Working 5 boxing setup

[Esquilo]

Here's a spec that works for 5 boxing on 1 machine using Keyclone:

EVGA 680i MB

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

4gb DDR2 800mhz

Single EVGA 8800gts 640mb

Using 2 monitors, 22" @ 1680x1050 & 19" @ 1440x900 running my main on the 22" and the slaves on the 19". Main set to 60fps max and the slaves at 30fps max

[Naysayer]

These quads can really pull some weight. Are you using cpu affinity?

[Esquilo]

No, I left affinity to run wild. Going to OC it today to see if performance is better in Shatt. right now I'm at 35fps in Shatt on the main and 15 on the slaves with 98-100% cpu utilization. But, for running 5 box PVE it all works great. I haven't tried a BG yet, as I don't have a 5-man team for that at the moment. (Shatt testing is being done running 5 clients, 4 of which aren't mine. Still no chars 60+ on 4 of my accounts, so I 'borrow' a few 70's for testing)

[aNiMaL]

I was happy with my 1 PC setup till I decided to log into an AV and see how it would handle there,
even with the gfx set to low I was starving for fps. (<3 those macro )

I have yet to try shatt in the 1 pc setup,
it's probably better to get that running smooth then to try another AV,
I already got a lot of hate for making last nights' AV break apart due to low numbers.

Sys Specs:
Gigabyte EX38-DS4
Intel E8400
4GB DDR2 1066
Sapphire 1GB HD3870 X2
Using one 22" monitor
1280x1024 as main screen(max40fps) and 4 320x256 for the slaves(max20fps)
(oh.. my uptime was 55hours when I tried it, trying again in an hour or 2 with a fresh booted system)

[bugilt]

I read somewhere on these forums to set cpu affinity to:

core 0 - none
core 1 - 2
core 2 - 2
core 3 - 1 (main)

This caused skipping and bad frame rate in large cities. I set it back to:

core 0 - 1
core 1 - 1
core 2 - 1 (main)
core 3 - 2

It runs much smoother like this and never skips. I might try moving the main to the 1st set of cores since my l2 cache is set to split 6mb x 0-1 and 6mb x 2-3.

[Naysayer]

I run
core 0 - 1
core 1 - 1 (main)
core 2 - 1
core 3 - 2

If you find a sweet spot, let me know. I've had no problems so far, but I haven't tried AV yet.

[aNiMaL]

Have you tried creating symbolic links?
It seems I forgot to create them when I reinstalled.

I used the powershell script mentioned in PowerShell script to create symbolically linked (mklink) copies of WoW

It performed ok in AV,
Shattrath was a bit choppy, but not bad enough to make a clone drop /follow

[wowphreak]

I'm curious

Try disable areo on vista how much of an improvement is there?

[Esquilo]

Running Vista Home Basic 64bit, which doesn't have Aero and I'm using symbolic links. Still working on getting my xkeys and macros sorted out, this seems to take longer than leveling :P

[sn0n]

haha.. i love it.. im lookin at
EVGA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard CPU Bundle - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor 2.40GHz OEM
and im like.. wonder if that will work for 5 boxing.. i'll check over on dual-boxing and make a first post asking.. then see this thread and see that it will.. fantastic!!!

(as far as disabling aero for 'better performance' i think thats pretty much myth at this point.. )