Aggravated.

[Taffy]

So, for the second time, I've lagged out. Something needs to be done.

I'm running 5 wows. I did bump up to 4 gigs...thought that would be fine. When I'm out in the world, I'm good to go. When I get into a city I get laggy. If it's peak times...forget it. I can barely move in shat and SW.

I'm not hardware savvy at all...I can look it and teach myself to do it...but I'm unsure of what needs to be done.

I have another tower sitting here...my fiance just got a new machine. I could use it. But..what would I do with it? It seems a good idea, to have 2 running on it, and 3 on my own...but I'm unsure how to go about this. What I've read about a KVM switch is that I would only be able to see what's happening on one pc at a given time? Maybe I've got that wrong in my mind.

Or...I read about multiple hd's...I'm very confused...and may have bitten off more than I can chew...but it aggravates me to NO END when there's something I'm trying to figure out and it hasn't clicked yet.

Someone please point me in the right direction.

/cry for help

[Khazrael]

One of the biggest changes that helped me was a hard drive related issue.

Do you use multiple hard drives or just one? Do you have multiple WoW installations or just one?

Answer those questions and we can see if the fix that helped me will do anything for you.

[antishadow]

If you want to run 5 on one machine you'll want a lot more than 4GB of ram if you don't want to lag in cities. running on multiple machines is the best route to go if you're able to do it - you can do it without a KVM by using Synergy with broadcasting enabled. You can check the WIKI out here for information on where to get it (Synergy is free) but you will need (i believe) additional Keyclone licenses.

Another suggestion would be to avoid the main cities (SW, Shat, IF) for alliance and sticking to the less used cities. Darnassus or the Exodar (sp?) are a lot more workable and with 2GB on my laptop I'm able to handle those 2.

[Khazrael]

If you want to run 5 on one machine you'll want a lot more than 4GB of ram if you don't want to lag in cities. running on multiple machines is the best route to go if you're able to do it - you can do it without a KVM by using Synergy with broadcasting enabled. You can check the WIKI out here for information on where to get it (Synergy is free) but you will need (i believe) additional Keyclone licenses.

Another suggestion would be to avoid the main cities (SW, Shat, IF) for alliance and sticking to the less used cities. Darnassus or the Exodar (sp?) are a lot more workable and with 2GB on my laptop I'm able to handle those 2.

I would contest that, as I 5 box on a single machine, and have little to no issues in main cities such as Orgrimmar. After the initial load time for my primary account (which would happen regardless of me multi-boxing) everything is smooth as butter. I get around 30-40 fps generally running through Orgrimmar, while my clones are capped out at 15.

[Taffy]

One of the biggest changes that helped me was a hard drive related issue.

Do you use multiple hard drives or just one? Do you have multiple WoW installations or just one?

Answer those questions and we can see if the fix that helped me will do anything for you.

I have one hard drive. I have one wow installation.

I see shots of others with multiple towers sitting next to each other and doing it that way...this is what I'm trying to accomplish, running 2 on the secondary one and 3 on my main one.

I'm going to look into synergy, now.

/eyetwitch

[Khazrael]

I see, then my issue is separate from yours. Running off of one copy would be the same as what I'm doing, so I won't go through the trouble of doing a write-up on it. I have no experience doing multiple physical machines, so I can't really do much to help you there.

Good luck.

[Djarid]

Trikk,

can you give us some details on the specification of your current machine?

Also can you give details of how the lagginess manifests itself? Is it a frame rate problem where your gfx card can't redraw quick enough? Do you get the environment drawn but it take ages for payer models to show up? Is it network lag with random disconnections or clones getting left behind?

Long zoning time is normally caused by loading textures \ addons
Low frame rates are often caused by your GPU or memory bandwidth
Network lag and disconnection could be due to the follow bug, anyone know if it has been fixed?

What model is your graphics card? If it uses shared memory than that is likely to be your culprit as memory bandwidth is being eaten for screen drawing

btw, I five box on the following system and have lag in SW at peak times but it is generally usable
Athlon X2 4600+
4Gb Ram (only 2.8Gb available to the OS)
Radeon X1950XT 512mb Graphic Card
1x Seagate Barracuda running the OS and main WoW (I know, I know but I can't be arsed changing it atm)
1x WD Caviar running 4x Wow (one junctioned data directory for all of them)
1x SCSI 160mb/s 9Gb drive for my page file

I wouldn't advocate the need for separate drives, the way my 4 on the 2nd disk is effectively the same as your single install except I have the flexibility of separate WTF folders for each instance. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that 5 boxing with shared data directories is quicker than having multiple disks, even a disk per instance.

[Taffy]

I have a... (I'm just copying what it says...I bought what he recommended...then put in more ram and a graphics card)

AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual 5000+ 2.4 GHz
4Gb Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT

Keep in mind I know very little about hardware, networking, or...well...yeah. But I'm teaching myself! I did manage to set up a home network, even though the xp system didn't want to chat well with the Vista boys. That out of the way, I tried Synergy, and it just would not work. I think maybe Norton is blocking a port that it needs...but Norton hates me. So I got Multiplicity...and it works! So...set up keyclone on both and it worked without a hitch. So I achieved what I was after...one keyboard/mouse...two systems.

Now...the older tower, that I just hooked to my main one...is pretty rough around the edges. I'll have to go get a little ram for it and see if that helps...I think it's running like...512. O.o It did open two clients and run them...but very laggy.


----

The lagginess on the main one eased up quite a bit, when running 3 instead of 5. But to answer your questions, Loading time, kinda long. It WOULD take forever to load the people around me in the inn. Then jeez, when I'd try to run...a few steps and freeze. Wait...few steps, freeze. Then...all 5 fell off Aldor rise.

Buuut. Seems I may have fixed it...at least for now, until my mind decides that I "need more beef". Then I'll be buttering up to buy a new system.

[Gallo]

Question: Do you set the CPU Affinity in keyclone's command editor? (this sets which Core of your dual core that each WoW uses).

[Taffy]

Nuuuu. I should do this?

Please forgive my ignorance.