5x WoW and Vista 64

[John110]

At the moment iam using XP Prof ( 32 Bit ), 4 gig ram and 5 accs.

Will be there a performance boost if i go with a 64 bit OS?

Cant really say it lags while i run 5 accs ( 1 PC ) but sometimes i have "keysend" lag so only 2 out of 4 slaves do the action i was sending from main acc. Iam using keyclone.

Or do i get a better performance boost if i buy a quadcore?

[keyclone]

if you go to vista64, you'll be able to put more memory on your box. i've got 8gb on my vista64 quad core box... and loving it.

btw, i was talking with someone today that was tired of 'playing games' with performance issues and took advice i gave him about 2 months ago. he upgraded to the i7 and got 12g of memory (i didn't suggest that much, but it wasn't much more so he went for it). he called today to tell me how thrilled he has been with his new machine. he's got it running 4 screens (2x 22" portrait mode, 1x 30" and 1x 36") and 5-boxing on it, no problem. he says all the screen are extremely smooth (i'm not sure of the video card... it has 4 dvi outputs, 2g of memory and i believe its an nvidia board)

btw, if you do get the quad or i7 chip, make sure to set your cpu affinity correctly and set the maxfpsbk and maxfps fields for each command

[John110]

Sounds good. Thought about a quadcore too.

Whats the difference between quadcore and i7? Iam out of pc buissness for 2 years now, didnt read anything new.

Oh and i have 2 more questions.

1. May i run XP32 prof and vista 64 on 1 PC? ( 2 partitions )

2. Why does keyclone stop sending keystrokes when i open up my task manager? ( XP prof SP3 )

[Enndo]

The i7 has 4 physical cores like a standard quad core, But.. it also has an additional 4 virtual cores! So 8 cores!!

[Contagion]

You can use the PAE switch to get Vista 32 to address more than 4GB of memory.

The question is if the WoW code supports PAE mode.
Microsoft supports Physical Address Extension (PAE) memory in Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 products:

Windows XP (all versions) 4 GB of physical RAM* (*Total physical address space is limited to 4 GB on these versions of Windows.)



Vista doesn't support PAE because it already has a 64bit mode. XP doesn't support > 4 GB even with PAE mode. Not sure what the point is then unless it helps overcome the 1G of RAM lost due to be being allocated for video devices.



All that said, the best option? Download the X64 Win7 RC and get 8G of RAM (or more if your motherboard and wallet support it). You'll have to upgrade to the real Win7 release when it comes out, but it's better than switching to Vista at this point.

[Momo]

Windows 7 will be on the market by August/September. Full release.

Personally, I have been running Vista Ultimate 64 for a couple of years and have found it to be a very good OS.

Windows 7 absolutely wipes the floor with it.

JUst too many more options with 64 bit .

With memory being so cheap at the moment I really cannot see the point of limiting yourself with the OS.

[keyclone]

i haven't bumped to windows 7 yet, but all accounts of its performance are very encouraging.

what i have heard is something about the UI being more like a mac. that is not an improvement in my book (i hate that moving bar at the bottom of mac screens, can it be disabled? can we install our own window manager?).

@John110
1. May i run XP32 prof and vista 64 on 1 PC? ( 2 partitions )

afaik

2. Why does keyclone stop sending keystrokes when i open up my task manager? ( XP prof SP3 )

it should function normally. if you open keyclone's setup, that would be the same as hitting override.

[Tonuss]

At the moment iam using XP Prof ( 32 Bit ), 4 gig ram and 5 accs.

Will be there a performance boost if i go with a 64 bit OS?

Cant really say it lags while i run 5 accs ( 1 PC ) but sometimes i have "keysend" lag so only 2 out of 4 slaves do the action i was sending from main acc. Iam using keyclone.

Or do i get a better performance boost if i buy a quadcore?Will you get better performance from more than 4GB RAM? Yes.

Will you get better performance from a quad core? Yes.

I 5-boxed on a single machine this past week for the first time. In the past I would run my main on one computer and my alts on a second system. I'm running a Core i7-920 (stock speeds, it hits 3.6GHz easily with the stock HSF, going to replace that next month) with Vista64 and 12GB of memory. I also have three RAID 0 arrays (and the WoW folders spread among them) and two Radeon 4870 (512MB). I connect those to two big LCDs (1920x1200). One LCD has the main character at full 1920x1200, the other has the alts in 800x600 windows (I use keyclone's maximizer for those, to tile them and remove the borders).

