New massive system to arrive tomorrow

Forgive me as I take some time away from your daily schedules to present an idea.

I am currently using 7 computers to run 40 copies of WoW. It is not the optimal configuration as a couple of the machines barely handle the load. So now, I have a new
system due to arrive tomorrow and I am going to try to run 40 copies of WoW on a single computer this weekend but first, I'd like to ask the community if this configuration
could possibly work. I'm planning to use 5 monitors in total. There will be a 22 inch screen configured with 4 WoW account windows. The other 4 monitors will each
be 27 inch screens configured with 9 WoW account windows each. Each nVidia 590 can output to three monitors max. If 40 accounts doesn't run with good performance with this machine,
I will offload some of the accounts to other machines. With my configuration, I don't use PiP on any screen so that I can better see all of the screens.

How many copies of WoW with ISBoxer would run on a system with the following:

CAS: * Corsair Obsidian Series 800D Full Tower Gaming Case
CD: LG 12X Internal Super Multi Blu-Ray Rewriter (Black Color)
COOLANT: Standard Coolant
CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-990X Extreme Edition 3.46 GHz 12M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366
CS_FAN: Maximum Enermax 120MM Case Cooling Fans for selected case (Maximum Silent Operation) [+29] (500-1,200 RPM T.B. Silence Black Color with Red LED Twister Bearing 8-14 dBA [+0])
FAN: CyberPower Xtreme Hydro Liquid Cooling Kit 360MM w/ Triple Fan(CPU & GPU Liquid Cool Capable, Extreme Overclocking Performance + Extreme Silent at 18dBA)
FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (BLACK COLOR)
FREEBIE_VC1: FREE Just Cause 2 Game Coupon [+0]
HDD: 240GB Corsair Force GT Series SATA-III 6.0Gb/s SSD - 555MB/s Read & 525MB/s Write [+305] (Single Hard Drive)
HDD2: 2TB (2TBx1) SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Hard Drive)
IUSB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
KEYBOARD: Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard w/ LCD Display [+107]
MEMORY: 48GB (8GBx6) DDR3/1333MHz Triple Channel Memory [+1002] (Corsair or Major Brand)
MONITOR: 27" Widescreen 1920x1080 Sceptre X270W-1080P LCD Display w/ Built-in Speaker, DVI, & HDMI-Input [+339]
MONITOR2: 27" Widescreen 1920x1080 Sceptre X270W-1080P LCD Display w/ Built-in Speaker, DVI, & HDMI-Input [+339]
MONITOR3: 27" Widescreen 1920x1080 Sceptre X270W-1080P LCD Display w/ Built-in Speaker, DVI, & HDMI-Input [+339]
MOTHERBOARD: * (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte G1.Guerrilla Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Triple-Channel DDR3 E-ATX w/ 7.1 Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity Audio, Bigfoot Killer E2100 GbLAN, eSATA, USB3, 2x SATA3 RAID, 3 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI
MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse [-57]
NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
OS: Microsoft® Windows 7 Professional [+31] (64-bit Edition)
OVERCLOCK: Ultimate OC (Ultimate Overclock 30% or more)
POWERSUPPLY: 1,350 Watts - Thermaltake TP-1350M ToughPower Modular, 80 Plus Silver Certified, Quad SLI Ready, CrossFireX Ready & Eco-Friendly Power Supply [+115]
RUSH: NO; READY TO SHIP IN 5~10 BUSINESS DAYS
SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
VIDEO: EVGA Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video [+189] (EVGA Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 590 Classified Hydro Copper 3GB 16X GDDR5 VRAM)
VIDEO2: EVGA Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX Series PCIe Video [+189] (EVGA Liquid Cooling NVIDIA GTX 590 Classified Hydro Copper 3GB 16X GDDR5 VRAM)


By the way, you're going to see more of me in both AV and Isle of Conquest next week as I get all 40 characters to max honor before the season change. See you in combat!

Prepared, the massive multiboxer of World of Warcraft

[lax]

That sounds amazing

CPU could potentially be the bottleneck. Each of your 6 CPU cores will be running, at minimum, 6 WoWs. If you get 30% OC'd you'd be around 4.5GHz per core, divided by 6 WoWs is about 750MHz per window. Hyperthreading should help that out a bit, but of course it's not the same as 12 actual cores. But it's probably going to be playable. During the Quick Setup Wizard, I would use standard Round-robin CPU management but disable the dedicated CPU option. Otherwise one CPU will operate only 1 and each of the other 5 will run ~8 each.

Your GPUs will probably handle rendering 40 just fine assuming most of them are going to be low graphics. Keep in mind the limitations of using multiple GPUs (as explained under GPU Management), but your plan sounds like it will be fine.

The only other thing that comes to mind is if you end up burning through the 3GB of RAM on the video cards. At low settings it shouldn't be a problem but Direct3D needs room for screen buffers in order to let another game launch. If the game starts saying it cant set up 3D after so many are launched, at that point you would want to lower video RAM usage by dropping resolution or various graphics quality settings (e.g. texture quality would be expected to have impact).

My prediction is that you will be able to successfully launch all 40 as long as they are split between the GPUs, and if there's problems with FPS you can probably limit the background FPS to 15-20, main to 30-60.

I'm going to say no.

You are going to have major bottlenecks everywhere (CPU, memory, frontside bus, storage interface) and the lag when you zone into an area (SW, IF) is going to horrible.

