Can't 5box with Cata :(

[nonzok]

Hello

I've been away from wow since Wrath and now got back to 5boxing with Cata, and turns out I cannot anymore. Well, it lags toooo much. Wayy too much.

I could barely run 5 clients on LOW (res low, all settings low, only one client had sound) in Wrath, and even Stormwind was a hell to run to (because of the client-side lag).

So has something changed? I cannot do it anymore with this PC. I need to upgrade....

[Sajuuk]

Before we can judge your PC we need to know WHAT IT IS.

[nonzok]

you don't need to judge my PC, that was the point

all I am asking if Cataclysm makes it harder to run five clients than what Wrath did

or some other patch in between

I've heard about some water thing being improved, like better water en such

[ZooljinX]

giving us your comp specs can give us info that might help you..

on the topic, yes they polished it a bit but not that much, try setting all low(as you have) and set slave FPS to max 10 and run lower res could help aswell..if you are using 2 screens try only using one of them..
dunno how much RAM you have but adding more if you have a low ammount would probably help aswell

[nonzok]

thanks.

I have 4 gb of ram. I ran four toons on my other display. so that has an effect, huh? I noticed Primary 1 and Primary 2 settings on the WoW's config screen. maybe if I set all four toons to Primary 2, it'll know where thay are.

I checked that WoW took about 480 mb of memeryo per client, without addons, wherein previously I remember them taking WITH addons about 370. everything as low as they can be, of course. but then the text becomes nearly unreadable, and the experience is not what it used to be.

[HPAVC]

Cata has a lot of different performance settings, i wouldn't expect you to just patch wotlk and have it perform the same. Though once diagnosed it should run better than in wotlk on nice hardware.

My guess would be affinity issues, which should be pretty obvious to see with perfmon or similar.

But 4gb of ram? I would fix that after you diagnose this issue.

[Bollwerk]

Cataclysm added DirectX11, which is more taxing to your system than DirectX9. Check the video settings on each client to see if it's using DX9 or DX11. It is also possible that updating/patching has changed other video settings, so you may want to check all the settings on each client to make sure it's on the very lowest end of the main slider. I distinctly remember one patch "reset" my graphics from low to medium and I had to change it back on each client.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Isn't there a command-line parameter for WoW that lets you restrict it to DX9?

[MiRai]

Isn't there a command-line parameter for WoW that lets you restrict it to DX9?
There probably still is because it's how Blizzard told people to try the experimental DX11 mode before they fully
implemented it back months ago and I doubt they removed it. Now it's standard in your config.wtf or, as
already mentioned, in the actual advanced video settings. It's probably always been able to be added either
way since it's been around but, I'm too lazy to test the command line right now because the Giants are about
to play the Rams.

[RSM72]

thanks.

I have 4 gb of ram. I ran four toons on my other display. so that has an effect, huh? I noticed Primary 1 and Primary 2 settings on the WoW's config screen. maybe if I set all four toons to Primary 2, it'll know where thay are.

I checked that WoW took about 480 mb of memeryo per client, without addons, wherein previously I remember them taking WITH addons about 370. everything as low as they can be, of course. but then the text becomes nearly unreadable, and the experience is not what it used to be.

4GB of RAM is not even close to sufficient. Those 480 MB per client you see is already limited by the shortage of memory. I run 5 clients on a box with 12GB of RAM and memory usage per client is above 650 MB and can get close to 1GB in crowded areas. Add 1-2 GB for your operating system and you end up with a bare minimum of 8 GB.

[Zub]

Yeah it seems memory reqs have clearly gone up

[EaTCarbS]

4GB of RAM is not even close to sufficient. Those 480 MB per client you see is already limited by the shortage of memory. I run 5 clients on a box with 12GB of RAM and memory usage per client is above 650 MB and can get close to 1GB in crowded areas. Add 1-2 GB for your operating system and you end up with a bare minimum of 8 GB.

I would disagree on 8g ram being a minimum. I have run up to 9 windows with 6g (only lagging in major population centers). 6 is probably a more reasonable number.

[MiRai]

Isn't there a command-line parameter for WoW that lets you restrict it to DX9?
There probably still is because it's how Blizzard told people to try the experimental DX11 mode before they fully
implemented it back months ago
Just tested this... -d3d9 and -d3d11 still work as command line arguments. This means anyone that doesn't
accidentally want DX11 to be enabled on their games can make a wow.exe shortcut using the -d3d11 switch
(or vice versa) and launch from that.

[Zub]

Just tested this... -d3d9 and -d3d11 still work as command line arguments. This means anyone that doesn't
accidentally want DX11 to be enabled on their games can make a wow.exe shortcut using the -d3d11 switch
(or vice versa) and launch from that.

is DX11 something you have to install on top of WoW, or is it installed with wow now?
When i look at the DirectX dropdown in the wow video options i only see 9. I'm assuming that means wow runs on 9 for me. ?

i'll try the parameter anyway. thanks for sharing.

[Edit]meh: tuesday maintenance

[MiRai]

is DX11 something you have to install on top of WoW, or is it installed with wow now?
When i look at the DirectX dropdown in the wow video options i only see 9. I'm assuming that means wow runs on 9 for me. ?

i'll try the parameter anyway. thanks for sharing.
If that's all you see then you're locked into it. DirectX is dependent of your OS and video card.

[moog]

4GB of RAM is not even close to sufficient.
My experience backs that up.

Started off with 6GB RAM on my i7-920 and that wasn't enough to run a 5th client.
4 was ok, the 5th maxed the RAM and started swapping and all 5 clients as good as died.

Upped to 12GB RAM and with 5 clients it floats around 7-8GB used.

[Zub]

That amount of nemory is needed if you want to pvp or visit org/sw, but if you're happy just chilling in instances it's nowhere near.
As stated in another thread, i got my Glory of the wotlk hero while playing 3-4 toons on a 2gb box.
Back then each wotlk would use 300-400mb on my settings.
Now ib Cata it seems to be more like 600mb and my crappy system cant handle it

[Tin]

Yes - requirements did go up with Cata, and even more after the fireland patch hit the server.

3 tings that happend for me:

1. Every loadet game now use around 700-800Mb of ram
2. Cpu that used around 80% load (wolk) - was now hitting the roof 98-100% (Fireland patch)
3. Gpu (GeForce GT 220) was running on max load - big drop in framerate - where I use to have 30+ FPS on main
was some time dropping to under 20 FPS

I did try everyting to get it running, low setting, removing addon, DirectX etc. But for for me nothing seem to change,
I could hear the computer start to work over time when the 5th account was getting loadet.

When running 4 account only, I was getting close to Wolk feeling of boxing. (Use ISboxer 5 account 1 computer)

A new computer (Intel® Core™ i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz, 16GB ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580) was the was the way i did fix it. Is now running with 60+ FPS on main :)

[Eteocles]

Blizzard also enabled alot of graphical options with Cataclysm and removed the ability to turn them off, such as Shadows, so overall Cata is harder on your system than Wrath and prior releases ever were; there's honestly not much you can do about it short of an Upgrade besides turning down view distances and hoping for the best.

I had little issue 5boxing in BC and Wrath, but soon as I got into Cata oh god the noticable FPS drop; Shadows are a surprisingly big culprit of this, and they removed the ability to turn shadows off even via wtf editting, command lines, and console commands, and there's likely other options in the same boat.