rofl cant deside on new hardware

[Sajuuk]

im looking at 25 chars one pc will it work and im holding off on the card becauze of nvideas new 570 thats coming out

In that case for maximum performance across all clients get three dual-GPU cards. We don't know how cataclysm is going to effect things.

How many monitors were you wanting to run with that many?

[Sam DeathWalker]

Although I don't doubt it technacally fesible to run 25 clients on one computer, and the computer he is planing is state of the art basically there is good reason that I don't run more then 7 clients on a single computer (well besides the fact mine are junk by comparison).

A simple search of this site will see all kinds of complaints about using CF and SLI multiboxing (although many have done it sucessfully).

I just predict that things are not going to go smoothly, sure you have a 500M read / write SSD, and a really nice 25.6G ran buss

http://www.reghardware.com/2008/11/0..._i7/page4.html

You have 36 lanes, each being 500M. The SSD drive takes up one Lane. Lets say you use 2 video cards at 16 lanes each how do you expect a single SSD drive taking up one lane to feed video cards that are capable of taking in 32 lanes of data? Ya the 24G of ram can deliver 51 Lanes (each lane is 500M in PCIe 2.0) but the SSD drive can only deliver 1 lane ..... If you could get all of wow into the 24G of ram maybe but you can't now since 4.0.1 is more then 20G or so, and each client is going to use about 1/2G so with 25 clients you have 12G of ram just for them.

You can LOAD 25 clients but running all 25 in AV for example or even in Dragonblight at even 1/2 of what I can run 36 (on six computers) I really doubt is going to happen.

If wow was optimized for multiboxers, say allowing each client to SHARE textures from system ram instead of requiring each client to operate seperatly of the others, then maybe, I am almost certian wow isnt set up to accomodate boxers in that fashion at this point though.

Hopefully I am wrong but you are asking a LOT of your SSD, even though its the very fastest SSD made.

Maybe if you add more SSD drives but then you won't have slots for a lot of video cards ....

I hardly tax my systems at all I play full screen not tiled. Im asking my computer to render ONE CLIENT at a time only (but I get a good view with 6 montors). I can't do targeted aoe as a result (well I can do 5 at a time but ..), but thats the only thing I am really missing out on. I switch almost instantanously between clients and I play in 1920 X 1200 on all clients.

I wish we had some data on just how much data a single characters textures is then we can get a better feel for whats needed.

For 100 percent sure though you need video cards with 2G or even 4G on them (if they make such a thing), every texture you dont have to go to the SSD for is a speed improvment.


But still with this system I think 10 is going to be really really easy and if it turns out you only need 2 computers for 25 clients then thats not so bad is it?

[Lax]

I see 25 characters on one computer well .... don't expect to tile them no matter what video card you get I bet. No way will a single card render at full size like isboxer does 25 characters. If you play at full screen like I do though (lots of alt/tab though lol).

If he wants to give up mouse broadcasting, all he has to do is turn off Instant Swap and voila, 24 of them can render at 320x240 or something instead of full resolution. That might even be viable for characters without ground-targeted AOE needs. He might have to have swap disabled anyway if he's going for multiple video cards -- see http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2787#p2787 for multiple card caveats. (There is an alternative to disabling swap, by manually adjusting the Window Layout with some Window Style Actions, but it's not for the faint of heart)

[Sajuuk]

You have 36 lanes, each being 500M. The SSD drive takes up one Lane. Lets say you use 2 video cards at 16 lanes each how do you expect a single SSD drive taking up one lane to feed video cards that are capable of taking in 32 lanes of data? Ya the 24G of ram can deliver 51 Lanes (each lane is 500M in PCIe 2.0) but the SSD drive can only deliver 1 lane ..... If you could get all of wow into the 24G of ram maybe but you can't now since 4.0.1 is more then 20G or so, and each client is going to use about 1/2G so with 25 clients you have 12G of ram just for them.

Que? Why are you assuming that we're going to be maxing out the PCIE bus? First off, the SSD rofls has selected is PCIE x4, meaning four lanes, or 2GB/s bandwidth. I don't see wow using up that much bandwidth, even using 25 clients.

Alternately if lanes are that important to you, get a handful of lesser ssds and raid 0 them.

Assuming the use of three multi-gpu cards, we get an (optimum) bandwidth setup of x16/x8/x8, so the first card gets 8GB/s and the other two get 4GB/s. Again, I don't see that getting pushed to the limit. Even accounting for the four "lost" lanes from the card, (we'll just make every card run at x8 for simplicity), we're left with four "open" lanes of bandwidth.

Furthurmore, regarding "sli/cf" configurations, we WON'T be using that. herp derp. We'll simply be using the extra gpus to render extra instances of wow.

Ok, for additional headway, let's just up the ante and the cost by about...2.8k and switch to to 48GB RAM, dual six core processors, and an EVGA SR-2 motherboard.
I think that's a bit much, but...

