Advice on a new rig

Hey guys,

I've been multiboxing WoW (5 toons) for about two years now. I just startet setting up my first ISBoxer pro setup, still a work in progress but getting there.
With the recent WoW sales in December I got my self 5 extra accounts to 10-box, but my rig just isn't up for it. I've set all 10 instances to the lowest graphical settings, and as long as I walk around outside of the cities I get frame rates on my main of about 15 to a max of 20. But if I dare to enter the city my fps go down the drain to completely unplayable. I decided to OC my processor (i7 2600k) to 4500 MHz which makes to whole thing halfway playable but far from satisfactory. Also with Warlords of Dreanor, and it's UI and Char updates on the way I'm really in need of something new.

First a look at my current setup:

Asus P8Z68 Deluxe
Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40 GHz - be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2
Corsair Vengeance PC3 16 GB DDR3 1600MHz
Asus AMD 6970 CCU
Corsair PSU AX850
All tugged nicely in my Silverstone Raven RV03 Case

This rig will go to my wife, she recently started five-boxing.

My Logitech G13 and G19 as well as my Madcatz MMO 7 will be joining up with the new toy.

The new rig should be capable of playing 10-15 sessions of WoW (planning on doing some 15 boxing with my wife 5 accounts as well). As soon as I get a better Internet connection streaming should be possible as well.
Atm I have 4 monitors attached to my rig (see picture below). A 30 inch center flanked by 2 20 inch in Portrait and a 3rd 20 inch on top of my center screen (all Dells). May want to ad two more monitors in the near future. So will need enough monitor outputs.
I see some multiboxers still playing with/having 2 or more computers to box with, is there still a use for this?

Reading the forum and watching some of MiRai's very informative videos I've already learned that nVidia is the way to go, since SLI also supports Windowed mode. One or better two 780 ti sound like a good basis to start with (red there will be a 6 Gb version available shortly, would it be useful to get those instead of the standard 3 Gb?).
That about where to knowledge ends. I red a lot about the X79 and Z87 chipsets but have not been able to find any conclusive info on which is the best to go with.
Here and there I red some little pieces about RAM-disks, sounds interesting.

Fund wise lets start with a budget of 2.000 to 2.500 Euro. Budget can be flexed if needed.

I'm planning to purchase in about 1-2 months. Having hopefully the last big exam of my life on the first of march, when I pass this will be my reward http://isboxer.com/forum/images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif

Thanx in advance for all your advice,

sP`!´Ke

Nice, organized, current setup. I think you will have to go dual video cards if you want to continue using 4 monitors, since the 780 has 2xDVI and 1xHDMI out, but then you could go six monitors like many of the cool looking setups you find here.

Do you play with the keyboard/mouse sitting that far back, or just for the pic?

WoW is very cpu-intensive and you can expect no more then 15% of an performance increase (ipc, instructions per clock) moving from your overclocked sandy bridge to a current generation haswell (1). More if you go six-core from the additional cores. The increase in performance will make your 10 clients feel playable but imho 15 clients is out of sight for a single box.

EDIT:
(1) and you wont be able to overclock a haswell that far so with your sandy bridge at 4.5 Ghz a haswell wont run at much higher clock speeds.

15 boxing can get tricky on a single CPU box, depending on how you want your clients setup - resolution, background FPS requirement (reliable melee IWT needs 25fps+ background sustained, in my experience). I'm convinced at this point, without running your clients on what I call botter-mode (heavy dx9 config settings making the game look l ike minecraft) you just need dual xeons to make it "easy", otherwise you need to find a balance.

Now, My rig is just flawless with 10x:

3930k 6-core (between 4.2-4.6Ghz I've tried) // 2x Vertex 4 SSD Raid 0 // 64GB RAM // GTX 680 Classified 4GB

Somewhere around 12+ I noticed huge differences, and at 15x (and 16th client running bank alt, whatever) I really had to make compromises and do tweaking.

As mentioned above, WoW is extremely CPU intensive. One may think, with a better video card, one can run more clients at better settings - not usually the case. The more graphics settings you enable and the higher they are, the more CPU calculations WoW "must" do (they say), and some cause an exponential increase. As I recall in some technical posts, many graphics settings cause frames to need to be rendered (always with CPU involvement) many times over.

