Advice on a new rig

[Sp_i_ke]

Thanks for all the extra info guys.

Maybe I was a bit unclear about it but I do not intend to run all instances of the game at 2650 x 1600. I only have both tanks and healers at this res., the DPS sessions will run at the lower res. of 1680 x 900. My primary plan is to 10-box on the new system, I was hoping it might also do 15, but that it seem is unlikely. That's why I presented the alternate option of using the i5-2500K system as a second system for a few chars, they will most definitely not run at 2560 x 1600, I've only got one 30 inch and it will be connected to the main PC. The session on the i5-2500K will probably be running something like 1680 x 900, and taking into account Heyaz's comment of one session per core, I would try to run 12 on the new system and only the remaining 3 on the i5-2500K.

As Mirai said it, and I red on other sources as well, I won't be before late 2015 that we'll get Broadwell with more than 4 cores, we don't even have a Haswell with 6 cores atm.

Heyaz mentioned he runs his melee slaves at a minimum sustained 25 fps, rfarris has his slaves at 30 fps. On my current system I have my slaves at 10 fps. What minimum fps should I aim at with my slaves to get decent game play? And what is the downside of running lower fps?

Putting all the gathered info together my new system is beginning to take shape:
- Intel i7 4930K
- Asus Rampage IV Black edition
- be quiet Dark Power Pro 1200W
- Cooler Master Storm Trooper Case

I cannot decide between getting an EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Dual Classified or Asus GTX 780 Ti DirectCU. Are there advantages in getting the Asus since I'll get an Asus MB? Should I wait and get a 6 GB version when they come out, any info on when that will be or what kind of pricing we're looking at? Do I need a 780 ti or would (for example) a, or two 760 suffice?

Ain't got a clue what kind of internal memory I should get, nor how much. On the one hand I'd think 32 gig would suffice, on the other with the Rampage I get RAM-Drive capability which I think I would like to try out.

Next is SSD's. If I don't use the RAM-Drive I could wind up needing 4 of them? One for Windows, two in RAID for WoW and a fourth one for recording/streaming. I also came across the Asus RAIDR express PCIe SSD, don't you have one MiRai, how do you like it? If I would combine that with a RAM-Drive for WoW and would dump my streaming/recording directly on my NAS I wouldn't need any. Lot's of ???questionsmarks??? here.

Than we come to POWER. When MiRai is correct (and I think we can assume he is) than for starters one GPU would suffice with 4 monitors. When I upgrade to six monitors I would though need a second one, it's unlike there will ever be a third. What kind of PSU do I need, mostly in the sense of wattage? I'm looking at be-quiet for the PSU because I like their CPU cooler and I'm trying to keep the system nice and quiet.

Last thing I would like some advice on is CPU cooling. Currently I have a be quiet Dark Rock Pro 2, and I love because it's so quiet, I just have it running at full load continuously because I can hardly hear it (no I ain't deaf). So I could just get the new Dark Rock Pro 3 for the new system and be a happy man.
But there is still a part of me saying try water cooling, which got me looking at the Corsair H110 (it would fit into the Strom trooper, and in test it's the quieter one of the AIO big water coolers). It is louder than air-cooling, though kind of hard for me to imagine by how much without having heard them side by side. A review I found that compares the two, says it is up to 7 db louder (42 against 49) at full load, keeping an i7-4770K over-clocked @ 4.2 GHz at full load only 2 - 3 degrees cooler. Which would tell me just get the be-quiet of now, and maybe do a proper water cooling at a later stage. Comments?

Sorry for all the questions, but we're getting somewhere.

sP`!´Ke

[rfarris]

The reason I run slaves at 30 fps is because I read that it has a significant effect on the slaves follow performance. Having said that, my slaves still lose follow when changing zones, but that's the only time I see it.

WRT cooling, I'm running the Noctua NH-D14 and it is damn quiet and keeps the 4930 cool, but it also requires low profile RAM and covers up half my motherboard. And is ugly. I don't have a window in my case, so I'm good with ugly, but if you care about the aesthetics you wouldn't like it.

SSD? I run WoW off a single SSD (Samsung 840 Pro.) I have the OS on a separate SSD. I don't really have any trouble with the single SSD, but I'm considering adding another (128 GB) SSD to set up in RAID-0 simply because the 128 GB SSDs are cheap and umm... I dunno, everyone is doing it.

