12 box/one computer feedback requested

[mistahmikey]

I decided to take my rag-tag crew of 12 to the next level and add a 3rd group. This means that I must run 12 clients on one computer.

The computer I built for this task is fairly high end, even though its about a year old now. The main components:

ASUS Rampage IV Extreme MB
Intel 3960X CPU
64 GB memory
Dual Nvidia EVGA ACX 780s in SLI
500 GB SSD
Windows 7 64-bit

I have done everything I can think of to make this perform as well as possible:

1) I used "ogre proc" to run each of the 12 eq2 processes on a separate thread.
2) I have set all the Eq2 performance settings as low as they can go, as well as disabling nulti-core usage.
3) Using the NVIDIA control panel, I have enabled custom settings for everquest2.exe that force SINGLE GPU (so presumably SLI is disabled).
4) Ensured the everquest2.exe is enabled for Large Address Space usage.
5) Have played around with overclocking the MB and graphics card (with little impact other than comprising stability)
6) Keep every aspect of my software (drivers, BIOS, OS, etc.) at the most current release


Using Process Explorer, I have verified that my cores are being utilized as expected, and they certainly are - when the game is just sitting idle, they are all cranking about about 96% CPU usage. There doesn't appear to be excessive page faulting going on.

When I am not fighting, in most areas, I get about 20fps. But when I begin a fight, this quickly drops to 5-10fps, and movement of my MT becomes very laggy and difficult to play.

I have scoured the internet for other ideas about how to improve this, and have found very little specific info. So.

I am looking for feedback from other "12 on one" users about their performance numbers. I don't want to spend a ton of time stressing over how to improve this if I have simply hit the wall on what I can do. And, of course, if I have (undoubtedly) missed something that could help improve my performance, please let me know.

Thanks.

 

[Kannkor]

Unfortunately I'm not someone who maximizes session on a computer, I prefer to spread the load for better performance...

However... What do you have your CPU overclocked too?

You could try that combat_filter command or whatever it is in game to reduce the amount of processing each session has to do, could save you a few frames.

Make sure you are running the least amount possible in the background, IE: don't have webbrowsers open etc, definitely do not have ACT open. Don't have any 'overlays' open (ACT being the one I'm thinking of).

I suspect you've done that.. but just thought I'd mention it...

 

[amyglyn]

"Using Process Explorer, I have verified that my cores are being utilized as expected, and they certainly are - when the game is just sitting idle, they are all cranking about about 96% CPU usage.

Well, there you go, then.

"There doesn't appear to be excessive page faulting going on."

Yeah, I don't think that would be an issue ... with 64gb of ram =p. 32gb is way more than enough to run 12. With 64gb you might as well turn the swap file off (note: don't really do this, there's no reason to turn it off).

You can install MSI afterburner and see if the gpu usage is a problem. It probably isn't, based on what you said above (more on that later). If it is, you can disable SLI, plug a second monitor into the 2nd GPU, and route 6 over the other GPU. That will solve that (likely non-existant) problem.

Anyway, the key is this: when the game is just sitting idle, they are all cranking about about 96% CPU usage.

With all cores going with 2 threads each, let's be honest here. The stock 3960x is going to be running at an extremely leisurely 3.3ghz. Yawn! ZZZzzz!

But fear not. It's unlocked. Time to overclock it! Woohoo!

First, get a decent cooler, as sandy-bridge E isn't the energy mizer that socket 1155 SB was! You could change to IB-E, but honestly, don't bother. You have two 780's so you obviously aren't too worried about power consumption (it's okay, I'm not either, lol).

First, you're going to need a good cooler:
1. Want an Air cooler? High end air works great but is huge. But it's simple, and cools fantastically. I'd recommend the good ol' Noctua DH-14. While it might be tempting to get one of the cheaper coolers that I usually recommend like the ol' 212, in this case, you're going to want to pass, pretend you are an AMD user or someone really wanting to OC....it's not going to cut it.

2. Want canned water cooling? It works well (about the same as that Noctua above really when all is said and done, maybe slightly better, maybe not depending, but costs more). It also isn't huge and doesn't take up half your case like the Noctua. I'd recommend a Corsair H110 or equiv 280mm or 240mm one (read reviews, you can figure it out). This is what you should probably go with starting out.

3. Custom water (this is what I do, but I love building computer hardware, so if you are just starting out, it might be a bit much--maybe you'll become an addict and go for this later =p. Building is fun).

Install the cooler. Yay, you are 90% done. Load your ram's xmp profile to make sure it's not running at 1066 or some crap.

For starters you can then just go into bios and change the voltage to 1.325V and then set the CPU speed to 4.4ghz. This should be stable for starting out. You can run prime95 for a bit to make sure temps are okay, but don't needlessly stress your cpu out by running it endlessly, there's just no point, you'll soon find out of it's stable or not in everyday use anyway. Watch the temps (coretemp64 works okay, whatever you want, perhaps your motherboard came with something).

