Creating a benchmark for Multiboxing Systems.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Excellent effort I see nothing but positive coming from this.

[Freddie]

Yeah this is great.

/salute Sina

[zanthor]

As to displays - the average cheap older panel is 1280x1024, most users are going to have two.

MANY of us have higher end systems and I can personally say that dual 22's is perfectly playable and I have no issues with my side-vision having them set @ 1680x1050.

I like the testing method, I'll have to give this a shot on my system tonight as I've got three AMD chips available for the moment... AMD Phenom 9600 (2.3ghz), the 9950 (2.6ghz) and the new phenom II @ 3.0GHZ should be arriving this afternoon!

[Sina]

I will setup on the main post a "how to replicate" for the benchmark so we all have the same numbers. Will help us deliberate our ultimate setup . AMD numbers will be interesting to see.

[Owltoid]

Ouch, so when my new rig comes in (i7 920, GTX 260) I'm only looking at FPS of 40, 15, 15, 15, 15? I was really hoping for more like 60, 25, 25, 25, 25 though I really don't cares about my slaves getting much above 10 (and will probably set their limit as such)

[Sina]

well it just depends on what settings you use. i have not messed with affinity ( which will increase your frames ) and i have capped the slaves at 15. I am sure you can push it a bit harder but im again , trying to set a level playing field to test all cards and cpu structures.

[-silencer-]

I'm interested in this thread, so here's a few comments..

- Interesting lack of difference between a 4870 and x2 4870 (does this mean two 4870 videocards or a 4870x2 videocard? which 4870.. 1GB or 512MB?).

- Sam's post is something I mentioned months ago, but it's got a few major drawbacks:
----- 24GB of DDR3 is going to cost around $2000 in RAM alone (Crucial's 3x4GB (12GB) ECC/registered module kits are $960 each), so good luck finding the memory or even a motherboard that supports ECC/registered modules without issues. (Yes, many claim 24GB support, because that's Intel's X58 spec, but the mobo doesn't have proper BIOS support for it yet.) 2x RAID0 30GB SSDs will cost under $200 and offer better performance than Velociraptors. Also, since the problem with fetching /data isn't bandwidth! It's access time, and although the ram drive will be faster, the price-performance & *hassle* isn't even close to the benefit of SSDs.. on to the hassle aspect:
----- *EVERY* time your computer is turned off or rebooted, you have to reload your ram drive with the WoW/data directory. That's why I was hoping for a new Gigabyte i-RAM drive supporting ddr2 modules and at least 16GB - battery backup while using system memory for data. Looks like the original i-RAM didn't sell well enough to encourage them to make a newer version - maybe because using a PCI slot sucks, 4GB is small, DDR1 is more expensive than DDR2, and SATA 1.5 is slower than SATA 3.0. The i-RAMBOX was an improvement, but still needed more max capacity, DDR2, and SATA 3.0.

- For the flight path, I would have picked something that flies over/near Dalaran - at least enough to pick up on the massive amount of objects/textures in the area. The primary downside of this is that the fps will be dependent on how busy Dalaran is with players at a given time.

Nice data though.. it's cool to see actual tests being done..

[Sina]

I'm interested in this thread, so here's a few comments..

- Interesting lack of difference between a 4870 and x2 4870 (does this mean two 4870 videocards or a 4870x2 videocard? which 4870.. 1GB or 512MB?).

- Sam's post is something I mentioned months ago, but it's got a few major drawbacks:
----- 24GB of DDR3 is going to cost around $2000 in RAM alone (Crucial's 3x4GB (12GB) ECC/registered module kits are $960 each), so good luck finding the memory or even a motherboard that supports ECC/registered modules without issues. (Yes, many claim 24GB support, because that's Intel's X58 spec, but the mobo doesn't have proper BIOS support for it yet.) 2x RAID0 30GB SSDs will cost under $200 and offer better performance than Velociraptors. Also, since the problem with fetching /data isn't bandwidth! It's access time, and although the ram drive will be faster, the price-performance & *hassle* isn't even close to the benefit of SSDs.. on to the hassle aspect:
----- *EVERY* time your computer is turned off or rebooted, you have to reload your ram drive with the WoW/data directory. That's why I was hoping for a new Gigabyte i-RAM drive supporting ddr2 modules and at least 16GB - battery backup while using system memory for data. Looks like the original i-RAM didn't sell well enough to encourage them to make a newer version - maybe because using a PCI slot sucks, 4GB is small, DDR1 is more expensive than DDR2, and SATA 1.5 is slower than SATA 3.0. The i-RAMBOX was an improvement, but still needed more max capacity, DDR2, and SATA 3.0.

- For the flight path, I would have picked something that flies over/near Dalaran - at least enough to pick up on the massive amount of objects/textures in the area. The primary downside of this is that the fps will be dependent on how busy Dalaran is with players at a given time.

Nice data though.. it's cool to see actual tests being done..

THanks!

I am not completely done with the numbers im hoping to have everything crunched and presentable come monday. On top of that we will have a doghouse solution for our end result with a 3 year warranty.
I am guessing the bang for your buck with end up being a 920 with a single 4870 ( 1gig) with 6 gig of ddr3. Still working on the storage solution, looking forward to seeing these results and will relay to you all soon!

[-silencer-]

THanks!

I am not completely done with the numbers im hoping to have everything crunched and presentable come monday. On top of that we will have a doghouse solution for our end result with a 3 year warranty.
I am guessing the bang for your buck with end up being a 920 with a single 4870 ( 1gig) with 6 gig of ddr3. Still working on the storage solution, looking forward to seeing these results and will relay to you all soon!

These are the specs I'd expect to see on a bang-for-the-buck 5-boxing machine:
- i7 920
- X58
- 6GB DDR3 (minimum!)
- HD 4870 1GB (although at the current price, the GTX 280 is also looking very nice.. and I like the GTX 285 as well)
- *quality* power supply.. SeaSonic or SeaSonic-based (like the Corsair 520w/620w models). The CWT-based Corsair 1000w is also very nice, but not even close to necessary for a bang-for-the-buck machine. SeaSonic/Corsair 620w will run this machine with plenty of power to spare.
- Large hard drive.. this shouldn't be a place to cut corners. 1TB 7200rpm is under $100, and it's plenty fast. A lot of storage space is something that shouldn't need to be added later for any machine costing $1500+.
- SSD.. here's the performance for multiboxing. 30GB is more than enough space for WoW/data, and it's also under $100. Since we only need it for fast random reads, we don't need a high performance drive. Even the worse SSDs are much faster than a Velociraptor for our use.

[Mercurio]

This is all very cool.

Sina PMed me about a month ago when I was looking for advice building a system. We figured out I live only about 8 minutes from Doghouse Systems, so I stopped by, talked to Sina, some other engineers, and even the owner. It was great to talk to another multiboxer who really understands our rather unique requirements and someone much more knowledgable about computers than I am. Doghouse was already thinking about the needs of multiboxers and I got to be a test case. I got to ask all sorts of questions about performance under different scenarios and over the next week or so Sina ran a number of tests and shared the output. It was nice to have him do the leg work on any reasonable configurations I could come up with. In fact, everyone at Doghouse seemed very interested and happy to help. We went back and forth on a couple of components, but In the end, I configured a pretty nice system and placed an order. The system should be ready next week (sweet!), so I'll be happy to add my experiences to the pile of data Sina is creating.