From 3 to 4 boxing worth it?

[MiRai]

Would like any opinions on this change, since I read that many games does not use HT function that I7 offers and could even decrease performance on gaming ( An old article I read here http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/11...3-better-games) am not 100% sure if I should go for this or just use a 2nd PC to run 1 account and the main one running 3 accounts.

As, Ishar mentions...

I also turned up this post on IsBoxer, and would be inclined to go with MiRai's answer that HT is beneficial more often than not.

...but I've also shown that it helps tremendously in other games like World of Warcraft.

However, if you buy a CPU with hyper-threading (which I always recommend if you can afford it) and for some reason find out that the virtual cores are causing an issue, then just alter the CPU affinity to not use those cores. You don't have to shut them off in the BIOS and you don't even need ISBoxer to assign affinity (although it's easier), you can do this right through the Windows Task Manager.

Dont beat yourself about your HW. D3 sucks in terms of graphics. The graphic engine is BAD. It performs HORRIBLE compared to any of the latest graphic engines (unreal, frostbite, etc.). Even without multiboxing, it SUCKS. My specs:

Geforce GTX780 Ti
Core i7 4770k
16GB RAM 1866MHz
SSD
Dual 120Hz BenQ monitors

I can run any game at 1920x1080 ultra settings, 16x AF, 4x AA. Any game but D3 since Blizzard did a terrible job with the graphic engine. For once it's locked at 60fps (no clue why) and I get FPS drops everywhere. Even worse, FREEZES which are extremely annoying. The game stutters and that breaks multiboxing syincing ALL the time. 2.0.5 should fix some of the freezing caused when clanmates ID legendaries or multiple ppl log in chat at the same time. Opening inventory also freezes.

I played FPS games for years at competitive level and I'm very sensitive to FPS drops and monitor refresh rates. Playing at 120Hz and 120FPS with vsync ON is a totally different experience. It's so damn fluid and smooth it looks amazing and that's thre reason I've invested a lot of money to make sure all my games are like that. I have that in every game I play but D3 which looks so choppy and bad in general. Even without multiboxing I never get that silky smooth gameplay and visuals I get from other games.

Bottom line is, its the game that is broken, not your hardware. Sure u can optimize here and there, but even with the best rig money can buy, I can assure u the game will not run 100% smooth. I'll prolly just get another PC to multibox with 2 PCs so my main just runs 1 account while the other PC runs 3. Will not be 100% smooth still, but a little better than how it is right now which is BAD, really BAD.

PS: I've done plenty of HW reviews for many different vendors, including NVIDIA and I've tried D3 with many different GPUs, including SLI of high end GPUs like the Titan and the game still stutter, freezes and u get FPS drops in many situations. Same with RAID0 SSDs. The game is just not optimized. Even if u turn EVERYTHING down to low (textures, effects, etc.), u still get FPS drops in many different maps. That to me is a very lousy job from Blizzard.

While I agree that D3's engine feels a bit unoptimized at times, I have to disagree with you when you say the game is hard-coded to 60 FPS.

Solo
http://i.imgur.com/ZlIp9H7.jpg
Both the IS and MSI Afterburner overlays are reporting over 270 FPS.

• In game video settings are maxed out (1920x1080)
• nVIdia Inspector is adding 16x AF / HQ Texture Filtering / Ambient Occlusion
• Added SweetFX (with the FXAA preset)

Solo
http://i.imgur.com/NsECWSk.jpg
Both the IS and MSI Afterburner overlays are reporting about 260 FPS.

• In game video settings are maxed out (1920x1080)
• nVIdia Inspector is adding 16x AF / HQ Texture Filtering / Ambient Occlusion / 4x SGSSAA
• Added SweetFX (w/o the FXAA preset)

Multiboxing
http://i.imgur.com/B8waKiB.jpg
MSI Afterburner overlay shows a solid 60 FPS (I disable the Inner Space FPS display when multiboxing)

• In game video settings are maxed out (1920x1080) (on all clients)
• nVIdia Inspector is adding 16x AF / HQ Texture Filtering / Ambient Occlusion (on all clients)
• Added SweetFX (with the FXAA preset) (on all clients)
• Three dxNothing windows for added overlays across two monitors

Note: VRAM numbers are a bit bloated because I do have a lot of tabs open in Chrome at the moment as well as some video editing programs.

I realize the multiboxing screenshot doesn't prove much of anything, but you're just going to have to take my word that it's nice and smooth out in the field when fighting monsters as well. When I multibox with my Wizards I use 60/60 as my foreground and background FPS, and I have no abnormal issues with syncing -- The only stutter I ever really experience is the micro-stutter that multi-GPU setups introduce.

I used to run 4x SGSSAA on my main client, but I got a bit tired of the blur that SGSSAA can create (especially in this game), so I've since turned it off and just deal with the small bit of aliasing there is in the game. I also played through Pandemonium with 4x SGSSAA turned on and it was easily maxing out my GPUs and even causing a loss in FPS, but I still didn't experience any de-syncing because of that. I've been meaning to go through Pandemonium again without 4x SGSSAA to see how well my setup fares.

Again, I don't disagree that D3's engine feels a bit unoptimized, but the game is definitely smooth for me when running 60 FPS fore/background on four clients @ 1920x1080. If you're experiencing stutters and even freezing like you say you are, then I'd be double-checking how you have things set up.