This should be perfectly fine on sandy bridge-e e with a good cooler. At that point, you don't want your cpu running at 1.325V all the time, do you? So it's time to figure out what your offset needs to be, so that your CPU can get it's higher voltage when clocked up/under load, and when it's idle it can clock down with speedstep (with sandy-bridge just leave all the power save stuff on while oc'ing!) and go down to 1 volt or so (perhaps less). You'll probably need to enable line load calibration (but watch the voltage) to make sure the voltage doesn't "droop" under load. If your motherboard has a bunch of LLC settings, try one in the middle or try the upper 3/4 setting (for example if you have low/medium/high/ultra high/extreme try high or ultra high).

Google should be able to help you figure out how to set offset voltage instead of constant voltage for your board and cpu. And the LLC. You may also need CPU VTT voltage (google, again!) ^_^ If not try overclock.net or other similar forums. Or youtube. You can do it!

Temps should be fine, so at this point, let it stretch it's legs a bit. I'd try for 4.6-4.8ghz @ 1.35-1.375 volts or so...this should be okay with say, an H110 while running 12 copies of EQ2. It might get a bit hot if you run media encoding or something though. A lot of 3960x's could hit 5ghz but that might be a stretch at first.


As for eq2 settings: turn the third party combat bubble damage off and use /combat_filter 1. Apologies if you are already using this.

But, if my crappy second pc, which is an AMD 8320 (yuck) @ 4.4ghz, with 16gb of ram and a 6970, can run 6 copies okay, fear not, your computer once you clock it up, will be able to run 12 easy peasy once you get it set up right. ^_^

 

[mistahmikey]

Thanks very much for the detailed info, particularly the overclock.com site. Using that site, I have been able to OC my rig to 4.6 GHz, which provides a tremendous performance improvement for eq2. And, as it turns out, I am already using the cooler you suggested To get there, I just cranked up the voltage and multiplier. But my MB has a huge number of settings, most of which I do not understand at this point, so I will delve into that via overclock.com to see if I can squeeze a bit more out of it.

One question, however. I tried using the "/combat_filter 1" setting on all the toons, and it seemed to disable the bot - none of the toons would cast any spells. Took it out, and things started working again. So is receiving the combat spam from other toons necessary for ogre to work properly?

 

[Kannkor]

One question, however. I tried using the "/combat_filter 1" setting on all the toons, and it seemed to disable the bot - none of the toons would cast any spells. Took it out, and things started working again. So is receiving the combat spam from other toons necessary for ogre to work properly?

I personally don't use the command, but I know others that do. If the bot did nothing at all, there is something else going on. It's possible you may need the other spam for SOME special raid code, but most of that is old dov raids etc.

 

[amyglyn]

I personally don't use the command, but I know others that do. If the bot did nothing at all, there is something else going on. It's possible you may need the other spam for SOME special raid code, but most of that is old dov raids etc.

Yeah. I've never seen that command disable anything in ogre, but I could be wrong. I use it on my PC number 2. Really though I think it's less that that command really helps, because the data still gets *sent* to your PC...but I always figure it can't hurt. The third party combat bubble damage thing *really* helps on my 2nd pc (but it's a crappy AMD box). *shrug*.

And mistahmikey: Excellent. Glad to hear it! 4.6ghz is a great point and probably at the "good enough" range! I wouldn't worry tooooo much about getting it higher than that. Good job. Nicely done. If you haven't already been able to turn on variable voltage (instead of constant one) using offsets, and whatnot, that'd be the next point, for power savings.

Other settings you shouldn't need to worry tooooo much about. Next thing would be your ram, really. Make sure it's running at optimal settings (does it have an xmp profile, if so load it, etc). Keep in mind that you are using 64gb ram though which is a great great strain on your poor sandy bridge's memory controller. You can try turning the command rate from "2t" to "1t" this might gain you like .5fps or 1fps ish...maybe. But you might have to run 2t. Even on my haswell with all 4 slots filled I must run 2T, or choose a lower ram frequency (go for the frequency every time!)

Anyway, good job!

Oh, PS...a full voltage control was just released for GTX780 video cards. The stock 780 cooler is very very good (just make sure the cards have room between them!). You'll need MSI afterburner as well, which you should already be using /grin. I'm not going to link the voltage controller because if you don't know what you are doing you can really do some damage, but overclock.net has it in the nvidia section--read the thread /grin. Next step is install that and afterburner and clock the 780s up a bit! Then, make two copies of eq2. One for your tank one for the rest. Crank the AA settings, force Anisotropic filtering to 16, all that jazz, for the main copy (you can manually switch between nvidia inspector profiles, just load one, start tank, load other, start the other 11 copies lol). If you still have GPU power to spare, turn on supersampling (you can use nvidia inspector for this) for the main copy, it will completely eliminate that pesky texture shimmering in EQ2 (unfortunately my 670 is not fast enough to run it unless I'm only running one copy of eq2 /sniffles).

I also run an SMAA injector dll file on my main copy of eq2. You can google for them there's many diff injectors. The one I use I also have a vibrance control on to make colors a bit more vivid. There's all kinds of options in some of them to make your games look smoother and more interesting. Enjoy. And good job on the 4.6, again, nicely done. Woot.