Boxing on a Mac- The Whats, the Hows and the Whos

[MultiMacBox23]

Running Early 2.8ghz 8core MacPro, 16gigs Ram, (2x) Apple 8800gt's, just added another monitor to the camp so now i have
20" Apple LCD (rorated 90 degrees) -- 30" Apple LCD -- 30" Apple LCD -- 20" Apple LCD (rotated 90). standard mac slim alum keyboard, and wired mighty mouse.

1st 20" = System monitor stats + movie/TV
1st 30" = Wow full screen (2650x1600 @ all maxed settings except shadows, mac shadows glitch & act weird)
2nd 30" = 4 wows evenly divided in windowed mode (800x600 @ min settings, but windows streched to line up nice)
2nd 20" = Safari for access to thottbot/wowhead/wowwiki

Wow (Sym Linked) + ClonedKeys, Addons = IceHud, Dominos, Jamba, Party Casting Bars

What ive learned;

- trying to force fullscreen on 2nd 30" didnt work, fubared all the screens (put OPT-M on do-not-pass list for broadcaster)
just run windowed mode, and maximize window.
- more than 8gigs ram = no noticable improvement
- adding 2nd gfx card, and offloading clones to that card/monitor combo = no improvemnt of FPS on main.
- out of all the options symlinked worked best to reduce city/zone load lag, OSX automatically buffers frequently used
files in unused memory. all 5 wows have access to that buffer.
- clonedkeys/clonekey/keywire, all suffer "buffer backup" if you spam/roll-face-keyboard
- clonedkeys/clonekey/keywire, all suffer random keydrops quite often in 1 of the 5 windows (varies which window),
ive found that instead of a quick tap of the keys, a nice solid, depress-pause-release solves the problem.
- system information reports 25%-40% processor utilization with 5 wows depending on whats going on
- system information reports OSX is distributing workload to all 8 cores.
- FPS runs 19fps-45fps in Northrend on main, and 15fps solid on slaves (maxfps @ 60, maxbackfps @ 15)
- in the Mac client of wow, i havent found a way to force a non-standard resolution (changing the WTF does nothing)
- the GLfaster=2 mod is worth about 8-10fps on the main in some situations
- PS3 controller is very combersome to me, just like trying to play a FPShooter on a PS3 vs PC, need my mouse and kb
- Wii controller, ditto. trying aiming your pointer to loot the corpse, ugh
- havent found osx drivers for xkeys pads, but the zBoard Fang works out the box (but ididnt care for it on the mac pro at the desk
but it is nice to have when not at home and boxing on the MBpro)
- DVI-to-HDMI to use your 42" HDTV, looks "softer", color is off/darker, text harder to read, difficult to readjust resolution to
compensate for overscan area on televisions



Sorry if that was a mess, just typed as stuff was popping into my head.
-ray

[TheBigBB]

I think that the key spamming buffer issue isn't a big problem only because there's rarely a time when you actually need to spam the key that much, although it could help hasten your casting at times. If you press a key once per half second you are probably good, any faster than that and you might have your clones lagging a lot, depending on how long you spam for. I can almost always get accurate text if I type out a /use XXXXX or whatever, it's only on some boss fights where I got nervous that I found that the buffer clog made the healer quit. 90% of the keypresses were not serving any function.

I would love to play on a host of Mac Minis because they run one client of WoW great for a cheap price, but I am not too keen on all those monitors. My fiance would have a FIT.

[minty]

I can almost always get accurate text if I type out a /use XXXXX or whatever, it's only on some boss fights where I got nervous that I found that the buffer clog made the healer quit.

Huh... That's the opposite problem I have. I can usually keep a steady keypress rhythm during encounters, but typed commands is where I get going too fast and drop keystrokes to some windows.


MultiMac, how well do the 20" screens do in portrait mode? I've tried setting up my 24" rotated but they got glitchy. I remember hearing somewhere that it was the 8800GT that had issues with that. Are the 20" running 1680x1050?

[TheBigBB]

I can almost always get accurate text if I type out a /use XXXXX or whatever, it's only on some boss fights where I got nervous that I found that the buffer clog made the healer quit.

Huh... That's the opposite problem I have. I can usually keep a steady keypress rhythm during encounters, but typed commands is where I get going too fast and drop keystrokes to some windows.


MultiMac, how well do the 20" screens do in portrait mode? I've tried setting up my 24" rotated but they got glitchy. I remember hearing somewhere that it was the 8800GT that had issues with that. Are the 20" running 1680x1050?

Yeah, I really never have a dropped key press if I press more slowly or type for a short period of time UNLESS my hardware is struggling, which it rarely is. I run all windows out of the same directory with low settings and maxfps set at about 25. Most of the time this is overkill, but I don't like lagging, ever. I can function in a crowded major city at prime time like this. There are times of inexplicable lag, like one time I couldn't move in Everlook and had to basically restart the whole game. I'm going to try using the /console RestartGx that someone mentioned.

EDIT: Actually, I really don't have a good excuse not to run the main window on another directory, do I? I really ought to if only just to see farther into the distance on the main. I could drop follower FPS to like 5 or something.

