I wanna try and fix this problem once and for all...

[slidai]

I built a system about 6 months ago, and it's still pissing me off.

My specs are:
Striker Extrmeme Motherboard,
Asus 8800GT,
4x1GB Crucial Ballistix 800,
Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1,
320GB WD 7200 speed 16MB HDD,
Q6600 CPU,
Windows XP Pro 64,

So here is my deal... I play WoW and dual box alot. I have an old Dell notebook (E1705) with 2gb of ram, a Go 7900 video card and the dell runs WoW with 60+ fps and even if i dual box on the notebook i still get around 45-50fps with both screens up at the same time.

My new desktop gets 100-200fps depending on location which is great but when i dual box, my fps goes down to around 10-15fps. Very choppy. Now my buddy has the same computer i do (dekstop wise) and has no problems dual boxing. The only difference is he has the motherboard thats one step lower, and uses xp pro 32.

I have tried using xp pro 32 and i still seem to get the same problem. All my drivers up are to date. I just don't know what could be the big difference other then the motherboard but would the mobo really make THAT much of a difference?

 

[captaincharisma]

sounds like a program is trying to do somthing in the background. do virus and spyware scan, disable as many startup programs in msconfig as you can, and see how many services you can disable too

 

[slidai]

Even after i do a new wipe and reinstall. I still get the same results so i dont think it's a virus or anything but keep the ideas coming.

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

Does your friend have a the same x fi card you do? try removing it and it's drivers from your machine. I've heared of it messing with games before.

 

[slidai]

He does not have a sound card. I was having this problem before I had any sound other then onboard. I have reinstalled different versions of windows with and without the sound card, changed the ram, etc etc and it's pretty much the same result no matter what i do. Which is why i was thinking that the only thing really different is the motherboard. I had a P35 baord for a brief time but i don't remember what the fps were. I just remember it was awesome and i was like well damn, i need an SLI motherboard and it will be even better. So i switched. Thats before i knew that WoW did not run on 4 cores, only 2. It also does not use SLI.

 

[vnderachiever]

I'm in sorta the same boat as you. My dual 8800 gts's don't run wow half as well as my brothers x1950 pro. Ive got an e6600 and sli cards, he's got a cheaper dual core (cant remember which one atm) and one older card. He runs upwards of 100 fps at all times, I am usually around 25-30.

 

[dokk2]

just an observation here...try your 4x1 ram at 2x1 some mobo's do not play well with 4x1,maybe what is needed is 2x2 rather than 4x1,'cause you've done everything else that can be done and you have got very good ram.:>)

 

[slidai]

As i said i have tried the ram in many configs. Still no help. On a side note, would updating my bios help at all? I had problems with it before and since i have found a stable one, i didn't want to change but if it will help i will try it.

 

[szwaba67]

How much ram do your vid cards have in comparison? Onboard graphics usually share RAM with the system and could probably go upwards of 768MB.

 

[slidai]

Its an Asus 8800GT so 512mb

 

[szwaba67]

Could be the amount of ram limiting the FPS. If the laptop is set higher, it could effectively have 384MB per game, whereas the 8800GT would have 256MB per game. Not sure if that's really how it works but it makes sense to me. =P

 

[Shadow703793]

What resolutions are you running at?

 

[k4p84]

You have a SLI MB with a single card in.

Have you made sure that it is all set up for a single card in the master PCI e slot?

Some boards have mini cards you have to flip over or else it could be a bios selection.

 

[gamerk316]

Please people, my 8600 GT and Pentium D could handle WOW at 75 FPS (its not THAT taxing a game), its not a lack of hardware thats the problem.

I'm thinking overheating; its the only thing I can think of that could slow things down that much without brining the entire system down with it.

 

[pbrigido]

I would also try to download any miscellaneous drivers for your motherboard. Sometimes you will have a driver update for a random component that may change how things run, especially if you are updating your chipset driver.

Also, I'm sure you may have already tried this, but if not it is worth a shot. If you are familiar with how WoW works with addons and cached files, it might be a good idea deleting all of them. The WTF, Interface, and one other directory (I can't remember which one). I had a few addons that I believe were in conflict. They ended up using lot of ram and made my CPU usage go very high. Install each addon individually, even though it takes a long time, and check your FPS after the install.

 

[particleman]

Have you thought about setting the cores to each program (i.e. 2 cores per process of WoW)?

That usually works well for me in a similar instance. The program might be ttying to run both clients on one core....which causes the bottleneck.

 

[slidai]

I have pretty much tried everything you all have said. My friend has the same set up (cpu, video card) and just a 650i board from nvidia, where i have the 680i and he can dual box just fine.