- Addons begin to get tricky as well as they engage the CPU quite a bit before a frame can be rendered. Things that parse the combat log and other real-time events can get especially bad (I had my main grinded to a halt recently due to a month old Skada log that hadn't been reset). Load/zone times out of an SSD or even RAM for that client were 10-30 seconds compared to the other clients not running it.

- Number of cores seem to be a big factor, maybe more so than clock rate. Once I exceeded logical cores (went over 12 clients) is when things got rough.

Now about tweaking:

- There is a lot of misinformation about RAM Drives and access speed, and block/file caching software (e.g. FancyCache, etc.). Most modern operating systems including Windows perform block level caching of recently used files automatically which I found differs very little over time (although I want to test more) than using a full RAM-disk or supplementary block/file level caching program, some of which appear to be complete snake oil (disabling Windows' os-level caching, then enabling its own to show their benchmarks).

- File access times, read/write speed, etc. is further misinterpreted by things like CrystalDiskMark (or whatever) that show you the speed of your disks - they disable the os-level caching entirely during this. Yes, their purpose is to show you how fast the disk actually is on its own, but it's synthetic - that SSD Raid 0 getting 1GB/sec compared to your mechanical drive at 200MB/sec, compared to your RAM drive at 9GB/sec - in the real world, you'll often see near RAM drive speeds in all cases (try moving/copying/reading a very large file twice and watch the difference on subsequent attempts once OS-level RAM caching kicks in.)... On the other hand, yes, SSD's are going to be better unless you've managed to get Windows to cache and hold all of WoW in RAM on its own prior to you using it. If you have the RAM you can put all of WoW into it and guarantee it's loaded out of there, but I suspect (although haven't fully tested) it may compete with the CPU's demands on RAM.

- There is a ton of misinformation about Windows tweaking out there. Say what you will, Linux/OSX/BSDish/whatever fanboys, but the Windows kernels especially around 7, 8, and 8.1 are very mature and exceedingly efficient, out of necessity (the amount of crap you're going to run on top of it, especially third party software MS doesn't control). Many tweaks hurt performance, do nothing (but disable useful features), or makes things unstable. Be that as it may, it is absolutely worth tweaking Windows at the os-level, but I'd start with Googling "bad windows tweaks" first, which led me to several articles explaining in depth what the tweaks (supposedly) do, why some are bad, useless, or outdated, and fortunately - information on what actually does work.

As far as better video cards, I don't know how they would help with pushing more clients than you have CPU to handle. My game looks decent (but doesn't have shadows or any shiny effects) and the GTX 680 maxes out at about 75% util... I can certainly get it to use 100% by increasing graphics settings only to have it crush my CPU.

I have a lot more notes over the past year, but that's the current state of 15 boxing as far as my setup. I'd afraid WoD may require me to use server-grade hardware to get multiple CPUs if I want to continue 15 boxing, or even 10.

@JohnGabriel:
Thanks :-)
I play like that, my desk is curved in so I can sit very close to it and have my arms rest on the desk while playing. Very comfortable ;-)
Was already thinking of adding two extra monitors to complete my setup, but upgrading my PC has priority over extra monitors.


@RSM72:
15% is all they were able to squeeze out in two year of technological advancement? Disappointing. At least there is a 6 core option now which will give me some kind of performance increase I expect.
Think I'd be better of waiting for Broadwell?

sP`!´Ke

@Heyaz:

Firstly thanks for your very long and insightful reply.

Currently while ten boxing I have both tanks and both healers stacked on my center monitor at a resolution of 2560x1600 with two dxnothing windows on my side monitors so I can always see all four of them. The remaining six Dps chars are stacked on my top monitor at a resolution of 1680x900 with a small third dxnothing window below them so I can see what they're all doing, see screen-shot below. Like I said, all at the lowest setting and running them in DX9. Main char will do 15-20 fps depending on it's surrounding, the rest run a 10 fps.

So you're saying ten boxing will be possible with new hardware. 15, especially with WoD on the way, will be a no go on a single system.

I thought, after seeing MiRai's video where he walks his train through Stormwind with 60 chars on his new system, that 15 on a single machine should not be that much of a problem.

