City Lag

[dancook]

2.4 Quad, 8800 GTX, 4gb ram
5 x WOW

Entering orgrimmar I get a lot performance lag for about a minute, memory usage goes from 2.2gigs to 3.2gigs. CPU is nearing 100% for the majority.

Is this inevitable? I'm reluctant to reduce graphics settings because it's only a temporary thing.. but will upgrading hardware resolve it?

edit. pardon this was meant for h/w forum, but appreciate any response

[Teq]

Its not realy the city that causes the lag usually. Its all the people and npc's. I.E. Try what happends when you are dead in a city and dont load them. Easy to check if that is the problem for you too.

I remember somehting you could change in the WTF file, that reduced the range and amount of npc's that where loaded. I'll see if i can find it.

[keyclone]

the perfomance drop would be each wow client trying to read all the data from disk at the same time. to improve such a situation, you would need multi-readers... ie: multiple disk drives. if you want to get crazy, 4 smallish hard drives, each with a different wow instance would give you 1 read per wow. you could change it to a single stripped raid... which would also improve performance...

either way, you will have the memory usage as it needs the data to render the area.

[dancook]

the perfomance drop would be each wow client trying to read all the data from disk at the same time. to improve such a situation, you would need multi-readers... ie: multiple disk drives. if you want to get crazy, 4 smallish hard drives, each with a different wow instance would give you 1 read per wow. you could change it to a single stripped raid... which would also improve performance...

either way, you will have the memory usage as it needs the data to render the area.

I'll stick my main wow folder on the D: and test the theory - be interesting if it works :)

IF it were the case, i wonder if you could use memory cards to contain the wow folders :) would access/transfer rate be high enough.. firewire/network/usb solutions?

[Notes]

I'll put Keyclone's solution to the test aswell, might be worth a shot. Got the same problem and indeed 5 WoW's on 1 HD.

WIll try it asap when I get home tonight!

[dancook]

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/ProductInfo.aspx?ID=2006

40mb/s transfer rate, though I wouldn't know if it's enough ..

[dancook]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=624046

:) sweet 8gb external usb 2.0 drive.. x 4 ...

[Notes]

WoW folders are like 8.5gb in totall(well mine are anyway) so those are a bit too small in GB's

[leukos]

4GB Compact Flash cards with high read speed are becoming more affordable, the 8GB still seem to be relatively pricey. However, there are other solutions.

Addonics makes one of them. The Quad-CF PCI Controller allows you to combine 4 Compact Flash cards into one RAID0 drive, two separate RAID1 drives, one RAID 10 drive, or four separate drives. I've included a picture below, and more information can be found at http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad4cfprj.asp.

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/images/ad4cfprj_angled.jpg

Addonics also makes Compact Flash to SATA converters, and the hardware that will let you mount them in 3.5" and 2.5" bays. They also make this:

http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/images/sas_diagram_large.jpg

Use your imagination, it will fit into a single 5.25" drive bay.

The folks over in the mp3car forum have spent a lot of time using Compact Flash as hard drive replacements and have addressed some of the main problems with them. Before someone brings up the write-cycle lifetime of using Compact Flash cards make sure you take a look at a driver released from Microsoft called the Enhanced Write Driver (EWF).

EWF can provide an overlay of a file system in RAM. Any writes to the file system get saved to RAM, essentially tricking the operating system into thinking the write was successful. When the computer reboots the information in RAM gets lost. It can also do the same to a hard drive, but then you lose most of the advantageous of using flash memory.

Sometimes, it is easier to just spend the extra $300 and get a proper solid state drive. There is something to be said about buying a product by a single SKU instead of a two page bill of materials and assembly instructions that read like the recently released Budget of the United States Government.

As a side note, Keyclone's comment on multiple disk is correct. When you start issuing a large number of read and write requests you will eventually reach a point where one disk can not perform the work. You need more hands (disk). I work on some smaller computer systems, one of which we need to run across about 100 15K Fibre disk in order to meet our Service Level Agreement (SLA). The only other way we could reach that is with a RAMSAN (think giant compact flash card). And, no, they won't let me run Warcraft on it.

