Biting off more than I could chew

[Squiggoth]

Okay, so I have a good new PC (8600 nvidia, dual core 1.86ish, 2 gigs ram, xp, etc) and an older pc (6k series, single core 2.8 I think, 2 gigs ram, xp, etc).

My plan was to 5 box 1 paladin, 4 shaman. I planned to keep 3 clients on the good machine, 2 on the older one. I bought the 5 accounts, the 2 KeyClones, and off I went.

Except for monitors I have 2: a 24" Gateway that is just awesomeface, runs in 2048x1024 or something similar, and for the 2nd PC I have just a dinky 17 inch crapola LCD monitor.

Add on top of this my 2nd PC blue screens any time I have WoW in windowed mode, and you have a weird senario.

I can't put 2 clients on the 2nd PC becuase of the blue screens, but even if I could they'd be so small it'd be hard to see any text or anything anyway. Eventually I may just re-OS the PC to see if that fixes it or if it's a hardware problem. For NOW, a single maximized client will do, with KeyClone running in the background.

I can run 4 clients on the 1st good PC but the best way I was able to get it is having 3 clients "stacked" on each other running 1024x768, stacked so that I can see the chatboxes of each one, and the 4th running 1600x1200ish.

Now, I get 30fps on all 4, but this is still a bit low for my tastes. It isn't until I go to 2 clients I can get the 40s and 50s in fps. I'm not sure if this is a limitation of hardware, but I have done a few troubleshooting steps such as making all 4 clients same resolution (no change in fps), disabling EVERY addon on every client (no change in fps), etc.

My Task Manager tells me the CPU is my issue -- with 4 clients it fights for CPU time. Should I bork with the affinity or leave it be?

ALSO this is just hardware. I'm also having a game issue -- I loathe to grind, questing is where it's at and it's the ONLY way I was able to go to 1-70 on my other server. I'm not like some of these guys who have 2 or 3 "teams" of 70s. =P I envy them, but back to my problem. I am taking all the kill quests I can get (although turning them in with all 5 toons is....a chore) and ignoring the gather quests. Then I grind everywhere I possibly can. But 20 XP at level 3 is like....ugh...takes forever and I can imagine it not getting a whole lot better.

SOOOOOOOOOO here's my end question:

With my PC issues, and my "emo" I hate grinding issues, should I:

A)Go to a 2 or 3 box, where I can get gather quests, treat each toon more like an individual, maybe even expand on classes/roles (3 druids sounds like fun, a tank, a healer, a dpser). Then if I can manage that, try the 5 boxing again.

B)Stick it out and stop being such a whiny baby?

C)Multiboxing may not be for me.

[Eteocles]

1) Get a Quad-Core if you wanna run more than 3 on the same PC; I have a dual-core too and 2 runs smoothly, 3 runs mostly smoothly though you can tell it's starting to push the limits, 4 will be like giving a fat guy a piggyback ride, "she cannae take any more captain!" :p
2) Attempt to limit the FPS on the background clients as described by keyclone, I forget the exact command but it was something like /console maxfpsbk 15/20/etc; limiting the FPS on the background clients may improve the front copy and you will likely not notice much difference in the background ones, but your poor stressed processor will lol
3) If all else fails, downgrade to 4(1 on off PC, 3 on main) and you'll still be able to run instances for the most part on your own; down to 3 if you have to but again your options above would solve the numbers issues if you can afford it

[Contents]

I dont understand the claims that dual cores cant take 5 WoW's I'm running an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ and it handles everything fine, I never go over 80% usage.

But back on topic, I say suck it up nancy boy. The first 20 levels seriously make you want to play SWG instead (I assure you this is a bad thing) But once you ding 20 or run your first successful instance things get much better.

you might want to play with the CPU affinity and close any unnecessary programs in the background. This should make things run a bit smoother.
You may just want to go to a quad-core which could solve your probs, but why spend money if you don't have to?

