computer upgrade advice

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leatherwolf

Well-Known Member
Hey just looking for some advice on a system build for 6 boxing, I've been getting it done on my ancient core2 quad....lagging my ass off in the process. I was thinking of an i5 build, but i'm open to some suggestions. The amd 6&8 core processors sound really nice too, but I'm not convinced the do any better than the 4 core pentiums. I'm starting to believe that EQ2 runs bad on every system.lol I plan on keeping my graphics card, I'm running the GTX670.
 
wolfppo

wolfppo

Active Member
I build computers now and would like to know your price range and would direct you to Fry's Electronics instead of Amazon as I buy a lot and get issues with them weekly on items not shipping or wrong item shipped.
 
wolfppo

wolfppo

Active Member
And also on a side note Bob is right for EQ2 ram is the key for a full group try 8-12 gigs so as no lag and a faster processor docent hurt but 4 cors is enough I use a 3770k atm cost $300 OC to 4.5 gig and 16 gigs of Dominator ram $125. I run 6 toons in good resolution np could run 12 if needed.
 
Kannkor

Kannkor

Ogre
wolfppo said:
And also on a side note Bob is right for EQ2 ram is the key for a full group try 8-12 gigs so as no lag and a faster processor docent hurt but 4 cors is enough I use a 3770k atm cost $300 OC to 4.5 gig and 16 gigs of Dominator ram $125. I run 6 toons in good resolution np could run 12 if needed.
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You should really really aim for 1 eq2 session per virtual core.

An i5 means you should only run 4 sessions.
An i7 means you should only run 8 sessions.

Going above those values, means your core goes from running at 100% (full load) for 1 session, to it running for 2 sessions. That means you instantly get a 50% decrease in performance.

I highly recommend the i7 3770k. If you really need a cheaper option, than an amd8 core, or amd6 core. But the i3770k is (IMO) the best price/performance on the market.

With an aftermarket cooler, you can push the 3770k to 4.2 with a single click, and maintain temps under 70c at full load. (You can push it further if you want, but that's just how simple it can be).
16 gigs RAM should be the lowest you get. I personally still only build 16gb RAM. I don't go above or below (don't see a reason to go higher).

But yea, if you have a price point in mind, and if you have the ability to build it yourself, then people could give better recommendations.
 
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leatherwolf

Well-Known Member
Well the advice has put things in a better perspective for me, I appreciate the advice. Yeah I have been building my own pc's for a while now, it's just cheaper. SO my build i'm thinking of going with is:

Board:GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H
PSU:CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650
Processor:i7-3770K
Ram:G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB)DDR3 1600
CPU Cooler:ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-R

and keeping my GTX670

feel free to point out any horrid building mistakes.lol
 
Kevinshp

Kevinshp

Well-Known Member
leatherwolf said:
Well the advice has put things in a better perspective for me, I appreciate the advice. Yeah I have been building my own pc's for a while now, it's just cheaper. SO my build i'm thinking of going with is:

Board:GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H
PSU:CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650
Processor:i7-3770K
Ram:G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB)DDR3 1600
CPU Cooler:ZALMAN CNPS9900MAX-R

and keeping my GTX670

feel free to point out any horrid building mistakes.lol
Click to expand...
You really want at least a 750 watt psu 850 would be best also the better the quality the better. The i7's like power especialy if u oc it and what ever new gpu will want its share.
 
macker0407

macker0407

Active Member
No he doesn't. The most power hungry pre OC'd 670's will draw at most ~250W and an OC'd Ivy Bridge, even with stupid amounts of voltage thrown at it, won't exceed ~200W. 650W is plenty.

leatherwolf, the only change I'd make is getting a better CPU cooler. Something like a Noctua NH-D14/Thermalright Silver Arrow or if you're worried about size/clearance issues, the Coolermaster TPC-812.
 
Kannkor

Kannkor

Ogre
macker0407 said:
leatherwolf, the only change I'd make is getting a better CPU cooler. Something like a Noctua NH-D14/Thermalright Silver Arrow or if you're worried about size/clearance issues, the Coolermaster TPC-812.
Click to expand...
Macker had directed me to the TPC-812, and I've now switched them all over to it. It's one of the easier ones to install, and has really great cooling.
+1
 
N

nezuld

Active Member
I would also like to add that your monitor resolution also affects things. I run a 30" high rez monitor (2560x1920 if I remember right) and I cannot run more then 9-10 toons without frame rates dropping below my acceptable limit (I7 4ghz, 24g ram, etc), however I can run 12 toons on my laptop with slower processor, less memory but a x1080 display with higher framerate just fine.

just my 2 cents
 
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bob_the_builder

Well-Known Member
Try using ISXBOXER.