[Nepida]

I had this problem too, cities were bad and shatrath during the day was an absolute nightmare.

However (!) there is a way to really help this if you meet the following criteria.
1) Running Windows Vista
2) Your problem stems from the fact that you have 5 seperate copies of the Warcraft directory

What you need to do is link all the Data and Cache directories in your clone Wow folders to the main one.

ex:
c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2\Data -> c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data
c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2\Cache -> c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Cache

You do this with the 'mklink' tool.

1) Remove the Data and Cache directories in each clone wow folder (or rename them)
2) Open up the Command Prompt
3) Change directory to the clone wow
> cd c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2
4) Make the link
> mklink /D Data c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data
> mklink /D Cache c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Cache
5) Repeat for each other clone directory

Doing this reduced my lag in shatrath from horrible to zero.

edit: The main reason I did this was when I got my epic flyers anytime I would fly over _anything_ I had a high chance of losing one, it doesn't happen anymore :)

:!: Concerns:
I haven't upgraded WoW yet with a patch, and because the files are split like this there may be issues. This is why I haven't deleted the data directories yet, so I can restore them if I have to.

[Notes]

That sounds so refreshing, it must work! Last night I didn't have time to copy the WoW folders, and now I'm glad for it. This solution makes perfect sense.. Hope it'll work for me as wel(Read: Hope I get it to work ... <---- pc n00b)

[Kilh]

I had the same problem when I started, 4 different WOW installs on the same hard drive.

I changed to running all clients from the same WOW install and the problem went away, with easier patching/addon updating to boot =)

[theory]

Indeed, symlinking those directories will benefit you greatly, should you suffer from loadlag in cities, boats and zeppelins.

I went from "move 10 feet, stop, wait" to being able to just run whenever - even in Shattrath.

[Notes]

Edit: nvmd, got it, post can be deleted

[bundeswuhr]

I had this problem too, cities were bad and shatrath during the day was an absolute nightmare.

However (!) there is a way to really help this if you meet the following criteria.
1) Running Windows Vista
2) Your problem stems from the fact that you have 5 seperate copies of the Warcraft directory

What you need to do is link all the Data and Cache directories in your clone Wow folders to the main one.

ex:
c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2\Data -> c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data
c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2\Cache -> c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Cache

You do this with the 'mklink' tool.

1) Remove the Data and Cache directories in each clone wow folder (or rename them)
2) Open up the Command Prompt
3) Change directory to the clone wow
> cd c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2
4) Make the link
> mklink /D Data c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data
> mklink /D Cache c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Cache
5) Repeat for each other clone directory

Doing this reduced my lag in shatrath from horrible to zero.

edit: The main reason I did this was when I got my epic flyers anytime I would fly over _anything_ I had a high chance of losing one, it doesn't happen anymore :)

:!: Concerns:
I haven't upgraded WoW yet with a patch, and because the files are split like this there may be issues. This is why I haven't deleted the data directories yet, so I can restore them if I have to. Can some explain that, having problems following it.
I get 'The syntax of the comand is incorrect' error at step 4
Thanks

[Glord]

Well, the idea is that you either get more hardrives, so you're no longer IO capped.
Or you could symlink your data folders, so the HD cache will reduce the actual amount of reading from the disks.

Personally, I have 3 disks for 5 clients and it still gets laggy if there are a lot of people running around in the cities. It's still playable, but laggy.

[Otlecs]

get 'The syntax of the comand is incorrect' error at step 4
Try putting double-quotes around anything with a space (like "c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data").

[bundeswuhr]

get 'The syntax of the comand is incorrect' error at step 4
Try putting double-quotes around anything with a space (like "c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data").Thanks, worked a treat :P

[Pocalypse]

Has anyone managed to do this in Win XP? Does it yield any benefits?

