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System advice appreciated

Moderator: MiRai

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Blink

Posts: 6

Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2010 3:29 am

Post Fri Sep 17, 2010 4:07 am

System advice appreciated

Hello been using isboxer for close to a year now i believe (well with a couple month break for the summer). and i love i box 5 shammy....throw in a druid...pally..rogue...warr...hunter in the mix occasionally and i love it...well gettin bored of just 5 so bought 5 more accounts need to lvl them however in the meantime im gettin prepared to run 10 so have a few questions as well as possible advice...current system is 955 be @ 3.4 .8 gig ddr3 1600 2xintel ssd raid 0..1600 watt psu (ultra x3)...gtx 470 super oc....52 inch monitor ...i sit about 13 feet away from the montior so i box with an xbox 360 controller and love it...Ultra graphics are imperative for me on the main too this current system does that just fine rarely falls below 45 fps avg 60 as long as im not in dal during peak hours then i can get anywhere from 25 to 8 (on a mount moving quick)...this system will in no way run 10 with the graphics i want at the performance i want i have not tried but its a relatively safe bet either way i wanna upgrade so my current options are running dual quad or hexa xeons on an evga sr-2 with 24g ram (12 per cpu) with only one set of ssds to read from or run 2 seperate boxes (would be I7 for sure maybe 980 if need be...i budget isnt a concern to extent defintely want it under 5k however no need to waste cash if i dont need too so running 10 accounts max graphics (on the main) do i need 12 cores or just 8...better with 2 boxes and a kvm or just the one box with 2 cpus (also keep in my mind if i buy 2 boxes...that means 2 os (as i need win 7 still using vista...as well as more hdd or ssd for the second system peripheals etc...i will be most likely using a 65 or 55 inch led as the main monitor and high 20ish 30 ish for the secondary (only stating cuz muliple gpu manufactures have told me size makes a performance impact on gpus). so do i need a second vid card in one box to run 10 and keep max graphics or can i get away with just the one ...Sorry lots of questions but i like to be prepared and hate buyers remorse (as we all do)..Also keep in mind cata is coming up (oh btw i box WOW forgot to say taht in the beginining)..I rarely hit up forums but finding info on peeps pc performance running 10 verions of wow with MAX (ultra) graphics doesnt seem to be overly abundant so perhaps someone on here has experience and or insight.......Ty in advance and happy boxing
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Blink

Posts: 6

Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2010 3:29 am

Post Fri Sep 17, 2010 4:30 am

Re: System advice appreciated

Forgot to add i would also like to maintain 1920x1080p resolution for the main...slaves i been running @ 1300 somthin by 768 ....TY
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lax

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Post Fri Sep 17, 2010 9:23 am

Re: System advice appreciated

Well, I don't envy you for wanting full graphics on all of the windows. Putting it up on one is going to be much more efficient than putting it up on all 10 obviously ;) I haven't really tried to run 10 on one PC yet as I've got a few PCs that are capable of running 5 each. And it'll be difficult for me to guess how it will perform with full graphics.

As far as your CPU(s), I'd generally recommend being as close to 1 core (or more) per game instance as possible -- you don't want to double up on the CPU cores too much (especially with high settings). 8-12 cores (real ones, not 4 real like an i7) would be ideal to run 10.

Do you run with Swap and Instant Swap enabled? If so, then your slaves are also running at 1920x1080, just in a smaller window (1300 something by 768). So keep that in mind as far as your video card goes. Your video card is going to be pretty important for running 10. I run 5 comfortably on an 8800GTX, but I keep my settings low. I imagine your GTX 470 should do pretty well, but again.. 10 of them at 1920x1080 and high settings is a little excessive ;)

Oh and if you're getting a new video card, I do NOT recommend trying Crossfire or SLI. There's an ATI card for example that is a dual card with Crossfire permanently enabled. If you're going to get one of those, you're either going to end up disabling one of the cards, or putting the "master" firmware on both to use them independently of each other without Crossfire. (Using multiple video cards)
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Blink

Posts: 6

Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2010 3:29 am

Post Sat Sep 18, 2010 2:53 am

Re: System advice appreciated

Ty...for the repsonse lax....i may have mistated...i only care about full graphics on the primary monitor and 1 toon.....although not following you on the i7...from my understanding an I7 xeon 4 core has 4 real cores and 4 logical...i would still count that as 4 cores my plan is the evga sr-2 board that holds dual xeon socket 1366 cpus and up to 48 (off the top of my head) gigs ram...(planning on 24 should be sifficients i hope and always add later if need be ...that would mean 12 gigs per cpu on one mb...my dilemma however is can i get by with just 2 4 core I7 (westmere) xeon for a total of 8 cores or do i need to pop 1000 plus per cpu for 2 six cores...hoping to get by with just the 2 quads but i would hate to get them and have issues...and be out 800 plus....so if i need to i will pop the cash for the six cores...but perhaps with your xp...you are using an I7 quad on a machine with roughly 12 gigs of ram that can easily run ultra graphics one the main toon/monitor and low on the slaves?....ty...i would also like to know if it is possible to set up 1 (windowed) big screen on 1 big monitor and have 9 little boxes on a second monitor? and if so can i just hit a hotkey to swap regions from one of the little 9 boxes on the second monitor to the big monitor etc....as far as sli goes thats good to know will have to read that yet........TY in advance Blink
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Blink

