From 3 to 4 boxing worth it?

[Enoah35]

Hello,

I am in need of advice. Right now I am playing with 3 accounts to increase my loot chance to gear up my main character (may sound silly but that is the choice I have made). So far I have 2 teams, 3 wizard and 3 wds. Both teams can do T1 relatively smooth and T2 is doing ok, although depends highly on what mob and map I encounter. (still suffer from large open area with act4+act5 charging mobs and running mages).

The issue is that I am still having multiple runs without any loot on any of my characters. Is it worth the effort in increasing to 4 characters to have full members? I know it increases your MF by 10% and some bonus on stats but it is also true that the mobs gain significant boost per character in game.

Any advice is welcome. I am willing to pay for another copy and make another account if it increases the chance of loot drop or progression in question to higher tiers.

P.S. As solo with my main wizard I can do T3 with ease, same with my main WD. But with 3 the increase of mob's health becomes absurd on higher torment.

[Kicksome]

You might as well throw another guy in there since going from 3-4 is super easy. You never know what guy will find the killer loot. I think it's a no brainier personally. I swap gear among my 4 guys all the time when things drops.

[Ellay]

the monster hp with a 4 person group is I think 360% ( I may be off ) but if you characters all do the same exact damage, the monsters hp ends up being smaller overall than if you played a single character solo. So adding a 4th is beneficial, and if you ever want a friend to join in, can always drop one.

[Enoah35]

Thanks for all the replies.

I ended up with 4 accounts in hopes to get better loot. Apparently the game still have streaks of raining with legendary and nothing for a couple of rifts. So far I have 4 WDs and 4 Wizs. Am tempted to try 4 Crusaders too soon. The issue is the usual, some of your members stays in the back (like looted something or got attacked but for whatever reason stops) or goes berserk and rushes ahead like an idiot.

4 Wizards are easier on trash white mobs and elite packs (save those who have nightmare and knockback, along with vortex and other knockback/pullin stuff) but suffer a little on single target bosses. On the contrary WDs are pretty much the opposite with Pet build. Am tempted to try a dot build x3 with 1 pet build but those needs to be more mobile to be effective. Will see.

[Kicksome]

Thanks for all the replies.

I ended up with 4 accounts in hopes to get better loot. Apparently the game still have streaks of raining with legendary and nothing for a couple of rifts. So far I have 4 WDs and 4 Wizs. Am tempted to try 4 Crusaders too soon. The issue is the usual, some of your members stays in the back (like looted something or got attacked but for whatever reason stops) or goes berserk and rushes ahead like an idiot.

4 Wizards are easier on trash white mobs and elite packs (save those who have nightmare and knockback, along with vortex and other knockback/pullin stuff) but suffer a little on single target bosses. On the contrary WDs are pretty much the opposite with Pet build. Am tempted to try a dot build x3 with 1 pet build but those needs to be more mobile to be effective. Will see.

One of the reasons I really like crusader is that they move slower assuming you have the 2H w/shield build. It's much harder for your guys to get unsynced. If they get feared they don't run off at top speed and your guys don't get scattered all over. With WD or Wizards it's really easy for your guys to be all over the place very quickly with certain elite packs. Then it's a pain to get the synced up.

[Enoah35]

Hello again,

Going to use this thread instead of making a new one. However this time is more of in need of advice in a more technical way. Since I have moved from 3 to 4 boxing, i noticed more graphical lag and performance issues. I have read the FAQ and did monitor what was causing this and apparently its the CPU that reaches 100% on heavy fights, especially on RoS specific areas and some Rifts. Hardware spec is like this:

CPU : Intel Core I5-3570K 3.4Ghz
MEMORY: Corsair Vengeance PC3-12800 DDR3 1600 16GB 2x8GB
HDD : OCZ Vector SATA3 2.5 SSD 256GB + WD Caviar Green 2TB SATA3 64MB
GFX CARD : Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Version. (Catalyst 14.4)
OS : Windows 7 64bit

I am using 2 monitors. Configured as multimonitor swapping method, main window on the main screen, the other 3 + another Dxnothing window on the 2nd monitor. I configured the cores like this.