Performance overall is good, but the main window tends to have some jitter, and is usually running in the 15-30 FPS range, even with all settings at low. No idea why, but it could have to do with my keyclone settings, as I used the CPU affinity to tie four of the WoWs to a specific core, while leaving the fifth one "unaffiliated." However, it's playable, and one thing that has improved greatly from my old setup is that there is almost never any lag between the windows. In my old setup I would constantly have to tap my assist key twice in order to get all of the alts to target a mob. It doesn't happen now. I can hit my assist key and then my attack key almost immediately and the alts won't "skip" a keypress. I'm going to look into ways to improve performance on the main window, but for now I'm very happy with it.

One thing I know for sure, from watching a system meter I have loaded in the Windows Sidebar, is that the extra RAM is a huge help-- my system load goes to 4900MB shortly after loading all of the WoW windows, and during an average play session it hovers in the 5200-5400MB range. I've seen RAM usage go as high as 7200MB. On a system with 4GB that would've brought things to a halt.

[Korruptor]

You can use the PAE switch to get Vista 32 to address more than 4GB of memory.

The question is if the WoW code supports PAE mode.See here ('http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778.aspx') under "Physical Memory Limits: Windows Vista"
"The following table specifies the limits on physical memory for Windows Vista."
Under all versions of 32bit Vista it says 4GB (minus "starter").

PAE or no PAE, it's a lock put in by MS. Even their 32bit "Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition" can't use more the 4GB even with the /PAE switch. Only 32bit Enterprise and above can when enabled with the /PAE switch.

See the bottom of this link ('http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx') .
"Windows XP SP2 and later | AWE API and 4 GB of physical address space"

Also this link ('http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx') :

"Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 Memory Support. The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is also 4 GB. However, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition supports 32 GB of physical RAM and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition supports 64 GB of physical RAM using the PAE feature ('http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx')."

[Catamer]

the boost of speed you get between x32 and x64 is more memory ( or at least the biggest boost )
if you have 3G of ram you probably won't notice that much difference between x32 and x64 flavors.
my presonal experience is x64 works great.

you can run the i7 as either 4 cores at 2.6ghz or 8 cores at 1.3ghz. ( change 2.6ghz to the speed of the cpu you purchase and half it if you run it with 8 cores )
the i7 has a completely overhauled memory manager so the largest boost you get there is that data from memory is getting to the CPU faster than before. I would suggest filling out all of the memory slots.
so an i7 set for 4 cores runs faster than a quad core because if the better memory access.

it all depends on the programs you are running as to whether or not having 4 fast cores or 8 slower cores is better for you. I believe most people are going with the 8.

[keyclone]

another thing to do if you have 4 or 8 cores would be to set the cpu affinity to use 2 cores per wow, since wow is optimized for 2 cores, then spread the load evenly across the cores.

let's say you have 5 wows and an i7 (8 cores)... i would set it up like this:

wow1 - cpu0 + cpu1
wow2 - cpu2 + cpu3
wow3 - cpu4 + cpu5
wow4 - cpu6 + cpu7
wow5 - cpu1 + cpu2

note that i avoided using cpu0 more then once. this is due to the OS already being on cpu0, so i wanted to avoid the extra load.

if you have a quad core:

wow1 - cpu0 + cpu1
wow2 - cpu1 + cpu2
wow3 - cpu2 + cpu3
wow4 - cpu0 + cpu1
wow5 - cpu2 + cpu3

[Sam DeathWalker]

PAE in theory does work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Some confusion comes from the fact that there is a limit on the amount of ram each process can execute.

Nonetheless in practice PAE is a joke:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx


System Board Issues: DAC Capabilities for Buses
Various chipsets are capable of supporting more than 4 GB of physical memory. By using PAE, the Windows Datacenter and Advanced Server operating systems can use this memory.

On a 64-bit platform, for optimal performance, all PCI adapters (including 32-bit PCI adapters) must be able to address the full physical address space. For 32-bit PCI adapters, this means that they must be able to support the Dual Address Cycle (DAC) command to permit them to transfer 64-bit addresses to the adapter or device (that is, addresses above the 4 GB address space). Adapters that cannot provide this support cannot directly access the full address space on a 64-bit platform.

Unfortunately, Microsoft is finding that not all PCI buses on a system board support DAC, which is required for a 32-bit PCI adapter to address more than 4 GB of memory. Furthermore, there is no way for a DAC-capable PCI device (or its associated driver) to know that it is running on a non-DAC-capable bus.