A second option might be to take my wife's old system, tweak that a little and use it as a second system. She currently has an Intel Core i5-2500K on a GigaByte GA-Z68AP-D3 mobo with 8 GB of ram and my old ATI Radeon HD 4870. What would be the best, not to costly upgrade, to get this system ready to play 5 chars?
Third option might be waiting for Broadwell to be released?

I will take an good look at all the addons I'm currently using, disabling, on a per toon basis, everything they don't really need.

Windows tweaking, running 8.1, haven't done any tweaking on yet. Will look into it.

So forget about a RAM-drive, just use two SSDs.

sP`!´Ke

Forgot the screen shot ;-)

sP`!´Ke

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

15% is all they were able to squeeze out in two year of technological advancement? Disappointing. At least there is a 6 core option now which will give me some kind of performance increase I expect.

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When the competition doesn't offer any... competition, then what can you expect? AMD has been nowhere near Intel in terms of raw performance where it matters (for most people) for years now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Think I'd be better of waiting for Broadwell?

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If you're waiting for Broadwell with > 4 cores, you're probably going to be waiting until late 2015. The next 6/8-core CPUs are scheduled to hit later this year, but they'll be Haswell-E.

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

So you're saying ten boxing will be possible with new hardware. 15, especially with WoD on the way, will be a no go on a single system.

I thought, after seeing MiRai's video where he walks his train through Stormwind with 60 chars on his new system, that 15 on a single machine should not be that much of a problem.

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The biggest difference is that I ran those clients at 1280x720 and you run your clients at 2560x1600. Not to mention that my 59 slave clients were running at a whopping 5 FPS. -_- It was only a test for fun and I would have needed much more available CPU to have gotten anymore FPS or resolution out of those game clients.

1280x720x60 = 55,296,000 pixels
2560x1600x15 = 61,440,000 pixels
1920x1080x15 = 31,104,000 pixels (for comparison)

With such a large resolution your hardware needs to work almost twice as hard (theoretically estimated) as someone who plays at 1080 -- Assuming both of you have identical video settings, framerate, etc.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

A second option might be to take my wife's old system, tweak that a little and use it as a second system. She currently has an Intel Core i5-2500K on a GigaByte GA-Z68AP-D3 mobo with 8 GB of ram and my old ATI Radeon HD 4870. What would be the best, not to costly upgrade, to get this system ready to play 5 chars?

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5 clients on a 2500K/4870 @ 2560x1600? I think that might be pushing it depending on the situation, but I could be wrong. It might be worth a shot, but I'd test it out before making the commitment and assuming it's going to perform well.

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Originally Posted by MiRai

...5 clients on a 2500K/4870 @ 2560x1600? I think that might be pushing it...

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I'm running 5 clients on a 4930k @ 2560x1600 plus a second monitor at 1920x1200 using a EVGA 780 Ti Classified and I get stuttering when moving the camera around. It's bad enough that I reduced the resolution on the main monitor to 1920x1200, which makes the whole rig run solidly at 60fps on the master and 30fps on the slaves. So I'd agree, 5 clients at 2560x1600 on *any* current hardware (WoW) would be a problem.

(My best guess is that the 3GB vram is the bottleneck. If the 6GB 780 ti comes out it may change everything.)

I also forgot to add that, since the 6xx series, nVidia GPUs (that are worth multiboxing on) can handle 4 displays.

Thanks for all the extra info guys.

Maybe I was a bit unclear about it but I do not intend to run all instances of the game at 2650 x 1600. I only have both tanks and healers at this res., the DPS sessions will run at the lower res. of 1680 x 900. My primary plan is to 10-box on the new system, I was hoping it might also do 15, but that it seem is unlikely. That's why I presented the alternate option of using the i5-2500K system as a second system for a few chars, they will most definitely not run at 2560 x 1600, I've only got one 30 inch and it will be connected to the main PC. The session on the i5-2500K will probably be running something like 1680 x 900, and taking into account Heyaz's comment of one session per core, I would try to run 12 on the new system and only the remaining 3 on the i5-2500K.

As Mirai said it, and I red on other sources as well, I won't be before late 2015 that we'll get Broadwell with more than 4 cores, we don't even have a Haswell with 6 cores atm.

Heyaz mentioned he runs his melee slaves at a minimum sustained 25 fps, rfarris has his slaves at 30 fps. On my current system I have my slaves at 10 fps. What minimum fps should I aim at with my slaves to get decent game play? And what is the downside of running lower fps?