Main window : Core 1&2
2nd account: Core 2&3
3rd account: Core 3&4
4th account: Core 4
DxNothing: Core 1

Ingame configuration its set on lowest setting on all games. Usually with this configuration the CPU usage goes from 50%-80% on normal areas. But on heavy mob density it shoots up till 95-98%. Worst areas are pandemonium fortress that goes to 100%. The only thing I can probably improve is to get rid of the DxNothing window that has 3 VideoFX (the minimap of other accounts) and rely on checking the map after clearing one area, or disable sound on other accounts.

Any other tips you can give me I appretiate it.

[Ishar]

I doubt that dxnothing has a huge impact. Pandemonium lags me too but not with my cpu. I have a bit more head room in that component than you though the same gpu.

You can try dxnothing but I would look into seeing if any background processes were eating cycles first.

Another thing to try is doing a overlapping Windows on main monitor and using viewers on a dxnothing on the second monitor.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

[Enoah35]

I doubt that dxnothing has a huge impact. Pandemonium lags me too but not with my cpu. I have a bit more head room in that component than you though the same gpu.

You can try dxnothing but I would look into seeing if any background processes were eating cycles first.

Another thing to try is doing a overlapping Windows on main monitor and using viewers on a dxnothing on the second monitor.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

Not intending to bump but this eased up the CPU usage by a lot. Pandemonium fortress still lags the hell out but the CPU load for the rest went down by about 5-10%. Thanks a lot.

[Ishar]

NP. And reporting positive results is not bumping. Other people might have similar questions.

Another trick with viewers is you can create and destroy them with isboxer hotkeys. So you can layer them over your main window and toggle them on and off via hotkeys. Or have a hot key to create the initial viewers when you load a character set. Which makes creating new character sets fast. I generally create the viewers through the gui in order to get the values to put into the hotkeys. Not to hijack the thread or anything.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

[Enoah35]

Hello,

Although with 4 wizards I have no issue, when I went to 4 WDs things became little unstable again. Most likely due to the amount of Pets I got out, and I am thinking on upgrading my CPU from what I got to a Intel Core i7-3770k 3.5 Ghz which is the highest value my motherboard can go. However I am not sure how much performance increase I will get with this upgrade. Since I believe its the CPU that is currently on the bottleneck, I don't think increasing RAM( which I already have 16 and not using everything) or Gfx Card (Which the load never goes above 60%) would help.

Would like any opinions on this change, since I read that many games does not use HT function that I7 offers and could even decrease performance on gaming ( An old article I read here http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/115466-13-better-games) am not 100% sure if I should go for this or just use a 2nd PC to run 1 account and the main one running 3 accounts.

Thanks.

[Ishar]

Well it's anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, but I have an i7-3930k which clocks at 3.2GHz, and a 7970 and my bottleneck is usually my GPU. When a whole lot is going on on the screen I do stutter; but it's sort of rare. (My monks (epiphany + crowds + running really fast + tempest rush + fire ally active) were the most obvious. Haven't ran WD's though.)

I googled, and found an article that linked to this (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Core-i7-Nehalem,2057-12.html)saying there was no benefit from hyper threading, but the thing they linked too said that there was 6%; my brain hurts now. I also turned up this post (http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=4628)on IsBoxer, and would be inclined to go with MiRai's answer that HT is beneficial more often than not.

Objectively, even if it does not tangibly benefit the game itself, it will benefit other things that run in the background. As an aside, we should probably retire this thread in favor of one in the hardware forum if this continues. If only to benefit those searching for similar information.

[Devile]

Dont beat yourself about your HW. D3 sucks in terms of graphics. The graphic engine is BAD. It performs HORRIBLE compared to any of the latest graphic engines (unreal, frostbite, etc.). Even without multiboxing, it SUCKS. My specs:

Geforce GTX780 Ti
Core i7 4770k
16GB RAM 1866MHz
SSD
Dual 120Hz BenQ monitors

I can run any game at 1920x1080 ultra settings, 16x AF, 4x AA. Any game but D3 since Blizzard did a terrible job with the graphic engine. For once it's locked at 60fps (no clue why) and I get FPS drops everywhere. Even worse, FREEZES which are extremely annoying. The game stutters and that breaks multiboxing syincing ALL the time. 2.0.5 should fix some of the freezing caused when clanmates ID legendaries or multiple ppl log in chat at the same time. Opening inventory also freezes.

