8.1 Changes, can no longer maintain 5 Windows

[Rocknard]

Hmm well this is a problem, not sure if it was due to changes in wow or not, but now in environments with lots of activity like raids or any world pvp with 8 or more, I cannot maintain 5 windows they just exit no errors or nothing, just gone I am seeing out of my 8 CPU cores 4 are between 90-100% and I never looked at this PRE the changes, anyone else having problems?

https://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2121&stc=1
Pre-raid CPU


then once I get into combat it goes to 100% on 4 cpu's and then sometimes random but usually 2-3 will just exit with no errors or anything, I am still using DX11 so any of the new graphical changes should not affect me. It was usually always choppy once in 25+ raids but never dropped me.

https://www.dual-boxing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2122&stc=1
In raid/Player Heavy Environment


now obviously the issue is CPU hitting 100%, at least to my eyes it is but the question is if I am on DX11 don't I avoid all those changes, or maybe it's just due to the number of people for 8.1.

[Rocknard]

Going to give it a week or so I can do certain zones/areas fine so I am guessing it's an issue with CPU increase due to people returning 8.1 and world zones have more people gathered, even in dazzalor I can have one window close just from swapping focus windows.

[moosejaw]

Patch notes stated game will default to dx12 if it is available, regardless of your settings. Kinda crap move on their part.

[Rocknard]

Still shows DX11 though in all my settings.

[moosejaw]

Here is the patch note, it looks like we don't get the option to downgrade graphics api if your system is DX12 capable.

[Wubsie]

Here is the patch note, it looks like we don't get the option to downgrade graphics api if your system is DX12 capable.

This just means that if there is no pre-existing config, DX12 will be the default choise. After moving my config files to work with the new folder structure, I booted up my games and they all went to DX11 since the virtualized config.wtf files had it set for those characters.

[JohnGabriel]

My 5 box setup took a bit of a performance hit as well, still using DX11. Everything is still playable but there is some stutter now and then.

As per Google's instructions I ran dxdiag and it says that my version is DirectX 12.

So obviously WoW thinks my system is not capable of DX12. I am running an i7 which I though had hyperthreading, wonder if I should just try DX12 and see what happens.

[MiRai]

As per Google's instructions I ran dxdiag and it says that my version is DirectX 12.
That is just what the Windows OS is reporting.


Still shows DX11 though in all my settings.


So obviously WoW thinks my system is not capable of DX12. I am running an i7 which I though had hyperthreading, wonder if I should just try DX12 and see what happens.
It's a setting in the game, so just change it to DX12 in the Advanced section if you want to use DX12. In addition to capable hardware, you need to be using Windows 10 if you want to take advantage of DX12, but obviously WoW can use either 11 or 12 seeing as not everyone who plays the game on Windows, is using Windows 10.

[Rocknard]

I will try using DX12 and see how it goes, I do note in advanced settings I am still using DX11 maybe they decided not to default, but I will check and see.

[MiRai]

I will try using DX12 and see how it goes, I do note in advanced settings I am still using DX11 maybe they decided not to default, but I will check and see.
I honestly don't think it's an automatic switch because my system didn't switch. The way the patch notes are worded makes me believe that new installations run for the first time are defaulted to DX12 if they're capable of doing so, where as before, they were not.

[Rocknard]

I would agree as I try DX12 where I physically set it, and it's much worse.

Now that only leaves out, what else could be causing my screens to just Disappear I believe it's due to the CPU but what is not causing my Huge increase in CPU if I have confirmed to not be taking advantage of any of the new graphic changes if I am not running DX12

[Altsoba]

Hello everyone, I'm having the same issue (window closing), checked and all are still in DX11 and I have really no performance issues, just the 2nd window that always closes.

Anyone has any solution for this?

Thank you.

[Rocknard]

I got a clip of my second window closing, it's random on what window closes I imagine if I pinpointed which CPU is running which PID I could find out more


https://youtu.be/khbuN07lKoc

[MiRai]

I would agree as I try DX12 where I physically set it, and it's much worse.

Now that only leaves out, what else could be causing my screens to just Disappear I believe it's due to the CPU but what is not causing my Huge increase in CPU if I have confirmed to not be taking advantage of any of the new graphic changes if I am not running DX12
DX12 should free up CPU resources, but otherwise it eats up more from the GPU VRAM.


I got a clip of my second window closing, it's random on what window closes I imagine if I pinpointed which CPU is running which PID I could find out more


https://youtu.be/khbuN07lKoc
Clearly that's a crash of the game client due to, what looks to be, the hardware being overloaded, and any crash logs are going to be stored in the /Logs/ folder.

