Inconsistent FPS while 5 boxing

[daviddoran]

So I built a brand new gaming system, and I'm getting strange FPS results while 5 boxing. I'm using ISBoxer, and its set to the default 30 FPS background 60FPS foreground, and i have Vsync turned on, with triple buffering (Didn't see much difference with it off either). My FPS is either 60FPS, or 14FPS. I played around with the overall video settings slider, and the higher I go, it only seems to affect my top end FPS, but still often goes down to 14. Is there anything else I can try? I just upgraded from a Q6600 OC'd to 3.4GHz, and I'm now running a core i7 @ 4GHz. I had similar issues with the Q6600, but my CPU was always at 100% while boxing, the core i7 is barely at 50%. Single boxing, or up to 3 boxing I never get any hint of slowdown. System also plays Starcraft 2 maxed no problem.

My system

eVGA X58 FTW3 Motherboard
Intel Core i7 930 @ 4GHz (tried at 4.2 and saw no difference before it crashed)
Corsair XMS3 12GB DDR3 1600
EVGA GTX 275 and a GTX 260 for the third monitor (soon will upgrade to dual GTX 460s in SLI)
Kingston SSD Now V Series 128GB running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and also houses my wow folder.

[Sajuuk]

*shrug*

A definite way to boost performance is to split up some of your toons between GPUs.


Lower the maxfpsbk on your slaves, I guess?

[Hivetyrant]

Might be a stupid question, but are you telling ISBoxer to use different CPU Cores for each instance of WoW?

That was the issue I had a long time ago.

Also, what version of Windows are you using?

Also, also, you don't need to run your CPU at such high frequencies (at least for WoW), I have the same CPU and run 6/7 instances at the same time across 3 screens with no issues and max fps.

[Harrypott]

Gather u reinstalled windows? Checked ur power settings to be on performance and made the reg hack to force it? Helped some people.

[Khatovar]

Might also want to check that indexing is off on the drives you're running WoW from. Indexing always gave me issues.

[MiRai]

Might also want to check that indexing is off on the drives you're running WoW from. Indexing always gave me issues.
Nice, I will have to test this out.

Anyway, this next one is for Dave...
If you are setting CPU affinity to only specific cores make sure that you are indeed using the physical core and its correct virtual core counterpart together. In fact, I believe some people had reported with their i7 920's back in the day that they got better results by assigning specific cores instead of all cores across all instances of the game.

And one last thing to try for the hell of it...
Try turning off the Hyper-Threading feature in the BIOS and test it out with just the 4 physical cores. /shrug

[daviddoran]

Thanks for the replies. I've had to reinstall windows, as I upgraded from a single SSD to a raid 0 array with 3 OCZ Vertex 2s. I have turned off all of the Indexing, prefetch, and all the other stuff recommended by SSD Tweaker for dealing with SSDs. I did a benchmark and im getting nearly 600MB/s transfer rates. I havent been to dalaran yet, but on the boat from booty bay to ratchet, the load screen in the middle was nearly instant.

I have the CPU Affinitys set so the main window gets 2 cores and 2 hyperthreads, and the other 4 share the other 4 threads. The cores are the odd numbers and the "fake" cores are the even numbered ones right?

I'm running windows 7 Ultimate x64. Also I upgraded my video cards, im running 2 GTX 460s, but I read wow isnt SLI capable so it's disabled for now. I got them so i could run surround gaming for other games in SLI, and also "just cause" lol The only way to keep upgrading this pc would cost a LOT more money than I'm willing to spend (6 core chip, GTX 480 3 way sli water cooling...)

[MiRai]

So, are things better than before? :)



The cores are the odd numbers and the "fake" cores are the even numbered ones right?

Windows will report them as 0-7 [physical being 0 with its counterpart being 1] and ISBoxer will report them as 1-8 [physical being 1 and its counterpart being 2], if I remember correctly.

[daviddoran]

not a real improvement, Not sure what to do next. If I assign the affinity for each wow other than the main to be on only one core, physical or virtual? Or should I try and double up, and give the 2 remaining cores 2 wows each? I'm going to focus on fine tuning my overclock. I've gotten it as highas 4.3GHz but it was not stable. 4.2 was stable for the most part, but still, not quite 100% stable. Seems to be stable at 4.0, I'm running a prime95 burn in test to see if its fully stable at 4.0. I'll see how close to 4.2 I can get and still be stable. Then I'll focus on tweaking wow again. I'll also try spreading around the GPU load, but that may not work, at least in Vista running on more than 2 monitors was a huge FPS drop.