I played FPS games for years at competitive level and I'm very sensitive to FPS drops and monitor refresh rates. Playing at 120Hz and 120FPS with vsync ON is a totally different experience. It's so damn fluid and smooth it looks amazing and that's thre reason I've invested a lot of money to make sure all my games are like that. I have that in every game I play but D3 which looks so choppy and bad in general. Even without multiboxing I never get that silky smooth gameplay and visuals I get from other games.

Bottom line is, its the game that is broken, not your hardware. Sure u can optimize here and there, but even with the best rig money can buy, I can assure u the game will not run 100% smooth. I'll prolly just get another PC to multibox with 2 PCs so my main just runs 1 account while the other PC runs 3. Will not be 100% smooth still, but a little better than how it is right now which is BAD, really BAD.

PS: I've done plenty of HW reviews for many different vendors, including NVIDIA and I've tried D3 with many different GPUs, including SLI of high end GPUs like the Titan and the game still stutter, freezes and u get FPS drops in many situations. Same with RAID0 SSDs. The game is just not optimized. Even if u turn EVERYTHING down to low (textures, effects, etc.), u still get FPS drops in many different maps. That to me is a very lousy job from Blizzard.

[MiRai]

Would like any opinions on this change, since I read that many games does not use HT function that I7 offers and could even decrease performance on gaming ( An old article I read here http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/115466-13-better-games) am not 100% sure if I should go for this or just use a 2nd PC to run 1 account and the main one running 3 accounts.
As, Ishar mentions...

I also turned up this post (http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=4628)on IsBoxer, and would be inclined to go with MiRai's answer that HT is beneficial more often than not.
...but I've also shown that it helps tremendously (http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/44505-Multiboxing-Hardware-Science!/page2?p=336875#post336875) in other games like World of Warcraft.

However, if you buy a CPU with hyper-threading (which I always recommend if you can afford it) and for some reason find out that the virtual cores are causing an issue, then just alter the CPU affinity to not use those cores. You don't have to shut them off in the BIOS and you don't even need ISBoxer to assign affinity (although it's easier), you can do this right through the Windows Task Manager.


Dont beat yourself about your HW. D3 sucks in terms of graphics. The graphic engine is BAD. It performs HORRIBLE compared to any of the latest graphic engines (unreal, frostbite, etc.). Even without multiboxing, it SUCKS. My specs:

Geforce GTX780 Ti
Core i7 4770k
16GB RAM 1866MHz
SSD
Dual 120Hz BenQ monitors

I can run any game at 1920x1080 ultra settings, 16x AF, 4x AA. Any game but D3 since Blizzard did a terrible job with the graphic engine. For once it's locked at 60fps (no clue why) and I get FPS drops everywhere. Even worse, FREEZES which are extremely annoying. The game stutters and that breaks multiboxing syincing ALL the time. 2.0.5 should fix some of the freezing caused when clanmates ID legendaries or multiple ppl log in chat at the same time. Opening inventory also freezes.

I played FPS games for years at competitive level and I'm very sensitive to FPS drops and monitor refresh rates. Playing at 120Hz and 120FPS with vsync ON is a totally different experience. It's so damn fluid and smooth it looks amazing and that's thre reason I've invested a lot of money to make sure all my games are like that. I have that in every game I play but D3 which looks so choppy and bad in general. Even without multiboxing I never get that silky smooth gameplay and visuals I get from other games.

Bottom line is, its the game that is broken, not your hardware. Sure u can optimize here and there, but even with the best rig money can buy, I can assure u the game will not run 100% smooth. I'll prolly just get another PC to multibox with 2 PCs so my main just runs 1 account while the other PC runs 3. Will not be 100% smooth still, but a little better than how it is right now which is BAD, really BAD.