Also, those slave screens look pretty smooth - Are you running them at a high framerate? In addition, sound playing from all windows at the same time is going to increase the load too. Lowering your background framerate and disabling background sound are two easy ways to reduce load.


Finally, what people who are experiencing issues can try is:



nVidia users can try rolling back their driver to 417.01 or just a little prior to that (although a brand new driver just came out today).
Disabling the new multi-threading improvements with the following command: /console gxMTDisable 1 However, if that doesn't fix anything, then you should probably re-enable those enhancements by re-entering the command and switching the 1 to a 0.

[JohnGabriel]

I don't know if this will help anyone, but here is my test.

5 WoW open sitting at the mission table not moving. Latest version of nVidia driver 417.35 Main on 7 slaves on 1. Using the performance monitor built into windows task manager.

DX11: CPU 55%, Mem 43%, GPU 56%
DX12: CPU 45%, Mem 38%, GPU 55%

[MiRai]

DX11: CPU 55%, Mem 43%, GPU 56%
DX12: CPU 45%, Mem 38%, GPU 55%
While these numbers give somewhat of a picture to you for your system, they, on their own, don't really say much for others because when it comes down to percentages, they're different for every single user depending on their hardware.

For example:


with CPUs, 50% CPU of a 16-core chip is going to be eight cores, a 10-core chip is going to be five cores, and an 8-core chip is going to be four cores (this doesn't take into effect CPU generation, IPC, overclocks, etc.)
with RAM (or VRAM), if you have 64GB then 50% is 32GB, but if you only have 32GB, then 50% is 16GB
with GPUs, 50% overall usage of a GTX 1060 is going to be much when measured on a GTX 2080 Ti because the newer GPU is more powerful and can do more with less effort


In terms of measuring performance, having actual numbers along with hardware specifications is going to help people more accurately establish how their setup aligns with yours. However, in Rocknard's case, an AMD FX-9370 was released in July of 2013, so it's going to be incredibly difficult to compare your setup to theirs, unless you: A) have similar hardware (unlikely), or B) want to go back through the several generations of benchmarks/reviews trying to figure out how the two CPUs might compare today in terms of overall horsepower, because most (if not, all) review sites aren't going back 5+ years to see how those chips perform in today's workloads.

[Rocknard]

I will try disabling the improvements and see, in regards to my slaves no they run at 30 fps in background 60 on my main.

[Wizeowel]

Hi Rocknard. I have a similar issue since 8.1. Before yesterday I could easily run 5 toons. Last night I saw that my main memory is full when I have 5 wow clients running. Each wow.exe takes 3GB and I only have 16GB total, so Windows starts swapping to the temporary pagefile and everything slows to a crawl.

I looked through your screenshots but I didn't see anything about your PC's memory. Did you look at Task Manager while running your 5-box?

[MiRai]

Hi Rocknard. I have a similar issue since 8.1. Before yesterday I could easily run 5 toons. Last night I saw that my main memory is full when I have 5 wow clients running. Each wow.exe takes 3GB and I only have 16GB total, so Windows starts swapping to the temporary pagefile and everything slows to a crawl.

I looked through your screenshots but I didn't see anything about your PC's memory. Did you look at Task Manager while running your 5-box?
I'm pretty sure your issue stems directly from the fact that you upgraded from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 (http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9562), which is a 300% increase in pixel count and requires a lot more resources to run.

[Tin]

From original thread

(https://www.wowhead.com/news=287727/new-multithread-optimizations-coming-in-patch-8-1-tides-of-vengeance)
SET gxMTPrepass "1"
SET gxMTOpaque "1"
SET gxMTDisable "0"
SET gxMTBeginDraw "1"
SET gxMTShadow "1"


https://www.wowhead.com/news=287727/new-multithread-optimizations-coming-in-patch-8-1-tides-of-vengeance (https://www.wowhead.com/news=287727/new-multithread-optimizations-coming-in-patch-8-1-tides-of-vengeance)

[CMKCot]

on \World of Warcraft\_retail_\Logs you'll find a file called gx.log

open game windows and log characters in game one by one, up to the point one of the windows closes. then quickly copy the log file out of the folder and post it so we can see the error. (in fact copy all files so you dont have to do this again)


you have to do it exactly like this, since all client instances are logging to the same file, if you take too long data on the log file can get lost.





without even looking at the log i can already suggest two things, first disable all addons and try again, some add-ons haven't been updated and they are calling functions that are no longer available. (you can verify this by looking at the taint.log file in the same folder. it should be filled with bad calls.)

and second is to switch the client to dx12, then once you restart the client, go to window mode and change it to full screen(windowed), the client will appear hanged, but its actually bugging out and trying to revert to dx11. simply alt f4 and relaunch the window. it should now stay on dx12.

