HOWTO:MMO Multiboxing Gameplay

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Yes, this wiki entry is a thing, but is totally neglected and unfinished.

Getting Started

MiRai demonstrates how to start multiboxing with some absolute basics

This first video begins after you've completed the Quick Setup Wizard in ISBoxer, and then successfully exported your settings to Inner Space, launched your Character Set, and have gotten your accounts logged in. If you need assistance with any of these prior steps, then it's recommended that you check out the Quick Start Guide.




Exploring ISBoxer

MiRai demonstrates how to use Open Hardware Monitor to check for hardware bottlenecks
  • This may seem a bit obvious, but increase or disable the game's FPS limit setting if it has one.
  • Disable anti-aliasing/multi-sampling!: Anti-aliasing is likely to have a significant performance impact when multiboxing.
  • Disable vertical sync: Vertical Sync (or V-Sync, also called "Present Interval" in EVE Online) intends to synchronize the rendering speed against your monitor's refresh rate. When multiboxing, disabling V-Sync may significantly improve your framerate.
  • Favor high performance over high quality where possible for all other settings
  • As a last resort, lowering the game resolution may significantly improve framerate as well. If selecting a game resolution in-game does not affect the actual resolution, your actual resolution can likely be adjusted through your Window Layout (see "Window Layout" section below).



Questing

MiRai demonstrates how to use Open Hardware Monitor to check for hardware bottlenecks

CPU Strategy and FPS Limiting

  • FPS Limiting can be adjusted any time through the CPU Strategy Wizard. Selecting a low number for the Background FPS limit can improve overall performance for both CPU and GPU bottlenecks. For some games, notably EverQuest 1, this will also negatively affect your characters' ability to auto-follow each other. (Although for EverQuest 1, EQPlayNice can be used to improve auto-follow performance while rendering a low FPS.)
  • For multi-CPU or multi-core CPUs, as are quite popular among multiboxers, the CPU Strategy Wizard offers a few different settings you can try. In some cases, having ISBoxer assign all CPU cores to all game instances may improve framerates. Round-robin balancing (default) is generally recommended, particularly when there are enough CPU cores to go around.

Window Layout

  • Your game resolution can easily be significantly reduced through your Window Layout, by disabling Instant swapping during the Window Layout Wizard (with a layout that uses small windows)
  • If you have multiple Video cards (GPUs), your Window Layout is extra important; see GPU Management for details. In a nutshell, you may need to avoid letting ISBoxer swap windows from one monitor (powered by one GPU) onto another monitor (powered by the another GPU). This can be done using the Cross-monitor swapping option in the Window Layout Wizard, or by manually configuring a layout.
  • If you are on Windows XP (as opposed to Vista or later) and have multiple monitors, you will need to avoid letting ISBoxer swap windows from one monitor onto another, using the Cross-monitor swapping option in the Window Layout Wizard.



Useful Information

MiRai demonstrates how to use Open Hardware Monitor to check for hardware bottlenecks

Some other software that you may have running can significantly impact your framerate, especially those that provide in-game overlay functionality.

Some known offenders:

  • Mumble: Disable the in-game (overlay) features while multiboxing.
  • Steam: The in-game Steam overlay may not work correctly.
  • X-Fire: Disable the in-game features while multiboxing.



Melee & Mixed-Class Teams

MiRai demonstrates how to use Open Hardware Monitor to check for hardware bottlenecks

The limiting factor for your performance is referred to as a bottleneck, meaning that if this bottleneck were replaced then the system as a whole could possibly perform much faster.

Framerate bottlenecks are usually either GPU (video card), Processor (CPU) or Memory (system RAM and video RAM). Bottlenecks of these sorts can easily be identified at the time of the performance problem, by checking the load % (e.g. from 0% in use to 100% in use) of each of these pieces of hardware. Your bottleneck will be "maxed out" at the time of your performance problems (e.g. "lag"), while the load of the others may be significantly lower due to waiting on the bottleneck.

Open Hardware Monitor is a free, open source program that can pull information from many sensors on your computer, including GPU and VRAM, CPU and RAM loads. To use it, just download and run the program (as Administrator, or it may not be able to access all of the sensors), and it will provide a relatively simple list of sensor data such as temperatures, speed, and load. Once the hardware monitor is running, get to multiboxing and do whatever it is that you do when it goes too slow for your liking. When it is performing poorly, check the sensor data, particularly the GPU Load, CPU Load, and Memory Load! If you want help figuring it out, open the File menu and select "Save report...", which will save a report that you can share with us via e-mail or on the forums.

The closer to "maxed out" (100% in use) any of these three resources (CPU, GPU, RAM) are, the more likely it is to be your bottleneck. For example if RAM is 100% (or nearly 100%) in use, things that should be readily accessible may be placed in storage instead. If your GPU is 100%, then it's pumping out frames as fast as it can and either changing settings to reduce quality and/or resolution, or a GPU upgrade, can probably improve framerates. If your CPU is 100%, then settings related to your CPU rather than GPU will have more of an impact.

If none of these three are near maxed, then a Power Profile (Windows), CPU Strategy (in ISBoxer), FPS Limiting (in ISBoxer, and in some games), or Vertical Sync (in-game) change may be just what the doctor has ordered; see the sections above for these configuration tips.

Healing

MiRai demonstrates how to use Open Hardware Monitor to check for hardware bottlenecks


PvE Dungeon

MiRai demonstrates how to use Open Hardware Monitor to check for hardware bottlenecks


See Also