PS: I've done plenty of HW reviews for many different vendors, including NVIDIA and I've tried D3 with many different GPUs, including SLI of high end GPUs like the Titan and the game still stutter, freezes and u get FPS drops in many situations. Same with RAID0 SSDs. The game is just not optimized. Even if u turn EVERYTHING down to low (textures, effects, etc.), u still get FPS drops in many different maps. That to me is a very lousy job from Blizzard.
While I agree that D3's engine feels a bit unoptimized at times, I have to disagree with you when you say the game is hard-coded to 60 FPS.

Solo
http://i.imgur.com/ZlIp9H7.jpg
Both the IS and MSI Afterburner overlays are reporting over 270 FPS.

In game video settings are maxed out (1920x1080)
nVIdia Inspector is adding 16x AF / HQ Texture Filtering / Ambient Occlusion
Added SweetFX (with the FXAA preset)


Solo
http://i.imgur.com/NsECWSk.jpg
Both the IS and MSI Afterburner overlays are reporting about 260 FPS.

In game video settings are maxed out (1920x1080)
nVIdia Inspector is adding 16x AF / HQ Texture Filtering / Ambient Occlusion / 4x SGSSAA
Added SweetFX (w/o the FXAA preset)


Multiboxing
http://i.imgur.com/B8waKiB.jpg
MSI Afterburner overlay shows a solid 60 FPS (I disable the Inner Space FPS display when multiboxing)

In game video settings are maxed out (1920x1080) (on all clients)
nVIdia Inspector is adding 16x AF / HQ Texture Filtering / Ambient Occlusion (on all clients)
Added SweetFX (with the FXAA preset) (on all clients)
Three dxNothing windows for added overlays across two monitors


Note: VRAM numbers are a bit bloated because I do have a lot of tabs open in Chrome at the moment as well as some video editing programs.

I realize the multiboxing screenshot doesn't prove much of anything, but you're just going to have to take my word that it's nice and smooth out in the field when fighting monsters as well. When I multibox with my Wizards I use 60/60 as my foreground and background FPS, and I have no abnormal issues with syncing -- The only stutter I ever really experience is the micro-stutter that multi-GPU setups introduce.

I used to run 4x SGSSAA on my main client, but I got a bit tired of the blur that SGSSAA can create (especially in this game), so I've since turned it off and just deal with the small bit of aliasing there is in the game. I also played through Pandemonium with 4x SGSSAA turned on and it was easily maxing out my GPUs and even causing a loss in FPS, but I still didn't experience any de-syncing because of that. I've been meaning to go through Pandemonium again without 4x SGSSAA to see how well my setup fares.

Again, I don't disagree that D3's engine feels a bit unoptimized, but the game is definitely smooth for me when running 60 FPS fore/background on four clients @ 1920x1080. If you're experiencing stutters and even freezing like you say you are, then I'd be double-checking how you have things set up.

[Devile]

VSYNC ON. I always use vertical sync on since my monitors are 120Hz and having that lets me see a very smooth gameplay. If I don't use VSYNC, sure I get 200+ FPS but that's not what I want. I dont care about how high my FPS can go, I only care about smooth gameplay. Having my monitor Hz at the exact same FPS of the game means silky smooth gameplay.

Did a quick test disabling vsync with my work PC that has just a GTX 570 and I get 90+ FPS but it looks HORRIBLE. I can clearly notice the huge difference between 90+ FPS vsync off and 60 constant FPS vsync on. There's visible micro stuttering that u may not notice at all but I clearly do. Again, its all about your eyes and if u have tried 100+ Hz monitors in the past and are used to it. Even 10+ years ago when I used CRT monitors, always used 100Hz CRT monitor for Counter-Strike to get 100Hz and 100FPS locked with vsync on for perfect gameplay. Thats why BenQ is one of the preferred monitors in the competitive scene for most games. Even StarCraft has a Refresh Rate option. I don't get why there's no such option on D3 and it's locked at 60Hz/FPS.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12471427055
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11883508489?page=8#141
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8796091367
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/9318901909
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5152412144
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4310130975

Bottom line is, D3 with vsync on is really bad and its locked at 60Hz/FPS.

PS: Issues like this are why NVIDIA has developed GSYNC (http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/g-sync) technology for monitors so u get smooth gameplay regardless of your Hz and FPS.

