Looking for setup-specific advice

[MarcAntony]

Hi guys,

I hope you don’t mind my making a thread for this. All I can say is I am a huge forum reader (member of 25 or so forums – almost all PC/tech related), and generally teach myself everything, but have no MIS degree or any background in the stuff.

What I am really wondering is what my optimal setup and configuration should be, given my PC specs and the game I play. I’ve read so much on this subject and so much of it contradicts itself and I’ve gotten to the point where I have not the knowledge or the free time to figure it out on my own, so I found this place and thought I’d just ask you guys what you’d do. So the game I play is wow.

PC Specs:

Q9550 @ 3.40
EVGA 780i SLI
4GB Gskill 800mhz (4-4-4-10)
x2 9800GTX+ SLI
x2 WD Raptors (74GB x 2) Raid 0
500GB Seagate (7,200rpm)
1TB External (5,000 rpm)
Samsung Syncmaster T240 (1900x1200)

Windows Vista Ultimate x64

Configuration details:

- WoW and OS both run on the C: (which is the two Raptors in raid 0)
- I record to the 500GB drive which has nothing (and I mean nothing) on it. Its nor partitioned or anything. Just bare, open drive.
- I set WoW to run on cores 2,3 and have Fraps use 0,1.
- I also take most other programs and have them use 0,1 as well leaving wow with total access to the last two cores
- wow’s in-game settings are set to ultra (8x Multi) with shadows turned down. I’ve then gone into the NVCP and set sampling rates to 16x (it’s the only way to make wow visually impressive)

- Frapsing at full-size and 30fps – no sound

So typically, when raiding I can maintain around 75-30fps in Ulduar. Most fights I can stay around 45-50, but some that are extremely action-packed it will get down to low 30s. When I Fraps outside of raid, I can easily maintain 30fps. But in raid I start Fraps before the pull and am at a steady 30fps and then drop down to as low as 15fps in combat. This is simply too low. I could live with 25, but not 15. So with there being sooooo many variables and different configuration combos, I’ve become overwhelmed in trying to figure out what to do. And oh, btw, I will be upgrading to a GTX275 FTW next week, but we’re set up to take out some very key achievements this week and the guild is expecting their movies. I’ve been looking to get rid of SLI for some time since all I play is wow and it just turns the second card into a case heater.

But the crazy thing is, back in the day before my “retirement” from wow, I could Fraps full-size (1680x1050 then) at 30fps and never drop below 25. I was using XP, with a P4 3.2, 7900GTO, and a single 250GB HDD. So I don’t really know what is bottlenecking here. I know wow is an extremely CPU intensive game, but a Q9550 @ 3.400….should be a-ok I would think. Especially considering the old P4 could do it.

Any advice/recommendations would be highly appreciated and I’ll follow anything to a T. Thanks peeps

[frapsforum.com]

I think it might be a limit on how much data you're writing to the harddrive. I can't get above 30ish or so at that resolution on a system with much lower specs in WoW, but the game is still somewhat playable.

Two cards in SLI is probably serious overkill for WoW, and I have heard of people having serious framerate issues with that setup. You might try running with a single card and see if performance improves. Also, if you're running any CPU intensive addons (recount comes to mind) you may want to try disabling those as well.

Two drives in raid 0 might increase write performance some, and switching your OS to the single drive could be an option if you're trying to squeeze out some extra frames to keep raiding performance at an acceptable level.

Have you tried letting the system work out which cores should be getting the load of applications?

The best suggestion I can give you is probably one you don't want to hear. But one of the main people in our guild that published boss kill videos for my World of Warcraft guild would just set up his UI in the native resolution that he wanted to publish the video in. 1280x720 isn't a too terrible resolution to raid at. As far as I know, for the best results with h.264 video, you want to have footage with a resolution that can be divided by 16. You could also do 1680x1050, and when you produce the movie just crop 70 pixels from the top or bottom (or split and do both)

I wish someone with a decent idea on how to test bottlenecks of a system would show some data on what values each component of a system has in relation to fraps performance, and scale it with the resolution you are recording at. The problem is there is so much variation in it. Some games are GPU bound, others are very demanding on the CPU. The bottleneck is unique for each game. Still, if this forum catches on it will be a very good centralized location for users of it to compare system specifications with each other to see what setup gets the best results for specific applications.

[MarcAntony]

Well, you're right, that wasn't what I wanted to hear =p But sometimes thats the best advice.

I'll give it a shot and letchya know how it goes. And I am changing the 2 9800's out for a single GTX275 FTW. I was actually able to sell the 9800's for the same cost of a 275ftw and I am expecting the system to be a good bit lighter (and cooler) after doing so.
And yes, I am soooo hoping this forum catches on. Its been needed for a long time. I'll be sure and link it any chance I get.

Gracias

[MarcAntony]

Ok, status report. We can rule out the GPU(s) from the equation. I pulled the 2x 9800s out and installed a new GTX275 FTW and Frapsing is precisely the same.

I learned that my timings (4.4.4.10), which although were tightened significantly, weren't optimal and changed them to 4.4.3.14 = Frapsing the same.