We haven't heard MiRai's review of the RAIDR yet, but I've read a lot of reviews that say that standalone SSDs are faster and more reliable.

I've got a Corsair PSU like MiRai's, but don't let the "CorsairLINK2" press suck you in. It was a major feature that sold me on the Corsair PSU but now that I've actually looked at it I find it not nearly as useful as OpenHardwareMonitor. Still, the Corsair PSU is quiet, good looking and comes with a ton of cool cables and other junk.

[heyaz]

I'm anxious to see how the new ivy bridge 6-cores perform in real-world scenarios, or well, our scenario of multiboxing WoW which is a unique situation where neither synthetic benchmarks nor full-screen latest FPS shooter benchmarks are completely relevant.

7-12% increase on the 49__k's? Based entirely on combination of synthetic + hey look crysis on max settings full screen. Will it be 7-12% in WoW multiple clients? or 20%? Or zero? Who knows.

As far as FPS requirements, I think follow gets affected when FPS drops below about 12-15 in the background... when you get down to about 5 fps they just don't want to follow at all.

Reliable follow I'd say is 15-18 sustained
Reliable IWT 25+ sustained
Smooth IWT (perfect circle around target) 25-40+ sustained.

And by sustained I mean... no dips. With IWT in a target dummy in a vanilla zone, yeah it sustains my setting fine. In Pandaria where there are more graphical effects and 100+ players invovlved? No way, under load the background clients can drop to 10 fps and you get jousting at best, runaways at the worst.

[MiRai]

Maybe I was a bit unclear about it but I do not intend to run all instances of the game at 2650 x 1600. I only have both tanks and healers at this res., the DPS sessions will run at the lower res. of 1680 x 900.

I don't know what software you're using to multibox with, but does that not mess with mouse broadcasting, especially since both of those resolutions are not the same aspect ratio? And doesn't running two different resolutions mean that you have to maintain two slightly different UIs?

As Mirai said it, and I red on other sources as well, I won't be before late 2015 that we'll get Broadwell with more than 4 cores, we don't even have a Haswell with 6 cores atm.

There are two sides to every processor family...

Sandy Bridge / Sandy Bridge-E
Ivy Bridge / Ivy Bridge-E
Haswell / Haswell-E
Broadwell / Broadwell-E

There is no need for > 4 cores on a typical desktop system because many programs and applications only use one or two cores. The "E" designation is for "enthusiast" or "extreme" and that's the only place you're going to find the extra cores and horsepower that multiboxers desire. IVB-E just came out in September, and these CPUs typically have at least a 1 year life cycle before the new platform is released, so, you're looking at probably about a Q4'14 release date, at the earliest, for Haswell-E.

Heyaz mentioned he runs his melee slaves at a minimum sustained 25 fps, rfarris has his slaves at 30 fps. On my current system I have my slaves at 10 fps. What minimum fps should I aim at with my slaves to get decent game play? And what is the downside of running lower fps?

I wouldn't recommend running them lower than 10 because you may end up with follow breaking at random times. I have nothing to backup the follow statement, it's just what I've heard, but the game clients tend to look like a slideshow below 10FPS anyway and I'll assume it might also affect how well they accept input from the keyboard. I run my 5 clients at either 30/30 or 60/30 if I can.

In addition, and again I don't know which software you're using, FPS also affects how smooth the mouse cursor is when using mouse broadcasting in ISBoxer.

(heyaz replied while I was replying and also mentions some IWT stuff related to FPS)

I cannot decide between getting an EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Dual Classified or Asus GTX 780 Ti DirectCU. Are there advantages in getting the Asus since I'll get an Asus MB?

There's no hidden benefit to buying a GPU made by the same manufacturer as your motherboard.

Should I wait and get a 6 GB version when they come out, any info on when that will be or what kind of pricing we're looking at?

They're rumored to be $1,000 each, but just as powerful (gaming-wise) as a GTX 780Ti. You could practically buy three GTX 780Tis for the price of two "Titan Black" GPUs.

Do I need a 780 ti or would (for example) a, or two 760 suffice?

Two GTX 760s are unlikely to suffice.