Posts: 6

Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2010 3:29 am

Post Sat Sep 18, 2010 3:14 am

Re: System advice appreciated

Ok read the sli thing...and a question arises....do you know offhand is it possible on one mobo with multiple pci express x 16 2.o slots to use 2 video cards in NON sli and have 1 card power the first monitor only and the second card just power the second monitor ,if one card isnt sufficient to run 10? if so that would be great i have my previous vid card (gtx 260) in the closet that works great just updated to the 470 a few months ago...so i could use the 260 to run the main monitor with 1 account on ultra...and the 9 slave accounts with low graphics powered by the 470 on the second monitor (if 1 on 1 and 9 on 1 is even possible). ty blink
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Blink

Posts: 6

Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2010 3:29 am

Post Sat Sep 18, 2010 5:36 am

Re: System advice appreciated

A couple more questions lax......if u dont mid...im waying out my options here and wondering if 2 seperate systems might suit me better than the 1...so my question is if i use 2 seperate pcs with 2 seperate monitors (both with win 7) can i use a kvm that only has usb for my keyboard/mouse and wireless xbox 360 controller reciever for windows and no dvi/hdmi for the monitors...meaning each box has its own vid card and monitor...or do i have to have the kvm to connect the 2 vid cards and then out 2 the 2 monitors... also any particular brands you have had good performance/reliability from...........TY in advance.Blink


Oh also i run instant swap i have my wow settings on the slaves @ 1300 somthing x 768 and wow settings on the main @ 1920 x 1080....the main graphics ultra the second slave is fair graphics just so i can see the glitter for herb picking on super low it somtimes can be difficult to see even know i see there is an herb on the mini map....the last three slaves are as low as low can go....I would like to maintain this current graphic setup just with 5 more slaves @ low graphics...and if possible have one big monitor high graphics one toon and a smaller monitor with 9 lil low graphic slaves that can swap to the main screen if i need to be on that toon assuming thats possible (if they have low graphics thats fine I/m only concerned about having the ultra graphics on the toon im on 95% of the time). Thanks again
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lax

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Post Sat Sep 18, 2010 9:19 am

Re: System advice appreciated

Oh also i run instant swap i have my wow settings on the slaves @ 1300 somthing x 768 and wow settings on the main @ 1920 x 1080

It doesn't matter what WoW says it is, if you have instant swap on it's rendering at the size of the main, which is 1920x1080. The resolution listed in the game only determines the aspect ratio the game uses. So for example if you were to tell WoW to render your slaves in 800x600 and tell ISBoxer not to fix it, and your main region is 1920x1080 and you use instant swap... and say your slave windows are actually sized as 1024x768 per your Window Layout. WoW would fully render a 1920x1080 buffer because that's the size of the main region, using the aspect ratio of 800x600 because it's selected in the game, and then it would be stretched to 1024x768 because it's the size of the slave region. So yeah...

If you use 2 PCs with 2 monitors, you could ideally run 5 on each, and you can use a software KVM (I specifically recommend Input Director, it's free, easy to use and less bugs than Synergy, which is also free) to share mouse/keyboard between the two -- no need for a hardware KVM, those will just slow you down. Hardware KVM is more useful if you need to share a monitor between the two.

Setting up your main on 1 video card and 9 others on another video card would mean you would have to disable swapping, or do some relatively complicated configuration in ISBoxer to only swap the ones on the same card. But really you'd want to just disable swapping altogether. This would cause all of the smaller windows to actually render at the smaller resolution, and you would also lose perfect mouse broadcasting (or if those windows are small enough, mouse broadcasting will be pretty useless altogether). Rendering all of the ones on one video card at the smaller resolution WOULD allow you to run 9 pretty well, while keeping one ultra graphics on the main one.

Now... if you don't need ultra graphics on all of them, your current video card MAY be sufficient to run all 10 with swapping, if you have 8 to 12 CPU cores. What I said about i7 is the same thing you said, i7 has 4 real and 4 logical cores, and as I understand the technology they're kind of meant to be paired together. So you would still count it as 4 cores for our purposes, but it will complete certain operations faster when a real core is paired with its logical core (CPU affinity-wise).

I should just fire up my 10 accounts on my dual quad xeon + 8800 GTX box and let you know how it performs ;)
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Blink

Posts: 6

Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2010 3:29 am

Post Sat Sep 18, 2010 11:46 pm

Re: System advice appreciated

Ty Lax for the helpful info....and if u could fire up 10 and let me know that would be great....i would prefer to get by with one box if possible but not 100% neccasary...and now that i know i cant do sli or crossfire....amd opteron magny cour...12 core cpu may be a cheaper option...just not so sure about the ghz they are real low like 2.1 to 2.3 or so...i will also look into input director and go from thier...the server cpu world and KVM is all new to me so thanks for the heads up....talk to ya soon...ty....blink

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