The final Upgrade Choice.. Need Tech Advice

[Ellusionist]

Mine were set to 3 and I changed it to 15. I have since installed 5 wow folders symlinking them all. It seems to help alittle however the two accounts that are on the same core affinity get bad fps. My accounts on their own core affinity get from 10-15fps in dalaran. The 2 that are on the same core get 3-5fps.

I am specing a new system and plan to raid 0 2 of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136319

I will then use one of these as my storage/backup drive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148337

I did some testing for you yesterday, just forgot to post the results.

Q6600 OC'd to 3.2GHz, 4GB, Geforce 9800 GT 512MB (not GTX), Vista x64
Two monitors: 1x 22" Asus LCD (1680x1050), 1x17" Dell LCD (1440x900)

Normally I run the main character with all graphics cranked up, but I can't do that in Dalaran. So to make it apples-to-apples, I cranked all my video settings down to their lowest and went to dalaran. I was seeing about 19fps on all clients.

This is without framerates capped. I run everything wide open at all times. My characters seem to respond better to strafes, forwards, backward, follow, etc. when my framerate is uncapped. When I had it capped, some would strafe X amount, while the others would strafe Y amount. But that's a whole 'nother issue.

I guess this still doesn't explain why your system is doing what it is, but it should at least give you an idea of what you should be getting. I would expect a little higher framerates given the fact that you're running multiple cards. I'm only running one.

[pinotnoir]

Mine were set to 3 and I changed it to 15. I have since installed 5 wow folders symlinking them all. It seems to help alittle however the two accounts that are on the same core affinity get bad fps. My accounts on their own core affinity get from 10-15fps in dalaran. The 2 that are on the same core get 3-5fps.

I am specing a new system and plan to raid 0 2 of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136319

I will then use one of these as my storage/backup drive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148337

I did some testing for you yesterday, just forgot to post the results.

Q6600 OC'd to 3.2GHz, 4GB, Geforce 9800 GT 512MB (not GTX), Vista x64
Two monitors: 1x 22" Asus LCD (1680x1050), 1x17" Dell LCD (1440x900)

Normally I run the main character with all graphics cranked up, but I can't do that in Dalaran. So to make it apples-to-apples, I cranked all my video settings down to their lowest and went to dalaran. I was seeing about 19fps on all clients.

This is without framerates capped. I run everything wide open at all times. My characters seem to respond better to strafes, forwards, backward, follow, etc. when my framerate is uncapped. When I had it capped, some would strafe X amount, while the others would strafe Y amount. But that's a whole 'nother issue.

I guess this still doesn't explain why your system is doing what it is, but it should at least give you an idea of what you should be getting. I would expect a little higher framerates given the fact that you're running multiple cards. I'm only running one.

I cant figure it out either. I am not overclocking my cpu maybe that will give a big boost in performance. My windows rating is 5.5. My graphics are 5.9 disk 5.9 ram 5.5 processor 5.9. I dont know what could be causing me to get such crappy results.

[Erron]

Have you considered there may be other factors causing your lower performance than your configuration?

Strange things that have caused my systems to "under perform"

#1 External FPS thieves:
SOUNDCARDS - especially onboard sound with hardware acceleration. This is a quick and easy test. Disable the onboard sound card in BIOS. Re run your tests. Even if it's disabled in WoW, hardware acceleration can cause all kinds of performance issues behind the scenes, even crashes. The Asus P5K gave me all kinds of troubles with Vista64 until a software driver update.

USB Devices - "a good USB device is an uplugged USB device". I spent weeks in Vanguard tracking down troubles, ended up being conflict with my G15 keyboard and a headset. Try testing with a straight USB mouse/keyboard and no other USB devices plugged up.

RESIDENT PROGRAMS - Antivirus, firewalls, crap that loads when windows launches. Try disabling all those, including the autorun's and test again. I had issues with Free AVS antivirus software, and a media center extender for the 360 3rd party.

#2 System temperatures:
One thing I have been learning about 3870's and in all cases multiple 3870's is they are hot. Too hot. Use a software based temperature monitor to keep track of both GPU and CPU temps. SpeedFan was a savior for me, when I had a 3870 that during peak times would puff out 150 degree heat into the case. Most CPU's like your quadcore, and some motherboards, will put in Throttling to protect the CPU from overheating. This can look like stuttering or complete slow downs for no reason.
Open up your case and place a floor fan on it while running, test it and see if it helps.