Ain't got a clue what kind of internal memory I should get, nor how much. On the one hand I'd think 32 gig would suffice, on the other with the Rampage I get RAM-Drive capability which I think I would like to try out.

32GB is fine to multibox with, but you'll need 64GB if you want a RAMDrive for World of Warcraft.

Next is SSD's. If I don't use the RAM-Drive I could wind up needing 4 of them? One for Windows, two in RAID for WoW and a fourth one for recording/streaming. I also came across the Asus RAIDR express PCIe SSD, don't you have one MiRai, how do you like it?

You don't need to game off of SSDs in RAID0, one SSD is good enough. As for the RAIDR, it's a nice concept, but a bit expensive for the small performance gain in speed. I think there was one other drawback to it as well that I can't think of at the moment.

You also don't need to record game footage to an SSD. I do it because I run very high video settings in game which seem to affect recording performance (at least with FRAPS) and I really dislike it when I'm left wondering if the media I was using was the culprit of a loss of framerate in the video I just recorded. You'll also likely end up wearing out the SSD much, much quicker than normal, especially on a smaller driver like 250GB or less. That's why the next upgrade I'm looking at is a nice 1TB Samsung EVO for my recording drive.

If I would combine that with a RAM-Drive for WoW and would dump my streaming/recording directly on my NAS I wouldn't need any. Lot's of ???questionsmarks??? here.

I don't know.

Than we come to POWER. When MiRai is correct (and I think we can assume he is) than for starters one GPU would suffice with 4 monitors. When I upgrade to six monitors I would though need a second one, it's unlike there will ever be a third. What kind of PSU do I need, mostly in the sense of wattage? I'm looking at be-quiet for the PSU because I like their CPU cooler and I'm trying to keep the system nice and quiet.

Never assume, always check up on other peoples' statements; but I'll back up my previous statements with links from nVidia.

GTX 580 Specs
GTX 680 Specs
GTX 780 Specs

You can see that before the 6xx series, nVidia didn't specifically list how many monitors a GPU could support -- It just says "Multi Monitor = Yes" on the GTX 580. Once the 6xx series was released and was capable of powering 4 displays, they began listing it in the specs. However, not only do you need to use three different connectors to power 4 displays (DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort), I don't know if plugging in that many displays to a single card adversely affects performance in anyway -- I've only ever plugged two displays into a single GPU before.

EDIT: I'm not sure if running 3-4 monitors off of a single GPU are required to be in Surround. If so, that's not what you want because Surround requires all monitors to be the same resolution in order to work. Not only that, but I also found that it adds unnecessary GPU load while multiboxing multiple clients (See my post below this for more information).

If it's unlikely that there will ever be a third GPU, then you can save money and drop that PSU to ~850W. This is according to Guru3D and basing this entirely off of you purchasing two GTX 780Tis, but if you're looking overclock the shit out of your CPU then you may want a bit more wattage.

Last thing I would like some advice on is CPU cooling. Currently I have a be quiet Dark Rock Pro 2, and I love because it's so quiet, I just have it running at full load continuously because I can hardly hear it (no I ain't deaf). So I could just get the new Dark Rock Pro 3 for the new system and be a happy man.
But there is still a part of me saying try water cooling, which got me looking at the Corsair H110 (it would fit into the Strom trooper, and in test it's the quieter one of the AIO big water coolers). It is louder than air-cooling, though kind of hard for me to imagine by how much without having heard them side by side. A review I found that compares the two, says it is up to 7 db louder (42 against 49) at full load, keeping an i7-4770K over-clocked @ 4.2 GHz at full load only 2 - 3 degrees cooler. Which would tell me just get the be-quiet of now, and maybe do a proper water cooling at a later stage. Comments?

I personally don't consider the sealed-from-the-factory water coolers as real water cooling. Sure, there's water in the loop and it's cooling your CPU, but they don't necessary tend to do much better than air cooling. If you were to build a custom loop with actual waterblocks you'd likely get much better results, but it'd cost much more money.

I was looking at the Dark Rock Pro 2 as the cooler I was going to use for my latest build, but after realizing it was so gigantic I decided to not use it because I was afraid that it'd interfere with my RAM (and the availability of the cooler in the US was hard to come by). I ended up going with a smaller cooler, and a push/pull fan configuration, and had no RAM clearance issues on either of the two LGA 2011 motherboards I used.

