reply to Ken. Continuation.
and the test location was Dalaran. Test was runned for about 10 minutes standing in one of the major intersections within the city. CPU utilization for the 4-core mask was between 20-30%. Try the above settings, disable the frame rate limit and try the different 1-core, 2-core, and 4-core masks. You will probably get similar results with the CPU utilization.
Getting to your second comment about the Memory, application memory usage is to some extent not affected by the OS settings. I believe caching is not included in the calculation of the WoW application memory usage (I will need to google the Internet on Vista caching system to verify.) but as a separate stat. Yes, WoW quality settings does have a strong affect on memory usage and was pointed out in a test case later on in the guide. I did go in-depth about the two different settings and compared the difference in memory usage. The thing I did forgot to add was WoW addons affecting memory usage which I will add to the guide in the next revision or the following revision after that.
As to the page file, all these test were done with the page file set to the maximum size recommended by the Vista OS. As to whether or not turning off the page file will affect actual application memory usage, it will probably increase the memory usage due to not being able to page certain parts of the application memory to the page file (Need to find reference or link to this and verify in a test case).
Now whether or not it is recommended to turn off the page (you referred to it as swap) file completely, I recommend not to do that. Certain applications are dependent on the page file for proper operation. Yes, there are certain applications that will run fine without it and your mileage will vary on applications you run (or crash).
Another good test case would be to test and see if reducing / disabling the page file would affect performance and stability of the OS and the WoW application. The next test case with the page file setting is to see if reported application memory changes.
As for the minimum memory vs range of memory, I will change that to 1 GB.
Getting to your third comment about NPU, I did measure the network bandwidth usage and it bounced between 10-60Kbps range to upwards of 100Kbps-150Kbps range but this is also dependent on which WoW addon you use and I need to add that to the next revision of the wiki. Settings used was similar to the above core mask test and the same location. You reference 1 WoW instance uses about 3KBps which translates into 24Kbps (reference for some of the readers, 8 bits = 1 byte. Capital "B" notation is usually referenced as a byte. while lowercase "b" is usually references as a bit.). Now 24Kbps is not really close to 56Kbps but close enough for this example and I use 56Kbps as a basic (generic and rounded up to something that people could recognize as a basic tier of service) unit of network bandwidth. I was not insinuating that 56Kbps was a telephone line, I was using it as a generic unit of network bandwidth.
Getting to your fourth comment about the OS, I do reference the reasons later on in the guide as information for those interested in learning more about it.
Getting to your fifth comment about UML, I was planning to go somewhere with it but I haven't finished adding/editing the last part of the guide.
Getting to your sixth comment about CPU Bound Observation 1, I'm adding more stuff to that sections and the reason why this information is relevant was to point out that CPU frequency has a strong affect on framerates. Referencing the three websites that had conducted performance test with the three different versions of WoW shows this. But I am still in the process of adding more to this section.
Your last comment about downgrading the memory from 800MHz to 400MHZ, I will agree to a certain extent about memory speed is important in 3D rendering applications. However, for certain applications and certain video games, this is not the case. Now depending on the programming of the application, some / most of the 3D graphics pipeline rendering is actually performed on the GPU (depends on which one you have). The textures or any related graphic items needed would be placed within the GPU node. Coders would try to limit transactions crossing between the GPU and CPU nodes. Some parts of the system memory would be used kind like a caching zone for graphic related items not needed or if there was not enough room on the GPU node to begin with. The cases where speed of the system memory starts playing a role is when you are talking about CAD or modeling programs where it's mainly dependent on the CPU and system memory. However, with the introduction of the CUDA programming language and/or changes in the 3D programming languages (etc.), the lines separating the CPU from the GPU are getting murky and application performance becomes less concrete as to which component is limiting it.
Another case is depending on the setup and whether or not it has an integrated memory controller (and the multi-tier caching scheme) may explain the difference between the individual you referenced as having a performance increase in fps vs setup A where the memory speed was lowered from 667MHz to 400MHz. In setup A, I did pull out the 400MHz memory to see if there was a difference, but there was no noticeable improvement in framerates. And could you provide the link to the individual who had a fps increase due to faster RAM?
You referenced that your system was a quad core running at 2.66GHz, is this a core 2 based or the new Core i7 based series. What are the specs on your machine and what kind of software settings adjustments have you made above the default settings. A good case test would be test a Core i7 system (test if the integrated memory controller plays a big role in performance, if the new multi-tier cache is affected by different memory speeds and whether or not hyperthreading affects performance on a small vs heavy WoW loads). These test cases, would provide valuable information and better inform the readers of this site.
