PC Performance Issue

[schlange]

I have an overclocked Duo Core 6750 with a 8800GTX graphic card and 4gb ram. My HDD is a raid 0

What I notice when I play 5 chars and I go into any big city like Stratt or Org is my HDD starts spinning like crazy, I lag and my chars break follow.

I was wondering how to improve the performance? I have defragged my drives, but still have problems. Does it help to have my 4 clones all sharing the same logical folder? I heard you can actually run multiple instances from one install :whistling: :whistling:
Right now there are 5 installs on the PC and maybe that is why teh HDD goes crazy when I enter the cities. :?:

[OzPhoenix]

Your system beats my current one (new one arriving next week hopefully) and while I lag shockingly in Org etc (down to 5-10 FPS), it's never so bad that /follow breaks.

Mine is set up like this:

Main - c:\wow - full graphics settings
Followers - c:\wow2 - all graphics turned down and sound disabled.

I used to run each follower from a different install of wow (a la, wow1, wow2, wow3, wow4, wow5) but found the performance to be better by reducing the number of installs from 5 to 2.

The other big consideration - you XP'ing or Vista'ing. 32 bit or 64 bit?

[schlange]

I am on Vista 64bit ;(

How did you combine 4 different wow installs into one directory. What was the easiest way for a non-technical guy?

[Zaelar]

He didn't combine installs into one directory, he just used one install for multiple windows.

Step 1) open wow
Step 2) wait for wow to open
Step 3) open wow again(the same one used in step 1)
Step 4) repeat steps 2 through 4

If you follow that you will keep opening new windows of wow until your computer can't handle it any more, so you'll have to adjust it to your needs.

You can try running from one install and see if that helps, or try splitting it between 2-3 installs.

[OzPhoenix]

What Zaelar said, excepting that I use KeyClone to initiate the Wow clients, but it's basically doing the same thing.

Not sure if 4gb will cut it for V64 as I use XP, so it might be worth moving that discussion over to the New Users section for some further queries.

[spannah]

Besides the main wow folder there is only one other one that is needed and created by the install and that is the Data folder. All others are created when WoW is run if they don't exist. The data folder is also if the big mother of them all and the one likely to be accessed more often to load graphics textures, 3D infomation, new zones ... you get the idea.

What I did, following some advice in the forums, was install once to World of Warcraft (run it so it patches to the latest), then create wow1, wow2, wow3, wow4 and copy all the files, not the folders, from World of Warcraft, except for the patch files. After I created a Symbolic Links in the wow1, wow2, wow3, and wow4 folders to point to World of Warcraft\Data.

So the data really only loads once into memory, since the clones just point to the same :-)

I run a 60 FPS (main) and 30 FPS(clones) on q6600, 4 GB, 8800 GT with Vista 64 ;-)

[schlange]

Update: I did the symbolic linking and then did also cpu affinity with keyclone. It runs much better now with 2 physical installs.

[wowphreak]

since yeh got vista64 I would suggest yeh get more ram.
Vista by itself need at least 2 gigs of ram

[Bovidae]

More than 4gb of ram will not improve performance in WoW.

World of Warcraft is a 32 bit application, and is therefore restricted to the good old 4gb cap. And like any good party, all the people want to cram into the same room; the same is true for ram utilization: Vista, warcraft, ventrillo, Firefox, what have you, all want to utilize the lowest reaches of your available ram, cramming it full.

Trust me, I have 8gb of ram, 512mb video, and my ram utilization has never topped 3.7gb yet Windows keeps using a pagefile. ;(

[Anahka]

Running 4 installs on a quad-core with 4GB on Vista 64. Runs great. Doubt any more RAM will make a difference.

Tweaking Vista a bit can help though. I'll paste the "how to speed up Vista mail" I send to colleagues when they come bitchin' below. As always, use at your own risk and don't blame me if anything goes wrong.....but it should all be pretty safe.

