Single or many WoW installs?

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/03/...tor/page8.html

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Super Talent 3.5 inch 16GB SATA Solid State Drive Specification

• Mfr Part Number: FSD16GC35M
• Capacity: 16 GB
• Form Factor: 3.5 inch type (HDD compatible)
• Interface: SATA
• Compatibility: Full SATA hard disk compatible
• Performance:
  
  
  • Sequential Read Rate: 60 MB/s (min)
  • Sequential Write Rate: 45 MB/s (min)
  • Access Time: 0.1 ms
  • Shock: 1500G (operating)
  • Vibration: 16G (operating)
  • OS Support: All
  • Reliability:
    
    
    • MTBF: >1,000,000 hours
    • Data reliability: Built-in EDC/ECC function
    • Patent pending Wear-leveling algorithms
    • Endurance:
      
      
      • Read: Unlimited
      • Write/Erase: >140 years @ 50GB write-erase /day
      • Power Supply: Vcc= 5.0V ±5%
      • Dimensions: 101 x 145 x 14 mm
      • Package: Complete metal housing
        
        Dosnt' seem much advantage to SSD yet ... or am I reading the specs wrong? Might be able to get by with 8 gigs for eq though....

[Sarduci]

• • Access Time: 0.1 ms

In this application, this is the only advantage. Random seek time in standard drives is <10ms. SSD's have no moving parts and therefor in a high random I/O scenario they are perfect. In large sequential reads, SSD's are less than ideal since traditional drives have a much higher sustained throughput rate.

We looked at this for database applications at work but we are out pacing the drive growth by 2 to 3 times what they are increasing in size. Temp DB logs run stupid fast off of these things though.....

Personally, my next laptop will be SSD, but that's for the power consumption savings, nothing to do with the drive speeds.

SSD's will start to be more common over the next 3 to 5 years as price/unit comes down.

[marvein]

with how cheap drive space is I didnt bother with anything fancy, i just kept making copies. I have about 7-8 unique wow folders on my computer. 3 on one hard drive and 4 on another. initially it was just 6, 1 for my default in program files and then 5 for the 5box team to give me more macros. but then I was having issues with my mains and wanted to keep certain addons seperate since I dual box a lot using different addons so I split them up again lol. Seek times arent bad but Im thinking of spliting them off again now that I have ventured into shattrah and having 10 people constantly following me has been creating problems lol. -_-

*edit* I think im going to look into shrinking my 5boxers from 5 directories down to 2 and moving them to seperate drives. there shouldnt be an issue with macros since macros/keybindings are on a per account basis. This will require some testing but hopefuly it improves things a lot. Might even put the clones on a raptor to make them even better since SSD's are still way too pricey.

[marvein]

@Keyclone

No, unfortunately my last computer was all IDE, and I only purchased a single disk for this system. I was planning on adding more disks if I needed the for space more than anything since I'll be running a lot of virtual machines on there for work to look into 2008 server core services install. (Can't wait for the MS roadshow so I can get my free copy! [img]../forum/images/smilies/thumbsup.png[/img])

Disk queue length was taken from Perfmon in Windows since it's a built in tool to any install. It was logged to another system remotely so the disk I/O for permon would not show up in the charts. There were two physical disk counters that I used, current disk queue length and average disk queue length. Then I'd export it to a CSV file and use a VB macro I'd format the data and parse it that way.

Well, best performance was a mixed bag. I'd have to say that there is no clear advantage in single drive or RAID for my particular hardware. Less RAM or more instances running would change the numbers. Multiple installs were not as good in mine, but the overall performance was not bad.

you got some intersting numbers there but I was wondering if you could do the same tests when riding a boat/zepplin or going through the portals in shattrah. Those two things are what have been killing me recently, especially the portals thing.

[Taipan]

*edit* I think im going to look into shrinking my 5boxers from 5 directories down to 2 and moving them to seperate drives. there shouldnt be an issue with macros since macros/keybindings are on a per account basis. This will require some testing but hopefuly it improves things a lot. Might even put the clones on a raptor to make them even better since SSD's are still way too pricey.