Putting all the gathered info together my new system is beginning to take shape:
- Intel i7 4930K
- Asus Rampage IV Black edition
- be quiet Dark Power Pro 1200W
- Cooler Master Storm Trooper Case

I cannot decide between getting an EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Dual Classified or Asus GTX 780 Ti DirectCU. Are there advantages in getting the Asus since I'll get an Asus MB? Should I wait and get a 6 GB version when they come out, any info on when that will be or what kind of pricing we're looking at? Do I need a 780 ti or would (for example) a, or two 760 suffice?

Ain't got a clue what kind of internal memory I should get, nor how much. On the one hand I'd think 32 gig would suffice, on the other with the Rampage I get RAM-Drive capability which I think I would like to try out.

Next is SSD's. If I don't use the RAM-Drive I could wind up needing 4 of them? One for Windows, two in RAID for WoW and a fourth one for recording/streaming. I also came across the Asus RAIDR express PCIe SSD, don't you have one MiRai, how do you like it? If I would combine that with a RAM-Drive for WoW and would dump my streaming/recording directly on my NAS I wouldn't need any. Lot's of ???questionsmarks??? here.

Than we come to POWER. When MiRai is correct (and I think we can assume he is) than for starters one GPU would suffice with 4 monitors. When I upgrade to six monitors I would though need a second one, it's unlike there will ever be a third. What kind of PSU do I need, mostly in the sense of wattage? I'm looking at be-quiet for the PSU because I like their CPU cooler and I'm trying to keep the system nice and quiet.

Last thing I would like some advice on is CPU cooling. Currently I have a be quiet Dark Rock Pro 2, and I love because it's so quiet, I just have it running at full load continuously because I can hardly hear it (no I ain't deaf). So I could just get the new Dark Rock Pro 3 for the new system and be a happy man.
But there is still a part of me saying try water cooling, which got me looking at the Corsair H110 (it would fit into the Strom trooper, and in test it's the quieter one of the AIO big water coolers). It is louder than air-cooling, though kind of hard for me to imagine by how much without having heard them side by side. A review I found that compares the two, says it is up to 7 db louder (42 against 49) at full load, keeping an i7-4770K over-clocked @ 4.2 GHz at full load only 2 - 3 degrees cooler. Which would tell me just get the be-quiet of now, and maybe do a proper water cooling at a later stage. Comments?

Sorry for all the questions, but we're getting somewhere.

sP`!´Ke

The reason I run slaves at 30 fps is because I read that it has a significant effect on the slaves follow performance. Having said that, my slaves still lose follow when changing zones, but that's the only time I see it.

WRT cooling, I'm running the Noctua NH-D14 and it is damn quiet and keeps the 4930 cool, but it also requires low profile RAM and covers up half my motherboard. And is ugly. I don't have a window in my case, so I'm good with ugly, but if you care about the aesthetics you wouldn't like it.

SSD? I run WoW off a single SSD (Samsung 840 Pro.) I have the OS on a separate SSD. I don't really have any trouble with the single SSD, but I'm considering adding another (128 GB) SSD to set up in RAID-0 simply because the 128 GB SSDs are cheap and umm... I dunno, everyone is doing it. :)

We haven't heard MiRai's review of the RAIDR yet, but I've read a lot of reviews that say that standalone SSDs are faster and more reliable.

I've got a Corsair PSU like MiRai's, but don't let the "CorsairLINK2" press suck you in. It was a major feature that sold me on the Corsair PSU but now that I've actually looked at it I find it not nearly as useful as OpenHardwareMonitor. Still, the Corsair PSU is quiet, good looking and comes with a ton of cool cables and other junk.

I'm anxious to see how the new ivy bridge 6-cores perform in real-world scenarios, or well, our scenario of multiboxing WoW which is a unique situation where neither synthetic benchmarks nor full-screen latest FPS shooter benchmarks are completely relevant.

7-12% increase on the 49__k's? Based entirely on combination of synthetic + hey look crysis on max settings full screen. Will it be 7-12% in WoW multiple clients? or 20%? Or zero? Who knows.

As far as FPS requirements, I think follow gets affected when FPS drops below about 12-15 in the background... when you get down to about 5 fps they just don't want to follow at all.