Bad hardware Settings
Having weird refresh rates or odd driver parameters. I had one of my computers hooked up to a rear projection HDTV during game downtimes to watch movies. Having VSYNC on and an odd 59Hz refreshrate to be compatable with this TV was wrecking havoc when I toggled back to my LCD monitor and playing games. Removing all those settings (and a program called powerstrip) made these issue go away. Set and double check all your settings regarding refresh rate, let the game API set the defaults for you, don't override anything in the control panel. Test again.

Bad hardware
A single bad stick of RAM is hard to identify. Silly things like a crimped or damaged IDE hard drive cable. A couple bad sectors on a hard drive, can all lower over all game performance and not really be noticed. Most hardware has to attempt to access memory or a file location several times before failing and reporting back to windows there is an error. These things can be a terrible pain to track down. Removing them one at a time, using "known" good equipment to compare performance to can help uncover them. Most the time I only discover it when I upgrade along the way and realize that the part I just traded out was bad.

Bad Karma/The Charlie Brown Theory
Sometimes bad system performance happens to bad people. Often I have bad system performance and will spend some time doing positive things, like taking out the trash, or walking the dog, reading to the blind and try it again. I know this isn't very scientific but alas when all else fails and the choice is to stop playing your favorite games or drop 4 grand on a new computer in desperation, a little good Karma can go a long way.

And you techno nerd out there, please do tear apart my suggestions, these are just some common things I've seen on my computers over the last couple years, that made my head hurt and my games to lag.

[echo]

You mentioned running all wow off of one install folder. I'm not sure if you are junctioning/symlinking the various accounts? For me that brought about a noticeable improvement.

[pinotnoir]

You mentioned running all wow off of one install folder. I'm not sure if you are junctioning/symlinking the various accounts? For me that brought about a noticeable improvement.

I changed it to symlink. It helped some but it's still to laggy for me. I have 5 wow folders now symlinked. Symlink is the way to go for sure. I found a post that was very confusing to setup but crucial made a post in it making symlinking super easy. This is crucials post...

Not sure why everyone wants to overcomplicate this....

1. Copy Wow directory for each clone (ie. Wow1, Wow2, Wow3, etc)
2. Delete Data, Interface, Screenshots, Cache in the clones folders
3. Paste into text file called makelinks.cmd (change drive letter of course)

mklink /D Data D:\Wow1\Data
mklink /D Interface D:\Wow1\Interface
mklink /D Screenshots D:\Wow1\Screenshots
mklink /D Cache D:\Wow1\Cache
pause

4. Run that in each clones Wow directory, they are now all pointing to Wow1 as the source for those directories.
5. Done "

[Ellusionist]

A couple things you can do to check the hard drive(s) is:

Run HDTune - This will tell you the read/write speed of your hard drives. It's free, decently fast, and it'll tell you some cool information. You can compare it here: Tomshardware.com

Run SpeedFan - It's a fan controller. This doesn't sound like it'd do anything to benefit you, but it will read S.M.A.R.T. data from your hard drive. You may need to run it as an administrator in Vista.

[align=center]Screenshot from SpeedFan (Click on "Perform an in-depth online analysis of this hard disk"):



Screenshot from SpeedFan's Hard Drive Analysis:

[/align]

[Ellusionist]

Another thing you can do is move everything to one hard drive and use the other HDD to perform a "trial-and-error" process.

1) Install a fresh copy of Windows on it. Install all MANUFACTURER drivers (this is VERY important).
2) Install WoW.
3) Run WoW 5 times. No addons, no tweaking (except for cranking all video settings down), just see if it'll run 5 times.
4) See if it works any better.

Even without capping the framerate, it oughtta run. I'm using one card, and I don't cap my FPS (or maxfpsbk). You have two cards. You should be better off than I am even.

This will determine if your problem is hardware- or software-related. You may not even have to spend a dime to make your computer multiboxable once again.

[pinotnoir]

Another thing you can do is move everything to one hard drive and use the other HDD to perform a "trial-and-error" process.

1) Install a fresh copy of Windows on it. Install all MANUFACTURER drivers (this is VERY important).
2) Install WoW.
3) Run WoW 5 times. No addons, no tweaking (except for cranking all video settings down), just see if it'll run 5 times.
4) See if it works any better.

Even without capping the framerate, it oughtta run. I'm using one card, and I don't cap my FPS (or maxfpsbk). You have two cards. You should be better off than I am even.