Regardless of who is right or wrong with Win7 being around there seems little practical choice but to go to Win7 if you want over 4G ram.
MIght try:

os cpu0/1
main cpu2/3
alt12 cpu4/5
alt34 cpu6/7

So you can run main at higher resolution then alts and have a core and virtual core for OS. DO NOT set anythign to only virtual cores.

There is really only one question left as to optimal hardware:


With a 920/I7 and 12G is your non latency lag due to cpu saturation or texture lag going to the SSD/HHD or whatever your wow data folder in on. Has anyone gone from a 920 to a 965 and seen a lot of impovement? Do all 920/I7 users still get low frame rates when loading new textrues (i.e. anyplace a lot of pc's are coming in and out of view?). Does video card with 2G ram per single cpu improve this?

[Moorea]

PAE is a useless workaround (which also isn't working on vista32 so fur you should do your own research too but even if it was it would be just a ugly useless kludge). Why would you not get a 64bit OS if you need 4gb and more... just get vista64 or windows7 as said; and 6+ gb and you'll be fine

[Ozbert]

IMO, theres not much point in buying Vista64 now.

Download a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate from Microsoft and run it until Windows 7 releases for real.

Windows 7 is looking like a very, very promising OS. It'll be the first version of Windows that I'll be more than happy to buy. I've been running it since the beta was made available in February and have had no problems so far.

[Tonuss]

you can run the i7 as either 4 cores at 2.6ghz or 8 cores at 1.3ghz. ( change 2.6ghz to the speed of the cpu you purchase and half it if you run it with 8 cores )Hyperthreading/SMT doesn't halve the speed in order to use extra cores. It makes better use of gaps in the CPU pipelines to make the CPU more efficient. The Pentium 4's hyperthreading was not very well implemented and thus you were often better off not using it, but the version in the Core i7 CPUs is much better. It's not really 8 cores, but it works pretty well nonetheless. Turning on Hyperthreading does not change the CPU speeds at all. I'm running 4 cores @2.66GHz with hyperthreading on, so Device Manager shows 8 cores @2.66GHz.

[Momo]

IMO, theres not much point in buying Vista64 now.

Download a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate from Microsoft and run it until Windows 7 releases for real.

Windows 7 is looking like a very, very promising OS. It'll be the first version of Windows that I'll be more than happy to buy. I've been running it since the beta was made available in February and have had no problems so far.This.

Yeah...This is what I would do. Windows 7 will be pretty much the first OS that I will dump serious money on.

If I didnt already have Vista Ultimate 64 set just how I want it I would use the release candidate of 7 for sure.

[John110]

Thx for the tips. Guess ill go with Windows 7 and a i7.

Didnt like vista anyway so no big deal to wait for w7.

[Starbuck_Jones]

How did he or you Keyclone get over the second monitor or in this case a lot more monitor performance hit. Im Running Visatx64 and I can run 5x accounts just fine on one monitor. It eats up too much real estate for my tastes but if I hook up a second monitor and move slave accounts over there, the whole thing grinds to like 10fps. Ive tried useing the same video card as well as adding a second one with no change. XP doesnt have this problem useing the same unified driver sets. I have read several threads about something with how xp allowed this to all work with a spanned desktop and such where vista doesnt do it the same way and thus the hit.

[Tonuss]

I have two video cards and two monitors. I have the main WoW on one monitor, running at full resolution and windowed mode (maximized). Then I used the maximizer in keyclone to set up the alt WoWs on the other monitor. The alts are all 800 x 600 with everything turned down and they run fairly well, a slight bit choppy but I rarely check those windows so it doesn't matter. I think the problem I was having with my primary display is that for some reason it would leave the 'view distance' setting at max. Turning it down allows the primary window to run at 40fps most of the time and the jitter is almost nonexistant now.

The alt windows probably run at 15 fps or so, I think I used keyclone to limit them to 20 fps or something like that. But like I said, I don't really bother with those windows (and between Jamba and the recent addition of binding a key to "interact with target" I almost never have to). I'm running relatively recent drivers for the Radeon cards (from 3-4 months ago? Maybe a bit more recent). But like I said above I'm also running 12GB of memory and a lot of striped arrays.

One change that may have made a difference is that instead of running 5 WoWs out of 5 directories, I'm now running the main account from one directory, and the other four are split between two directories. Each directory is on its own separate RAID partition. I may try moving the main account to the D drive (and away from the OS partition) and run the four alts out of a single directory on E, just to see if it provides any extra performance. But for the time being it works just fine (still in the old world, with a group of level 15s, two locks and three mages).

[Momo]

I use two monitors on 64bit Vista.
8gig of decent DDR2 ram.

One monitor is a 24", the other is a 19".

