Aggravated.

[Taffy]

So, for the second time, I've lagged out. Something needs to be done.

I'm running 5 wows. I did bump up to 4 gigs...thought that would be fine. When I'm out in the world, I'm good to go. When I get into a city I get laggy. If it's peak times...forget it. I can barely move in shat and SW.

I'm not hardware savvy at all...I can look it and teach myself to do it...but I'm unsure of what needs to be done.

I have another tower sitting here...my fiance just got a new machine. I could use it. But..what would I do with it? It seems a good idea, to have 2 running on it, and 3 on my own...but I'm unsure how to go about this. What I've read about a KVM switch is that I would only be able to see what's happening on one pc at a given time? Maybe I've got that wrong in my mind.

Or...I read about multiple hd's...I'm very confused...and may have bitten off more than I can chew...but it aggravates me to NO END when there's something I'm trying to figure out and it hasn't clicked yet.

Someone please point me in the right direction.

/cry for help

[Khazrael]

One of the biggest changes that helped me was a hard drive related issue.

Do you use multiple hard drives or just one? Do you have multiple WoW installations or just one?

Answer those questions and we can see if the fix that helped me will do anything for you.

[antishadow]

If you want to run 5 on one machine you'll want a lot more than 4GB of ram if you don't want to lag in cities. running on multiple machines is the best route to go if you're able to do it - you can do it without a KVM by using Synergy with broadcasting enabled. You can check the WIKI out here for information on where to get it (Synergy is free) but you will need (i believe) additional Keyclone licenses.

Another suggestion would be to avoid the main cities (SW, Shat, IF) for alliance and sticking to the less used cities. Darnassus or the Exodar (sp?) are a lot more workable and with 2GB on my laptop I'm able to handle those 2.

[Khazrael]

If you want to run 5 on one machine you'll want a lot more than 4GB of ram if you don't want to lag in cities. running on multiple machines is the best route to go if you're able to do it - you can do it without a KVM by using Synergy with broadcasting enabled. You can check the WIKI out here for information on where to get it (Synergy is free) but you will need (i believe) additional Keyclone licenses.

Another suggestion would be to avoid the main cities (SW, Shat, IF) for alliance and sticking to the less used cities. Darnassus or the Exodar (sp?) are a lot more workable and with 2GB on my laptop I'm able to handle those 2.

I would contest that, as I 5 box on a single machine, and have little to no issues in main cities such as Orgrimmar. After the initial load time for my primary account (which would happen regardless of me multi-boxing) everything is smooth as butter. I get around 30-40 fps generally running through Orgrimmar, while my clones are capped out at 15.

[Taffy]

One of the biggest changes that helped me was a hard drive related issue.

Do you use multiple hard drives or just one? Do you have multiple WoW installations or just one?

Answer those questions and we can see if the fix that helped me will do anything for you.I have one hard drive. I have one wow installation.

I see shots of others with multiple towers sitting next to each other and doing it that way...this is what I'm trying to accomplish, running 2 on the secondary one and 3 on my main one.

I'm going to look into synergy, now.

/eyetwitch

[Khazrael]

I see, then my issue is separate from yours. Running off of one copy would be the same as what I'm doing, so I won't go through the trouble of doing a write-up on it. I have no experience doing multiple physical machines, so I can't really do much to help you there.

Good luck.

[Djarid]

Trikk,

can you give us some details on the specification of your current machine?

Also can you give details of how the lagginess manifests itself? Is it a frame rate problem where your gfx card can't redraw quick enough? Do you get the environment drawn but it take ages for payer models to show up? Is it network lag with random disconnections or clones getting left behind?

Long zoning time is normally caused by loading textures \ addons
Low frame rates are often caused by your GPU or memory bandwidth
Network lag and disconnection could be due to the follow bug, anyone know if it has been fixed?

What model is your graphics card? If it uses shared memory than that is likely to be your culprit as memory bandwidth is being eaten for screen drawing

btw, I five box on the following system and have lag in SW at peak times but it is generally usable
Athlon X2 4600+
4Gb Ram (only 2.8Gb available to the OS)
Radeon X1950XT 512mb Graphic Card
1x Seagate Barracuda running the OS and main WoW (I know, I know but I can't be arsed changing it atm)
1x WD Caviar running 4x Wow (one junctioned data directory for all of them)
1x SCSI 160mb/s 9Gb drive for my page file

I wouldn't advocate the need for separate drives, the way my 4 on the 2nd disk is effectively the same as your single install except I have the flexibility of separate WTF folders for each instance. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that 5 boxing with shared data directories is quicker than having multiple disks, even a disk per instance.

