Quad core but not impressed.

[shaeman]

After much misery trying to get my graphics card and network usb dongle working I finally managed to get my pc up and running.

Copy wow across, fire it up and I'm dying to check out the frames per second this puppy will give.

I run around shatrath and my frames per second is 30...... just 30.

To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.

Details of my rig are

INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 8MB CACHE 1066 MHZ TOWER COMPUTER WITH NVIDIA 8500GT 1024MB DDR2 GRAPHICS CARD.
500GB 16MB CACHE SATA HARD DRIVE
WITH 20X DUAL LAYER LIGHTSCRIBE DVDRW + 2GB DDR 2 MEMORY .

OS is VIsta 64.


I was kind of expecting double the frames per second.

Am I being unrealistic?

I then decided to run a second instance of wow on it - the second one fired up and the frame rates dropped through the floor -with 8fps on one and 10-15 I guess on the other. Surely this isn't right.

Anyone with similar specs seeing the same level of performance - or more importantly far better performance?

my vista 32 cheap laptop amd turion 64 2.2 ghz laptop with 2 gig memory and a nvidia geoforce 6100 seems to handle two instances better, and runs one instance of wow in a window at 15 fps.

I really thought my quad core machine was going to rock.

Does anyone have any suggestions to get the level of performance I feel I should be getting out of this box?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The 8500 may be your culprit. Specs VS the 8800GT:

Core clock: 450Mhz vs 600+MHz
Stream Processors: 16 vs 112
Memory bus: 128bit vs 256bit
Memory clock: 600MHz vs 1800MHz

So you're talking about a card with about 1/3 of the processing power of an 8800GT. If you're talking about running a high-rez single monitor or dual-monitor setup, I can see that being an issue.

[Sarduci]

My four followers are running capped at 30fps, my main is capped at 60fps and that's where they all sit 99% of the time. 8800GTS for the video card w/Q6600, 8GB RAM, 64bit Vista Business

[Bovidae]

The 8500 may be your culprit. Specs VS the 8800GT:

Core clock: 450Mhz vs 600+MHz
Stream Processors: 16 vs 112
Memory bus: 128bit vs 256bit
Memory clock: 600MHz vs 1800MHz

So you're talking about a card with about 1/3 of the processing power of an 8800GT. If you're talking about running a high-rez single monitor or dual-monitor setup, I can see that being an issue.

This would be my first suspect.

Also, WoW will only run on two cores, #0 and #1 by default. Even then, only sound functions are split to the second core. Take a look at the performance tab of the Windows Task Manager, it may give you some insight to how much you're loading the different cores.

Don't forget to set the processor affinity to #2 and #3 for the second instance, or else you will be slamming your first core, while your other cores are taking a nap. If you turn the sound off, on your slaves, you can asign slaves to run on 1 specific core only: Slave 1-core#1, Slave2-core#2, Slave3-core#3.

If at all possible, do no cross the gap of this dual dual-core chip. Remember, the Q6600 is basicly 2 core2duos on 1 die. There is a bus between cores#0/1 and cores#2/3, but the link between these two chips is considerably weaker.

[Chorizotarian]

If at all possible, do no cross the gap of this dual dual-core chip. Remember, the Q6600 is basicly 2 core2duos on 1 die. There is a bus between cores#0/1 and cores#2/3, but the link between these two chips is considerably weaker.

Can you explain this more? How do we avoid "crossing the gap"?

[zanthor]

8500GT is a VERY low end card.

[zanthor]

Question on the sound functions...

So if you are running 5 copies, 1 with sound, and 4 without... would it be best to set them up...

Main With Sound - Core 1/2
Alt1 - Core 3
Alt2 - Core 3
Alt3 - Core 4
Alt4 - Core 4

I'll have to play with this and see how that runs... could be interesting!

[Bovidae]

If at all possible, do no cross the gap of this dual dual-core chip. Remember, the Q6600 is basicly 2 core2duos on 1 die. There is a bus between cores#0/1 and cores#2/3, but the link between these two chips is considerably weaker.

Can you explain this more? How do we avoid "crossing the gap"?

Setting a processes affinity to cores#0/2 or 1/2 or 1/3 (one core from each of the chips) would be theoretically lower performance than selecting cores#0/1 or cores#2/3. This would apply to any application capable of utilizing two cores.

Since WoW has such crappy dual core utilization to begin with, I suspect it's not that big of a deal, especially if you play with the sound off.

Main With Sound - Core 1/2
Alt1 - Core 3
Alt2 - Core 3
Alt3 - Core 4
Alt4 - Core 4

would probably be the best split for 5 boxing. To get a little more anal, you can force all your peripheral programs to the second core, because the Main WoW utilizes the first core A LOT MORE than the second core. Because of this, I force Ventrilo, Firefox, VLC onto the second core which is only running the MainWoW Sound.

ps/fyi: Intel/Windows starts counting cores at 0, so your quad core processor has cores 0, 1, 2, and 3

[Chorizotarian]

Makes sense. Thanks.

[Bovidae]

I LUV HARDWAREZ!!!

no problem

and special thanks to Mr Keyclone for integrating such a great affinity tool into his software, its just...great. I just wish I could find something as user friendly for the rest of windows.