Running two accounts windowed - Best Performance tips, pls

[PadreMM]

Lo,

Just wondered if anyone else tried to run two accounts of DAoC yesterday on same PC in windowed mode and if you have any feed back?

What I'm especially looking for is tips as how to get the best performance out of your machine...

I noticed that my back ground account was lagging like hell (think I'll fix that by changing the PC configuration and how the CPU resources should be prioritised, using two separate folders for the two accounts to run from etc.)

Cheers

 

[Deadmanwalking]

1) Why u want to run such an ...... interesting game twice?
2) System Specs and OS?

Connection?

 

[Danya]

Yes, the only solution I could come up with for the second copy lagging was an extra cpu. It worked like a charm though.

 

[edoa]

Well my problem

Maybe someone can help me with my problem. I got a quite good computer and all:

768 DDR RAM
g4 ti4600 128 DDR RAM
AMD Athon 2,2 Ghz+
win XP

so when I try to put up 2 instances the first one is smooth but the second one is sooo slow and the computer turns off adn start over as soon I as I logs in with the second(dont got enough memory I guess).

So I tough ok yeah mayeb its very very demanding but then my friend that got:

1,7 Ghz Duron
512 DDR RAM
g4 MX
win 2k

can do this without any problem and he acctualy runs the window mode smoother then me(think DAOX was much better then the official).

So is it WIN XP that is crap or what?

BTW my internet connection is 5 times faster then his.

 

[Meatballs]

Run them in the lowest resolution you can. Turn down all the graphical options as low as they can go.

Try downloading: http://www.xmlsp.com/pview/prcview.htm

and try forcing the background game with a higher priority. Don't know if it works (havn't even bothered trying it myself 4 computers ) because the game seems to change it's priority itself when it loses focus.

 

[PadreMM]

Well my current config is as follows... bottle neck at the moment till I can aford a new one is the CPU...

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Ram: 2*500Mb Kingston PC3200 DDR
GFX: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
O/S: WinXP

Noticed the other night that if running (actually running in game) with one char stuck to the other and if I quickly alt+tab between the two accounts the lag with whichever gets in the background isn't that bad..

Now, I haven't had time to fidle around that much yet, and I'm still new to WinXP and last time I had a look around I couldn't find the option to decrease the top applications priority for CPU process.... but after noticing that the quick alt+tab between the accounts redused the lag I have a feeling that this might well be the issue.

 

[PadreMM]

Ok, managed to change the priority to give a bit more processing to the background applications. This caused the front application to have slight lag (just noticable), while the background application is running much better, and when switching between chars there's no real delay when wanting to perform an action.

For example when I play my Infil and Cleric in a group I can quickly switch from Infil to Cleric, get a stun off and a heal as a followup action. Before he has even started on the heal I'm back on the infil styling away. Before I changed the way the processor prioritises which application to work on, this wasn't possible at all as when I switch account it just took too long for it to catch up with the "reality".

Next thing I'm gonna do is just to get rid of all useless background applications that are running. This should also improve the performance quite a bit.

<edit: forgot to mention that the PC overheated at one point though... I'll have to get a better fan I suppose, at least before the summer heat is here>

Cheers,
Padre

 

[old.moriath]

ok good for you now give location of prioritization changer

 

[PadreMM]

Hmmm, on windows xp .... bah, can't remember on top of my head.. but I'm a n00b that actually use the "help" and think I searched for with the key word "background" ...

will edit this when I get home and give a more straight forward answer

 

[Danya]

On xp/2k, right click your task bar and select task manager, all your programs are listed there, you can then right-click game.dll and change the priority.

BTW meatballs the game doesn't loose priority when it looses focus per se, it's just anything set to "normal" priority gets a boost by default from windows when it gains focus to increase responsiveness to the user.