5-boxing on my rig dies in Orgrimmar. [Thanks for nothing shadows]

I started multiboxing the other day, with 5 boxes running on my machine:

Dell Preciscion Desktop:

- 2x quad-core E5405 Xeon @ 2.00GHz processors
- 12GB DDR2 RAM (667MHz)
- 2x WD Hard drives in RAID-0
- BFG GTX 275 GPU
- Windows 7 64-bit
- two Samsung 204B monitors @ 1600x1200 through DVI connections


I started out in Mulgore running 5 boxes (1 on Display1 @ 1600x1200, 4 on Display2 @ 800x600) and things were moving along.

At some point, the slideshow began and framerates dropped to nothing. I don't remember what I was doing, but I wasn't anywhere populated or doing anything other than killing things in the wilds.

I offloaded a box onto a second PC so now I was running (1 on Display1 @ 1600x1200, three on Display2 @ 800x600) and set up Keyclone CPU affinity to isolate each of the four WoW sessions running to two CPU cores each. Things were fine again.

So last night I finally made it for the first time to Orgrimmar as a five box and things came to a screeching halt. The slideshow came back and I couldn't move in any way. I was forced to quit all of my sessions and march each character outside towards Razor Hill and then quit.

Clearly this won't do, but I can't figure out what to tweak since it seems like I should be able to run five boxes on this rig no problem, hardware wise.


What settings should I turn down so that I don't get stuck like that again?

Try turning off character shadows, or whatever the setting is for shadows.

Thanks.

Tonight I plan on updating the GPU drivers and while I'm at it, I'll turn off shadows.

Do shadows really make that big of a performance hit?



Edit: Is the "/console shadowLOD 0 " method still the way to do it?

yes the shadows kill my comp to just on solo play also id just turn them off and ull be set

Quote:

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Originally Posted by agrikk

Thanks.

Tonight I plan on updating the GPU drivers and while I'm at it, I'll turn off shadows.

Do shadows really make that big of a performance hit?



Edit: Is the "/console shadowLOD 0 " method still the way to do it?

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I'm sure there's a way to do it via a console command, however, the only way I know is through the advanced video settings.

I ended up turning off shadows in config.wtf and I ran four boxes as smooth as you please. I'm going to try five again later.

WTC is up with that? Stupid shadows killing computers? What a horrible horrible feature. :argh:

I have my slaves running out of different directory's to my main (I have 3 copys split over 3 different drives) All the slaves have their settings turned down to absolute minimum.
Having the directorys split over 3 drives means when I hit an bit area like Org it doesnt have to load 5 copys of it from 1 drive (When I had it all on 1 drive my HDD would go insane when I hit org)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gormand

I have my slaves running out of different directory's to my main (I have 3 copys split over 3 different drives) All the slaves have their settings turned down to absolute minimum.
Having the directorys split over 3 drives means when I hit an bit area like Org it doesnt have to load 5 copys of it from 1 drive (When I had it all on 1 drive my HDD would go insane when I hit org)

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I tend to find that I get better performance from one directory and symbolicly linked files, rather than having multiple directorties across different drives.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mikekim

I tend to find that I get better performance from one directory and symbolicly linked files, rather than having multiple directorties across different drives.

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I have heard of this but have never actually looked into it. However I would likely always keep at least 2 directorys (One for slaves) to ensure I can play my slaves as single toons from the primary directory.

But apart form the above what are the benefits of the symbolicly linked files? And how does it work in general?

Ther'es alot of changes you can make to speed it up, i can run around dala and get no lag some days.

in invidia panel there's graphics rendering settings, chuck them on high performance, i got big performance improvement.

i keep my main screen on 1280x1024 on my 24" hd screen, and rest on 800x600 on ultra low graphics, put the viewing distance down so min, everything.

main screen setup the minimum you need to see, so distance would be what would be acceptable viewing distance and particals etc, dont need ultra your boxing not solo playing performance is a very high priority.

my rig is:

Core2Quad Q9650 clocked@ 3.6Ghz 8Gb of XMAS3 @1600Mhz, Nvidia 275 super overclocked edition 2GB , and running WD raptors for each wow client, total of 5 drives. keep latency minimal. if you want epic performance, get SS drives, but only the best one not cheapos.

my system can handle 5 easily, im running windows 7 64 pro, and i have windows media player in background and few webpages, yet performance does not change.

if your getting issues, look towards tweaking, and optimising.