hardware advice please

[vinny_germany]

Good day all ;)

*Been coming here for a while and getting good advice on using Keyclone sorry i'm using AutoHotkeys
I've been triple boxing for a while now cause got bored of questing alone.

Got one team of mages to lvl 35 and now doing a team of shamys cause more fun they hit 49 yesterday.
Since a few days i've been trying to use 2 screens cause I multibox on one PC.

My setup is :

board : Asus P5Q
CPU: Q6600 Core 2 Quad
RAM: 4 GB
Graphic card : Geforce 9600GT -> just changed to a Gainward GTX275
Hard disk : 75GB 10k raptor

Windows Vista 64 bit professional

Screen 1 : Samsung 22" 16/9
Screen 2 : Samsung 19" 4/3

I am running the main account on the 22" and the other 2 on the 19"

I was running my 9600GT until today cause I was having some lag issues and poor fps and all windows. I just bought a GTX275 but I must say I dont see much of a difference if any.
It's playable but by no means what I would have hoped from upgrading the card. At best I get 60 fps on the main and about 30 on the other 2.

Is it the CPU my problem :S

any help advise would be greatly appreciated

regards
Vincent

Magevinnya , Magevinnyb , Magevinnyc
Vinnyshaman , Vinnyshamanb , Vinnyshamanc

[wowphreak]

Wow isnt very graphic intensive. upgrading your grpahics card is the last thing yeh should do for wow.

Might want to reduce some of yer graphics settings
Kill the shadows affects reduce the view range.

Did yeh set maxfps and maxfpsbk?
Did yeh set affinity?

Might also want to check and see how much memory yeh have left when yer running all yer accounts, vista require a considerable amount of memory just to run by itself.

[alcattle]

My guess is RAM also. You are running V64 so getting 2 more sticks of RAM won't be too bad. If the MB is full.... then it would be 4 sticks x 2 gigs ;(

[Sajuuk]

Have you tried tweaking the processor affinity for your WoWs within keyclone? How about capping the slave FPS at...say...20FPS?

Say, Client one using cores 1/2, client two using 3/4, and client three using 2/3? (Something similar to that)


By the way...looking to get rid of that 9600GT?

[vinny_germany]

thanks for the replies guys.

Should I stick to my 9600GT then (the GTX is on loan from shop)

I think I'll try to get some Ram then, i'll have to switch to 2MB or 4MB modules cause board full.

Dont use keyclone I use autohotkeys (sorry my mistake) is keyclone better then ? Can it run together with Autohotkeys ?

I must say I never touched the settings in WoW so will try that today.

I dont know how to set "maxfps and maxfpsbk" and "affinity" are those graphic card settings ?

sorry for the dum questions but I never really fiddle around with settings normally.

[alcattle]

Looking on the web, I think you have 4 slots (yellow and black?) so 4 gigs would be 4 x 1 gig RAM. You will need 4 x 2 gig sticks.

I would upgrade the RAM with the old card, it is as good or better than my 8800 GTS 320.

Keyclone and AHK do the same basic things, keep what is working.

Max/Min are WOW graphic settings, Affinty is the CPU setting.

Give that a shot

[vinny_germany]

on my P5Q i have 4 slots.
according to the book I can run up to 16GB due to chipset limitations. Since I can exchange the Graphic card I want to get 4x 4GB DDR2 - 667 (PC2 - 5300)
Does it make sense to run 16 rather than 8 ?
I could run 8 and put the difference towards a new CPU but i'm not sure that makes sense right now ?
The biggest CPU I can put on my board is the : Core 2 Quad Q9650(rev.E0,3.00GHz,1333FSB,L2:12MB)
dont think the P4, or Pentium D CPUs are better than the Core 2 Quad ?

[Sajuuk]

thanks for the replies guys.

Should I stick to my 9600GT then (the GTX is on loan from shop)

I think I'll try to get some Ram then, i'll have to switch to 2MB or 4MB modules cause board full.

Dont use keyclone I use autohotkeys (sorry my mistake) is keyclone better then ? Can it run together with Autohotkeys ?

I must say I never touched the settings in WoW so will try that today.

I dont know how to set "maxfps and maxfpsbk" and "affinity" are those graphic card settings ?

sorry for the dum questions but I never really fiddle around with settings normally.While in game, type /console maxfpsbk 20 into your slave's windows. (This will throttle down their performance in the background)
For processor affinity, there's a chart floating around that will help you. To change this while wow is not running, you'll have to edit your config.WTF files for each client (if you're using that) Otherwise you could hit Ctrl+alt+del and set your processor affinity by right clicking the wow process and changing it there. (You'll have to do this every time you start wow)

And keyclone is great! You should give it a whirl. Only twenty dollars, handles CPU affinity and throttling background client performance very well.

