what lags you most in MMO raids?

[oneofusjustin]

ok here is my question i play MMO's and my system can handle the game fine on ultra high usually 80-100fps but if i get in a 12+man group i start to churn into a slideshow at times scaled back the graphics a bit and same thing... my connection is fios 20meg a second so i know thats not the problem the rest of my system is core 2 duo @4ghz (game doesnt use 4 cores so don't suggest quad) 2 gigs of 1066 ram 8800gt...if uprading oen thing what do you think will help this problem the most?



Moved to PC Gaming.

Super Moderator BFG10K.

 

[Hacp]

ok here is my question i play MMO's and my system can handle the game fine on ultra high usually 80-100fps but if i get in a 12+man group i start to churn into a slideshow at times scaled back the graphics a bit and same thing... my connection is fios 20meg a second so i know thats not the problem the rest of my system is core 2 duo @4ghz (game doesnt use 4 cores so don't suggest quad) 2 gigs of 1066 ram 8800gt...if uprading oen thing what do you think will help this problem the most?

Get an SSD.(only applies for wow)Btw, the game DOES use 4 cores. It if fully multi-threaded. I remember a post where someone using an I7 got way more fps than some guy using a core 2 quad in Dalaran. Same card.

 

[Seero]

ok here is my question i play MMO's and my system can handle the game fine on ultra high usually 80-100fps but if i get in a 12+man group i start to churn into a slideshow at times scaled back the graphics a bit and same thing... my connection is fios 20meg a second so i know thats not the problem the rest of my system is core 2 duo @4ghz (game doesnt use 4 cores so don't suggest quad) 2 gigs of 1066 ram 8800gt...if uprading oen thing what do you think will help this problem the most?

The FSB design is the cause of the lag. Both network and HDD read shares the same bus, controlled by South Bridge, so if data isn't in RAM, lag starts to arise. Remember, the use of page files means things in memory may be off loaded to hard drives. Also, during raid, a lot of small read is required, combined with the network traffic and you will experience lag regardless of what video card you are using.

Note that the bus is reserved from the time a request is sent to reply is received. That means Network data can't be sent through cpu during a single read. It is worst if your HDD is fragmented.

Try to disable page file and turn off roll back through control panel, then reboot and defragment your HDD. After that re-enable page files to set min and max to 4096 to avoid creating fraqmented page files. You should see improvement after that.

The remedy to this is SSD, 3Gb ram or more, and a 64 bit OS. 64 bit OS allows all 32 bit games to run without the need to page if there is enough physical memory. SSD reduces the mini wait due to respond time, and no 32 bit games use more than 2Gb of memory.

 

[ScorcherDarkly]

Get an SSD.(only applies for wow)Btw, the game DOES use 4 cores. It if fully multi-threaded. I remember a post where someone using an I7 got way more fps than some guy using a core 2 quad in Dalaran. Same card.

He's not playing WoW, sounds like LotRO from the group size. There is more than one MMO out there . I have no idea how that game is threaded. More RAM and a faster hard drive (SSD) will definitely make things run smoother.

 

[soccerballtux]

The FSB design is the cause of the lag. Both network and HDD read shares the same bus, controlled by South Bridge, so if data isn't in RAM, lag starts to arise. Remember, the use of page files means things in memory may be off loaded to hard drives. Also, during raid, a lot of small read is required, combined with the network traffic and you will experience lag regardless of what video card you are using.

Note that the bus is reserved from the time a request is sent to reply is received. That means Network data can't be sent through cpu during a single read. It is worst if your HDD is fragmented.

Try to disable page file and turn off roll back through control panel, then reboot and defragment your HDD. After that re-enable page files to set min and max to 4096 to avoid creating fraqmented page files. You should see improvement after that.

The remedy to this is SSD, 3Gb ram or more, and a 64 bit OS. 64 bit OS allows all 32 bit games to run without the need to page if there is enough physical memory. SSD reduces the mini wait due to respond time, and no 32 bit games use more than 2Gb of memory.

I don't buy it. In a raid, all the information is loaded up. Character textures, attacks, etc. Game doesn't have to go the harddrive NEARLY that much. Certainly not enough to make any system drag like that-- it would have to be hitting the harddrive CONSTANTLY and if it were we'd hear it grinding.