-edit-
Step 4 is obviously not needed if you have 4GB already.

---
1. Turn off Windows Search Indexing Windows Vista search indexing is constantly reviewing files on your system to make their contents available for quick searching. This is handy, but can severely impact system performance.

To disable this constant indexing:
- Click Start then Computer
- Right Click the C: Drive
- On General Tab, Uncheck Index this drive for faster searching
- On the subsequent dialog box, Select Include subfolders and files

2. Turn off Automatic Windows Defender Operation. Windows Defender real-time protection against malware continues to run despite having automatic operation disabled.

To disable this feature:
- Open Control Panel
- Select Windows Defender
- Choose Tools from the top menu
- Select Options
- Uncheck Auto Start at the bottom of the window

3. Turn off Automatic Disk Defragmentation Windows Vista and its always-on defragment feature isn't really that necessary and can cause system slow down. Just remember to run a defrag manually every week or so.

To disable this:
- Click Start then Computer
- Right Click the C: Drive
- Select the Tools Tab
- Uncheck Run on a schedule

4. Add a 2GB or higher USB Flash drive to take advantage of Windows Ready Boost (Additional Memory Cache). Ready Boost is Microsoft's name for using a USB thumb/flash drive to provide some quick access memory the operating system can use as extra RAM. The Ready Boost system can significantly improve system performance.

To set this up:
- Insert a USB Flash Drive (preferably 2GB or more)
- Click Start then Computer
- Right Click the USB Drive in My Computer
- Select the Ready Boost Tab
- Choose Use this device
- Select as much space as you can free up for RAM usage vs. Storage

5. Turn off Windows Hibernation
Windows hibernation background services can use a large amount of system resources. If you don't use the Hibernate feature on a regular basis you may want to disable it to give Vista a performance boost.

To disable Hibernation:
- Select the Contro- Pane- then Power Options
- Click Change Plan Settings
- Click on Change Advanced Power Settings
- Expand the Sleep selection
- Expand the Hibernate After selection
- Crank the selector down to zero
- Click Apply

6. Turn off System Restore
Analysis and restore point creation by Windows Vista can eat a fair amount of system resources. Disabling this service will obviously mean the system restore feature in Vista will not be available in the event of a system crash. Change this at your own risk.
- Control Panel > System
- Click System Protection on the left panel
- Uncheck the main system drive
- Agree to the confirmation

7. Disable User Access Control (UAC)
This much-loathed new Vista feature attempts to protect your system from malware infection by making you manually confirm a whole host of everyday user operations. While it doesn't directly impact performance, it can be annoying and might be more hassle than good.

To disable User Access Control:
- Click Start then Contro- Panel
- Select User Accounts
- Select Turn User Account Control on or off
- Uncheck User Account Control Box
- Restart as recommended

8. Disable excess Windows Services that Auto-Launch at Startup Just like Windows XP, Vista ships with all kinds of services enabled that load at startup and may never be used by most users. To see what loads at startup and disable the ones you likely won't be needing (they can always be started manually later):

- Click Start then Control Panel
- Select Administrative Tools
- Choose System Configuration
- Click the Services Tab
- You can safely deselect:
¡ Offline Files (unless you're using Offline File Sync) ¡ Tablet PC Input Service (unless you have a tablet PC) ¡ Terminal Services ¡ Windows Search (If you have already disabled indexing) ¡ Fax (unless you're using a fax modem)

9. Disable Excess Windows Features
Windows ships with other features that are listed separately in the Vista operating system from the startup services.

You can view and disable these features by:
- Clicking Start then Contro- Panel
- Select Program Features
- On the left panel, select Turn Windows Features on or off
- You can safely deselect:
¡ Indexing Service
¡ Remote Differential Compression
¡ Tablet PC Optional Components
¡ Windows DFS Replication Service
¡ Windows Fax & Scan (unless you use a modem for faxing) ¡ Windows Meeting Space (unless you use the Live Meeting Service)