[gitcho]

what's the multisampling set to for each instance? I've got a core i7 920 with 12GB of fast ram, 30GB SSD (dedicated for wow), Asus 4850 and I was getting really crappy fps (5-7 in cities). I changed the video rez to 1x multisampling (down from 4x) on all my windows and reduced the view distance on all but my main and my FPS instantly shot up to 25-30 in dalaran and 60 everywhere else. just a thought ...

[Owltoid]

I remember on my i7 920 machine with 12GB of RAM, SSD, and GTX260 that I could get 30-40 FPS in Dalaran with max settings on all graphics except one. I don't remember what that setting was, but if it was at 75% everything ran smoothly, but as soon as I put it to max the game was unplayable. It may have been multisampling or shadows... I don't remember. If that particular setting was at 75% then everything else, including view distance, could be at maximum and things would run smoothly (5-boxing).

[Psych]

Before you go buying gobs of RAM and swapping out your existing sticks, have all of your WoW instances open and go into Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL --> Task Manager --> Performance Tab), see how much memory you're actually using. I run 5 WoW's at once, granted 4 of them are set for low graphics, but the main one is at "High" mostly. I never peak over 2.6GB of RAM used for 5 instances of the game at once. Add on any regular stuff like music, web, email, IM client, you won't get over 3GB used.

If you're not getting REALLY close to your RAM limits (4GB) then look to your CPU. Again in Task Manager, Performance tab, check when running all of your WoW's if all 4 cores are getting used, if you're only seeing usage on 2 cores then mess aroung with your Affinity settings in Autohotkey or in your config.wtf file itself.

If all cores are being used, you may want to look at a CPU upgrade. I just upgraded from a e6300 dual core (the 1.8Ghz version, not the 3Ghz) to an e8400 dual core and it's been a world of improvement, quite dramatic. WoW is quite CPU intensive, it would seem.

I'd wager that if you're going to put money towards something, your CPU will be a good way to go.

Hope that helps a bit!

[Owltoid]

Before you go buying gobs of RAM and swapping out your existing sticks, have all of your WoW instances open and go into Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL --> Task Manager --> Performance Tab), see how much memory you're actually using. I run 5 WoW's at once, granted 4 of them are set for low graphics, but the main one is at "High" mostly. I never peak over 2.6GB of RAM used for 5 instances of the game at once. Add on any regular stuff like music, web, email, IM client, you won't get over 3GB used.

Where are you seeing this? There is a huge difference between Dalaran and inside an instance from vanilla WoW (BRD). I'd be extremely surprised if you're only using 2.6GB of RAM on 5 clients inside Dalaran.

[Psych]

I'll check again tonight, but I for sure have never breached 4GB of RAM used. My highest 5 group is 65 so I've yet to 5 box in Dalaran, but still...during the Fire Festival there was a good amount of activity in some other capital cities/Shat.

I really think keeping the graphics settings low on the 4 clients is key, if they don't have to render gobs of data for things too far away to matter to a child instance of WoW, it must help with things.

But yeah, I'll maybe summon myself out to Dalaran soon and see how much mem usage I have like this.

[Owltoid]

I'll check again tonight, but I for sure have never breached 4GB of RAM used. My highest 5 group is 65 so I've yet to 5 box in Dalaran, but still...during the Fire Festival there was a good amount of activity in some other capital cities/Shat.

I really think keeping the graphics settings low on the 4 clients is key, if they don't have to render gobs of data for things too far away to matter to a child instance of WoW, it must help with things.

But yeah, I'll maybe summon myself out to Dalaran soon and see how much mem usage I have like this.

My laptop could run 4 in BC instances fairly well, but it can't handle more than one in Dalaran at any time (2GB RAM).

YMMV

[vinny_germany]

ok thanks for all the advise.
I just tried the performance window while running all 3 toons in SW

Ram is going grazy at about 3.4-3.5 GB
CPU is seeing only 50% but what is strange is only 2 cores are really going full out the other 2 are not really moving. Strange

i lowered the video settings in wow and I was getting the above values with about 45fps on main and about 25-30 on the other 2 windows on the second screen.

I gave back the GFX275 today and am waiting for the rams since they did not have 4x 4GB in stock. I should have them this weekend.

I'm going to have a go at keyclone now see what I can improve even more.

[Owltoid]

for the cores you need to change you affinity if you want it to load balance over more than the first two. Do a search on affinity on this website as there has been recent discussion.

[wowphreak]

Wow isnt very graphic intensive. upgrading your grpahics card is the last thing yeh should do for wow.