[MultiMacBox23]

MultiMac, how well do the 20" screens do in portrait mode? I've tried setting up my 24" rotated but they got glitchy. I remember hearing somewhere that it was the 8800GT that had issues with that. Are the 20" running 1680x1050?

Works pretty well, i chose the 20" because of the 1680x1050 resolution, which when rotated 90, is almost the same height (pixel count and monitor casing size) as my 30's. Only thing i've heard about the 8800gt is random freezing with coverflow, but i havent encountered anything. it just sucks that the Apple display doesnt have a pivot in the mounting hinge, i just stole an idea i saw from someones flicker account of taking the allen screws out, and rotating the display and laying it up against the mounting leg. they just routed the cable through the hole and ziptied it in place to keep the thing from slipping. I used a little 3m double sided sticky tape to make it a little more secure, just incase i bump the desk i dont want it to slip and strain the cable.

Flicker pics i grabbed the idea from:

[Vix]

*drools*


I wan't more picturs!!!

Ok back to topic I really enjoyed reading about your setups! Thanks for sharing.

Guess i have to give Clonekeys a second chance. Will start with looking into keywire

The next step for me will be to get a second display (already have two graphics cards as i have a TV connected). Performance vice the macPro does very well. I have the early model with only 4 cores and 8 Gigs of ram. I also raid stripped two hard drives for better performance and i did cut back on my loading time zoning and starting. Rotating the displays is a good idea! I will have to look into that as well.

My left hand sits, like any hardcore WoW gamer, on WASD. I also use the left hand for modifier keys to get more action out of my mouse. Seems my fingers are always resting on WASD. Even at work typing this i find my fingers there.

[Fef]

I Run five WoW clients on my iMac. I discribed my setup in this post.

I plan to get a Mac Pro soon (upgrade any time soon, Apple ?). I am sure it will be a whole different experience. I might even give 10 boxing a try. Well, actually, I already thought of how to organize my screen layout to work with 1 main and 9 thumbnail slaves on a 30' Apple display.

[Vix]

in this post[/url].

I plan to get a Mac Pro soon (upgrade any time soon, Apple ?). I am sure it will be a whole different experience. I might even give 10 boxing a try. Well, actually, I already thought of how to organize my screen layout to work with 1 main and 9 thumbnail slaves on a 30' Apple display.

Looks like you are bootcamping, or am i missing something? Apple never tells when they have something new and Sexy ready for us. But my guess would be Mac Pro Suitable Nehalem (Core i7) Processors Due in 1st Quarter 2009. And no i don't work for Apple And yes its only a guess.


Your window layout looks really nice! *sobs"

[Gadzooks]

I'm running a 24" iMac, just purchased a few weeks ago, 2.8Ghz, 2600 HD PRO, 4 gigs ram, standard keyboard, and a Logitech mouse - runs 3 flawlessly. I was running 2 on a dual 2.0Ghz G5, but the video card (Radeon 9800 Pro) died, and I just could'nt see dropping $300 on a 4 year old video card, so I upgraded. I ran a 3rd copy from a Mac Mini, using Synergy. Never see any lag now, and the temp stays very low - the G5 pumped out massive amounts of heat dual boxing. It was getting pretty loud, too, the fans just got noisy. It is 4 years old, so it's resting now in it's box in the closet, when I get a chance I'm going to clean it, put the stock video card back in, a new drive, and donate it to a needy friend or family member. It's still a good machine!

I set up two trial accounts along with my 3 on the iMac, and it runs 5 no problem, but it's pretty cramped on the screen, so I'm going to try and see how well it does with my old acrylic 23" Cinema as a second monitor. It means adding more cables and stuff to my desk, but it would be cool to have it for Photoshop too.

The Mini is now doing what it was bought for: serving up iTunes and multiple hard drives for AppleTV, watching Hulu, and ripping video in Visual Hub. My place is now much quieter and less cluttered now, I love it. I'm putting together my choices for furniture (moved recently), and the Mini will probably live next to the Apple TV, and I'll access it via Apple Desktop Remote from the iMac.

ClonedKeys is all I need, I've only had lag once or twice, so I don't see any reason to change at the moment. I was going to play with a Bootcamp install and Keyclone, but that's for later. I havent used Windows in about a year, so I need to get up-to-date on virus/keylogger protection, there's no way I'm putting my accounts at risk until my Windows partition is locked down.

[TheBigBB]

I have made what I think is a discovery regarding software multiboxing via Clonedkeys. Last night I stopped running all my windows out of the same directory, and finally set a main window from a duplicated WoW directory to 30FPS with large view distance, and the follower windows down to 10FPS with low specs. Clonedkeys basically stopped working when I did this, despite having no hardware lag at all. It technically worked, but it took it way longer to send the signals. Even when I scaled back the main window even more, the difference was absolutely huge over before when I was running all windows at the same low specs. I don't think this issue is to do with my hardware, but probably something to do with how Clonedkeys works. I really don't know, or wouldn't know, but I can say with some confidence that the program sends keystrokes a lot better when you have the system devoting an equal amount of work to each window. Any thoughts? This may explain why someone thought that Clonedkeys was not sending keystrokes as well as I thought it was.