Googling gave a bunch of results and ways to do it, but I was wondering if someone had it working before I got into it.

Edit: NVM, found some other good threads on this forum about it.

[TheBigBB]

I found that a simple "/console maxfps 30" solved my problem.

All 5 windows were trying to run at 60 FPS. At 30 they don't have any issue.

[jrdn]

i just started 3 boxing on my pc.. everything was fine until i went to orgrimmar and ouch. it took me probably 20 minutes to get from the entrance to rfc.

ive done a few things to fix this..

i copied my wow installation to 3 separate disks
on the followers i did three things:
i lowered the resolution to 800x600
i set the graphics to all the lowest settings
i set maxfps to 30 and maxfpsbk to 5

i now have no lag in orgrimmar or shattrath

amd x64 4200+
2gb ram
geforce 8600

[wougoose]

I had this problem too, cities were bad and shatrath during the day was an absolute nightmare.

However (!) there is a way to really help this if you meet the following criteria.
1) Running Windows Vista
2) Your problem stems from the fact that you have 5 seperate copies of the Warcraft directory

What you need to do is link all the Data and Cache directories in your clone Wow folders to the main one.

ex:
c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2\Data -> c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data
c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2\Cache -> c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Cache

You do this with the 'mklink' tool.

1) Remove the Data and Cache directories in each clone wow folder (or rename them)
2) Open up the Command Prompt
3) Change directory to the clone wow
> cd c:\Program Files (x86)\wow2
4) Make the link
> mklink /D Data c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Data
> mklink /D Cache c:\Program Files (x86)\wow1\Cache
5) Repeat for each other clone directory

Doing this reduced my lag in shatrath from horrible to zero.

edit: The main reason I did this was when I got my epic flyers anytime I would fly over _anything_ I had a high chance of losing one, it doesn't happen anymore :)

:!: Concerns:
I haven't upgraded WoW yet with a patch, and because the files are split like this there may be issues. This is why I haven't deleted the data directories yet, so I can restore them if I have to.This can be done in XP as well by using NTFS juntions. I wrote up a guide: Symbolic linking using Winbolic ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=58737&highlight=Link#post58737')

[wallshot]

zoikes...i tried this without the tool and got winders and wow all pissed. Killer info! This also cut my 5x log in/load time by at least half. My hard drive is loving the free time it has now too :)

[emps]

Well, the idea is that you either get more hardrives, so you're no longer IO capped.
Or you could symlink your data folders, so the HD cache will reduce the actual amount of reading from the disks.

Personally, I have 3 disks for 5 clients and it still gets laggy if there are a lot of people running around in the cities. It's still playable, but laggy.

even better (like keyclone said), small drives on raid 0 config. the more drives the better performance... i have 3x 80GB striped (data/cache are linked) no noticeable or unbearable lag running 5 wow instances on two wide monitors.

Edit: 22" @ 16x10res , 24" @ (4-way) 16x10res w/ window size of 9x6 -----maxbkfps=20 and vertsync enabled on all clients

[bugilt]

addons become a major issue when running x5. I uninstalled the addons that I didn't need on my other clients.

[Jamien]

woot! Thanks for this guys.

Used the mklink for my 4 slaves, linked them to a separate HDD which runs my main and I can now run through org without stopping every 3 seconds!
Last night I used it to good effect, making Chain Heal patterns in org ... up until the point where i had about 30 people standing there watching and I was gettin 5 FPS on all chars.

[Skuggomann]

I chekked my stats, in shatartat wen im flying around on epic flyers its aroudn 40-50% CPU usage and 55% ram usage :)

[Fizzler]

Could you mklink your clones addon folders to the main? would save me a little time in updating addons.

[Ken]

I found that a simple "/console maxfps 30" solved my problem.

All 5 windows were trying to run at 60 FPS. At 30 they don't have any issue.

I do the same thing (but I limit it through Keyclone) and that is indeed a good solution for the CPU problem.