I play at 1920x1200 in window mode. It has nothing to do with overheating because if i minimize one of the WoW screens, the FPS jumps back up to normal plus i have monitors on my temps which are just fine.

I have all the dirvers and they are up to date. The only thing i don't have is the latest BIOS which i don't think will help anything past start up.

The only thing i can think of is that the motherboard is just not happy with WoW for some reason. Crysis, runs great. WoW, only with one game open. It's just pissing me off. I am almost tempted to get a P35 board and 3ghz core two duo and see what happens.

 

[pbrigido]

I would definately say that your computer is fine for one instance of WoW and not two. I have had far more failures with games in Window mode as opposed to full screen. My guess is that when your computer is trying to render WoW as well as your GUI, it is greating too much work for it to be smooth.

 

[gamerk316]

...hold on a sec. Your running, in two seperate windows, WOW? that's not an issue, but running each one at 1980x1200 is. Try running each at 1024x768, that should clear things up.

Also, whats your native desktop resolution? If its something small (compated to the resolution you are playing WoW at), it could be a resizing issue when you window a 1980x1200 window on a lower resolution desktop.

Also, are both windows open at once? Thats double the rendering, and I doubt a single 8800 GT could handle drawing two 1980x1200 games at the same time.

 

[pbrigido]

gamerk316 is correct. When you run two instances of WoW, especially in window mode, you can't do a simple math equation of what FPS to expect. For instance, one window of WoW at 100 FPS does not mean that two windows of WoW will render at 50 FPS each.

If you wanted to contine to do two window modes of WoW with higher FPS, you will most likely need a Q6600+ and a higher end video card. By that time, you are so close to just making a 2nd cheaper tower to run WoW on and have two computers, with WoW on each one.

Just an FYI, there is another topic going on similar to this one. Maybe you'll get some more info there also.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/252062-28-tomshardware#t1841677

 

[slidai]

Thanks for the all the input.

The monitor is 1920x1200 native... obviously the fps is going to go up if i switch to 1024x768. If you read my very first post... you would see that my little notebook, with a Go 7900 video card can dual box WoW with both screens up in window mode at around 45-50fps. A single WoW window on the notebook runs 60+ and again, my friend has the basucally the EXACT same set up as me but he has a 650i board and i have a 680i. He can use dual box, i cant.

So to recap, you have two computers, one with a 650i board and one with a 680i board. Everything else is the same. He can dual box, i cant. I have tried everything else i can think of other then replacing the motherboard.

 

[Shadow703793]

What have you done so far? (ie. re-installing drivers,etc)

 

[slidai]

Ok, So i have a semi answer that i wanted to share in case anyone else is still having this problem also.

For a while, I just gave up on trying to dual box WoW. However, since this new recruit a friend thing is going on, i have once again decided to try and find out why i get crappy fps when i dual box.

There were three things i was pretty sure were the problem. Either the CPU, Motherboard or the Video card. Now the CPU is a Q6600 and some people were saying that WoW might not like running on a quad core since its designed for dual core. So i ordered a 3.13ghz core 2 over the weekend. I will come back to this later.

The video card was another option but thats a 8800GT which can more then play WoW. Last but not least was my Motherboard. I have the Striker Extreme for anyone who does not know.

I don't have the new CPU yet, i will get that later today. However, over the weekend i went to the local best buy and got a ATI 4850 for **** and giggles. I was interested to see the difference in performance over my 8800GT. I reformatted the computer and installed the ATI card. Got everything up and running and to my suprise... I can tripple and even quad box WoW on the 4850 with NO problems.

So i was like hmmmm... the video card can't be THAT much better... So i decided to run some benchmarks on 3DMark06. Long story short, the benchmarks were almost exactly the same. The 4850 was a little better but only by about 500 points. I ran the benchmarks for XP Pro 32 with 2gb and 4gb of ram (i know it only reads 3.25gb with 32bit). I will also run it with XP Pro 64 later tonight.

I am interested to see how the core 2 duo does with both the 8800GT and the 4850 but for now... it looks like the drivers for the ATI card are just better in WoW. Or.... the motherboard just like the ATI card better. Either way, changing the card fixed the problem. Maybe the core 2 with nvidia will be better, i dont know.

On a side not, my friend who i have mentioned before in this thread, has the same setup as me but he has the motherboard that was one step down from my striker extreme and he can dual and tripple box just fine with his 8800GT.

If anyone cares i will post some benchmarks later on tonight or wednesday with the quad/core 2 and the 8800GT vs the 4850.