[Taffy]

I have a... (I'm just copying what it says...I bought what he recommended...then put in more ram and a graphics card)

AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual 5000+ 2.4 GHz
4Gb Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT

Keep in mind I know very little about hardware, networking, or...well...yeah. But I'm teaching myself! I did manage to set up a home network, even though the xp system didn't want to chat well with the Vista boys. That out of the way, I tried Synergy, and it just would not work. I think maybe Norton is blocking a port that it needs...but Norton hates me. So I got Multiplicity...and it works! So...set up keyclone on both and it worked without a hitch. So I achieved what I was after...one keyboard/mouse...two systems.

Now...the older tower, that I just hooked to my main one...is pretty rough around the edges. I'll have to go get a little ram for it and see if that helps...I think it's running like...512. O.o It did open two clients and run them...but very laggy.


----

The lagginess on the main one eased up quite a bit, when running 3 instead of 5. But to answer your questions, Loading time, kinda long. It WOULD take forever to load the people around me in the inn. Then jeez, when I'd try to run...a few steps and freeze. Wait...few steps, freeze. Then...all 5 fell off Aldor rise. :(

Buuut. Seems I may have fixed it...at least for now, until my mind decides that I "need more beef". Then I'll be buttering up to buy a new system.

[Gallo]

Question: Do you set the CPU Affinity in keyclone's command editor? (this sets which Core of your dual core that each WoW uses).

[Taffy]

Nuuuu. I should do this?

Please forgive my ignorance.

[Gallo]

Yes! if you have 5 wow's running, you should have a command for loading each one. Inside the command editor, you can choose which processor core you use. For 2 of them, you should use Core0. For the other 3, use Core1. This may solve your lag problem. Dual core processors allow you to spread the CPU load over 2 "cores" which act as their own individual processors.

[keyclone]

Hi Trikk,

have you set the maxfpsbk and maxfps ?

if not, you definitely should if you are using keyclone, set them within the command editor.. setting maxfpsbk to 15 and maxfps to 40

let me know if that helps.

[Chorizotarian]

Also, does your ping time steadily increase as you launch more copies of WoW? What is your ping time?
Reducing latency ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=3973')

[Dezeral]

Gallo and Keyclone have pointed out the most likely ways to increase your performance, but another thing to consider here is the resolution and graphic detail of each window. An 8500gt will probably not handle max graphic detail with a very high resolution (1600x1200 or higher).

Things to look at either though the WoW video settings or through the Nvidia control panel:
Anti-aliasing (aka AA) - probably want this at 1x, 2x, or 4x (I use two 8800GTs and even 4x is a noticeable performance hit with 4 WoWs running at 1440x900 each). Set this to which ever setting still gives you playable frame rates. 2x is probably about all you'll be able to handle.
Anistropic-Filtering (aka AF) - 2x, 4x, 8x. Again, set this to whichever gives you playable frame rates. 4x gives a decent looking picture without stressing out your video card.

Under the WoW video settings:
Spell detail - lowering your spell detail can greatly lower the load on your video card.
Terrain distance - the more terrain you video card has to draw, the more work it has to do (this is compounded by having more instances of WoW running). Try moving the slider down some and see if it improves your frame rates. If you PVP a lot, you might want to lower other settings first so that you can see further into the distance before you lower the terrain distance.
Terrain detail - This is just eye candy. You can set this all the way down to see if it helps your frame rates.
Texture resolution - This again is eye candy, but the game can get really fugly with the lowest texture settings. If your WoW windows are tiny already, then you might not notice the detail too much if you lower the texture resolution.

To check how these settings affect your frame rates, turn on the FPS indicator in WoW. I believe the default keybinding for it is CTRL+R or CTRL+F. You can look under your keybindings to see what it is bound to. Or, if you can use FRAPS to check your frame rates. FRAPS is a utility you can download that has several handy features. If you go the extra step and pay for FRAPS, you can record your very own movies. But for what you're trying to do here, the built in FPS display of WoW will do just fine.

[Havelcek]

I find that a big performance savings in WOW is turning off shadows. That seems to be a resource hog.

[Taffy]

You guys are an amazingly patient core of helpy helpers. Thanks so much for all the little nips of advice.


My girls are running like champs now...right in the middle of Ironforge. :>

/happy

Now...when my xkeys shows up thursday...

[keyclone]

well then... hold on there cow-poke.... :D

you can't just say thanks and run. you have to describe which piece advise actually helped...
(this will help the next person coming down the pike)

[Eteocles]

I dunno about you but that Reducing Latency trick helped me a bit...years ago when I first started my pings would be 60-100ish..usually around 60ish. As patches came and went my ping kept climbing and was steadily 160+ at all times, god forbid busy sunday night raid nights, and the patch blizz did to help latency via their commands/nagle algorithm didn't do shit; I initially tried that trick on my own registry and it didn't seem to make a difference...but, I had 2 entries in my registry that both contained my IP and I had only put the TcpAckFrequency line in one of them; recently I was sick of the lag and put the line into BOTH entries...rebooted and I've had a permanent 60-70ms ping since.