Also, some people say that running multiple instances of Wow from one directory burns system resources, so you might want to try making a WoW folder for each account. This may help.

[Squiggoth]

Thanks you two. =)

A couple of things:

1. I am running WoW from 4 completely seperate copies, so that's not it.
2. I am running with literally nothing else running. Only things in Task Manager showing up are the essential system resources (like services). Also nothing else is showing up as using any CPU when I play, just the 4 instances and KeyClone.
3. I am not "claiming" it can't run 4, on the contrary, I believe it should be able to. I am trying to figure out why it can't run 4 smoothly.

I'll give the /console commands a try.

[keyclone]

hi Squiggoth and welcome to the forums! :)

if you are starting your wows using keyclone commands, then tweaking the fps is easy. ion the command editor, you will see maxfpsbk and maxfps... set them to 15 and 40 (maxfpsbk == background frames per second)

by doing this, you should be able to squeeze more life out of your cpu/gpu

also... for the blue screen issue... have you tried updating the drivers? did you get the right one? also... make sure all your clients have turned off sound in the background and sound hardware acceleration (i don't remember the exact setting, i'm at work... hopefully someone else can fill in the correct info)

good luck

[Squiggoth]

Thanks, KC, I really dig your program. It made getting into mutli-boxing a breeze.

Regarding the 2nd older PC I am having blue screen issues with, it's not audio, as I ripped out the sound card to put in my new PC. ;P So Windows XP doesn't even recognize a device, thusly, no hardware to bork anything up.

I do have the latest and greatest video drivers. However, my theory is it's something in Windows. An unrelated but EXTREMELY annoying problem I have is when I right click something, and I happen to wander past "Send To-" it freezes for literally 3-4 minutes. So something is borked, I think I need a reinstall of Windows, then I should be able to run 2 clients on it easily.

As a side-question, I often need different resolutions (I raid as well, so I need the full-screen, max-res version, and then I multibox, so I need windowed, smaller-res versions.

Is there anything that easily allows me to swtich that stuff on mutliple clients? Usually I have to point/click to do it but is there a /console command that I could replicate with KeyClone?

AND one last question. When I use the pause button to mute KC, do I have to do it on both PCs?

[Skuggomann]

Try followign this order, if 1 donsnt work go to nr2 and 3 and 4 ect...



1. Reinstall XP and WoW
2. Set everyting to teh lowest (grapix that is)
3. Limit fraps to 25, 5,5,5,5
4. OC to the max (but not to max XD)
5. Buy a new PC
6. Give upp cuz the shits not working XD
7. Pray? (you never know god might be real, and lisening and give a shit abotu you all at the same time, jea it cud happen XD Btw god donst exist so you can skipp thsi part if you like or pray to hisna or watever the talibans do (that is if yoru a taliban or if tahts even a real word))
8. Write a letter to Santi Claus? (God may not be real but santa is!! its true ive seen him he playes in the movie: Fred Claus!)
9. go to a shady allyway and blow a bunch of homoes for $ (reststops are also a good place to go at night)

[Squiggoth]

.....

I just.....wow....

[Wilbur]

I don't recommend step #9

Los also would not recommend step #9

:-(

[Contents]

I only understood half of it, but even that half scares me a bit.

Officially afraid to come across Skuggo in a dark alleyway.

Also I believe that when you hit the Pause button it should override every WoW associated with keyclone.

[marvein]

Also I believe that when you hit the Pause button it should override every WoW associated with keyclone.

that is correct, however there have been some quirks with the pause button but it seems to only be affected in high lag areas (dependant upon machine) so if your framerate is kind of choppy a pause from keyclone may not always take.

[Vos]

Should I bork with the affinity or leave it be?

Yes you should. I would suggest trying main wow on proc 1 and the other two on proc 0 first.

also your gateway 24" is 1920x1200 resolution

[keyclone]

another source of the BSOD could be flaky memory or a cracked mobo