If I enable multi monitor SLI, would that help any? I'm pretty sure it wont, as wow is mostly CPU bound in all the benchmarks I've seen. Also, I'm running my memory a little under spec to keep the ratio right. Would increased memory clock speed help any? All the review's I've seen seem to say that the caching on the CPU has gotten so efficient, that ram speed is not as important these days.

[MiRai]

not a real improvement, Not sure what to do next. If I assign the affinity for each wow other than the main to be on only one core, physical or virtual? Or should I try and double up, and give the 2 remaining cores 2 wows each? I'm going to focus on fine tuning my overclock. I've gotten it as highas 4.3GHz but it was not stable. 4.2 was stable for the most part, but still, not quite 100% stable. Seems to be stable at 4.0, I'm running a prime95 burn in test to see if its fully stable at 4.0. I'll see how close to 4.2 I can get and still be stable. Then I'll focus on tweaking wow again. I'll also try spreading around the GPU load, but that may not work, at least in Vista running on more than 2 monitors was a huge FPS drop.
I would first try just using all 8 cores for each slot. If that is crap then just try using 1, 3, 5, and 7 for all of the slots and let windows handle the virtualization. If that is still crap turn off the hyper threading in the BIOS and then double check your ISBoxer config and keep all slots assigned across all cores and see what happens. I guess... last but not least I would build a window layout that uses 1 monitor only just for test purposes and see if that has any impact what-so-ever [or you could try this first before messing with CPU affinity].


If I enable multi monitor SLI, would that help any? I'm pretty sure it wont, as wow is mostly CPU bound in all the benchmarks I've seen. Also, I'm running my memory a little under spec to keep the ratio right. Would increased memory clock speed help any? All the review's I've seen seem to say that the caching on the CPU has gotten so efficient, that ram speed is not as important these days.
I can't speak positive for SLI while multiboxing, everyone so far has had improvements by disabling it. You have newer 4xx cards so anything is worth a shot if the above doesn't give any change. I doubt the memory clock would do much if you're already at 4GHz unless you've really really really loosened the timings.

[Sbrowne55]

My machine is very similar, and it eats wows for dinner, I've ran 10 on it and it was just as smooth as 5. You've def got some core issues, as did I. Assign each wow to 2, I can't remember if cores started at 0 being your first core, but essentially it was 2 cores for each wow, and 1o cores total. The only time(s) I ever had lag, and low fps was due to my power supply going, and another from a virus. Fiddle around with the core affinities, and start ur wows at the lowest grapphics and scale up from there. It could be one graphic setting messing things up. Shadows was something I tuned down a lot.

[Hivetyrant]

I would first try just using all 8 cores for each slot. If that is crap then just try using 1, 3, 5, and 7 for all of the slots and let windows handle the virtualization. If that is still crap turn off the hyper threading in the BIOS and then double check your ISBoxer config and keep all slots assigned across all cores and see what happens. I guess... last but not least I would build a window layout that uses 1 monitor only just for test purposes and see if that has any impact what-so-ever [or you could try this first before messing with CPU affinity].


I can't speak positive for SLI while multiboxing, everyone so far has had improvements by disabling it. You have newer 4xx cards so anything is worth a shot if the above doesn't give any change. I doubt the memory clock would do much if you're already at 4GHz unless you've really really really loosened the timings.
Fenril head the nails on the head.

Use all cores for each instance, and turn off SLi.... At least to start with,m that should clear up the issues.

[daviddoran]

I kinda feel like an idiot, but I think the biggest impact on my performance I had was to turn the background frames to 15FPS. I probably could have done that with my q6600... Oh well. I didnt just upgrade for wow, I wanted to get back into first person shooters.

Ultimately, what I did, was to turn ON SLI, which I could only activate on one monitor due to a EDID bug on my main LCD (long story) so I had to hook up a third video card (thank god I got a mobo that was 3 way sli ready) and I hooked my other 2 monitors to the third card. Then I had to set my core affinity to 2 threads per instance. Just testing out 4 boxing, each wow on its own core gives me a consistent 60FPS. Can't 5 box just yet due to one of my accts expiring and I'm gonna wait til cata to renew.

I was monitoring my EVGA Precision for GPU usage, and even though I was rendering wow on a different screen, the primary GPU was still doing the work, so I surmised that SLI would hopefully help. I was also going to use the third card anyway for a physx card. I will probably someday try to re enable the 3d vision surround, cause I bet games like diablo 3 would kick ass with 3 monitors.