New Video Card

[Syferr]

Hi all,

Ive been boxing wow with isboxer for about 8 months with 4 accounts and since this latest patch my frame rate has taken a beating.

I used to be able to do AV with my main set to Good and sit on 60 FPS and my slaves on Poor and set to 30 FPS. Now im lucky to get 10 - 15 fps on main and thats with all accounts set to poor and have reduced my slaves in isboxer to 25 fps.

My vid card is old but up untill the patch it did what i wanted it to do.

My question is, will a new GPU fix my problem, i dont have a huge budget for a card but im looking at etting either a GTX 570 or if i can affort it, a GTX 660 TI.

GTX 570
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_1177&products_id=20958

GTX 660 Ti
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_1428&products_id=21258

My Computer specs are

Windows 7 64 bit home

Motherboard - Gigabyte H67MA-USB3-B3 (socket 1155)
Power - 650 w
CPU - intel core i5-2500k 3.30 Ghz sandy bridge
Ram - 8 gig DDR3 @655MHz
Graphics - GeForce 9800GTX+ 512mb
HDD - 500gig Western Digital

One other thing i have noticed is my CPU is going up to 100% usage in busy areas, has wow become this demanding or is my Vid Card bottlenecking it ?

Thanks for any replys

[MiRai]

There are a ton of people on the Blizzard Tech Support forums with FPS problems after 5.0.4 and, no, your CPU usage should not be anywhere near 100% CPU usage. However, while a new GPU may fix your problem, the age of that PSU would be the deciding factor of whether or not you would be able to upgrade.

How much amperage do your 12V rails put out?

[jstanthr]

i have noticed the same since the patch, also, wow defaults to dx11 now, so you might want to bump it down to dx9

[Syferr]

Cheers for the relpys
My PSU has +12v1 - 18a +12v2 18a if thats what im meant to be looking at ?

Also i put it back to dx9 after the patch came out.


Cheers

[MiRai]

Cheers for the relpys
My PSU has +12v1 - 18a +12v2 18a if thats what im meant to be looking at ?

Also i put it back to dx9 after the patch came out.


Cheers
You should be running DX9 anyway since the 9800 doesn't fully support DX11. Also, 18A is not enough for either the GTX 570 (36A) or GTX 660 Ti (24A).

[Syferr]

Ok cheers Mirai ill have to look at a new PSU then, it set to DX11 by defualt once the patch came out.

Any chance you could point me in the right direction for a PSU that will run those cards ?

Would this be any good ?
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15_220&products_id=14857

[MiRai]

NVidia cards that don't support DX11 will emulate it, but they're still missing out on true DX11 features (I really can't get any more specific than that). If I remember correctly, when Cata was first released and introduced the new water effects, they were only available using DX11. Cards that didn't fully support DX11 would see no water if they set Liquid Detail too high. Pretty sure most (if not, all) of the flashy water effects are now available on DX9 as well, though.

Yes, that would supply enough amperage to a newer GPU.

[Blubber]

TL;DR: Disable your addons and try again :).

I have a GTX 660 Ti, before the patch I had my slaves capped at 15 FPS with good'ish settings, and my main capped at 60 FPS with ultra'ish settings. I worked perfectly, unless I went into SW at prime time I never had any problems.

Now I do. When I run a dungeon I get regular hickups. ISBoxer is reporting 60 FPS on the main, my CPU is nowhere near 100% usage, and even the GPU never goes over 50% load (it's not even running at full speed, ever).

As was said before, a lot more people are complaining about FPS drop, even after switching to DX9. Some people report that resetting the graphics settings to default will solve the problem, not for me though.

However, it could also be one or more addons that are screwing up. Jamba < 1.0 beta had a problem with excessive CPU usage, and also recount is having problems. Make sure you are using the latest 1.0 beta from Jamba, and just disable Recount althogether (if you have it turned on). You could also try to run without addons, see if that fixes your problem (for me it does, although I have a hard time pin pointing the exact problem).