/facepalm

It is when you're running 5 copies of it.

I can run 5 copies of wow on a graphics card thats over 10 years old with no problems todays cards are overkill.
At least half of the graphics is done in/on the cpu wow doesnt do much offloading onto the graphics card.
This is the main reason why yeh set the affinity and the reason if yeh set yer in game res to high it still bogs down.

[Psych]

Ok, tested with all five in Dalaran, instead of each instance of Wow using 390MB of memory, it was using 580MB. That's it. Sooo...I never went over 3.6GB of memory used with all five dancing in Dalaran during a peak evening period.

If you crank your graphics, you'll use more, one client on full will use 1-1.5GB of memory, but that's on FULL settings at full res. If that's how you run things, you need gobs of RAM. If you run smaller child instances, you simply do not. 4GB is fine for 5 clients, 4 on low.

[vinny_germany]

Ok, tested with all five in Dalaran, instead of each instance of Wow using 390MB of memory, it was using 580MB. That's it. Sooo...I never went over 3.6GB of memory used with all five dancing in Dalaran during a peak evening period.

If you crank your graphics, you'll use more, one client on full will use 1-1.5GB of memory, but that's on FULL settings at full res. If that's how you run things, you need gobs of RAM. If you run smaller child instances, you simply do not. 4GB is fine for 5 clients, 4 on low.

This strange and not what I get at all. Are you running 2 screens ?
I am running quite good now thanks to the advise given by you all. Still using the 9600GT and my 4MB of ram (until the new arrive).
I played around with the performance window and set 2 wow on the last 2 cores and 1 on the first 2
then I set the 2 slave windows on 20fsp using the wow comand.
The result is i'm getting 60fps on main now going down do about 40 sometimes, runs nice over all but still lagging in SW.
memory usage is always around the 3GB - 3.4GB (which is max since only 3338 is used from the 4GB)
CPU usage is about 40-60 now but all cores are running :D

so I think I will stick to my memory upgrade since i'm maxing it out still

[grap]

.... 4 GB is fine for 5 clients, 4 on low. ....
well, it s a joke ;) ;) ;)
...... a copy of my memory, same PC like yours except video card.
main in full 1900X1200 and 4 clone with 1024X768 with an X4870 512 Mo
http://i86.servimg.com/u/f86/10/06/67/69/wow1210.jpg (http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=73&u=10066769)
No swap file but you see ... in dalaran with 5 wow .... i have only few M free. All is busy or ready to use.
I test with an MSI oc 285 1 Go ( all results are much better with this CG ) and i have less memory busy but 4 GB isnt enought at all to play 5 wow in dalaran.



Is it the CPU my problem :S

any help advise would be greatly appreciated

So, i ll give you my advice for your problem but you can choose what you want ....

You play with only 3 wow so 4 GB is enough because your 2 clones will be in lower resolution.
i use 512 MB for each clone and 1.4 GB for the mail in full.( i7 + w7 x64 )

Before, i was like you with 3 wow and xP pro x32 with only 2 GB and it was good except in shatt city.
q6600 + raptor + CG x800 xl 512 MB
With new ... wotlk, graphic is better ( shadows, etc ... ) so the game need more power.

Update to 8 GB RAM, it s enought. 16 GB is luxury and waste of money for 3 wows

If you want to play nice with 2 screens, the most important with your systeme .... is .... the graphic card and the memory on your graphic card.
Dont buy 2 CG with sli or cf, the result ll be expensive/not so great but try with one big video card with huge memory and see the difference ....
Not a multi gpu like X2 4870 or nvidia 295. The highest ll be ati x4890 or nvidia 285 but with huge memory, at least 1 GB


it s strange with your gtx275 1 Go !!!
it was 1 Go ?
You try the good video drivers ?

[Psych]

This strange and not what I get at all. Are you running 2 screens ?
I am running quite good now thanks to the advise given by you all. Still using the 9600GT and my 4MB of ram (until the new arrive).
I played around with the performance window and set 2 wow on the last 2 cores and 1 on the first 2
then I set the 2 slave windows on 20fsp using the wow comand.
The result is i'm getting 60fps on main now going down do about 40 sometimes, runs nice over all but still lagging in SW.
memory usage is always around the 3GB - 3.4GB (which is max since only 3338 is used from the 4GB)
CPU usage is about 40-60 now but all cores are running :D

so I think I will stick to my memory upgrade since i'm maxing it out still
I do run two screens, yes, but only one graphics card (8800GT). My slave screens (the 4 other WoW instances) are set to 30fps when in the background, which they always are as I'm always in my main screen and just peripherally watching the slaves. My main is mostly at 60fps in the world, in cities it can drop down a bit, typically not below 30 though, and as I said, memory usage is not ridiculous.