Greetings,

I tried that initially : keeping WoW1 on its own and junctioning 2-5 on WoW2. It was very nice but not uber.

But when I junctioned 2-5 on WoW1 (ie. all 5 clients reading Data on the same folder), then it turned magic indeed : it felt like I was playing on a solo client.

Raptor are fast but noisy : you can tell when it works. And it's just really quieter now 8)

Also, Sam's link to Tom Hardware is a good reminder that SSD aren't that an obvious bullet-proof of a solution for our application, thank you for that.
I think I'll hold for a bit and get a more decent CPU cooler from Sigmatek to start doing proper O/C on the Quad 6600.

Especially since the new generation of Quads 45n from Intel (aka 9450 and so on) seem to have a lower fixed multiplier (8x vs. 9x) and O/C capability than the 6600, with current motherboards (something about FSB 1800mhz vs. 1333mhz).
Too geeky for an old last-gen fart like me but here's the thread if you enjoy the talk :thumbsup:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...it-q9450-e8400

/salute

[marvein]

*edit* I think im going to look into shrinking my 5boxers from 5 directories down to 2 and moving them to seperate drives. there shouldnt be an issue with macros since macros/keybindings are on a per account basis. This will require some testing but hopefuly it improves things a lot. Might even put the clones on a raptor to make them even better since SSD's are still way too pricey.

Greetings,

I tried that initially : keeping WoW1 on its own and junctioning 2-5 on WoW2. It was very nice but not uber.

But when I junctioned 2-5 on WoW1 (ie. all 5 clients reading Data on the same folder), then it turned magic indeed : it felt like I was playing on a solo client.

Raptor are fast but noisy : you can tell when it works. And it's just really quieter now 8)

Also, Sam's link to Tom Hardware is a good reminder that SSD aren't that an obvious bullet-proof of a solution for our application, thank you for that.
I think I'll hold for a bit and get a more decent CPU cooler from Sigmatek to start doing proper O/C on the Quad 6600.

Especially since the new generation of Quads 45n from Intel (aka 9450 and so on) seem to have a lower fixed multiplier (8x vs. 9x) and O/C capability than the 6600, with current motherboards (something about FSB 1800mhz vs. 1333mhz).
Too geeky for an old last-gen fart like me but here's the thread if you enjoy the talk :thumbsup:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...it-q9450-e8400

/salute

Ya Ive already binned the raptor idea, they are just too much money for what they are, and id much rather have an SSD anyways but Im not going to shell out for that either.
Basically what my setup right now looks like is this
c:\program files\world of warcraft
c:\WoW\
d:\Warcraft\Primary
d:\Warcraft\Secondary
d:\Warcraft\WOW3
d:\Warcraft\WOW4
d:\Warcraft\WOW5
Now I dont run all these at once lol. the one in c\prog\blah blah is the main default install where I play my mains (druid/huter/rogue/etc) the one in root of C is if Im on my main and I need one of my alts online to do whatever, be it some arena/bg, item transfer, crafting, etc. I did this one recently because some addons (like auctioneer) were throwing errors left and right when being run twice from same set of files. The directories on D are my multibox army. Despite it being named secondary there is nothing special about that one. I did that initially with the plan of completely moving my main WoW folders over to this drive but I decided against it due to addon configuration. So I think what I am going to do is move the primary over to the root of C instead of the one there and then merge secondary->5 into one directory and launch my alts from there. Doing this should help eliminate some oddities I have with my addons and get them all nice and normalized. And doing this really should help performance not to mention free up space for FRAPS I just hope I dont have to redo too much of my config if I were to do this.

[Dorffo]

thanks much for the junction info folks... best performance boost i have tried yet

[Spudgun]

Having played for the last 6 months with 4 wow directories ive just changed to the 1 main install and 1 for the other 3 chars (2 wow folders in total) and the speed increase at loading is massive. Cant believe ive only just done it, all those Spuds losing there way so many times in shattrath - not any more.

Thanks for the big improvement