Edit: it seems to me that Tidyplates isn't working correctly, but I'm not quite sure.

[Syferr]

Thanks for the help guys,

I might just wait for a week or two before i go out and buy a new vid card, just incase Blizz find something.

One question about my CPU, i never really checked its usage before this patch but im guessing that each core is dedicated to an account each ? I have two moniters and whatever account i have on my main screen the cpu core shoots up to 95% load and the other three sit around 45-50% , i change toon and the core will change also, then push the corosponding core up to almost max load.

Is this normal, the only addons i have are Isboxer and Jamba ( Beta 1.0) and the 4 accounts are taking up from 515- 680k kbs of memory the next thing on my Processes is iexplorer which im typing this on using 80k memory, after that just smaller stuff.

My CPU temp is around 48-52 at the moment. Not sure what else too look for.

Thanks again.

[alcattle]

One question about my CPU, i never really checked its usage before this patch but im guessing that each core is dedicated to an account each ? I have two moniters and whatever account i have on my main screen the cpu core shoots up to 95% load and the other three sit around 45-50% , i change toon and the core will change also, then push the corosponding core up to almost max load.

Is this normal, the only addons i have are Isboxer and Jamba ( Beta 1.0) and the 4 accounts are taking up from 515- 680k kbs of memory the next thing on my Processes is iexplorer which im typing this on using 80k memory, after that just smaller stuff.

My CPU temp is around 48-52 at the moment. Not sure what else too look for.

Thanks again.
ISboxer should be setting the CPU usage. Might look at those.

[Blubber]

You are talking about CPU usage but it's not entirely clear (to me) what you mean. I'm guessing you are looking the that windows task manager thingy? You will see 4 graphs (one for each core), is one core at 100% or all? Or is it the bar graph on the left side that is at 100%?

Because if one of your cores is getting 100% load but the others aren't then I would suggest you look at ISBoxer's CPU settings.

[Ñightsham]

Ok cheers Mirai ill have to look at a new PSU then, it set to DX11 by defualt once the patch came out.

Any chance you could point me in the right direction for a PSU that will run those cards ?

Would this be any good ?
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15_220&products_id=14857

Although expensive.....Probably the last PSU you will ever need. (1.2kw @ 100a)
https://shop.pcpower.com/power-supply/turbo-cool-1200.html

[Baltyre]

I'm getting a new gpu to upgrade my computer for 5 to 8 boxing.
I ordered this one : SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950 OC 3GB for 300€
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102963

Seems nice, 3Go are usefull for multiboxing, the gpu seems good and can be overclocked easily to be just 5% less efficient than the 7970.
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/34761-amd-hd-7950-vs-hd-7970-clocks/
So it will be in pair with a GTX 670, for a lot less money.

The bad thing is that i not a big fan of amd, bad compatibility with linux, and some games including wow are optimized for nvidia.
But i checked some benchmark and it seems that the gap is less important without multi-sampling.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-crossfire-benchmark,3123-10.html
Anyway, even if the game is nvidia optimized, it seems to me better to bet on his cheap 3Go video ram for efficient multiboxing.

So do you think it's a good idea, or do you have better option for a 300€ card ?
If i want to use nvidia all the gpu using more than 3Go cost nearly 500€.
Exept this one, but i think it could be not enought powerfull : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127684
But i'm still curious about this one, because i remember, back in the wotlk days, when my last gpu was HS, i temporary replace it with a 50$ passive gpu for 5boxing and ... surprisly it was working well. Not perfect but playable. So i'm curious about the real need of a powerfull gpu for multiboxing wow.

[Syferr]

Thank you all for your help,

I think i may have found what the CPU issue was, when i installed the last patch the game went straight to DX11 so before starting i set it back to DX9 at the start game menu. I never knew there was another option that needed to be changed back in the in-game menu System > Advanced . I set it back to DX9 there also and CPU usage dropped by 30'ish %.

Thanks all for the help and advice.