Video performance of WoW (not hardware related)

[Fuzzyboy]

So. I was messing around with hardware settings and I have a few questions I was hoping someone with more experience could help me with. I recently switched from a 2 pc setup with 2 clients on one, 3 on anoter, to a 2 pc setup with 1 client on 1, 4 on the other. The one with 4 is pretty beefy and was the system I started out 5-boxing with. After I upgraded from 4 to 8 GB and installed Vista 64 I'm for some reason fighting performance issues even outside populated areas. I've optimized to the best of my ability, but the four clients running on vista 64 are still performing poorer than when I used to run 5 clients on vista 32. Here's what I've done:

- Optimized vista using this guide: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/81...nce-vista.html
- Turned off vertical sync
- Setting /console maxfps and /console maxfpsbk to 15
- Setting Multisampling to 16/16/1
- Set all effect settings to lowest possible on slaves - they are also running 800x600
- Disabled unnecessary add-ons

Still, performace is fairly chunky even outside dalaran and I'm curious as to what is making the difference. I'm open to any suggestions :-) Also, is there any way to save the 16/16/1 multisampling setting? I realize blizz has disabled this, but is there any way to "force" the client to load at 16/16/1? and is there any way to run the /console maxfps/bk commands without pressing a macro button manually?

[Hachoo]

I think you'd be better off setting the video to 24 bit, not 16, as weird as that sounds.

Aside from that, one good hint I found was to actually go download the directx 9.0c installer. Even though vista supports directx9 out of the box it uses a dx10 wrapper and doesn't have all of the dx9 libraries which means it actually plays dx9 games (like WoW) slower than dx10 games. If you install dx9.0c it will actually find a bunch of missing files and install them - it sped up wow on my machine. Aside from that I'm assuming your machine running 4 WoWs is a multicore? If so, you are setting the affinity explicitly so 2 WoWs run on each core or what not, right? If you let windows spread the load out it will be very slow.

[Sam DeathWalker]

SET maxFPS "1000"
SET maxFPSBk "5"

Put these (or whatever you want) in the config.wtf file.

Sell Vista and wait for Win7 lol ...

Go here and look under "graphics" and see if you can set the 16/16/1 I would like to do that also.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Console_variables

Hachoo advise is correct.

Always run at the same resolution as your desktop. If your game has to take 800X600 and convert to 1024X786 or whatever your desktop resolution is well ....

Shut sound off completely

How many addon your running. Pitbull is a HOG.

[Fuzzyboy]

I think you'd be better off setting the video to 24 bit, not 16, as weird as that sounds.

Aside from that, one good hint I found was to actually go download the directx 9.0c installer. Even though vista supports directx9 out of the box it uses a dx10 wrapper and doesn't have all of the dx9 libraries which means it actually plays dx9 games (like WoW) slower than dx10 games. If you install dx9.0c it will actually find a bunch of missing files and install them - it sped up wow on my machine. Aside from that I'm assuming your machine running 4 WoWs is a multicore? If so, you are setting the affinity explicitly so 2 WoWs run on each core or what not, right? If you let windows spread the load out it will be very slow.

Thanks for the directx tip - I'll try that out. As for the 16/24 stuff, I get a noticable framerate increase by setting it to 16, the problem is that the setting isn't saved after it's applied (this is intentional from Blizzards side - I saw a few posts on it on the official forum).

[Shaitan256]

Can't you keep the Settings via config.wtf?

http://www.wowwiki.com/Console_variables

command is gxDepthBits I guess. just my 2 cents, hope it helps.

[Fuzzyboy]

SET maxFPS "1000"
SET maxFPSBk "5"

Go here and look under "graphics" and see if you can set the 16/16/1 I would like to do that also.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Console_variables

Hachoo advise is correct.

Always run at the same resolution as your desktop. If your game has to take 800X600 and convert to 1024X786 or whatever your desktop resolution is well ....

Shut sound off completely

How many addon your running. Pitbull is a HOG.

Thanks for the advice :-) Messing around with the config.wtf file I found a few other things to set, but it turns out that once you set the /console maxfps and /console maxfpsbk in the wow-window it's saved, so no need to make a hot-key

Sound is already off, so no problem there.

I'm not sure what you mean by run the same resolution as my desktop. I'm using a 24 inch monitor (1920*1200) and running 4 clients (800*600) on lowest graphics settings next to eachother in a "square" layout. The game client size is set to 800*600 for each client and so is HKN (doesn't resize). This leaves some extra space on the desktop, which I use for HKN so I can see if it's currently enabled or disabled.

On my slaves I'm running fairly few add-ons, only the most necessary.

[Fuzzyboy]

Aside from that I'm assuming your machine running 4 WoWs is a multicore? If so, you are setting the affinity explicitly so 2 WoWs run on each core or what not, right? If you let windows spread the load out it will be very slow.

Oh, btw, it's quadcore. I havent set processor affinity manually since Vista seems to distribute the load fine (same load on all processors while running), but I guess it's worth a shot. I'll try it

[Fuzzyboy]

Can't you keep the Settings via config.wtf?

http://www.wowwiki.com/Console_variables

command is gxDepthBits I guess. just my 2 cents, hope it helps.

You can, but it reverts back to 24 anyway :-)

[Sam DeathWalker]

I'm using a 24 inch monitor (1920*1200) and running 4 clients (800*600) on lowest graphics settings next to eachother in a "square" layout

So you have 1600 X 1200 for wow and exactly 320 X 1200 on the side I guess for the desktop, that should be ok. Just so nothing has to be resized.

Ya wow rewrites the config file when you close and dosnt rewrite everything you put in it lol ... I think it saves it someplace though ... but not sure.

From this thread:

Running WoW in Windowed mode takes severe performance hit?

get sisoft sandra and do the memory bandwidth test, i would be interested in seeing if this is the bottleneck. I am thinking that memory bandwidth is very very important.

[Hachoo]

Aside from that I'm assuming your machine running 4 WoWs is a multicore? If so, you are setting the affinity explicitly so 2 WoWs run on each core or what not, right? If you let windows spread the load out it will be very slow.

Oh, btw, it's quadcore. I havent set processor affinity manually since Vista seems to distribute the load fine (same load on all processors while running), but I guess it's worth a shot. I'll try it

It might look like the load is being distributed good but trust me, its not. You absolutely need to manually set the affinity of each WoW instance.