[sparvath]

i give up. subscription is ending on december 19th on most. Tried DX11 and 12 and my i5 with 32gb ram and a 1060 card cant handle the change

[JohnGabriel]

i give up. subscription is ending on december 19th on most. Tried DX11 and 12 and my i5 with 32gb ram and a 1060 card cant handle the change

I'd give them a little more time, its bugs, lots of bugs, they will squish a few. I can still play WoW on an old laptop with integrated graphic card so I feel after a couple drivers get updates and a couple hot patches in WoW things will start to go back to normal.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

i give up. subscription is ending on december 19th on most. Tried DX11 and 12 and my i5 with 32gb ram and a 1060 card cant handle the change
Have you tried some of the detail macros?

A few of these probably don't work anymore but this is what I use for slaves, and it seems to work remarkably well.

/console farclip 700
/console textureFilteringMode 0
/console projectedTextures 1
/console waterDetail 0
/console sunshafts 0
/console renderscale 0.6


/console set Sound_MasterVolume 0.1
/console set Sound_SFXVolume 0.1
/console set Sound_MusicVolume 0
/console set Sound_AmbienceVolume 0
/console set Sound_DialogVolume 0
/console set Sound_EnableAmbience 0


/console graphicsViewDistance 1
/console graphicsEnvironmentDetail 1
/console graphicsGroundClutter 1
/console graphicsShadowQuality 1


/console maxfpsbk 12
My main char gets this macro:

/console farclip 2700
/console textureFilteringMode 4
/console projectedTextures 1
/console waterDetail 2
/console sunshafts 2
/console renderscale 1


/console set Sound_MasterVolume 0.1
/console set Sound_SFXVolume 0.2
/console set Sound_MusicVolume 0
/console set Sound_AmbienceVolume 0.5
/console set Sound_DialogVolume 1
/console set Sound_EnableAmbience 1


/console graphicsViewDistance 7
/console graphicsEnvironmentDetail 7
/console graphicsGroundClutter 1
/console graphicsShadowQuality 6


/console maxfpsbk 12
Tune to taste.

[edit] For what it's worth, I did a bit of checking on the performance diff with the above individually on an i7-6600k + 980Ti. Note that I have about 25 tabs in Iron (chromium browser), teamviewer, discord, rainmeter, and a bunch of other background apps running, so not like I'm being gentle.

With main set to the high settings above and slaves to low settings above, CPU is at ~40-45% and GPU is ~37%.
With all clients set to the high settings above, CPU = 50%, gpu = 47%.
Just bumping the maxfpsbk up from 12 to 20 jumps CPU/GPU to ~60%.
If I bump all to high settings above, maxfpsbk to 20, and set slaves to renderscale 0.3, CPU is ~60%, GPU drops to ~38%.

See also the performance vid MiRai just posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMdDurXgyhI
See also: https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/52701-Console-Variables-for-Video-Settings-(Battle-for-Azeroth)

[omegared]

i give up. subscription is ending on december 19th on most. Tried DX11 and 12 and my i5 with 32gb ram and a 1060 card cant handle the change

can you check if one (or more) of your wow windows is set to windowed and not to fullscreen in the wow display settings?
I had that problem which made playing impossible

[WOWBOX40]

Before, i was able to just start the wow.exe and then change the settings from 7 to 1, and it was fine.

This time, i had to start all games like normal via isboxer, then one by one, change from dx12 to dx11, restart that game, then change from settings 7 to 1, then restart again. I had to do this for all games...took ages, but now all games remember their good old settings. The games usually froze when i applied the settings, but after a hard close, it did remember the settings when it started up again. /phu

There is no noticable difference from before the patch came out. Luckily so. I run all games in window mode.