More than likely it's a poorly coded game engine + not having a quad. When edit the config file in WoW to make it run on 4 cores it runs a lot better. OP might see if there is a setting he could manually change in the engine, like there is with WoW, that would enable for quad cores.
What CPU is he running? e8400? Surely other people have this problem if the game will not use more than 2 threads.

 

[*kjm]

He's not playing WoW, sounds like LotRO from the group size. There is more than one MMO out there . I have no idea how that game is threaded. More RAM and a faster hard drive (SSD) will definitely make things run smoother.

I think you hit the nail on the head...... if it is LOTRO more RAM and and SSD and maybe a video card bump will nail it for them.

 

[Sylvanas]

Get an SSD.(only applies for wow)Btw, the game DOES use 4 cores. It if fully multi-threaded. I remember a post where someone using an I7 got way more fps than some guy using a core 2 quad in Dalaran. Same card.

WoW is not Multithreaded for 4 cores, not even close. Blizzard say it makes use of 2 cores at the most. The thread which you remeber was about a variable you can change which allows the game to 'see' more than 2 cores available- this does not mean it uses 2-8 cores.

Most MMO's are horrible CPU limited and comparative to their fps counterparts poorly coded. The best bet to increase performance is to upgrade CPU/RAM or get an SSD. The biggest difference for me has been the SSD.

 

[Binky]

Spell detail.

 

[Kuzi]

The WOW engine was created about 7 years ago when games supported only one thread. If you would get an FPS game engine like say the unreal/doom/far cry engine and use that engine to build a huge MMO world with tens or hundreds of people on screen at the same time, then you would get slow downs too. Maybe even worse than what you get now from Blizzard's engine.

Even with lots of RAM and an SSD in some areas you may get FPS drops, because the CPU is overloaded. It's true there is lots of room for improvement and to optimize the engines to run many more threads. Maybe in the future with newer engines running on powerful CPUs like Sandybridge and Bulldozer, this problem with MMO's may be less noticeable or disappear completely.

Spell detail.

Yeah spell detail and shadows create a huge overhead when you have many people on screen.

 

[Aikouka]

I think my video card is my weakest link. I find that when I get tons of people in Dalaran (talking about WoW of course), it just gets really, really bad. I also use two monitors at once, so that hurts it.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

I'd say that in my game, the spells are very intensive on the shaders, so try turning spell effects down. Also, have you tried lowering view distance? Less things to render at once.

Edit: Oh, try doing a naked run (turn off display of armor).

 

[Sureshot324]

WoW is not Multithreaded for 4 cores, not even close. Blizzard say it makes use of 2 cores at the most. The thread which you remeber was about a variable you can change which allows the game to 'see' more than 2 cores available- this does not mean it uses 2-8 cores.

Most MMO's are horrible CPU limited and comparative to their fps counterparts poorly coded. The best bet to increase performance is to upgrade CPU/RAM or get an SSD. The biggest difference for me has been the SSD.

Poorly coded Wow is not. Blizzard has been continuously updating the engine since the game was released. Considering how much money they make on it, it's well worth it for them to squeeze every bit of efficiency they can out of it.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Considering how much money they make on it, it's well worth it for them to squeeze every bit of efficiency they can out of it.

I don't know anything about WoW, but you may be interested to hear that this often works exactly opposite from how you might think it would work. Companies that have a killer product have less incentive to differentiate themselves and so often cut costs instead of investing in additional improvements. While this has been dubbed the iPhone curse recently, it actually extends as far as back as we've been keeping economic data.

 

[Elcs]

This thread would benefit greatly from the OP mentioning what game he/she is having issues with.

From the sounds of the specs it doesn't sound too much like LoTRO. That game is a beast graphically and chews up cards quite readily. Ultra High would require more horsepower than an 8800GT.

In Fallen Earth during the earlier days (I played the first two months of official launch) they had an issue whereby the game would poll the HDD for a sequence of many micro reads for one or two certain files which often crippled performance entirely for a period of time. This typically happened around the busy town areas where there were many people.

One solution which worked extremely well under Vista 64 and 7 64 was to index the game folder. This reduced the issue by a significant proportion with many users experiencing a 30-50% increase in FPS and smoothness of play. Once this had been identified I know Icarus looked into reducing some of that reading or staging it out better.

I would suggest that would be of some help, to specifically index the game folder.

