000rpm drive.
a) Place Operating system and other management programs here.

2) Format 2 seagate 750's that I have. Put these in raid0 format.
b) Install 5 copies of WoW here and symlink the WTF/data/and what else?

3) Drive clear across Austin to Fry's Electronics and pray the kids there can find 4gb's of ram to match what I bought 6 months ago...LOL...

Boot it all up and pray the lag in WG goes away. What say you all? Did I leave any steps out? I'm worried about the memory. Chances are that I won't be able to match the Corsair that I have. If that's the case, what do I do next? Not to keen on buying 8gb's when I already have 4. The original reason I bought 4 was that I hadn't intended to go to Vista.

Thanks for your comments...keep em coming.

[Owltoid]

Fur,

Yes, your assumption about what I was wanting to try was correct. Thanks for pointing it out for the others.

Let's try this again...for optimal game performance based on further reading, here's my new plan.

1) Begrudgingly put Vista64 (which I bought and shelved) on say a new 10,000rpm drive.
a) Place Operating system and other management programs here.

2) Format 2 seagate 750's that I have. Put these in raid0 format.
b) Install 5 copies of WoW here and symlink the WTF/data/and what else?

3) Drive clear across Austin to Fry's Electronics and pray the kids there can find 4gb's of ram to match what I bought 6 months ago...LOL...

Boot it all up and pray the lag in WG goes away. What say you all? Did I leave any steps out? I'm worried about the memory. Chances are that I won't be able to match the Corsair that I have. If that's the case, what do I do next? Not to keen on buying 8gb's when I already have 4. The original reason I bought 4 was that I hadn't intended to go to Vista.

Thanks for your comments...keep em coming.

Or go with an SSD drive

[Bovidae]

If you have 4g ram, and 1g video memory on a 32 bit OS, you're not getting your full potential. Install that Vista x64 you got and you should see an improvement.

It sounds like you already have 2 Seagate 750's. While a raid0 of these would give better speeds than a single drive, you will have a 1.5tb drive that you really only need 20gb of for WoW. using your existing harddrives, I'd use one for OS/apps, and the other for your 5xWoW+symlinked data directory. This should also give you a good improvement.

If you want to buy a single Raptor (or SSD) I'd use it for the WoW installs only. This should give you a large improvement. (this is what I did)

GET MORE RAM (nuff said)

[Maxion]

Or get Windows XP 64 bit version...

At least it is supposed to exist. (i want it)

[elsegundo]

you will see better load times when entering cities, instances, or zones, and when you initially load the game and such.

[Inate]

Good luck, I get lag just normally(single char active) in WG. The system enhancements you are thinking of will help, but not to the extent you are thinking of sadly. WG is a horrible horrible place lol.

Fur,

Yes, your assumption about what I was wanting to try was correct. Thanks for pointing it out for the others.

Let's try this again...for optimal game performance based on further reading, here's my new plan.

1) Begrudgingly put Vista64 (which I bought and shelved) on say a new 10,000rpm drive.
a) Place Operating system and other management programs here.

2) Format 2 seagate 750's that I have. Put these in raid0 format.
b) Install 5 copies of WoW here and symlink the WTF/data/and what else?

3) Drive clear across Austin to Fry's Electronics and pray the kids there can find 4gb's of ram to match what I bought 6 months ago...LOL...

Boot it all up and pray the lag in WG goes away. What say you all? Did I leave any steps out? I'm worried about the memory. Chances are that I won't be able to match the Corsair that I have. If that's the case, what do I do next? Not to keen on buying 8gb's when I already have 4. The original reason I bought 4 was that I hadn't intended to go to Vista.

Thanks for your comments...keep em coming.

[Souca]

Current System:
EVGA Motherboard, 780 SLI Chipset, 2 x16 PCI-E 2.0, 1 x16 PCI-E
Corsair 1000x HX Modular Power Supply
8GB of DDR2800 RAM
Quad Core Duo 9550
2x EVGA nVidia 512 MB 9500 GT driving a 17" (1280x1024)
1x EVGA nVidia 1GB GTX 280 driving two 22" (1680x1050)
OCZ 30GB SSD with WoW installed and symlinked
Vista64 Ultimate with all unneed services disabled.

Current Performance:
Single WoW - Full Details - 90-120 fps, 30-45fps in Dalaran, 1-30 fps in WG
Two WoW - Full Details (1680x1050) - 45-75 fps main, slave capped at 30fps

I've seen single digit frame rates in Wintergrasp. Every other app on the system was fully responsive. I think I may have even been watching a Divx at one point. I'm not preparred to spend the money to improve my machine to chase after faster WG fps. I'm sure my system isn't perfect, nor is it the best there is, but my main point is the disparity I see in performance between normal usage and Wintergrasp.

I think you can improve your performance, but if you are aiming for a lag free Wintergrasp, you may be chasing after something that you won't attain very easily or cheaply.

During this fight I dropped down to almost 2 fps. Here I'm around 9. There were at least two 40 man raids ally side, and we had tenacity. That's a lot of people generating combat log entries.

http://www.fivetimesthefun.com/multiboxing/screenshots/wintergrasp_lag.jpg

- Souca -

[Bovidae]

That's a lot of people generating combat log entries.

- Souca -QFE

This is the root of WG lag, there is just too much going on within range that a)the server has to process and send to you and b) you have to receive and process.

I'm sure many of you saw a similar effect when TBC hit. We left the 40man raid environment (which was taxing on my machine at the time) and entered Kara and had ~1/4 the data to handle. Performance was great on a same machine comparison.

