Out of horse power????

So this is day 3 of my pc overhauls, as i am trying to find a good setup to play my 5x Sham's. Here is where i am at.

Processors
Intel C2Quad 6600
Affinity's
Core 1 (OS + main)
Core 2 (Clone 1)
Core 3 (Clone 2)
Core 4 (Clone 3 &4)

8GB ddr800 (4-5GB) used with all video settings at LOW

Video Cards
two - 8800GT (92) with 640MB per card
30 inch dell monitor - Connected to 1st - 8800 - Main Toon (1280x780) Guess
20 inch dell monitor - Connected to 2nd - 8800 - 2x2 (800x600) each - Clone 2-5
All settings to LOW

Hard Drives
1 - 153GB HD 7200 RPM "OS + Main Toon"
1- 153GB HD 7200 RPM "CLone 1"
1-320GB HD 7200 RPM "Partitioned drive" 150GB (Clone2) + 150GB (Clone 3)
1-1TB external HD (USB2) "Clone 4"

Moved to Windows 7 RC 64bit - "Improvement over vista 64bit"

My results:
So after i begged and borrowed parts from my old junker the above setup is what i had with a fresh load of windows 7 RC x64. It is definatily better than Vista and watching the performance monitor on all hardware it appear the disk access is low for each of the drives. They do spike for a few seconds but not bad.

The CPU appears to be getting the brunt of this workout as all cores 0-2 are around 70-90%+ with the last core pegged due to 2 clones on it. I can say for sure that 2 monitors is kicking the crap out of my system but i dont like have the 5 on my 30inch.

I turned windows 7 to performance mode and told it to customize for performance instead of letting windows control it (gets rid of all the frills)

Couple of questions for my tweaking:
Anyone know if having 2 monitors hooked to 1 video card is better than 2 monitors hooked to 2 video cards (NOT SLI)

Should this setup be able to push what i am asking it to do? If not where do i start, new video card is my guess but i dont like the fact all of my cores almost peg when in city's.

Stormwind... Cant imagine this is going to cut it in dalaran or AV's

Thanks in advance.....

I'd suggest setting your CPU affinity for 2 cores each (WoW has some dual-core support). This should allow it to balance the load a little more. You're not going to get any cycles out of your CPU, but it may releave some short term bottlenecks. If you are really bottlenecked at the CPU you can try overclocking a little bit. (Even with stock heatsink and Fan a lot of Q6600 can hit 3.0GHz pretty easy).

Something like this may help a bit
Main - Core 3&4
Clone 1 - Core 1&2
Clone 2 - Core 1&2
Clone 3 - Core 3&2
Clone 4 - Core 4&2
OS and background apps - Core 1

I had that core configuration or something very close since keyclone wanted it that way (in vista). Thought i would try assigning them myself to see if i would get some benifits.

My personal thoughts are to rip out the video cards and replace with a single 260 or better.

I have better than stock for a cooling on the CPU and a nice XFX board.. I will OC'ing a try tonight.

You are going to have to overclock to get more out of the q6600. I run a q6600 at 3.4ghz and it still pegs 100% cpu utilization on all 5 in dalaran. I finally got fed up with it and built a second computer from spare parts and minimal purchases and run 3 on the q6600 and 2 on the new box. Wow can also handle all 4 cores having affinity. Because of this I set affinity to all 4 cores and let the cpu balance the load how it feels is best.

I can't really help you with video card questions, I run both monitors on a single gtx280 on my q6600. The other thing I like about having 2 computers running the game is I can use 4 monitors and have the clients at much larger resolutions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BoxingGeeks

So this is day 3 of my pc overhauls, as i am trying to find a good setup to play my 5x Sham's. Here is where i am at.

Processors
Intel C2Quad 6600
Affinity's
Core 1 (OS + main)
Core 2 (Clone 1)
Core 3 (Clone 2)
Core 4 (Clone 3 &4)

8GB ddr800 (4-5GB) used with all video settings at LOW

Video Cards
two - 8800GT (92) with 640MB per card
30 inch dell monitor - Connected to 1st - 8800 - Main Toon (1280x780) Guess
20 inch dell monitor - Connected to 2nd - 8800 - 2x2 (800x600) each - Clone 2-5
All settings to LOW

Hard Drives
1 - 153GB HD 7200 RPM "OS + Main Toon"
1- 153GB HD 7200 RPM "CLone 1"
1-320GB HD 7200 RPM "Partitioned drive" 150GB (Clone2) + 150GB (Clone 3)
1-1TB external HD (USB2) "Clone 4"

Moved to Windows 7 RC 64bit - "Improvement over vista 64bit"

My results:
So after i begged and borrowed parts from my old junker the above setup is what i had with a fresh load of windows 7 RC x64. It is definatily better than Vista and watching the performance monitor on all hardware it appear the disk access is low for each of the drives. They do spike for a few seconds but not bad.

The CPU appears to be getting the brunt of this workout as all cores 0-2 are around 70-90%+ with the last core pegged due to 2 clones on it. I can say for sure that 2 monitors is kicking the crap out of my system but i dont like have the 5 on my 30inch.

I turned windows 7 to performance mode and told it to customize for performance instead of letting windows control it (gets rid of all the frills)

Couple of questions for my tweaking:
Anyone know if having 2 monitors hooked to 1 video card is better than 2 monitors hooked to 2 video cards (NOT SLI)

Should this setup be able to push what i am asking it to do? If not where do i start, new video card is my guess but i dont like the fact all of my cores almost peg when in city's.