It can automatically make your background windows very tiny whist the front screen is full. Helps my FPS greatly
 
L

leatherwolf

Well-Known Member
Hey guys, sorry for the delay in getting back in here to post. Thanks again for the advice, I had a bad board I had to return so I was delayed in building. The 3770k runs so nice with 6 toons, not even a stutter. I love it, and as far as the cooling fans go, I've been sold on Zalman fans for quite a few years, they are real quiet & have always done a superb job for me keeping the temps down. I have not messed with any overclocking as of yet, maybe sometime after the Holidays.
 
U

uiyice

Active Member
Kannkor said:
You should really really aim for 1 eq2 session per virtual core.

An i5 means you should only run 4 sessions.
An i7 means you should only run 8 sessions.

Going above those values, means your core goes from running at 100% (full load) for 1 session, to it running for 2 sessions. That means you instantly get a 50% decrease in performance.

I highly recommend the i7 3770k. If you really need a cheaper option, than an amd8 core, or amd6 core. But the i3770k is (IMO) the best price/performance on the market.
Click to expand...
I can certainly understand liking the 3770K.

Any thoughts on the 3930K instead? I was eyeing it because it has 6 physical cores (12 virtual), and I like the idea of 1 session per physical core, (6 cores, 6 clients). Only 3.2Ghz, but it's said to overlock about as well as the 3930k. Same turbo speed. It's a bit more expensive, but not prohibitively so, and would be a fairly easy choice...

... except, they never made an Ivy Bridge version, the 3930K's still Sandy Bridge technology, a generation behind, a generation slower.

So now I'm idly fussing between the two... Any strong opinions anyone?
 
macker0407

macker0407

Active Member
The performance delta between Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge is fairly minimal(10% is being somewhat generous, the general case is closer to 5%). Ivy Bridge's primary intent was to shift to 22nm+trigate, and bringing a better IGP to the table.

The 3930K is certainly a nice processor and if you have the cooling it'll overclock fairly well(~4.4Ghz is easy enough to achieve on air), but the cooling is very important. It's peak TDP is roughly double that of a standard Ivy Bridge CPU(at standard clocks) and overclocking will just push that further. You also need to keep in mind it's a socket 2011 CPU, so you can't use the same motherboard as you would with a 3770K. The S2011 motherboards generally carry a ~$50 premium over an equivalent S1155 board, and the variety is also somewhat limited. I'd be very surprised if you could get the delta between a S1155 and S2011 based CPU+MB to be under 50%.
 
byaussy

byaussy

Member
I'm running the following system:
i7 3930K at 4.6G
ASUS motherboard P9X79 Deluxe
Liquid Cooling (proc running well below 45c at all times)
16G of Quad-channel Dominator RAM (CMZ16GX3M4X1866C9),
Corsair Force 3 SSD (SATA-6G)
Radeon HD5970 (2GB)

My system absolutely screams on almost any app or game, but I can only reliably get 3 sessions going with decent performance. If I open a 4th session, the bottom just completely drops out, and I'm only getting a few frames per second, even on minimal (raid) settings.

I'm using IXBOXER, all sessions on one display (1920x1200 display). I'm using 1500x1200 for the primary game window, and 420x300 for the other sessions. I've got one processor core assigned to each session (have tried using 2 cores per session with the same result). and have frame rate limiting in ISBOXER set to 30FPS background and 60FPS foreground.

Any clue what I might be missing or overlooking to get such poor performance? I invested a good bit of money upgrading my hardware and expected more. From what I'm seeing others are using for system hardware, and running 6 or even 12 sessions at once, I'm quite sure I'm missing something. I'd really like to be able to do 6 sessions at once, which I would think should be feasable with my setup.

Could it maybe be the resolution I'm using? Is 1500x1200 too much?

Looking for ideas/suggestions, any help is greatly appreciated!
 
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LuranEQ2

Active Member
Did you disable multi-processor support in-game? Other than that, I'm not sure -- I'm able to run 6 sessions on my machine and my processor is slower than yours (an i5 3570). Do you have the game quality settings turned up in every session? I run my main session around about Balanced and deliberately turned all of the quality settings down for the other five sessions (below even extreme performance).