Reliable follow I'd say is 15-18 sustained
Reliable IWT 25+ sustained
Smooth IWT (perfect circle around target) 25-40+ sustained.

And by sustained I mean... no dips. With IWT in a target dummy in a vanilla zone, yeah it sustains my setting fine. In Pandaria where there are more graphical effects and 100+ players invovlved? No way, under load the background clients can drop to 10 fps and you get jousting at best, runaways at the worst.

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Maybe I was a bit unclear about it but I do not intend to run all instances of the game at 2650 x 1600. I only have both tanks and healers at this res., the DPS sessions will run at the lower res. of 1680 x 900.

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I don't know what software you're using to multibox with, but does that not mess with mouse broadcasting, especially since both of those resolutions are not the same aspect ratio? And doesn't running two different resolutions mean that you have to maintain two slightly different UIs?

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

As Mirai said it, and I red on other sources as well, I won't be before late 2015 that we'll get Broadwell with more than 4 cores, we don't even have a Haswell with 6 cores atm.

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There are two sides to every processor family...

Sandy Bridge / Sandy Bridge-E
Ivy Bridge / Ivy Bridge-E
Haswell / Haswell-E
Broadwell / Broadwell-E

There is no need for > 4 cores on a typical desktop system because many programs and applications only use one or two cores. The "E" designation is for "enthusiast" or "extreme" and that's the only place you're going to find the extra cores and horsepower that multiboxers desire. IVB-E just came out in September, and these CPUs typically have at least a 1 year life cycle before the new platform is released, so, you're looking at probably about a Q4'14 release date, at the earliest, for Haswell-E.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Heyaz mentioned he runs his melee slaves at a minimum sustained 25 fps, rfarris has his slaves at 30 fps. On my current system I have my slaves at 10 fps. What minimum fps should I aim at with my slaves to get decent game play? And what is the downside of running lower fps?

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I wouldn't recommend running them lower than 10 because you may end up with follow breaking at random times. I have nothing to backup the follow statement, it's just what I've heard, but the game clients tend to look like a slideshow below 10FPS anyway and I'll assume it might also affect how well they accept input from the keyboard. I run my 5 clients at either 30/30 or 60/30 if I can.

In addition, and again I don't know which software you're using, FPS also affects how smooth the mouse cursor is when using mouse broadcasting in ISBoxer.

(heyaz replied while I was replying and also mentions some IWT stuff related to FPS)

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

I cannot decide between getting an EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Dual Classified or Asus GTX 780 Ti DirectCU. Are there advantages in getting the Asus since I'll get an Asus MB?

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There's no hidden benefit to buying a GPU made by the same manufacturer as your motherboard.

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Should I wait and get a 6 GB version when they come out, any info on when that will be or what kind of pricing we're looking at?

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They're rumored to be $1,000 each, but just as powerful (gaming-wise) as a GTX 780Ti. You could practically buy three GTX 780Tis for the price of two "Titan Black" GPUs.

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Do I need a 780 ti or would (for example) a, or two 760 suffice?

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Two GTX 760s are unlikely to suffice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Ain't got a clue what kind of internal memory I should get, nor how much. On the one hand I'd think 32 gig would suffice, on the other with the Rampage I get RAM-Drive capability which I think I would like to try out.

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32GB is fine to multibox with, but you'll need 64GB if you want a RAMDrive for World of Warcraft.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Next is SSD's. If I don't use the RAM-Drive I could wind up needing 4 of them? One for Windows, two in RAID for WoW and a fourth one for recording/streaming. I also came across the Asus RAIDR express PCIe SSD, don't you have one MiRai, how do you like it?

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You don't need to game off of SSDs in RAID0, one SSD is good enough. As for the RAIDR, it's a nice concept, but a bit expensive for the small performance gain in speed. I think there was one other drawback to it as well that I can't think of at the moment.

You also don't need to record game footage to an SSD. I do it because I run very high video settings in game which seem to affect recording performance (at least with FRAPS) and I really dislike it when I'm left wondering if the media I was using was the culprit of a loss of framerate in the video I just recorded. You'll also likely end up wearing out the SSD much, much quicker than normal, especially on a smaller driver like 250GB or less. That's why the next upgrade I'm looking at is a nice 1TB Samsung EVO for my recording drive. ;)

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

If I would combine that with a RAM-Drive for WoW and would dump my streaming/recording directly on my NAS I wouldn't need any. Lot's of ???questionsmarks??? here.