[roflstomp]

just 3 moniters and sam wow rilly....... the pc im on now with new v card will run 15 wows and it isnt even half as good and the one i looked up

[Sajuuk]

It's so fun to think about what you could do/buy.

I would still think about multiple dual-GPU cards to increase overall performance rendering.

[roflstomp]

I agree with u there but some of sans stuff I agree with to nut some he posts is just rediculous

[flaggelation]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-31-322.html

new build forum

[Sam DeathWalker]

The RevoDrive family gets its edge by eliminating the SATA II (3Gbps) bottleneck and leveraging a PCIe x4 interface to exploit the full potential of current flash technology, delivering superior speeds over 730MB/s sequential speeds and random small file writes up to 120,000 IOPS, nearly triple the throughput of other high-end SATA based solutions. Like the original RevoDrive, the X2 uses an onboard RAID 0 design, but it also employs four SandForce-1200 controllers versus two in the original to maximize data access and bandwidth.

Although its 4 lanes (I was thinking of the old revo) its still only 730MB/s, thats about 1.5 lanes.



Well if you don't render at full screen with IsBoxer like lax suggests then that is a Huge difference (320 X 240 instead of your full screen resolution). Ya if you give up mouse broadcasting and instant swaping then I am sure you will be fine. Im only talking about when you use IsBoxer in the mode where it renders all the tiles at full resolution. If you render 24 of them at the low resolution you will be fine. Giving up mouse broadcasting is no big deal but instant swaping? I can get to any of my 36 guys in under 2 seconds (7 clicks as fast as I can press the button), isn't that kind of important?

You run 15 tiled with isboxer at full resolution (i.e. instant swaping and mouse broadcasting) with your current system? In a battle ground or Dal. I find that very hard to belive.


Well again I did say it would be nice to know the exact amount of data that is require for textures for a full player character to exactly know what is needed to transfer.

And again I hope I am wrong but I still don't belive you can get textures fast enough at 730MB/s to feed 25 full screen renders, I guess if you had a video card with 3 outputs and takes up one slot, and had 2 or 4 SSD's in the other slots then ya maybe you could.

Assuming the use of three multi-gpu cards, we get an (optimum) bandwidth setup of x16/x8/x8, so the first card gets 8GB/s and the other two get 4GB/s. Again, I don't see that getting pushed to the limit. Even accounting for the four "lost" lanes from the card, (we'll just make every card run at x8 for simplicity), we're left with four "open" lanes of bandwidth.

Its not that you will run out of lanes its that your SSD is going to deliver 730MB/s (1.5 lanes), Sure the video card will take 8GB/s if it is getting its data from the system ram, but thats not going to be the case given the texturs will be on the SSD drive (unless some really good system ram caching is going on). Again the SSD drive is the bottleneck.

Well you can try these video cards the high end has 6 monitor output and 4G on the card:

http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/WORKS...omparison.aspx

This has three outputs but might not support all three (the above chart says 2 but it clearly has 3 outputs and the discription says 3).

http://www.google.com/products/catal...ed=0CCYQ8wIwAw#

The point being if you can get your 3 outputs on one card you might have enough space for more SSD's.


Well $1000 for 4 monitor support and 2G:

http://compare.ebay.com/like/1304404...=263602_304662



The new build forum isn't planning on running 25 clients ....



To get things in perspective although this revo is TONS better then a HDD, and is the best SSD made (well for under $1000) its less then AGP 4X:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates

730MB/sec is like .75 of AGP 4X.

Thats a FAR cry from the 25.6 GB/sec of the X58 system ram QPI buss.

Like you can see from my other posts previosly I have always said that if you get 24G and can put the entire wow folder in System Ram you will have zero texture lag becuase you have that 25.6GB/sec transfer from system ram to the video card and before 4.0.1 you didnt need an SSD IF you had 24G of ram (and are 5 or 10 boxing). BUT after 4.0.1 we can't get all of wow into the system ram because its to large .....

If you can go to 36 or 48G ram ya ... lol ... but ...

If blizzard would divide up the texture data into low res textures and high rez or maybe by expansion or somehting and say if you are in Wotlk you just load all the Wotlk textures into ram we could get by with 24G.

[Sajuuk]

The cards you linked are firepro cards, essentially better supported/optimized for various tasks vs the consumer cards. Worth it? Depends.

And are you REALLY that concerned that the SSD is going to be your bottleneck? I could see that possibility running 25 clients on one system/drive. In that case why not just go the route of the SR-2/Dual hexes with 48GB ram and do away with the SSD entirely? Or at the least keep your drive image on the SSD and go with a RAMdisk with the extra ram. That's something you've been wanting to do/touting for a while now, no?


Oooh snazzy. I totally didn't notice the firepro card you linked here was single slot. Makes me consider would it really be worth it to have two of those cards vs a dual-GPU/3/6 output card.