EDIT: Nevermind on the quality thing, I read it then immediately forgot about it -- but check the MP support in-game to be sure. And I run with this:

i5 3570 (no overclock)
32GB RAM
EQ2 is on a mechanical disk, but its texture files are symlinked over to an SSD (Samsung 120GB drive, SATA III)
GTX 660Ti Superclocked+ (3GB)
Screens: 1920x1080 (main) and 1680x1050 (second)
I run the main client in full screen window on the first screen, and the other five tiled at the bottom of the second screen, with space to put a browser window or ACT above it when I feel the need.
 
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byaussy

byaussy

Member
Did not have multi core support turned off in game. I had no idea that would have any effect since I was using ISBOXER and only assigning one CPU per session, but it appears to be better with 4 sessions now. I'll see how it does over time, but it's looking that was the problem.

Thanks for the tip!
 
byaussy

byaussy

Member
Nope, I was mistaken, that didn't fix me. It seemed to run ok for a few minutes, but then my 4 sessiosn at once all slowed to a crawl (around 5-7 FPS each). I exit the 4th session, and the other 3 are flying (near 60/30 foreground/background).
 
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LuranEQ2

Active Member
Is it possible that the multi-core option is still enabled for some of the sessions? I've had issues in the past with settings using ISBoxer's virtual game config files feature. That almost sounds like one of yours had it turned on and when that one started up it went downhill again.

AFAIK ISBoxer just sets an affinity for each session, if EQ tries to use multiple cores you get back into a situation where they're stepping on one another's toes. To be fair the multi-core support in EQ2 isn't that great anyway.

Also out of curiosity, I believe you have a processor with hyperthreading, are you putting the sessions on every other "core" that ISBoxer sees? Core 1 and 2 are actually the same processor core for you, would be better to use for instance 1 and 3 for two sessions.
 
Kannkor

Kannkor

Ogre
LuranEQ2 said:
AFAIK ISBoxer just sets an affinity for each session, if EQ tries to use multiple cores you get back into a situation where they're stepping on one another's toes. To be fair the multi-core support in EQ2 isn't that great anyway.
Click to expand...
^^^ Very correct.

Using any affinity at all, with eq2's multi-core support turned on, is extremely detrimental to your performance.
I wrote a little script that does the same affinity as ISBOXER (I don't use ISBOXER), and I tested it on a few sessions with multicore support on, and I experienced the same type of lag you did.
 
byaussy

byaussy

Member
Yeah I logged them all out and back in, and double-checked to make sure the setting took in all four sessions. I'm using cores 5, 7, 9 and 11, which is one per physical core.

Did a bit more experimenting in the mean time - I can crank the in-game settings way up to quality mode, and still get decent frame rates with only 3 sessions running, but if I add the 4th, even if I have them all cranked down to extreme performance, I get just a few FPS in all 4 sessions.

Out of curiosity, how much RAM should each session be taking up? I'm seeing a big difference between my 4 sessions:

EverQuest2.exe *32 1,608,848k
EverQuest2.exe *32 1,434,692k
EverQuest2.exe *32 1,407,420k
EverQuest2.exe *32 936,108k
 
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byaussy

byaussy

Member
OK, I've had 4 sessions up now for about 20 minutes, and they're all still at full frame rate, so maybe it worked itself out. One thing I did notice, and not sure if it's contributing or not, but if I start 'ogre' from the console, the memory usage for that session goes up by about 10k, but if I click the 'x' on the mini window the 10k stays allocated. I can repeat this over and over (starting and stopping ogre) and it keeps adding 10k every time, but never goes down.

I guess the next step is to rename my scripts directory and try a fresh checkout.
 
byaussy

byaussy

Member
After standing around doing nothing for about 30 minutes, other than stopping and starting ogre a couple times on the first session:

EverQuest2.exe *32 1,650,312k
EverQuest2.exe *32 1,436,428k
EverQuest2.exe *32 1,412,672k
EverQuest2.exe *32 988,736k
 
Kannkor

Kannkor

Ogre
byaussy said:
Radeon HD5970 (2GB)
Click to expand...
ATIs have a memory leak with isxeq2.

There's a lot of calls in ogrebot when it loads, so I wouldn't be surprised if one of them was just increasing the memory leak with ATI cards.

You can turn NoFog off to greatly reduce the memory leak. It's specific to ATI cards, that's why most of us run nvidia.
 
