The Dev has spoken! Where to put WoW folder! Acard wins!

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...034803&sid=1#0

Hi Samdeathwkzz,

The game requires all of the files to be present at the time the game loads. All data is scattered all over so you can't really throw parts of World of Warcraft onto a RAM disk. Maybe you'll encounter a mob in Eastern Kingdom or a player with a certain pet that makes use of an expansion file. You can still use one copy of the game to launch multiple instances so if you have enough RAM to do that, more power to you. If you do not have enough, you'll have to use a different storage medium.

High speed SSDs (especially if they're in a stripe RAID) with large read numbers are great for the game and can help you load things quickly. Hard drives aren't bad either.

World of Warcraft uses occlusion but I'm not sure if it preloads player data that are close to you.

Occlusion:
In computer graphics, the term is used to describe the manner in which an object closer to the viewport masks (or occludes) an object further away from the viewport. In the graphics pipeline, a form of occlusion culling is used to remove hidden surfaces before shading and rasterizing take place.


Basically this means that Silencer is correct that you want media that has low access times over media that has high transfer bandwidth.

So, a pair of cheap 36G raptors in raidzero is not sufficient, but you can use that for basic WoW storage at little cost.

Then you need to get in order:

12-24G System Ram (I7) is best. (this solution is like 6 months away)
2 Acard in 4 raid0 ram (the $400 Card) is 2nd best. (acard infos here: ACard ANS-9010 RAM Drive) (this solution is actually available now.)
1 Acrad in 2 raid0 ram (the $400 Card) is 3rd best.
Intel SSD 4th (some infos here: Running 5x WoWs on a capped server using the latest intel X25 SSD), given that you can get the Acard for about the same price this solution seems unwise).
Other SSD 5th (if cheaper then Acard - should be). Some infos: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...h,2127-10.html
2 more raptors for 4X Raid0 is cheap mans solution 6th (way cheaper but access times way worse then Acard).

Notice on the Acard you dont use the CFL or whatever that is just have the wow folder in the two cheapo raptors and read the whole folder to the Acardd before you start wow and read the whole folder back to the raptors when you end, I guess one raptor is just as good as two and a lot safer.

So just take that list and buy the best you can afford. End of story.


KEEP IN MIND this infos in MORE important then your CPU or your Video Card, those two (if decent) are not the bottleneck its getting infos from the wow folder to your system ram and/or video card that is more important. In other words going from raptors to SSD or Acard will help your fps more then going from dual to quad cores or going from a 9600 to a 280.


Ok here is a .11 ms access time ssd drive for $165 (i.e. for wow about as good as the Intel SSD): This seems a very very resonable and cost effective solution. Better to go to the Acard if you need more then 16G or you have the $400 (plus $12 per G of ram).

http://www.sandisk.com/OEM/ProductCa...A_5000_25.aspx

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Sandisk-SSD-...3A1%7C294%3A50

[Sajuuk]

Grats on 40.

[weeep]

I dont get all these speculations about storage performance.
1) My 5 chars are porting from any zone to Dalaran in ~5 seconds.
2) I do not lag in Dalaran or WG except video card lags. I'm on high pop server btw.
3) All zones and NPCs load instantly.
4) The only time my HDD is busy for few seconds is when I'm changing zones. FEW SECONDS, I was monitoring system HDD activity counter for looooong time

AND I'M USING CHEAP SINGLE HDD, NOT EVEN RAPTOR!

What's the point in all these super expensive SSD's, RAM drives, etc? Making you port to Dalaran in 1 sec instead of 5?
Symlink your WoW folders, get at least 8 Gb RAM - and your multibox performance will not differ from singlebox.

[Kaynin]

Sam, pineapples may be apples, but apples may not be pineapples!

[combhua]

While I strongly believe in communicating deliberately and only after careful consideration, I don't see mal-intent in Sam's post. Maybe we're being a bit hard on him.

Keeping in mind the perhaps excessive flair of his posts (which anyone reading a few threads on this board quickly sees) as well as the dependability of information coming from someone answering the Blizzard forums, his post still provided support (weak or otherwise) that access times are more important than throughput if your concern is dealing with Dalaran/Wintergrasp stuttering and loss of follow. Whether you're a believer in the value of throughput or access times is certainly a fair discussion that I've seen here a number of times, but I believe this info is worth not squelching.

As someone currently reading through these boards with the hope of improving my Dalaran stuttering, I found the information shared reenforcing some things I've read in other places and providing bits of helpful information to me, including options that I don't quite feel are personally worth it.

I've seen many, many posts with helpful intent declaring more firmly a specific position on various debatable issues. Those posts were assumably taken with the usual caveat of not simply taking everything you read on the internet at face value. I share the sentiment of mild annoyance regarding some other posts (and posters) being unsubstantial, vague and just plain confusing.

Respectfully

[Tonuss]

Basically this means that Silencer is correct that you want media that has low access times over media that has high transfer bandwidth.

So, a pair of cheap 36G raptors in raidzero is not sufficient, but you can use that for basic WoW storage at little cost.