Now, we are accustomed to the 10/25 man raid environment and have built our hardware/expectations for this purpose. We then throw ourselves into a 200man raid environment called WG. Can you say 'overload'?

[spannah]

1gb Nvidia video cardA 1GB Nvidia video card sounds nice, but how many stream processors ('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_processing') does it have? What about the memory bandwidth ('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_bandwidth')?
As an example, a nvidia 9800GT will offer much better performance ('http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=578&card2=575') then a nvidia 9400GT.
What is your video card? ;)

[Yo-Yo Freak]

1gb Nvidia video cardA 1GB Nvidia video card sounds nice, but how many stream processors ('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_processing') does it have? What about the memory bandwidth ('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_bandwidth')?
As an example, a nvidia 9800GT will offer much better performance ('http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=578&card2=575') then a nvidia 9400GT.
What is your video card? ;)ah yes a very good point that it seems a lot of people may have over looked (including myself). just saying you have a "1g Nvidia video card" doesn't mean you have a decent or high end card. i, and most likely just about everybody else, just assumed you had a higher end video card. but spannah has a very good point. some of the older less good cards are 1g too. so yes it would also help us if you posted your actual video card.

i still vote that no matter what you decide you should go with 4G more RAM over any other option as it will prove to be your best performance increase. everything else after that will be just icing on the cake so to speak.;)

~YYF

[Sam DeathWalker]

We been through all these things before:

[Ultimate] All-Purpose Rig ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=18771')

-Upgraded!- i7, here I come! ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=18937')

And we waiting on this guy for infos:

Creating a benchmark for Multiboxing Systems. ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=18848') .... and waiting.

Basically I am pushing a cheap 4 X 36g raptors in raid0 solution and Silencer is pushing the superior

ACard ANS-9010 RAM Drive ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=19039')

We both agree that 12G I7 is best, waiting for 24G to be avilable on the asus rampage II board. We both agree that a single 295 (or 285) vidoe card is best.

Actually I have moved into the Acard camp now:

The Dev has spoken! Where to put WoW folder! Acard wins! ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=19259')

[KvdM]

Tech support = person with a headset answering customer questions
Dev = person that has actually worked on the game

A dev would have told you that they designed the game to run from a hard drive and since hard drives are slow, the game does have to preload its data. This means that there is a point where increasing the speed of the storage medium will stop improving the performance of the game. A RAM drive is certainly overkill, although it would be interesting to know how much improvement you get from using it.

[Tonuss]

if i understand your question right then yes, moving your wow folders off of the HDD that hosts the OS could improve performance. if you are thinking about getting another HDD i would highly recommend an SSD. for multi-boxing all we care about is access times. like Sajuuk said you only need a cheap 30G or so 1 that can be had for around $70-90. wow only takes up about 15G of space so 30G is more then enough. you will have to symlink your wow folders but you should do that already even w/o another HDD.

BUT. and this is a big 1. from the specs you listed above. your best upgrade would be 4G more RAM. if your motherboard can support 8G of RAM and you have a 64-bit OS then go with 4G more ram before anything else.

WoW is very RAM intensive. 8G is just about a must for wotlk.

hope this helps some.

~YYFI was going to present a counter-point to this, and then it struck me-- I haven't been multiboxing in Northrend yet. Well, I started the other day, but it was just some early questing in Warsong Hold at off-peak times. My quad-core system with 2GB memory and a 4870 has handled my "followers" just fine through tBC, so I hadn't even considered how they will fare in Northrend. I guess I'll find out!

[knopstr]

My local Fry's Electronics was out of the cheap SSD's. As this is a hobby my wife gave me a budget of $400 bucks for upgrades. Since I have fairly decent equipment (not like Sam or some others) this amount allowed me to double my RAM and get faster HD's.

So, I purchased two new Seagate 500's with 32MB cache and my intention is to Raid0 them. After spending about 10minutes with two of their employees, they talked me out of 1 vel-raptor and recommended that I Raid0 these. Both kids (I'll call them) told me that if they could do it over they would do it this way. The new Seagate Drives utilize some form of new storage technology. I'm not a technical guru so I'm going to go with what they said.

I also purchased 4gbs MORE of Corsair 1600ddr3 memory. I now have 8.

My 1gb video card turns out to be a EVGA 8800GT. I get more than enough FPS when I'm on the ground in a zone...my problem is in Dal and sometimes SW. Since my occasional hiccups seem to be server/hd related, I didn't feel as though I needed to upgrade this atm.

My internet connection is through Time Warner and I have the turbo edition which is more than 22mb download and close to 4 up. Pretty sure I'm not having bandwidth issues there.

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. When I get it up and running I'll let you all know how it's working.

My intention now is to install Vista Ultimate and start from scratch.

[Souca]

After installing Vista, be sure to disable some of the more obtrusive features. I believe one of them is the window manager that copies the screen contents to a thumbnail it display when you mouse over the program in the Taskbar. This feature destroys frame rate and is pointless in my opinion. Other features can be turned off based on your usage. I personally disable drive indexing, as I don't care how long my searches take; I just don't want it indexing when I'm gaming.

The ram is a good upgrade, you won't regret having 8GB.

Here is the SSD ('http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001JU2UN0') I am using, but to be honest, I haven't really benchmarked to see how much of a gain, if any, I'm getting from it. I plan to do some testing this weekend as I'm curious where I can improve some performance. I'll update if I find any good info.

- Souca -