This will determine if your problem is hardware- or software-related. You may not even have to spend a dime to make your computer multiboxable once again.

I can still box fine its the busy areas that drag me down. It's funny you mention hd tune. I ran that the other day. Both my drives were pretty normal considering they were not in a raid setup. I think my problem is the very high population of magtheridon. Boxing with this pc setup is doable but if you want to avoid low fps in high traffic areas you need another pc. Our server is so packed today in wintersgrasp the server was lagging everyone in the zone. You couldnt even rez for 3min due to the lag. There is just way too many people fighting and I think the server cant take it. For Bliz to make over a billion a year they should have super computers.

[Tynk]

I hate to drop this in, but it is not always about throwing top end hardware at it.
My setup has 3 machines.
Machine 1 with primary wow set to makes graphics
$150 from a best buy open box
2.6ghz dual core
2 gigs of ddr2 memory
8900 gt video card

Machine 2 with 2 slaves set at at lowest graphics
3 year old Aleinware laptop
3.6ghz hyperthread processor
2 gigs of memory
6500gt mobile video card

Machine 3 with 3 slaves set at lowest graphics
$150 from a best buy open box
2.2ghz dual core
1.5 gigs of ddr2 memory
8900 gt video card

All three machines are tied into 24" gateway monitors, avast anti-virus, windows firewall active, octupus for km sharing and keyclone. Machine 2 has ventrillo
Machine 1 is not fps limited, machine 2 and 3 have a max fps of 15 for both active and background.
Machine 1 hits around 25 fps in dalaran, machine 2 hits around 10 fps on both characters and machine 3 sits at 15 fps.
Grand total was $300 each for machine 1 and 3, $2.5k for machine 2, but that was 3 years ago and depreciated value puts it much, much lower (cry). $300 each on the monitors, $60 for keyclone.

With the money you have in already, I see no reason why you couldn't take the two computers you have and maybe pick up a a simple third one to split them up a bit more. My general theory is 1 monitor per PC and I have had very little problems. I have always had problems trying to run two games on different monitors of the same machine. That being said, I have heard nothing but great things about running SSD and am planing on doing that myself once the holidays are over and I recover. I will be looking at the suggested disabling of the sound cards on my slave machines though.

[pinotnoir]

I hate to drop this in, but it is not always about throwing top end hardware at it.
My setup has 3 machines.
Machine 1 with primary wow set to makes graphics
$150 from a best buy open box
2.6ghz dual core
2 gigs of ddr2 memory
8900 gt video card

Machine 2 with 2 slaves set at at lowest graphics
3 year old Aleinware laptop
3.6ghz hyperthread processor
2 gigs of memory
6500gt mobile video card

Machine 3 with 3 slaves set at lowest graphics
$150 from a best buy open box
2.2ghz dual core
1.5 gigs of ddr2 memory
8900 gt video card

All three machines are tied into 24" gateway monitors, avast anti-virus, windows firewall active, octupus for km sharing and keyclone. Machine 2 has ventrillo
Machine 1 is not fps limited, machine 2 and 3 have a max fps of 15 for both active and background.
Machine 1 hits around 25 fps in dalaran, machine 2 hits around 10 fps on both characters and machine 3 sits at 15 fps.
Grand total was $300 each for machine 1 and 3, $2.5k for machine 2, but that was 3 years ago and depreciated value puts it much, much lower (cry). $300 each on the monitors, $60 for keyclone.

With the money you have in already, I see no reason why you couldn't take the two computers you have and maybe pick up a a simple third one to split them up a bit more. My general theory is 1 monitor per PC and I have had very little problems. I have always had problems trying to run two games on different monitors of the same machine. That being said, I have heard nothing but great things about running SSD and am planing on doing that myself once the holidays are over and I recover. I will be looking at the suggested disabling of the sound cards on my slave machines though.

I am sure I can run the accounts on my old amd 3500+ with 2gig ram. That option would cost nothing but I would like to upgrade that pc to a fast i7 with great graphics. Sometimes I play FPS games and even on my current system I have to dumb down the graphics for it to play smooth. By getting the second new pc and using this one my wife will be happy because that old amd has its issues. She can use this and I can use the new one as my main gaming system. Plus it should make my 5 accounts fly. 3 accounts on the new one 2 on this one should be smooth. I can thank the stimulus check for the upgrade.