So basically what I'm doing is saving the worst two options for very very last. 1) Changing to a lower resolution and 2) moving the entire install to the 500GB E: to allow for Frapsing to the Raid 0 Raptors.

I saw were you said you wish someone would do some real testing with Fraps and man oh man I could not agree more. I mean, with my setup, it makes no sense to see a 75% reduction in performance while Frapsing. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a Vista thing somehow. Cause like another fellow in this forum, I used to Fraps on a POS and had better success than I do with a oc'ed quad-core, 4 hdds including a dedicated 7,200rpm drive solely for Frapsing, and 4GB of oc'ed performance RAM. And btw, I'm using a 1,000 Corsair PSU, so that's not it either (I'd seen a similar case somewhere where the fella was using a 450w and when Frapsing his psu would all but shut down).

2 PCs ago, I was using a P4 3.06ghz + 2GB of regular Corsair RAM + a single 320GB 7,200rpm drive and I could Fraps just fine. Now, at the time I was on a 1680x1050 screen, but the slight increase in resolution shouldn't account for the massive upgrade in hardware. That old PC still has wow on it and gets 1/5 the framerate in normal situations, but Frapsing doesn't change the fps at all. If it was 20fps, it stays at 18.....


I'm almost tempted to install XP, wow, & fraps on a separate partition on this machine and test it myself, but with my current schedule, I'd never have time to do all that. I'd love to see someone with a similar setup try it tho.

So I'll keep plugging and letchya know if anything breaks the case. Oh, btw, I had one person (not sure if I believe them or not) say that they had similar problems when using 4GB of RAM in Vista and after going to 8GB, they were able to Fraps just fine. So, since I'd much rather spend $60 on another 4GB set of this RAM than some of the other alternatives in front of me, I decided to go that route and see if that makes a difference. The new RAM arrived today, so I'll report back tomorrow.

(But common sense says that adding 4GB of RAM won't have sh_t to do with sh_t) :rolleyes:

[frapsforum.com]

Just to be sure, the drive you are recording the fraps footage to isn't marked to allow compression or indexing?

Also, my WoW guild's raid leader has lower specs than your machine I believe, and can record at full resolution with almost no slowdown. I've still not figured out what he is doing differently.

http://www.filefront.com/13961423/AlgMovie.mp4/

[MarcAntony]

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrreakthrough!!!! Score 1 for the Frapsforum :D

Ok, at this point it can still be one of two things I did differently tonight. First, I set a different processAffinityMask setting (14), which allows wow to run on cores 1,2,3 which leaves Windows, Vent, and Fraps to run on Core 0. I'm inclined, however, to believe this was not what made the difference.

I saw your post about indezxing and compression and I instantly thought "good idea, but I've already done that". But it got me to thinking about that 500GB HDD that is capturing. I started thinking maybe I should make a smaller partition for the captures to go into? Hmmmm....nahhh

And then I remembered that when I reinstalled Vista not too long ago I never went back in and enabled "Enable advanced performance" under Write Caching. Write Caching was enabled on the drive, but the extra option under it for adv performance was not. I enabled it just before logging in and Frapsed Freya HM at a solid 30fps, 1900x1200, full blast ultra, etc.

Freya HM is about as tough as it gets on a system with sooo many textures in such a confined space, so I'm feeling pretty darn good about now.

If you could, ask your guildie to check and see if those options are enabled for his drive. If so, that may go a long way to explaining some of this. And thanks so much for your help. Really can't tell you how great this forum is.

[frapsforum.com]

how exactly do you get to that screen in Vista for anyone else that wants to try it?

I am running windows 7 RC at the moment, and just right clicking on the drive and clicking properties won't get you there.

I did the following:


Start
Rightclick 'computer' > manage
In the left column: Storage > Disk Management
Rightclick on the fraps harddrive > properties
'Hardware' Tab > Select Drive again > Properties Button
Policies Tab


37

My Write Caching was already selected, the "Turn off Windows write-cache..." option was not. I have alright performance, but it still gets choppy at times. I think moving to a quad core CPU would help out a bit there since WoW is such a CPU intensive game.

[MarcAntony]

I think that 2nd option is the same thing, its just been renamed in W7. Because advanced performance has the same warnings - "To prevent data loss, do not enable this option unless you have a backup power supply"

So I guess that "Advanced Performance" as listed in Windows Vista is actually disabling buffer flushing. I'll be honest and say that I don't really know what this is, but I'm about to Google it and find out.

Whatever it was - there's no question my Frapsing was vastly improved last night. There were no hitches, no slow dows, nothing. The last time I tried to Fraps Freya, I often had a hitch when rapidly switching back and forth between targets (Roots, Trio, Eonar's Gift, etc).

I Fraps'ed all 5 attempts btw. Seriously, the first couple attempts, I had this oh sh*t moment where I thought I wasn't Frapsing because the game was playing so smooth :)


http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/enable-advanced-performance-on-your-hard-drive/

And check out this thread about it - some first hand accounts to its possible effects:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1159942

[MarcAntony]

This seems to be a more technical summary of what write-caching does in general. Its not about the advanced performance though.