Out of curiosity, what is the network bandwidth requirements for 40 toons?

[lax]

I would hardly call lag when you enter an already populated area unplayable, but again on low settings and especially if the camera is pointed downward on them all, it should do fine. Only one way to find out for sure

As a random thought, you might be able to create a RAM drive and locate the cache directories there. This would improve access time when zoning into a populated area. The big disadvantage to a RAM drive is you have to re-download the cache everytime you reboot your computer.

I attempted 27 instances and it was lagging on some of the WoW screens. This was with all graphics options turned down. After backing it off to 13 WoW instances, things worked great on this system. I'm using 5 computers to run 40 WoW accounts at the same time. I'm going to put all my configuration and information about how I play on my Facebook page (Prepared Aegwynn) when I get around to it. Will be complete with all hardware specs, macros used, photos of system configuration and a few videos of the systems in operation. Probably will happen around the Christmas holidays.

I'm still using Octopus 1.3.8 for my multi-computer configuration. It seems to have the best performance during PvP battlegrounds with 40 WoW accounts running at the same time.

Prepared Aegwynn

[lax]

13 sounds pretty low to me, especially since some people are running 10 on half of that PC. Did you make sure the second GPU isn't just idling? I'd like to see the configuration you're using that will only comfortably run 13, I may be able to offer some suggestions?

13 sounds pretty low to me, especially since some people are running 10 on half of that PC. Did you make sure the second GPU isn't just idling? I'd like to see the configuration you're using that will only comfortably run 13, I may be able to offer some suggestions?

Just noticed this question that I never answered back then.

Some information about what I'd tried with the 27 account configuration... I had used 3 - 27 inch screens. All of the screens were connected to the two 590's that were configured for SLI. After reading up on SLI on the Internet in various places (Toms hardware being one of them), it appears that SLI doesn't really give that much of a performance improvement. Coupled with multiple monitors, I got bad performance a that time.

What I'm doing now is using 5 computers for my 40 account configuration. All computers only have one screen display. 4 of the computers run 9 accounts each in tiled screen format. 1 of the computers runs 4 accounts in tiled screen format. The primary reason I do it this way is to see all of the screen displays equally. Because I do PvP almost exclusively, I'd rather see all screens to know if one of them is being left behind or pulled by a DK or other such activity by players. Performance is great on all of the computers in large scale PvP battles (upwards of 200 players against me).

However, one of the computers crashes daily during heavy PvP. It appears to be the voltage level on the nVidia 590 card from what I've read on the Internet. I'm going to try to increase the voltage level slightly this weekend using MSI Afterburner, but I've read else where that the 590s are locked from being increased. When it crashes, the entire computer crashes. So instead of having 40 characters against 200 players, I have 31 characters. It's quite funny to see the enemies videos where they won't count the other raid against me and I'm not moving because my computer crashed. Any way, I've reduced the number of client crashes by removing the FPS screen update in ISBoxer, but I still get client crashes about every 20 minutes or so in heavy PvP combat. If I can increase the voltage level slightly on the 590, I believe that will be fixed.

One of these days I'll get around to taking a photo of my computer set up and even do a video where I'm playing all of the accounts in a large PvP battle. I've got a livestream set up, but I'm only on during Saturday at http://www.twitch.tv/preparedwow

If it helps I ran a test today on a bunch of wow accounts.

The setup
Processor I7-3930k 5.2 GHZ OC (Liquid Cooled)
Ram 32GB 2133 G. Skill
Hard Drive 2x 240GB SSD
2nd Hard Drive 2x 2TB SeagatE
Graphics Card gtx 680 4gb
Power 1300 Watt Coolmaster

In this setup I was able to run 21 copies of wow with playing low on all accounts and high on main, but the issues I noticed was terrible high pop area's. I think I could push the full 40 if I had another 32GB Ram and another GPU. Might even have higher FR also as one poor GPU wouldn't take all the stress. As for getting this CPU to that GHZ, I will say don't try if you don;t want to lose alot of money if water fails as my high temp is always high 70's.

I was finally able to determine the cause of the crashes. After doing a 12 hr memory check, all memory checked out fine.

In reading the blizzard tech support forums, they recommended to download the free hardware temperature check program called CPUID Hardware Monitor. The post said that the CPU temperature should not exceed 60C. During heavy PvP battles, mine would go past 75C! Even though it had a liquid cooling system, that computer was using the Corsair Obsidian 800D full tower which is completely enclosed except for the back and top of the computers where the fans bring air in from the back and exhaust out towards the top. This enclosed system was hot even though the room was cool. The other system I have uses a CoolerMaster HAF 922 case and it has fans on all sides of the computer with air coming in from the front and exhaust out in different places. It has a much better system that doesn't cause over heating.

To correct the overheating problem, I really had no choice but to remove both side panels from the case. When I did that, I found a fan inside the system that had a cover over it. The bright guys at Cyberpower decided to use the Corsair cover over that fan for whatever reason. I removed that as well. Now when I go into heavy PvP battles, I get about CPUID Hardware Monitor shows 45C at the top end and no crashes at all!! My issue had nothing to do with voltage levels nor memory. It had to do with the case restricting air flow for the radiator to cool the liquid cooling system. The Corsair Obsidian 800D full tower is a horrible case design in my opinion. It might protect the components from dust, but at what cost to the heat given to the components?

Finally I can do PvP without having a game crash every 2 or 3 minutes. And during the day the computer doesn't crash like it used to.