Wow graphic options. Which ones are CPU intensive and which are GPU intensive.

[Drommon]

As the title says. I started multi-boxing again recently and would like to see some better graphics on the main toon. Currently I am using the lowest settings for all toons. My hardware consists of Core quad q9550, 8gb ram, SSD and 2x ATI 4850. Five toons run fine in busy areas on the lowest settings. I use one graphics card for the main and the other card for the remaining 4 toons. I am trying to decide if I should upgrade the graphics cards to a single card but really want to know where the improvements would be and to avoid any new bottlenecks. Which options are graphics intensive and which are CPU intensive in WOW?

[Oatboat]

anti-aliasing, shadows, view distance are the big 3 if i remember correct.

I think i've read around before that using 2 video cards to split the load will hurt your FPS also. Better if ran on 1 card.

[MiRai]

As the title says. I started multi-boxing again recently and would like to see some better graphics on the main toon. Currently I am using the lowest settings for all toons. My hardware consists of Core quad q9550, 8gb ram, SSD and 2x ATI 4850. Five toons run fine in busy areas on the lowest settings. I use one graphics card for the main and the other card for the remaining 4 toons. I am trying to decide if I should upgrade the graphics cards to a single card but really want to know where the improvements would be and to avoid any new bottlenecks. Which options are graphics intensive and which are CPU intensive in WOW?
1. Open up the Windows Task Manager.
2. Go to the Performance tab.
3. With your low settings, mark where your CPU usage is currently at.
4. Then, make your way into your video settings.
5. Begin turning settings up one at a time and watch your CPU usage.
6. Take notes on which settings affect your CPU usage.

anti-aliasing, shadows, view distance are the big 3 if i remember correct.
Yes, these 3 would be both CPU and GPU intensive.

I think i've read around before that using 2 video cards to split the load will hurt your FPS also. Better if ran on 1 card.
If any of the characters leave the monitor(s) that their video card is attached to, they'll take a performance hit.

[Drommon]

Thanks Fenril I will give that a try even though it is a bit tedious. I was hoping someone else had already done that. It would be a good study to find options that are cpu, gpu and cpu+gpu.



1. Open up the Windows Task Manager.
2. Go to the Performance tab.
3. With your low settings, mark where your CPU usage is currently at.
4. Then, make your way into your video settings.
5. Begin turning settings up one at a time and watch your CPU usage.
6. Take notes on which settings affect your CPU usage.

Yes, these 3 would be both CPU and GPU intensive.

If any of the characters leave the monitor(s) that their video card is attached to, they'll take a performance hit.

I do see a performance hit when I swap toons from the secondary monitor to the main monitor. But it is not enough of a hit to bother me. It would probably have more impact if I set the options higher.

[Oatboat]

I do see a performance hit when I swap toons from the secondary monitor to the main monitor. But it is not enough of a hit to bother me. It would probably have more impact if I set the options higher.


So, you have your main toon on monitor 1 controlled by 1st video card.
Other toons on 2nd monitor controlled by 2nd video card.

How would Innerspace switching even work like this?

[MiRai]

Thanks Fenril I will give that a try even though it is a bit tedious. I was hoping someone else had already done that. It would be a good study to find options that are cpu, gpu and cpu+gpu.
It is tedious but unless someone has an identical system to yours then the results may be skewed in some way.
You're most likely going to see that almost all of WoW's options are CPU intensive and that upgrading the GPU
is not worth it without a CPU upgrade.

So, you have your main toon on monitor 1 controlled by 1st video card.
Other toons on 2nd monitor controlled by 2nd video card.

How would Innerspace switching even work like this?
I'm not sure whether you're asking how switching windows works or how GPU load balancing works so I'll just
cover both.

I was only successful at splitting the load between GPUs using DX9. You just set the monitor that you want
WoW to launch on through the video settings menu, restart your games, and you're good to go (assuming you
have a Window Layout that works with this).

You would have to set up a Swap Group for monitor 1 (which would only contain the main character in this
case) and then a Swap Group for monitor 2 (which houses the other 4). You'd then create a 6th slot which
would be used as the active slot for game windows 2-5. To put the final touch on the Window Layout you
should also have to create a Window State Action if you wanted windows 2-5 to revert back to their home
region when window 1 was active and tie it to a window swapping macro. There's other ways to do it as well
but, that's just one of the fancier ways.

The only reason I know this is because Lax walked me through this the other day. :)

[Drommon]

So, you have your main toon on monitor 1 controlled by 1st video card.
Other toons on 2nd monitor controlled by 2nd video card.

How would Innerspace switching even work like this?

This is actually very easy to set up with inner space. Inside inner space you can set up configurations for graphic cards. I have 3 monitors and 2 graphic cards. The main monitor has one card and the other 2 monitors share the other card. In ISboxer I created a 5 screen layout that allowed screen swapping. I did all this about 2 years ago. I forgot exactly what I had done so I am no help there. I kept the configurations and they work fine today. In fact inner space and isboxer are both very stable and probably the best in stability in my experience. I think the winning combination for ease of use and setup for multi-boxing is inner space + isboxer + jamba.

[Drommon]

It is tedious but unless someone has an identical system to yours then the results may be skewed in some way.
You're most likely going to see that almost all of WoW's options are CPU intensive and that upgrading the GPU
is not worth it without a CPU upgrade.

This is what I was afraid of. I really don't want a system overhaul to get eye candy. So I will do the tests and try to find out how the options add load to cpu and gpu. I really wouldn't mind seeing 80% CPU usage and 80% GPU usage. Right now its more like 40% CPU and 30% GPU with about 6gb memory usage.