Brain account is run on the big monitor, pulls EASY 60+ fps. Graphics settings @ "Good" with shadows reduced.
All 4 drones occupy 25% of the 19" screen, splitting it into four. All of those screens run at 30fps limited via keyclone. Lower graphics settings.

It let me do it on the nvidia driver set and it lets me do it on the ATI driver set. They are somewhat different, and if anything, it appears that the
ATI set is much more efficient. In my opinion.

***All my accounts are symlinked to the one brain account data and interface files***

I was running a GTX 280 Graphics card, but that build just has too many stability issues. I just replaced it with an XfX HD4890 which are CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP.

That thing is nuts. Easy.

My rig eats wow for breakfast.

[Bollwerk]

I was running a GTX 280 Graphics card, but that build just has too many stability issues. I just replaced it with an XfX HD4890 which are CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP.
Strange. I have a GTX 280 and have not had a single problem. It handles both my single player raiding and quad boxing without breaking a sweat. Maybe you got a lemon?

[Momo]

I was running a GTX 280 Graphics card, but that build just has too many stability issues. I just replaced it with an XfX HD4890 which are CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP.
Strange. I have a GTX 280 and have not had a single problem. It handles both my single player raiding and quad boxing without breaking a sweat. Maybe you got a lemon?Yep, I got a lemon.

It still works OK, but would just crash the graphics drivers repeatedly. A lot of the early ones had issues with overheating. I just got a dud methinks....

[bryce]

if you go to vista64, you'll be able to put more memory on your box. i've got 8gb on my vista64 quad core box... and loving it.

btw, i was talking with someone today that was tired of 'playing games' with performance issues and took advice i gave him about 2 months ago. he upgraded to the i7 and got 12g of memory (i didn't suggest that much, but it wasn't much more so he went for it). he called today to tell me how thrilled he has been with his new machine. he's got it running 4 screens (2x 22" portrait mode, 1x 30" and 1x 36") and 5-boxing on it, no problem. he says all the screen are extremely smooth (i'm not sure of the video card... it has 4 dvi outputs, 2g of memory and i believe its an nvidia board)

btw, if you do get the quad or i7 chip, make sure to set your cpu affinity correctly and set the maxfpsbk and maxfps fields for each commandi7 is not for gamers right now. You can get the same performance with a cheaper quad or a E8400. I've done some tests with a friend whose got a i7 and he's pissed off because I have a faster, more stable system than he does. I'm running my E8400 @ almost 4.24ghz while his is at around 4.1ghz. He's only got 4gb of RAM opposed to my 12gb of RAM as well. Let me see if I can find that article on how i7's suck for gaming.

@ OP: I had no issues with 5x WoW copies, keyclone, or anything else on Vista Ultimate x64. Runs perfectly and it's actually just as fast as XP, but with DX10 and more stable I think. That is, after you trim the services, etc down.

Needless to say Windows 7 x64 is going to be awesome. I'm running it on a quad boot right now and have had no issues with anything from this site to multibox on. I even F@H while playing graphic intensive games using the GPU2 client.

[Tonuss]

i7 is not for gamers right now.Core i7 works about as well for games as the less-expensive Core-2 Quad CPUs, so it's not as cost-efficient. I would not say that it isn't for gamers, but I would not blame a person who bought a less-expensive CPU platform for gaming. I think your friend would see a big improvement with more RAM. Go from 4GB to 8GB and he should be good.

[Reglar]

another thing to do if you have 4 or 8 cores would be to set the cpu affinity to use 2 cores per wow, since wow is optimized for 2 cores, then spread the load evenly across the cores.

let's say you have 5 wows and an i7 (8 cores)... i would set it up like this:

wow1 - cpu0 + cpu1
wow2 - cpu2 + cpu3
wow3 - cpu4 + cpu5
wow4 - cpu6 + cpu7
wow5 - cpu1 + cpu2

note that i avoided using cpu0 more then once. this is due to the OS already being on cpu0, so i wanted to avoid the extra load.

if you have a quad core:

wow1 - cpu0 + cpu1
wow2 - cpu1 + cpu2
wow3 - cpu2 + cpu3
wow4 - cpu0 + cpu1
wow5 - cpu2 + cpu3A bit off the original poster's message, but I was intrigued by the assigned pairings. I've tried both affinity to 2 cores and no-affinity (I run a i7 920 at 4.0Ghz), and honestly the no-affinity solution seemed to be running better, but perhaps I got lucky. Has anyone done imperical tests of the 2 options? I'd hate to be gimping my setup by mistake.