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I don't know.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Than we come to POWER. When MiRai is correct (and I think we can assume he is) than for starters one GPU would suffice with 4 monitors. When I upgrade to six monitors I would though need a second one, it's unlike there will ever be a third. What kind of PSU do I need, mostly in the sense of wattage? I'm looking at be-quiet for the PSU because I like their CPU cooler and I'm trying to keep the system nice and quiet.

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Never assume, always check up on other peoples' statements; but I'll back up my previous statements with links from nVidia. ;)

GTX 580 Specs
GTX 680 Specs
GTX 780 Specs

You can see that before the 6xx series, nVidia didn't specifically list how many monitors a GPU could support -- It just says "Multi Monitor = Yes" on the GTX 580. Once the 6xx series was released and was capable of powering 4 displays, they began listing it in the specs. However, not only do you need to use three different connectors to power 4 displays (DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort), I don't know if plugging in that many displays to a single card adversely affects performance in anyway -- I've only ever plugged two displays into a single GPU before.

EDIT: I'm not sure if running 3-4 monitors off of a single GPU are required to be in Surround. If so, that's not what you want because Surround requires all monitors to be the same resolution in order to work. Not only that, but I also found that it adds unnecessary GPU load while multiboxing multiple clients (See my post below this for more information).

If it's unlikely that there will ever be a third GPU, then you can save money and drop that PSU to ~850W. This is according to Guru3D and basing this entirely off of you purchasing two GTX 780Tis, but if you're looking overclock the shit out of your CPU then you may want a bit more wattage.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Last thing I would like some advice on is CPU cooling. Currently I have a be quiet Dark Rock Pro 2, and I love because it's so quiet, I just have it running at full load continuously because I can hardly hear it (no I ain't deaf). So I could just get the new Dark Rock Pro 3 for the new system and be a happy man.
But there is still a part of me saying try water cooling, which got me looking at the Corsair H110 (it would fit into the Strom trooper, and in test it's the quieter one of the AIO big water coolers). It is louder than air-cooling, though kind of hard for me to imagine by how much without having heard them side by side. A review I found that compares the two, says it is up to 7 db louder (42 against 49) at full load, keeping an i7-4770K over-clocked @ 4.2 GHz at full load only 2 - 3 degrees cooler. Which would tell me just get the be-quiet of now, and maybe do a proper water cooling at a later stage. Comments?

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I personally don't consider the sealed-from-the-factory water coolers as real water cooling. Sure, there's water in the loop and it's cooling your CPU, but they don't necessary tend to do much better than air cooling. If you were to build a custom loop with actual waterblocks you'd likely get much better results, but it'd cost much more money.

I was looking at the Dark Rock Pro 2 as the cooler I was going to use for my latest build, but after realizing it was so gigantic I decided to not use it because I was afraid that it'd interfere with my RAM (and the availability of the cooler in the US was hard to come by). I ended up going with a smaller cooler, and a push/pull fan configuration, and had no RAM clearance issues on either of the two LGA 2011 motherboards I used.

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Originally Posted by rfarris

We haven't heard MiRai's review of the RAIDR yet, but I've read a lot of reviews that say that standalone SSDs are faster and more reliable.

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I'd have to agree that unless you're out of 6G SATA ports on your motherboard or are out of space in your case and need another drive, that it's not really worth the money. Maybe I'll sell mine and fill the empty PCIe slot with a fourth GPU. >_>

Unfortunately, I can't actually fit a fourth GPU in my case. :(

Alright, so rather than add to an already huge reply, I figured I would just add another post (bloating post count FTW). I finally found the nVidia blog/guide I was looking for:

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gui...x-680-surround

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Originally Posted by GeForce Blog

In 2D Surround, any combination of monitors that share common timings will work but if the displays are not identical this may result in a lower than optimal resolution, and each must have, at minimum, one DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort connector. Aesthetically, identical monitors are preferable, but not a requirement.

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The bolded/underlined section above backs up my statement about having to have numerous adapters.