Typically, MMO's are CPU and RAM heavy with heavier HDD usage than most other games

 

[tranceport]

RAM -> Video -> CPU -> HDD

 

[exar333]

More RAM, more CPU power, and a better GPU would help a lot. At a mimimum, upgrade to 4GB and get a 4870/4890/GTX260 or better GPU. A quad and SSD wouldn't hurt, but RAM and GPU would be key.

 

[xCxStylex]

From what I read, I find that the CPU part, surprisingly, is true.

If you think your raiding is bad, try playing Aion with anywhere from as few as 30 vs 30 up to... 80 vs 150.

Even with character rendering disabled (all you see are names), most people still only get 10-20 fps.

Most MMO's are horrible CPU limited and comparative to their fps counterparts poorly coded. The best bet to increase performance is to upgrade CPU/RAM or get an SSD. The biggest difference for me has been the SSD.

 

[Modelworks]

It is all in the engine design.
If they intend to have 20 people on screen then they need to up the ram requirements so accessing storage is not required. You cache character and texture data and leave things like menu options in storage. The problem is they want the games to appeal to the masses and that means aiming for the middle of the pack for hardware.

If you want to do 20 people on screen in 720p resolution and not have it turn to a slide show you need about 100MB per character to store their textures, the animations, and any weapons and effects. So that is 2GB just for the character data. Add in the rest of the game and you could easily consume 4GB or more. If you have hardware requirements like that then you alienate a large number of gamers. You can squeeze more into less by lowering the quality of the characters but that also puts people off.

What people want is 60fps at 1080p resolutions with 50 players on screen and all of it to run on 2GB of ram with a 2 year old video card and it just is not possible , I laugh when I see a developer promise things like that.

 

[Modelworks]

Poorly coded Wow is not. Blizzard has been continuously updating the engine since the game was released. Considering how much money they make on it, it's well worth it for them to squeeze every bit of efficiency they can out of it.

It isn't that it is poorly coded , it is that they can't make use of new hardware much without hurting the customer base. The game engine is old and was designed for older hardware, many still use that same hardware so going forward you have to maintain compatibility. That means not being able to use the latest hardware to its fullest.

 

[Aikouka]

One thing to be wary of in WoW is add-ons. I know, for example, that I had to configure my scrolling combat text add-on to ignore my Shaman's Feral Hunt heal as it literally spammed up my screen. I also had to tell it to ignore the new Arcane Mage buff "Arcane Empowerment", because if you have multiple arcane mages, they will overwrite each other and you'll have a constant spam of "-Arcane Empowerment" and "+Arcane Empowerment".

 

[StrangerGuy]

"what lags you most in MMO raids?"

Blizzard raid servers duh. Half of my 25m raid will get disconnected when we start the Thorim event.

 

[Sylvanas]

Poorly coded Wow is not. Blizzard has been continuously updating the engine since the game was released. Considering how much money they make on it, it's well worth it for them to squeeze every bit of efficiency they can out of it.

Because they intermittently update the engine every 2-3 years for each expansion doesn't mean it's not poorly coded. You can go from a 8800GT to a 5870 and see little to no difference in FPS in many environments (cities, raids, questing with large draw distances). It does not make full use of 2 cores let alone 4 cores and can run like a dog even on a high end system. It's simply not as good as it could be, behind the times and therefore poorly coded to take advantage of todays PCs.

Now, as you pointed out given Blizzard sits atop a gold mine you'd think they'd have the resources to improve performance and take advantage of multicore CPUs but that has not happened and we are stuck with what we have now. The potential is there, by using the SetAffinity tweak mentioned earlier in the thread I gained 10fps avg in Dal which proves there is indeed a bottleneck in the use of CPU resources somewhere.

It isn't that it is poorly coded , it is that they can't make use of new hardware much without hurting the customer base. The game engine is old and was designed for older hardware, many still use that same hardware so going forward you have to maintain compatibility. That means not being able to use the latest hardware to its fullest.

Because the engine is old does not mean you cannot extend what they have now (about 2 cores in use) to proper multicore support, adding such things does not reduce compatibility.

 

[oneofusjustin]

sounds like LotRO from the group size.

wow... your good that was almost creepy! yes the game is lotro running on xp64... do turn off ulta high and post processing as well as shadows in raids to take a massive load off the card... and why are people telling me to get a quad 98% of games only use 2 cores max