Stormwind... Cant imagine this is going to cut it in dalaran or AV's

Thanks in advance.....

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I know that there was the issue of Direct X not rendering properly on the second card, which is why most people run with both monitors on the one card. not sure if this is still an issue with windows 7, as I've not really had much chance to play with it myself

you could try multiple monitor SLI and see if that gives you better results, any Nvidia Driver over v180 should give you the option of this.

you probably should look at picking up a GTX 260 or better

I'm running a q6600 (8GB) with 2x GTX 275 SLI and am getting 30 - 50+ (24" Screen) in Dalaran. My slave box is running 20-40fps (depending on time of day) Q6600 (8GB) with GTX 260 running 2x 22"

cpu's on both are standard - i will probably look to pushing them both to 3gz and see what difference that makes.

Your computer reminds me of my Frankenstein machine: 2 underpowered video cards, an array of old hard drives but a strong mobo/cpu/ram Your system has a few bottlenecks, namely video and that USB hard drive, but its a start.

Video cards: WoW does not play well with multiple GPUs. Only with the use of specific setups (I believe IS can handle this) can WoW be launched on specific/second GPUs. So if I had to guess, your second video card is doing nothing more than hosting the dvi jack that your monitor is plugged into.

Video Cards (continued) You say your 8800gt is a 640mb G92 model??? I have never heard of this. I may be mistaken, but iirc, this card has the gpu prior to the G92. Buy a new 200 series, you will not be disappointed (especially with a 285)

USB hard drive? Really? Dont do that! There are dozens of threads full of anecdotal proof that symlinking the wow\data folder to multple copies of one installation is the way to go. Your multiple full installs accross 4 HDDs is just plain scary, you are wasting GB upon GB and not gaining much performance. But the fact that one of these drives is trying to shove its data through a USB cable makes me wonder if that instance loads slower than the others.

CPU: My Q6600 has been stable at 3.2 on air for two years, Ive heard claims of higher. OC THAT SHIT. If you've got an extra $220 burning a hole in your pocket, the Q9550 would be a hell of an upgrade.

Core Affinity: As stated above, WoW does have limited multicore utilization built in, but this is limited to running sound on the second (#1) core. Assuming you have an audio card, this is unnecessary. If not, allowing your main instance (or the one that runs with sound on) access to a second core, would be beneficial. Your affinity should be ok.

You are correct at saying i have been throwing a bunch of junk in this box to try to achive better performance :P God i wish my money was my money still......married life... /sigh

When I first built this box it had the 2 - 153GB hard drives in a Raid set and the other 320 was in an old junker. The USB drive i know i a bad idea and will be taken out of the loop but it was a odd test and appears to work without bottlenecks... since its the only thing that drive is doing.

Over lunch here is what i figured out.
http://www.auctiondeals.ca/detail_pr...orce_8800_gts/
GF 8800GTS 650M 512MB DDR3 DUALDVITVPCIE (typed the above from memory)
This is my video card.

Removing the pointer from my 320GB partitioned drive was much quicker. I just pointed both instances of WoW to the same folder on that drive.

I got the OC settings i am going to test tonight.
FSB - 1555
mem - 1066
Rest of my board i am leaving to auto

Supposidly this will put me around the 3.4Ghz range... hope its stable.

Not sure i understand this comment

Quote:

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Core Affinity: As stated above, WoW does have limited multicore utilization built in, but this is limited to running sound on the second (#1) core. Assuming you have an audio card, this is unnecessary. If not, allowing your main instance (or the one that runs with sound on) access to a second core, would be beneficial. Your affinity should be ok.

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I have a creative labs X-FI fidelity (PCI because my video cards are to damn big)
MB - XFX 780I

More to come......

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bovidae

CPU: My Q6600 has been stable at 3.2 on air for two years, Ive heard claims of higher. OC THAT SHIT. If you've got an extra $220 burning a hole in your pocket, the Q9550 would be a hell of an upgrade.

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I had my q6600 at 3.6 for a while on air but dropped it back down to 3.4 because I was no longer 5 boxing on one machine. Even with a stock cooler you should be able to push 3ghz without any trouble. I've been running stable at 3.4 for at least 8 months.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bovidae

Core Affinity: As stated above, WoW does have limited multicore utilization built in, but this is limited to running sound on the second (#1) core. Assuming you have an audio card, this is unnecessary. If not, allowing your main instance (or the one that runs with sound on) access to a second core, would be beneficial. Your affinity should be ok.

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Are you sure it has limited multicore settings? I run with my affinity to all 4 cores and it gets utilization across the board. There is even a setting in the config for having affinity to all 4 cores. Now if I misread and you are just stating the only limit of multicore utilization is sound then I stand corrected. Hopefully all multiboxers use a hardware soundcard, its such a cheap solution to ofload processing from your cpu.

Over the wekend i followed the "OC that Shit" advance and WOHOO..... my Q6600 is now sitting stable at 3.4Ghz and wow what a difference that makes. Went back to 1 harddrive for the OS and 1drive for all of the wow's seems to be keeping up just fine now with 5 clones even in cities.

The Q6600 was/is a beast, imho there is no excuse to let it drag its feet at stock frequencies. I'm glad my most concise advice did the trick :)

I could be mistaken on how WoW handles multiple cores. A year and a half ago, I did extensive searches regarding this and that was my conclusion based off numerous tech support blue comments. I also ran a few tests of my own design. If there have been changes, I've missed them.

I might run a few test scenarios to see how outdated I am.