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LuranEQ2

Active Member
I think your memory numbers are fairly normal, just logged mine into the guild hall and got these:

940,084K
937,816K
945,456K
938,276K
1,098,172K
929,944K

That's a pretty sparse T1 hall, one room crammed with amenities I use basically. You'd see more in a larger, more filled zone.
 
byaussy

byaussy

Member
OK, thanks all for the help and tips. It seems to be working for me now, just finished up a harrows run and got through it with no trouble, so I'm going to write it off to a sticky "disable multi-core" setting in one of the sessions that I must have missed.

If the condition recurs, I'll repost here to troubleshoot again.
 
B

bob_the_builder

Well-Known Member
Kannkor said:
^^^ Very correct.

Using any affinity at all, with eq2's multi-core support turned on, is extremely detrimental to your performance.
I wrote a little script that does the same affinity as ISBOXER (I don't use ISBOXER), and I tested it on a few sessions with multicore support on, and I experienced the same type of lag you did.
Click to expand...
Is the script availalbe on SVN? What's the name?

I assume I can open a few EQ2 sessions and then run the script on one of the sessions and the script will set each session with it's own CPU??
 
E

Eyedea

Active Member
I finally bit the bullet and ordered a new system today. Second system I've bought from DigitalStorm and with a 4 year warranty too. Should be able to run all my toons on the desktop now =)

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770K 3.50 GHz (Unlocked CPU) (Quad Core)
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V DELUXE (Intel Z77 Chipset)
System Memory: 16GB DDR3 2133MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series
Power Supply: 800W Corsair GS
Hard Drive Set: 1x (180GB Solid State (By: Intel) (Model: 520 Series)
Video Card(s): 1x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB
Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 2: Digital Storm Vortex 240mm Radiator Liquid CPU Cooler
CPU Boost: Stage 2: Overclock CPU 4.5GHz to 4.8GHz
Warranty: Life-time Expert Customer Care with 4 Year Limited Warranty
 
dtgreer

dtgreer

Member
Piggy backing on an old thread.

I would like to run 12 sessions on one PC and am curious for those people who can run 12 (with good performance) have hardware wise.

Before I rush out and but I would like to see what works for other people.

thanks!
 
wolfppo

wolfppo

Active Member
Specs: Intelll 3770k Processor OC to 4g
Asus Sabertooth Motherboard Z77
Asus GTX680 Video Card OC to 850 mz.
Liquid cooled processor using a H-80 Corsair cooler
1000 Wat. Power Supply (Raidmax R-X)
240 gig SSD(Samsung 830) for the Operating system
2 TB HDD(WD)
Asus BlueRay DVD Writer/Reader
16 gig Domminator memory

Built by me it has a Trooper case.
 

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Kannkor

Kannkor

Ogre
wolfppo said:
Specs: Intelll 3770k Processor OC to 4g
Asus Sabertooth Motherboard Z77
Asus GTX680 Video Card OC to 850 mz.
Liquid cooled processor using a H-80 Corsair cooler
1000 Wat. Power Supply (Raidmax R-X)
240 gig SSD(Samsung 830) for the Operating system
2 TB HDD(WD)
Asus BlueRay DVD Writer/Reader
16 gig Domminator memory

Built by me it has a Trooper case.
Click to expand...
IMO, that's not enough for 12 sessions.

You need 1 eq2 per core. In the above scenario, you have 12 sessions on 8 cores. So 4 of your cores are handling 2 Eq2's.

If you really want a good experience with 12 on 1 system, you need something with 12 cores (One of those i7 six-cores with HT for 12 virtual cores).

For me personally, I use 2x i7 3770k, and run 6 on each.
 
H

Herculezz

ISX Specialist
I run 12 with usually 40-60 FPS on main and 20-30 on the other 11, I do use isboxer and have a one big screen and 11 little ones at 1920x1200 resolution, my PC setup is as follows

CPU: i7 3930k (Don't believe what anyone says this cpu blows the 3770k out of the water, since it has 2 more physical cores and is built off the enthusiast platform, and I have a 2nd pc with the 3770k in it :p)
Ram: 32gb ddr3-1600
HDD: 2-intel 520 ssd in raid 0
Video Card: XFX 7970 GHZ Edition (Might be switching this out for a 680 because my brother has one and it seems to do a bit better than mine.)

That's really all the information that will have any bearing on the performance of this game so there it is. If money is no object there is a 3960x and a 3970x which are truly great cpu's. And the nice thing about the 2011 socket and the sandy-e platform is when ivy-e is released sometime Q2/3 maybe this year you can upgrade the cpu and use same board. just my 21 cents.