I also use maxfps 64, and maxfpsbk 20, all 3 windows full-size windows(1280x1024, all settings same/mid to maxed out) runs smoothly on my dual-core + 7900gs + 2gb system ram

[Taffy]

well then... hold on there cow-poke.... :D

you can't just say thanks and run. you have to describe which piece advise actually helped...
(this will help the next person coming down the pike)Oh, sorry, Sir! ;)


"Yes! if you have 5 wow's running, you should have a command for loading each one. Inside the command editor, you can choose which processor core you use. For 2 of them, you should use Core0. For the other 3, use Core1. This may solve your lag problem. Dual core processors allow you to spread the CPU load over 2 "cores" which act as their own individual processors."
setting maxfpsbk to 15 and maxfps to 40
I find that a big performance savings in WOW is turning off shadows. It's really hard to say all that I've read to better get a grasp on it all. I've poured over site after site...reading tutorials, blogs, everything I can get my eyes on. It's been a great learning experience. :D My brain is happy to have the challenge...it tells me this when I go after the bottle of ibuprofen.


EDIT: As for this....

PATA? SATA? SATA II? RPM? Access Speed? Etc? I have NO idea.

[Eteocles]

I've no clue what PATA is myself...SATAs're those funny little HDs that use thin cable to attach instead of the floppy-esque IDE cables; SATA is much faster, SATA II is even faster than that, and both are far superior to their IDE predecessors.

[Djarid]

PATA - Parallel ATA - aka. IDE - the old school stuff.


surely you mean RLL or MFM if you are talking about old school disk systems ;)

(I know some real oldtimer is gonna trump me on this one :P )

[Wilbur]

In my day we used punch-cards.

/me pretends to be deaf.

[Chorizotarian]

Can you multibox off a punchcard? :P

[Djarid]

They made 120Mb ones? Jeez that must have been huge, my 40Mb was 2" thick

[Eteocles]

Thanks guys, I don't feel so old anymore ;)

[Taffy]

<squeels with glee!!!>


My xkeys pro just arrived!!!!!

[Eteocles]

You are quite possibly the girliest girl gamer I've ever seen :p

[Taffy]

>.<

Is it wrong that I looked for pink keycaps?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

>.<

Is it wrong that I looked for pink keycaps?Hell no. :) We're all a bit out on the raggedy edge here, just in different spots. But we are also unique in that we're one of the few forums where everyone's expectation is that you must find your own way of enjoying this thing called multiboxing. Basics are easy. Tweaking is hard. ;)

[The IT Monkey]

Ya. It took up 2x 5.25" bays, double stacked. :D

Looked identical to this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/5.25_inch_MFM_hard_disk_drive.JPG/180px-5.25_inch_MFM_hard_disk_drive.JPG

(thank you google images!)pssst... please.

My first hard drive:
http://www.allaboutapple.com/museo/pictures/donazioni/hd20sc.jpg

Capacity? 20 megs. Cost? $1500.

Worth every penny my parents paid for it... so long "floppy shuffle".

[NightFire]

My first.... umm...hard drive?
http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff288/PhoenixNightFire/TRS-80_tape_drive.jpg
My first modem
http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff288/PhoenixNightFire/TRS80_Modem.png

[Frosty]

I'm new to multi-boxing and just added my 3rd WoW account last night, thanks to this thread. :)

Right now I'm using a decent laptop with "Intel® Core 2 Duo" to run all 3 accounts with Keyclone.
While I know this setup isn't ideal, it works, and I don't have a choice right now, or I'd just buy a new computer. :p

I'm trying to push any extra power I can out of this system. I'm used to crappy graphics, so I have all of those settings turned down for all accounts.
I'm not sure if it makes any difference, but I turned the sound off on the 2 slave accounts. I was too lazy to test this out, but I'll check tonight. I don't think it made any improvements though.
I also, added an external hard drive to run at least 1 account off of.

Should I be running my "main" off of the external hard drive by itself? And what CPU should I assign it to? 0 or 1?
Or, should I run the main account off of the internal hard drive, and the 2 slave accounts on the external?

I had no problems playing all three last night, but thought I'd ask just in case!

-edit - I forgot to add that I also set maxfpsbk to 15 and maxfps to 40. :whistling:

Thanks!

[Gallo]

I'd say that you should run all of you accounts off of the internal hard drive. It is likely that the read/write is faster than the external. Also, I'd stick 2 accounts on Core1 and only 1 on Core0. Core0 is where most of your OS stuff is running, so thats extra baggage.

[Frosty]

I'd say that you should run all of you accounts off of the internal hard drive. It is likely that the read/write is faster than the external. Also, I'd stick 2 accounts on Core1 and only 1 on Core0. Core0 is where most of your OS stuff is running, so thats extra baggage.
I'll give that a shot when I get home.

Does it make any difference what 2 accounts I put on Core1?

Thanks! :)