[MiRai]

VSYNC ON. I always use vertical sync on since my monitors are 120Hz and having that lets me see a very smooth gameplay. If I don't use VSYNC, sure I get 200+ FPS but that's not what I want. I dont care about how high my FPS can go, I only care about smooth gameplay. Having my monitor Hz at the exact same FPS of the game means silky smooth gameplay.

Did a quick test disabling vsync with my work PC that has just a GTX 570 and I get 90+ FPS but it looks HORRIBLE. I can clearly notice the huge difference between 90+ FPS vsync off and 60 constant FPS vsync on. There's visible micro stuttering that u may not notice at all but I clearly do. Again, its all about your eyes and if u have tried 100+ Hz monitors in the past and are used to it. Even 10+ years ago when I used CRT monitors, always used 100Hz CRT monitor for Counter-Strike to get 100Hz and 100FPS locked with vsync on for perfect gameplay. Thats why BenQ is one of the preferred monitors in the competitive scene for most games. Even StarCraft has a Refresh Rate option. I don't get why there's no such option on D3 and it's locked at 60Hz/FPS.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8796091367
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/9318901909
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5152412144
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4310130975

That's why NVIDIA has developed GSYNC (http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/g-sync) technology for monitors so u get smooth gameplay regardless of your Hz and FPS. Bottom line is, D3 with vsync on is really bad and its locked at 60Hz/FPS.
Okay, well it just seemed like you were telling the OP that no matter what he did, and no matter what hardware he bought, that he couldn't have a smooth experience, which is incorrect because he can.

As for VSync, it not only adds input delay, but it's also been shown to cause its own stuttering issues when multiboxing which is why ISBoxer has its own setting which forces it off by default; but as for having VSync off and running at 60 FPS on a 60Hz monitor, it's incredibly rare that I ever see any screen tearing and it's absolutely smooth (much smoother than when 4x SGSSAA was enabled and causing stuttering).

Enabling VSync just seems like a clusterfk anyway when trying to multibox because you've got a GPU (or GPUs) trying to keep the framerate of multiple clients (in Windowed mode) synchronized to the monitor's refresh rate, and when it can't, the FPS is then continuously halved over and over which I'd assume results in a less-than-stellar experience. Right now, neither GSync or FreeSync are going to change my mind about enabling VSync at the moment when multiboxing because such a technology may be even worse when it's trying to handle multiple game clients all at once -- Nobody knows.

As for the performance of the GTX 570, I don't really know what to say. I have my old GTX 580s and would I imagine that if I installed D3 on my secondary machine that a single instance of the game would probably run just fine; but I think we both know that the current generation of Kepler GPUs take advantage of numerous improvements that come standard with any new node, and these are improvements that Fermi doesn't necessarily have access to, especially with the current set of drivers.

[Devile]

Well, it's a matter of what smooth means to u. To me, there's no such thing as smooth in D3. At least with vsync its better but still it performs really bad. Without it, looks horrible and I'm not talking just about multiboxing. Multiboxing aside, without it, it's not smooth at all. There's screen tearing and there's micro stuttering. At least to me is very noticeable and its not my hardware cause I see the exact same thing in every PC I've seen D3 run without vsync. IMO, if single play is not smooth, no matter what u do, multiboxing it wont be smooth either. But then again, our concepts of smooth may differ drastically.

The GTX570 is at work where I rarely play but I have it just in case I wanna see something ingame. I use a GTX 780Ti at home but also tested a Titan with same results. I'm also very sensitive to input lag and so far I haven't noticed it that much. I really hope GSYNC solves the problem. I'm waiting for the monitors to start shipping to my country so I can test them.

If u are not as picky as I am, turn off vsync. Sucks to have expensive hardware and not be able to see the game run perfect.

[Ishar]

The GTX570 is at work where I rarely play but I have it just in case I wanna see something ingame.

I don't think I've worked anywhere that had computers capable of running games since graduate school. Well; 3D games anyway. Going to work since graduating has been kind of sad; in that none of the computers even remotely approach the beast I have at home. When they are actual computers and not thin clients. Ugh.

[Enoah35]

Hello, I have done my CPU change since definately was part of the issue. However I will open a new thread where it should belong instead of this one since it has derailed from 3-4 boxing to a hardware issue. Again I appretiate the replies.