I run a full raid running 12 on each pc, and the 4 core 8 thread pc does take a bit of a hit when running 12 kannkor is right!! the 6 core 12 thread pc runs without a hitch, That being said, Running 2 separate pc's to run 6 on each will always net you better performance.
 
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Eyedea

Active Member
jonjones said:
How do you run isboxer and ogerbot at the same time I can't seem to get it to work.
Click to expand...
Have you set up a character set? If so, you have to make sure to go into ISBoxer and set a console key for that character set.

Hope that was what you are looking for...
 
Z

Zigge

Member
Sorry for the necro! But figured instead of making a new thread I would ask here.

This is my computer
Asus P9X79 motherboard
Intel Core i7 3930K 3.2GHz OC to 4GHz
Corsair Hydro H60 (v2)
32GB ram Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz

Now I tried running all 12 of my toons on 1 computer (usually run 6 on my wifes and 6 on mine but she gets grumpy when I occupy her computer for too long :p ), Reading this thread I figured my computer should be able to run 12 toons without any issues at all!

So logged in all toons ran ogre on all instances no issues. Then zoned to Jarsath Wastes then into the x2. Now, when the first toon zoned into JW my fps dropped to 5 fps, so zoning the other ones took forever, and once finally in the x2 I still had 5 fps so it was just unplayable! I got pretty disappointed to say the least,lol.

I did run ogreproc Before doing this and I have that set up as follows:

is1= core 1
is2= core 2
is3= core 3
is4= core 4
is5= core 5
is5= core 6
is6= core 7
is8= core 8
is9= core 9
is10= core 10
is11= core 11
is12= core 12

I have a feeling that I have the processor affinity setup wrong or something? I have disabled the multicore support in eq2 on all instances as well. I read the wiki about the processor locking as well, but tbh I Think I am too dumb to understand it lol. So if anyone have any tips or tricks to help me would be greatly appreciated!
 
Kannkor

Kannkor

Ogre
Zigge said:
Sorry for the necro! But figured instead of making a new thread I would ask here.

This is my computer
Asus P9X79 motherboard
Intel Core i7 3930K 3.2GHz OC to 4GHz
Corsair Hydro H60 (v2)
32GB ram Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz

Now I tried running all 12 of my toons on 1 computer (usually run 6 on my wifes and 6 on mine but she gets grumpy when I occupy her computer for too long :p ), Reading this thread I figured my computer should be able to run 12 toons without any issues at all!

So logged in all toons ran ogre on all instances no issues. Then zoned to Jarsath Wastes then into the x2. Now, when the first toon zoned into JW my fps dropped to 5 fps, so zoning the other ones took forever, and once finally in the x2 I still had 5 fps so it was just unplayable! I got pretty disappointed to say the least,lol.

I did run ogreproc Before doing this and I have that set up as follows:

is1= core 1
is2= core 2
is3= core 3
is4= core 4
is5= core 5
is5= core 6
is6= core 7
is8= core 8
is9= core 9
is10= core 10
is11= core 11
is12= core 12

I have a feeling that I have the processor affinity setup wrong or something? I have disabled the multicore support in eq2 on all instances as well. I read the wiki about the processor locking as well, but tbh I Think I am too dumb to understand it lol. So if anyone have any tips or tricks to help me would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Assuming you don't have is5 listed twice, and no is7... then having is# = core #, where # is the same, there is nothing wrong with that.

I'd double check the multicore support, make sure you're not running any overlays (like act), and the rest should just be CPU speed. You definitely shouldn't be getting that low of fps... I personally don't have any suggestions at this time I can think of.

Are you running multiple monitors?
 
S

Scoops

Active Member
Make sure you enable processor locking too (checkbox at the top of the "ogre proc" dialog), since it defaults to not being checked.
 
Z

Zigge

Member
It is enabled I get the message in the console "process affinity set" and the multicore support is turned off on all the toons.

I tried again today loaded 11 toons into my guild hall pulled out 8 dummies and engaged them. I even had act running as well and no lag at all. BUT once I zone one toon no matter what zone it drops down to 8-10 fps and stays there for some reason.

I did notice that is 10 and 11 doesnt have a hotkey set so when I load my ogre profile on those toons it says ctrl+alt+1, so made me thinking that maybe it somehow puts 3 instances on 1 core? Or is it just a default hotkey? Because if I press ctrl+alt+1 I switch to my tank and not any of the other toons that is on the "same" hotkey
 
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