We haven't heard MiRai's review of the RAIDR yet, but I've read a lot of reviews that say that standalone SSDs are faster and more reliable.

I'd have to agree that unless you're out of 6G SATA ports on your motherboard or are out of space in your case and need another drive, that it's not really worth the money. Maybe I'll sell mine and fill the empty PCIe slot with a fourth GPU. >_>

Unfortunately, I can't actually fit a fourth GPU in my case.

[MiRai]

Alright, so rather than add to an already huge reply, I figured I would just add another post (bloating post count FTW). I finally found the nVidia blog/guide I was looking for:

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/gui...x-680-surround

In 2D Surround, any combination of monitors that share common timings will work but if the displays are not identical this may result in a lower than optimal resolution, and each must have, at minimum, one DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort connector. Aesthetically, identical monitors are preferable, but not a requirement.

The bolded/underlined section above backs up my statement about having to have numerous adapters.

I still don't know if connecting more than 2 displays to a single GPU requires them to be in Surround, but they do allow the monitors to be different sizes. I say this because on the final page of that guide they show the nVidia Control Panel options, and the only available option seems to be spanning the displays with Surround. Typically, you'd have all four options available if you could use a non-Surround setup.

[Kimchee]

lots of great advice here, so i'm not going to add anymore. all i can say is theres rumors of some decent performance upgrades coming down the pipes for Haswell E so it might be an upgrade to wait for. some changes to memory and sata that ups the bandwidth quite a bit. Also as a boxer the more VRAM you have the better. i would wait for a 780 series with 6 gigs. Titans are overrated and avoid them. just my 2 pence worth.

[MiRai]

lots of great advice here, so i'm not going to add anymore. all i can say is theres rumors of some decent performance upgrades coming down the pipes for Haswell E so it might be an upgrade to wait for. some changes to memory and sata that ups the bandwidth quite a bit.

The biggest performance upgrade is going to be the two extra cores in the top-end chip, but there's only speculation on how much they'll cost. RAM and SATA aren't bottlenecks when it comes to multiboxing and DDR4 is going to need time to mature before it actually brings any real performance to the table.

It's going to be interesting to see what Haswell-E brings, but I think Broadwell-E might even be more exciting because things will have had time to mature.

Also as a boxer the more VRAM you have the better. i would wait for a 780 series with 6 gigs. Titans are overrated and avoid them. just my 2 pence worth.

Unfortunately, the next set of 6GB GPUs will still be Titans and they'll still be priced at $1,000 -- The GTX Titan Black is a 780 Ti with 6GB of VRAM. So, you'll be paying $300 on top of the price of the GTX 780 Ti for three extra gigabytes of VRAM.

I was apprehensive to upgrade to newer GPUs without getting an increase in VRAM, but I now know that the GPUs themselves still aren't powerful enough to handle everything I want to throw at them while 5-boxing, so I'm left with splitting the load between them and still have access to 6GB (even 9GB if I wanted it). I would estimate that my setup would use about 3.5GB - 4GB of VRAM running DX11 if it could, but more VRAM isn't going to fix the fact that the GPUs would still be sitting at 90% load.

[ebony]

my slaves still lose follow when changing zones, but that's the only time I see it.

everyone gets this This is a loading screen without the loading screen if you look you more then likely changing server ip's

[Sp_i_ke]

Thanks for the long answer MiRai, don't have a lot of time so just a short reply for now and another question.

Using ISBoxer to multibox.

When in SLI does VRAM "double" as well or is it just the raw GPU power that is "doubled"?

sP`!´Ke

[MiRai]

Using ISBoxer to multibox.

Were you using a super-custom Window Layout with Swap Groups or Instant Swapping disabled? If not, then all of you clients have most likely been rendering at 2560x1600 the entire time. It's not really a big deal, but in order to give a better estimate of hardware requirements I'd have to see your profile to know exactly how you have your layout set up.

When in SLI does VRAM "double" as well or is it just the raw GPU power that is "doubled"?

No, the VRAM is mirrored; and rarely do the GPUs scale perfectly when in SLI.