But if I am reading this correctly, then it would seem that Frapsing would not stand to gain much from write-caching since I would assume its a big, long write blocks.

Write-Caching (http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/perf/int/ccWrite-c.html)

Ehh, what do I know?


I didn't do any Frapsing last night, but the funny thing is, my FPS is currently lower (5-10fps lower than normal) with the pAM setting of 14 and this advanced performance checked, but the game honestly couldn't run any smoother. Last night I pulled almost 17kdps on Hodir as a Warlock . And then again, it could just be in my head :D

But the Frapsing is substantially improved. The Fraps counter was reading a steady 31/32 from start to finish wheras usually it stays in the 15-22 range.

[frapsforum.com]

This is good stuff. If anyone else is having problems and the above option changes impact things (for better or worse) it would be good to hear about it in this thread.

[MarcAntony]

Hey hey hey!

I'm back. So I've been crazy busy lately and haven't had much time to mess with this, but wanted to say that last night I tried to go back to the configuration of having WoW run on cores 2,3 and Fraps on Core 1. I didn't change anything else. I figured Windows would primarily use Core 0 for its applications and Vent. Sans Frapsing, this config gives me (by a small margin) the highest fps in game.

But when I began Fraps'ing General Vezax HM, I had really low FPS (back down to 15-18 again) and stuttering. So I don't have all the answers yet, but I have concluded that the Advanced Performance does help, but I now believe that my problem, specifically, was mostly related to CPU usage.

I have a few more configurations I can try yet. But there is no question that having wow on cores 1,2,3 and Fraps on Core 0 provides vastly improved performance on my system. The other thing of note is the level of detail I play in wow. I think I've come to the realization that playing on settings that I play on (16x sampling rates, 1900x1200, ultra in-game) will bring any system to its knees unless you allocate the resource usage properly.

I'm considering dropping my sampling rates to 4x when Frapsing as well and see if that makes a difference. Will report back

[MarcAntony]

I do have one question, unrelated, however. I don't want to make a new thread for it.

When I'm Fraps'ing and recording sounds, I get everyone's voice over vent recorded but my own. Anyone seent his before?

[frapsforum.com]

your voice would be input, not output so unless you set your mic to feed out into your speakers when you talk (which would be really confusing to hear) you won't hear yourself. Ventrilo has an option to record conversations though, and also output as a wav file when you finish. That should include your voice unless you have ventrilo set to not record yourself.

[MarcAntony]

your voice would be input, not output so unless you set your mic to feed out into your speakers when you talk (which would be really confusing to hear) you won't hear yourself. Ventrilo has an option to record conversations though, and also output as a wav file when you finish. That should include your voice unless you have ventrilo set to not record yourself.

Hmmm.....the one setting I changed in Fraps was instead of Best Input, I used the other setting (can't recall the two descriptions atm) and that recorded no game sounds, no other people’s voices, but just mine =p. So it would be a minute of silence and then I call a command out to the raid back to silence, etc.

Oh well, its not a big deal.

I have another question for you now lol. I may have mentioned that even though I’m the Frapser, I don’t have time to edit the Fraps into worthwhile movies. I am so limited on freetime its not even funny (hence my going weeks in between responses here). So what I’ve been doing is recording our achievements and using that Staxrip to convert to h264 and laying a song or two over top and publishing it as “Unedited…….”, so my guild can watch it but people don’t think the movies are supposed to be something they’re not.

Now recently, further cementing this setup is my Sony Vegas will no longer work. Everytime I launch it, I get an AppCrash and I’ve even completely uninstalled it, cleaned the registry, and reinstalled and it still happens. But Staxrip works fine.

So what I was wondering was if I could set up a team effort for making our movies. I record, then use Staxrip to convert and add music, and then upload that file to a filehost and have another guildie download it and work with it. Will the staxrip h264 work with Vegas Pro or iMovie?

And if so, will it hurt the playback quality to have it rendered twice? If so, is there anything we could do to limit the loss of image quality due to double conversion/compression?

[frapsforum.com]

Will the staxrip h264 work with Vegas Pro or iMovie?


Probably, but you might get unexpected results. The best input to put into vegas that I've found so far is lagarith encoded footage. This is, sadly, also larger than a fraps file itself :/

And if so, will it hurt the playback quality to have it rendered twice? Yes. But I do it as well when my users produce a fraps movie and stick it up on filefront. I download the file and re-encode/resize for streaming off our website. This isn't something you're going to get an academy award for, so as long as it looks "good" nobody should care.


If so, is there anything we could do to limit the loss of image quality due to double conversion/compression?If any of your buddies are web tech savvy you could set up a private torrent tracker to trade the large fraps files between each other. It would take time to upload obviously, unless you are on a very good upload speed connection. But if 3 or more people are wanting to edit these things then that would be a very efficient way of transferring the files to each other.

[MarcAntony]

Great info per usual

Gracias Senior