Erm... not sufficient for what, exactly? o.O

Most people here are running 4/5 instances of WoW on a single computer that isn't anywhere near to cutting-edge specifications. While I feel that it's best to avoid cutting corners in building a multi-boxing rig, I also think that you need to figure out a point of diminishing returns. You alluded to this when you said get the best you can afford, but I do not think that that is necessarily the best approach. I think the best approach is to determine what you want to be able to do, then consider which is the most reasonable solution. ie, if you want to run four 800 x 600 tiled windows on a 1600x1200 display and you want all of the effects cranked up, you'll need more processing muscle than someone with the same setup who has the graphics cranked to minimum.

But I think there's a point at which spending more money for the ultimate setup only gets you a very small incremental improvement, and after that you're just wasting money. If you have the cash to burn and/or really want to go that route, I understand (I like to splurge on hardware myself). But I'm not sure just how much improvement you'll get from four striped 10k raptors over a much more modest setup. I get good performance running with a couple of inexpensive 400GB SATA drives, with each one hosting two full WoW folders. I could probably squeeze out more performance from striped SSDs or a fast RAID array, but it would make almost no difference in terms of what I'm trying to accomplish with my group. It's fun to know that you're running that much horsepower under the hood, but it's not terribly practical IMO.

When/if I redo my multiboxing setup, I'm likely to go with four inexpensive SATA-II drives instead of a single high speed RAID array. If I stop being lazy and decide to run everything out of a single WoW directory, then it's likely that I'll stripe two inexpensive SATA-II drives. Either way, it would work for me without being unreasonably expensive. I think any multiboxer should look at it that way-- where is my performance "sweet spot"? After that, if you are inclined to spend money for high-powered hardware, more power to you (literally, even!).

[Sam DeathWalker]

What misinformation?

Fursphere are you saying that Silencer is wrong? Or maybe that he dosn't know what raid is as well as you do?

Best upgrade with current specs?

Yep, I've done various ways of running WoW, including RAID0 300GB Velociraptors, RAID0 36GB Raptors, RAID0 320GB 7200rpm, and an SSD. The key is the access time. An SSD can locate a file in 0.1-0.3ms, while the fastest Velociraptor is around 4.10ms. That's a huge difference when you're trying to locate hundreds of files on a drive. Just think of every piece of gear on every player in your local area when you visit a battleground or Dalaran - every piece of gear has textures and animations that have to be loaded. When you enter an area with 200 players, and each player has roughly 50 textures to load.. that's a sudden request for 10,000 files from your hard drive. These data files needed to be transferred aren't very large (evidenced by the comparatively ugly and pixellated textures), so the transfer rate doesn't matter at all as much as the access (seek) time.

My next step will be hosting WoW from Acard's ram drive with 16-32GB of memory.. which supports RAID0 from one Acard box. I'm positive this will be faster than any hard drive option short of a true main memory ram drive, but I don't want to take 12GB of space away from system memory to dedicate towards WoW, nor do I want to have to rebuild the ram drive after every reboot. Acard's unit has a battery backup - system ram drives don't.

The purpose of the thread was to get get all the proper information in one spot instead of 20 different threads, now that we have Dev confermation of Silencers proclomation of "10,000 files". As well as find a fairly cheap .1 ms SSD alternative for those not wanting the Acard.

Whatever I am slowly coming to the conclusion that some mods are a bit more interested in who the poster is rather then what information is in the thread. At some point I am going to stop wasting my time posting solid information and just go back to bragging. Fursprere I really don't care for your allegations that I am purposely spreading misinformation. Unless you have some actual information that is counter to what I have said why do bother talking? You do realize I was programming in binary and building things with TTL before you were born. You have how much money invested in computers? 1/10th of what I do? You have build how many computers in your life? 1/100th of what I have? Say something intelligent on topic or really don't say anything at all.

[zanthor]

What totally blows my mind is that the blue responding doesn't know what he's talking about.

You can put wow on 1000 hard drives if you want. All you have to do is SymLink the files appropriately and wala, wow never knows it.

So you COULD put your data directory on a ram drive and symlink it...

but seriously, i run 5 copies on my machine with a plain ol' 300gb sata drive... load times are NOT an issue, so I zone slower than a guy with a SSD, with 8GB ram I'm not swapping to disc (and if I was, it would be a DIFFERENT drive than my wow drive)...

Anyhow, once again a lowbie tech support monkey spouts half truths and is believed immediately by an end user. Never mind that he probably wouldn't know raid 0 vs 1 vs 5 if you hit him with it.

[TeamFrosty]

I have doubts if Sam even understands what a RAID is and what it does at this point.

Just to clear things up a bit... A "RAID" is a party consisting of 5 or more players teamed together in order to successfully tackle exceptionally hard encounters either built into the game, or for Player vs Player (also known as PvP) purposes. Hope this clears this issue up.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Tech support verified what Silencer has been saying all along, that when you encounter a new player you have to load that players textures, in other words wow only loads what it needs to based upon who is near or in your field of vision. That means when you encounter 100 new players you in fact do make tons of accesses, which means that access time is more important then transfer rate which makes media with low access times supeior for wow then media with higher access times and higher bandwidth.

Whats so complex about that.

Ya you can play well in a low populated zone with a single normal hard drive. But go into a big city in WotLk and see 200 new people and see what happens.