[Rocknard]

So after setting to DX11 across and changing my graphics all to 1 and disabling some UI addons I had only for my main character, also running the macro Mirari Provided "/console gxMTDisable 1"I have also reduced the rendering scale on my slaves to something less and made sure they are all in windowed mode, I may change them back to full screen windowed, but we shall see.After this I have noticed a decrease in CPU usage, have not had drops yet though I still have slight FPS freezes which are annoying but not it seems playable without any crashes though I have yet to enter a raid for a world boss yet so we will have to wait and see. One thing I took away is that you WILL have to adjust your settings once logged in to suit what "feels" right for you I used to just let ISboxer and the setting graphics to 1 and then done, however with an older CPU I have to make further adjustments to make this work now.

I would suggest as described by MiRai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMdDurXgyhI


to play with your settings, in most cases, you cannot just get away with setting graphics to 1 and using DX11

[Rocknard]

Though I don't think I can fix the 100% CPU over 4 cores while in the horde capital, at least the screens not crashing.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Though I don't think I can fix the 100% CPU over 4 cores while in the horde capital, at least the screens not crashing.
CPU is dramatically impacted by slave framerates. If they aren't already, make sure your maxfpsbk is set to 12 and see if that helps. FYI, I found that setting the background framerate to less than 12 tended to give me mixed results with things like follow breaking, etc. 12 was enough to avoid that and still get a lot of benefit on the CPU side.

[Kojiiko]

you cannot just get away with setting graphics to 1 and using DX11

I did this with my druids set, 5 boxer,, but using dx12 seems to work ok,,,

everyone that talking all computer talk, confusing the hell out of me.. I know that when i try to eight box its nearly impossible.

[sparvath]

"CPU is dramatically impacted by slave framerates. If they aren't already, make sure your maxfpsbk is set to 12 and see if that helps. FYI, I found that setting the background framerate to less than 12 tended to give me mixed results with things like follow breaking, etc. 12 was enough to avoid that and still get a lot of benefit on the CPU side."

This did the world.. After days of testing. Even had framerate on slaves at 15 but still crash, crash and crash again

Also tried this but no change

"can you check if one (or more) of your wow windows is set to windowed and not to fullscreen in the wow display settings?
I had that problem which made playing impossible"

So I better renew my subs. Was a bit anoyed that with my first xmas vacation in 5 years and 7 teams at 115 I had to stop on the 19th


I still struggle a bit on 2 of the windows but hopefully I will get a processor with more than 4 cores later and

Been playing for 2 hours and has had 1 dc in Borales and two with long loading times when exiting a vehicle

[MadMilitia]

I made sure when 8.1 launched to NOT upgrade my Nvidia drivers, after I read that it was problematic. Can confirm with pre-8.1 Nvidia drivers there are no crashes on my machine for my 5 box setup.

[Kayley]

I got a clip of my second window closing, it's random on what window closes I imagine if I pinpointed which CPU is running which PID I could find out more


https://youtu.be/khbuN07lKoc

So as pointed out by Mirai it's generally overworked hardware that causes this. You can sort of force this issue (as a test) by putting 5-10 clients on one CPU core and spamming dps buttons. Most clients will work fine, some will start lagging, then delayed key-presses leading to an eventual crash if it can't catch up.

Weird eh? Before 8.1 it would just lower your fps and that would be it.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Kayley, that does remind me of something worth mentioning: multiplicative stacking of keypresses.

For example, if I press "1" 5 times per second, and "1" has a keymap that sends "1" to all clients, I end up with 5 keypresses per second to each client.

If my "1" keymap sends keys 1-5 and "f" to all 5, I now have 35 keypresses per second to each client.

If my "1" keymap is also set to trigger on press AND release, I now have 70 keypresses per second to each client.

Now, imagine I'm using the Pro setup. My "Paladin doDPS" mapped key is set to fire when pressed AND released, and:
* calls Paladin doDPSAbilities (keys 1-8), which is also set to fire on press/release
* calls Paladin doSelfHealThingies (3 buttons), which is also set to fire on press/release
* calls Paladin protGearMacro,

I now have one button that, if pressed 5 times per second, effectively sends 240 (!) actions per second to each client. Multiply that by the number of clients and...well...

If you have some PC overhead, you're probably OK but I'm sure it is fairly obvious what starts happening if you are...promiscuous with your "referred" mapped key presses, especially on a system that is heavily loaded to begin with. ;)

[Rocknard]

Thanks all I have fixed it so far, by changing my CPU setup from the default balanced 1/1/1/1/1/0/0/0 to 1/2/2/2/2 with 1 window having CPU 8 and sharing another and then further reducing my 3d rendering to pretty much 3d bit pixels on my slaves which is fine, now the cpu's run a decent CPU load but no crashes, now if Activision blizzard can just fix the main capital zone lags with better servers.