It's all in how you set your graphics up, when I'm running just a single WoW for group playing with friends I have it set for Ultra at 1680x1050, 2x AA, and I get 60fps everywhere but that one WoW instance uses up almost 2GB of memory by itself, like 1.6 or something in Dalaran.

When boxing as a 5 group, all four clients are set to low everything, no AA, 960x600 or whatever the first widescreen res is. My main window I maximize to 1680x1050 windowed, and basically crank up everything that doesn't require a game restart. So view distance goes to full, shadows to full, object density and things like that. I don't bother turning on the new graphic setting (well, new as of 3.0) to do with texture mapping or whatever it is, the bottom right of the four checkboxes with Death Effect and Full Screen Glow. I don't turn that on when boxing.

Anyways, guess it's all down to how pretty you want things, if you are running larger windows for your slaves, or you want them to have a huge viewing distance or flashy graphics, you're going to use lots more memory than I. But definitely I have no troubles, and I never use my slave screens unless my main dies, or if I have to manually click something on them. None of these operations require awesome graphics for me though :)

So you CAN get by fine with 4GB and a mid-range processor/video card, and have a very playable and enjoyable experience, that's what I'm trying to say I guess. Everyone always suggests you need to spend thousands of dollars to multibox, even on a single machine, mis-information is teh lose.

[grap]

How many wow you play ?
At the beginnning you said 3 and now you have a full boxing with 5 wows ?

if you want 5 wow, 8 GB is the minimum and you CAN NOT play at all with 4 GB except if you enjoy 1 or 5 fps ..... !!!

[Psych]

How many wow you play ?
At the beginnning you said 3 and now you have a full boxing with 5 wows ?

if you want 5 wow, 8 GB is the minimum and you CAN NOT play at all with 4 GB except if you enjoy 1 or 5 fps ..... !!!Incorrect, if you don't play all of them on their own monitors at 1600+ resolution with high detail graphics. Set to Medium or Low and I can surely run 10 WoW's at once with 4GB. :P

[grap]

You can run 10 wow with 4 Go ... !!!!! ???? !!!!
And you can play 10 wow with 4 Go too in the middle of huge dalaran city saturday evening !!!!!
great joke ....
maybe ....
but .......
there is a little problem .....

we havent the same definion of the word ..... playing ..... 8|

ok, it s my last message on this funny topic, i dont want to feed .... the green troll again :thumbsup:

[vinny_germany]

:cursing:

i hate computers

got 8 GB of RAM today cause was tired of waiting for my 16GB to arrive and no delivery date.

I took some OCZ Reaper HPC DDR2 PC8500 1066mhz (all they had in stock) but I cant get the pc to run with them higher than 887 mhz at 1066 windows doenst start up

X(
going to have to take the whole machine to the store

[alcattle]

Might need to up your Dvolt in BIOS, and check what the company says to use. Stock is usually 1.8 but some need 2.0 or 2.2

[vinny_germany]

ok in the end it's the mother board that can't make the ram run at 1066MHZ so I changed them for 800MHZ ones and it runs stable now.
Using 3.9GB of memory in SW with 3 accounts running and the 2 off accounts running on second screen with details on min and 20fps max
that way i'm getting 60fps all the time mostly on the main window
using 2 cores on main and 2 on the other 2
nice and smooth so far

[Psych]

How are people using almost 4GB of memory in Stormwind, for 3 accounts running at 20fps on the slaves and at low detail?!

Insane...all my four slaves are at 30 (but could easily go higher) at on low graphic settings, main can be maxed out even, at still stay under 4GB used in Dalaran.

Srsly...no lie, what the heck are people doing to their systems that makes them pigs? 5 million addons? No idea how to optimize Windows or something?

It can be done, it can play nicely and only use a bit over 2GB of ram, I tell no lie.

[vinny_germany]

How are people using almost 4GB of memory in Stormwind, for 3 accounts running at 20fps on the slaves and at low detail?!

Insane...all my four slaves are at 30 (but could easily go higher) at on low graphic settings, main can be maxed out even, at still stay under 4GB used in Dalaran.

Srsly...no lie, what the heck are people doing to their systems that makes them pigs? 5 million addons? No idea how to optimize Windows or something?

It can be done, it can play nicely and only use a bit over 2GB of ram, I tell no lie.

Dont know but with Vista 64bit i'm using 3.2-3.9 right now and getting a smooth 60fps on main window.
I guess in the end maybe it depends on the windows version and maybe the antivirus / firewall etc running
Right now all is running well for me with this memory upgrade to 8MG so i'm happy as is.
Thanks all for the advice