Multiboxing Duo - In-game Lag

Hi! I was always watching streams on twitch.tv with these guys with the multiboxing program so I decided to start using it... Normaly, I run diablo 3 on all high settings and I don't have any problems, but now I can't run 1 witch doctor on my account and 1 on my friend account... Right now I have a laptop. It's an alienware m17x r2. I also have a second DELL monitor plugged into my laptop for more space. I don't really know what to do :S My processor is an Intel i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHZ (8 CPUs). I have gb of RAM and my graphic card is an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870. I followed the videos on youtube and the wiki, but I still get lag! In the CPU strategy wizard, I tried putting 30 fps background and foreground, I enabled CPU HyperTHreading and I left Round-robin balancing strategy. I also tried the other ones with no success. Which one do you think would be the best for an 8 core processor @1.6 GHZ and 6 gb ram? My computer is praticly 3 year old right now so I don't expect him to still be that good but I thought he could at least handle multiboxing with only two clients...

Thanks in advance everyone

[lax]

HOWTO: Tweak your framerate should pretty much cover it.

The first thing I would check on your laptop, though, is the Power Profile in Windows. It's super easy to purposefully or accidentally change the Power Profile to, say, "Balanced" instead of "High Performance" which may significantly reduce performance while multiboxing. Your CPU may be getting throttled for the same reason, which drops the power of your CPU and would contribute to this issue.

As far as the CPU Strategy Wizard, HyperThreading should automatically enable itself... but if you want to try anything other than defaults from this wizard, I would try setting it to all games use all CPUs, and 30 FPS for both foreground and background. Using this wizard won't fix the Power Profile though, you still need to check that first.

I already checked that and tried everything in that post... I really don't know what I'm doing wrong... I was already on high performance power option and yet it doesn't work really much :S Are my computer specs good enough to run dual multiboxing?

I have to work so I won't test now so I won't be able to test it. When you say "all games use all CPUs", do you mean "Select all CPUs with every window (Hyper THreading) (FPS 30/30)" ?

Thanks.

[lax]

Yes, that CPU strategy.

Your laptop specs are fine, I use a similar system (ASUS G74).

From the tweaking guide, the essential end-all is the section that explains how to identify your bottleneck. When you ask "how can I improve my performance?" you are really asking "What is my performance bottleneck?" (And *then* what to do about it is usually easy). So at this point, in order to answer your question I need to know what your bottleneck is.

Use the tools described to get this answer. CPU load %, GPU load %, RAM load %.

I don't have time for now because I need to go work but I'll try a defrag of my diablo 3 folder and I'll also try to launch Razer Game Booster to close most of the unwanted applications. That way, maybe that will resolve the bottleneck problem. What do you mean "Use the tools described to get this answer. CPU load %, GPU load %, RAM load %". How can I find the bottleneck? I go through the task manager, check the processes and check the CPU? Because my diablo 3 never goes up more than 15 in that CPU row of the task manager. Nor do the other applications... Is that weird?

Anyway, I'm going for work now!

I'll be back in like 6 hours.

Thanks a lot! And god your software if amazing.

Oh and there's also a tweak I can do with the game booster. It says "Boost priority of foreground applications".

As I am a newbie in this, could you tell me if that would improve a little bit?

Thanks

[lax]

The bottleneck is your limiting factor. If your GPU Load according to GPU-Z is 100% then this is the limiting factor and you would find improvements by reducing GPU consumption or with a more powerful GPU. If your RAM is 100% in use then this is the limiting factor and you would find improvements by reducing RAM consumption or with additional RAM. And so on. If none of these are maxing out, then you would find improvements by INCREASING consumption of CPU or GPU.

Boosting priority of the foreground app is not likely to benefit you as a D3 multiboxer... but feel free to try it and see how it compares.

So here are a few more question:

1) When I run the quick setup wizard, should I enable the "Swapping" or not.
2) Should I enable, disable or leave blank "Cross-monitor".

Here's a screenshot of the "Sensors" tab in GPU-Z after I started running diablo 3 with isboxer: http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/13/01/06/9uk.png

Here's a screenshot of the "Graphics Card" tab: http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/13/01/06/eta.png

As I said you, this is mostly chinese to me. I don't understand that at all!

I'm not sure but from my point of view, I think the "Memory Usage" is the RAM. So I would say that's not the problem since I have 6b of it and it's dedicated memory usage is about 600 MB max from what I can see.

For the GPU Load, I often see it at 70%+. It will also frequently hit the 100%. So I guess that would mean I have a bottleneck from what you're saying me... But when I closed the 2 diablo 3 windows, it dropped to near 0%... Idk what I should understand of that.

How can I identify the bottleneck if I have one?

Thanks for the really great support!

Edit: Running Razer Game Booster had absolutely no effect on the GPU Load. I did not notice any increase in the performance. Also, just to let you know, in the ATI Mobility Center for my graphic card, I put everything for max performance. I enabled "Low FX" in-game for better performance. Also, should I enable the "foreground" and "background" options with like 30 fps on each? Should I check them? Thanks.

[lax]

Your GPU has its own RAM which is what is shown in GPU-Z. Windows Task Manager will show your system RAM and CPU usage.

1. Yes enable swapping. This syncs the game resolutions assuming your Window Layout uses different sizes. Without it you may have problems with Mouse Broadcasting, which would be a big problem for D3.
2. Unless you have multiple monitors the cross-monitor swapping option will do nothing at all.

In the sensors tab where you see the red completely fill the GPU usage to the top, that's you hitting the limits of your GPU. It can't push any harder at that point.

When you close your hardware-accelerated 3D games, your GPU will be doing just about nothing which is why it then shows 0%.


Okay so with that in mind, first double check each game window's video settings to see that you didn't set one to low but leave the other at high quality. Turn off anti-aliasing and set low textures and particles, etc.

Next I might consider dropping your FPS limits in ISBoxer to 25 to reduce some of the strain. In-game limiting can be disabled/unchecked.

Here's a picture of my Task manager with the cpu and things: http://screencast.com/t/7dNxS6y61

Tell me if there's something wrong.... because I understand nothing of that

Edit; I tried running my 2 characters with another character of a friend of mine. It is playable but I can't really avoid the attacks or anything. Should I lower the fps more than 25? Thanks.