Quote Originally Posted by zanthor View Post
1 client. The guys not a multiboxer, just know a lot of hardware guru's here.

WoW is running off the SSD raid.



I've tried both SLI Enabled and Disabled, no change.

I'm honestly thinking it's just a limitation of WoW - can anyone confirm that they are getting > 30fps on "ULTRA" settings in Dalaran during prime time on a high pop server?
i7-965EE mildly oc'd to 3.8GHz.
12GB DDR3-1600 memory.
2x 24" 1920x1200 Dell Ultrasharps (main WoW at 1680x1050 window on LCD1, 4x alts in 960x600 maximized windows on LCD2)
8800GTX
Vista 64 Ultimate
2x 300GB Velociraptors in RAID0 (OS, games, apps)
64GB OCZ Core SSD (host WoW/Data)

I can tell you a few things..
Without *any* players running around, Dalaran is an elaborate area in terms of polygons & textures. Compared to Org, IF, or SW, it's very detailed, and a part of the problem is the design of the city - Bliz should have done a better job at "compartmentalizing" it to reduce the number of visual "leaf" nodes. Think of SW - it has the districts with constrictive corridors - those were designed for a reason: To block off each visual leaf node so less has to be rendered. If you're in the Mage district, you can't see the canals or any other district.. this design was intentional and is frequently done in FPS to keep frame rates high.

Now, add in a constant stream of players entering and leaving the area, all with polygons and textures to fetch and render...

Okay, enough about that. The problem is that we're severely limited by disk accesses for random reads. Yes, SSDs make a huge difference here, but they're not perfect and video processing is still going to come into play. I don't believe *anyone* who says they 5-instance with a constant 60fps in heavy traffic Dalaran on high/ultra visual settings with large monitors.

- Running 5-instances of WoW in Dalaran on my i7-965EE, I'm not even CLOSE to maxing out my CPU. In fact, it's usually less than half CPU usage at the busiest of times, and I've always got Vent, about a dozen Firefox tabs open, and WinAmp going on in the background at a minimum.

- Yes, my 8800GTX is very dated.. but it's playable everywhere and only lags in Dal/Shatt. Still awaiting the 5870-2GB card that looks like it won't come out this year.. so I might as well wait for GT300 and compare then. The 8800GTX is perfectly playable everywhere that matters for now, including WG.

- Vista 64 was a HUGE improvement in frames/playability over XP 64. This likely has to do with how Vista handles rendering 3D on multiple monitors. I was very skeptical abou this initially, but there's no way I'd bother with XP now. (Yes, I'd try Win7 if I didn't just buy Vista 9 months ago. Vista isn't a problem at all on i7 & 12GB memory.)

- The cheap MLC 64GB SSD is still my best bang/buck upgrade for WoW.

Honestly, Bliz should really consider the layout of the future cities when designing them or we're going to get stuck with more horrible performing areas - there's a point where performance can be vastly improved by software/data design over hardware upgrades. This is where artists & engineers have the hardest battles with each other - usually what looks "best" to the artist is the most difficult to perform well for the engineer.

Now I know you're talking about 1 client, which I don't think I've ever configured on this machine. Next time I'm home on my machine I'll turn off my 2nd monitor and configure the desktop for 1x 24" 1920x1200 display, crank up visual settings to max, and give Dalaran a run.. unfortunately I'm out of town until the week after Thanksgiving so it may be awhile..