I still don't know if connecting more than 2 displays to a single GPU requires them to be in Surround, but they do allow the monitors to be different sizes. I say this because on the final page of that guide they show the nVidia Control Panel options, and the only available option seems to be spanning the displays with Surround. Typically, you'd have all four options available if you could use a non-Surround setup.

lots of great advice here, so i'm not going to add anymore. all i can say is theres rumors of some decent performance upgrades coming down the pipes for Haswell E so it might be an upgrade to wait for. some changes to memory and sata that ups the bandwidth quite a bit. Also as a boxer the more VRAM you have the better. i would wait for a 780 series with 6 gigs. Titans are overrated and avoid them. just my 2 pence worth.

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Originally Posted by Kimchee

lots of great advice here, so i'm not going to add anymore. all i can say is theres rumors of some decent performance upgrades coming down the pipes for Haswell E so it might be an upgrade to wait for. some changes to memory and sata that ups the bandwidth quite a bit.

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The biggest performance upgrade is going to be the two extra cores in the top-end chip, but there's only speculation on how much they'll cost. RAM and SATA aren't bottlenecks when it comes to multiboxing and DDR4 is going to need time to mature before it actually brings any real performance to the table.

It's going to be interesting to see what Haswell-E brings, but I think Broadwell-E might even be more exciting because things will have had time to mature.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kimchee

Also as a boxer the more VRAM you have the better. i would wait for a 780 series with 6 gigs. Titans are overrated and avoid them. just my 2 pence worth.

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Unfortunately, the next set of 6GB GPUs will still be Titans and they'll still be priced at $1,000 -- The GTX Titan Black is a 780 Ti with 6GB of VRAM. So, you'll be paying $300 on top of the price of the GTX 780 Ti for three extra gigabytes of VRAM.

I was apprehensive to upgrade to newer GPUs without getting an increase in VRAM, but I now know that the GPUs themselves still aren't powerful enough to handle everything I want to throw at them while 5-boxing, so I'm left with splitting the load between them and still have access to 6GB (even 9GB if I wanted it). I would estimate that my setup would use about 3.5GB - 4GB of VRAM running DX11 if it could, but more VRAM isn't going to fix the fact that the GPUs would still be sitting at 90% load.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rfarris

my slaves still lose follow when changing zones, but that's the only time I see it.

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everyone gets this This is a loading screen without the loading screen if you look you more then likely changing server ip's

Thanks for the long answer MiRai, don't have a lot of time so just a short reply for now and another question.

Using ISBoxer to multibox.

When in SLI does VRAM "double" as well or is it just the raw GPU power that is "doubled"?

sP`!´Ke

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

Using ISBoxer to multibox.

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Were you using a super-custom Window Layout with Swap Groups or Instant Swapping disabled? If not, then all of you clients have most likely been rendering at 2560x1600 the entire time. It's not really a big deal, but in order to give a better estimate of hardware requirements I'd have to see your profile to know exactly how you have your layout set up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sp_i_ke

When in SLI does VRAM "double" as well or is it just the raw GPU power that is "doubled"?

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No, the VRAM is mirrored; and rarely do the GPUs scale perfectly when in SLI.

@MiRai:
- Yes I did make a custom windows layout with two swap groups (3 if you count the dxNothing windows), disable swapping says: false though, should I enable this?
- So far no real problem with running my slaves at 10 fps, sometimes follow breaks and I do have the occasional runaway. Will have to see if raising the fps on my slaves might partially fix this. Thought fps was only visuals, didn't know the reaction ability of the slaves was dependent on it.
- From what I can find on the net I could use all four connections of the 780 ti with different resolutions. But I do also fear that it may ruin the performance, so I think I'll be better of getting two of them.
- What do you think would be more useful for multiboxing: two GTX Titan Black or three GTX 780 ti? Keeping in mind that I will eventually go for 6 monitors.
- Should at least give me the possibility to upgrade to three 780 ti. Will try to overclock my CPU, but ain't no expert. 1200 watt it is.
- The more I read about AIO water coolers the less I believe in them, they may give me 1 or 2 degrees, but that's not enough to compensate for the increase in noise. I'll probable get me a Dark Rock Pro to start with, custom water cooling may follow at a later stage. Will have to make sure I get low profile RAM. I decapitated my current RAM to make my Dark Rock Pro fit, don't really want to do that to new RAM sticks.

Anybody got some advice on low profile RAM?

sP`!´Ke

I chose "Corsair Vengeance Blue 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory" and they seem to be working ok...