Max Clients

Hello everyone!

I'd like to know how many Eve clients you can run smoothly and what hardware you have.

I'm trying to run 16 clients at once, but anything past 10 clients I start to get less than 30fps.

My rig:

Intel 2600k (Quad core)
DDR3 1666 Vengence something Memory, 4x 4GB for 16GB total.
Nvidia GTX 570 (1.25GB memory)
SSD that's got the Sata 3 500 or whatever MB/S read/write.

Ok so.. the real question is where's my bottleneck?

My IS Boxer settings is round-robbing cpu (default) and main window FPS limited to 30 and small windows limited to 10fps.

Thanks!

[lax]

Have you checked out the HOWTO: Tweak your framerate guide? It specifically addresses framerate and performance, and has a section regarding the tools you need to use to identify your bottleneck.

Yes when I get home tonight I'll look at the GPU thing.

And I have read everything and have tried different settings with IS Boxer.

I'm just wondering what other people are doing specifically with Eve and how many clients they can run with what hardware.

Also if I need better hardware then who wouldn't want to get a new GTX 680?

But I'll install the stuff and see how the GPU is doing tonight.

Thanks!

When trying to run EVE clients the problem I routinely hit was VRAM (also running with GTX 570 1.25GB). My GPU load might only be at 40% but once the VRAM capped out, that was it, new clients would just start chugging. The major VRAM hogs are shadows and texture sizes (so make sure shadows are off and textures are set to low). Even at minimal settings my quick testing suggests each client was using about 250 - 300mb of VRAM, so you can kind of plan from there. At max settings it's more like 500-600mb. However, this can vary significantly depending on what you are doing with the client. If you are in a station with station environment turned off it's much less of a VRAM hit then if you need to undock and be in space.

You might have better luck with a 660ti or 670 with 2GB VRAM. I decided to upgrade to a 680 with 4GB and am currently running 4 clients at max graphic settings -- everything enabled, including shadows -- with no problem, and that's just barely touching the 2GB mark. I haven't pushed it to see how many I could run with minimal settings.

EDIT: Also, to add more important info... I'm running all 4 clients at 1858 x 1058, which was the resolution used to produce the VRAM sizes mentioned before.