Trying to increase number of bots, need some help from experienced botters

[declensionsone]

So sometime ago I built a computer just for botting, which I originally thought would be able to run at least 12, however I'm currently stuck at 8 bots before fps starts to suffer and drops my gph to like 200k. Currently still working out various issues but my GPH is shit, around 300k. Support is nonexistent for the issues I'm having so there's no chance of me ever getting over 400k gph, i'm figuring people who are getting 500k gph aren't using vmware, or running only a few bots. I realize vmware may be the cause for poor gaming/fps performance, but I must take precautions here. Some time ago I purchased gold from a guy who told me he was running 50 bots across two, i7-3930k 6 cores, with isboxer or something. He had only been botting for a week. When I tried to buy gold from him the very next day, no response. Haven't heard from him since. All I can say is I feel his pain. 50 x $35 = ouch

CPU usage jumps around from 50-80% (not even sure if the linux system monitor is accurate with this wild fluctuation) so i'm assuming I just need a better GPU to make things run smoother, when I start up my 8th or 9th bot a fps drop in all VM guests is instantly noticeable. but i heard that vmware doesn't fully utilize a GPU's capabilities so I'll be taking a chance if I do upgrade the GPU.

I would like to double my number of bots because at this rate it will take me some time to break even.

Specs:

i7-3770k (clocked to 4.0 ghz)
noctua dh-14 heatsink, wouldn't try to overclock anymore cus my cpu temp is around 55-65c on load, then again ambient temp is around 32c.
Nvidia GTX 460 1GB
32 GB G.skill ram, 1333)
120gb Vertex 4 OCZ Drive
650w rosewill psu
Linux Mint 13 x64 (VMware workstation 8.0.3)

total cost was about $1000 with tax from newegg (bought the cpu cooler used GPU second-hand. The almost unused GPU cost me $50.

So i'm trying to figure out how to double my current output, i've thought of a few ways that involve spending a bit of money and I'm wondering which route will actually work as intended.

• Should i upgrade the GPU to a gtx 480 or 580, or radeon 6950/6970... or 2x GTX 480 ?
• or upgrade my main computer to 32gb, hoping that it runs bots smoother than my botting comp? (though I don't see why it would, specs are almost identical)
• How about botting on US & EU server at the same time? Though I'm scared that it would raise flags. Is anyone successfully getting away with this?
• Is there a virtualization software with better 3d acceleration?

If anyone has similar, better, or worse system specs and able to run 10+ bots smoothly on VMware I would appreciate the input!

hopefully this thread helps others as well, had some people pm me about setting up vmware but honestly it was a nightmare to even get to this point.. 2-3 weeks of troubleshooting to get everything working half decent
i reinstalled my OS like 5 times trying out diff linux distros lol.
(btw Ubuntu was super fail, kept randomly logging me out and closing all my programs, something to do with the x-server crashing. Windows 7 was fail also, unless you have a really good GPU, the TDR function will kick in and reset your drivers, resulting in black screens in VMware and other graphic freezing issues).

 

[bambam922]

I hope this helps at least a little bit.

Here are my specs.

i5 760 OC to 4.0
Corsair H50 CPU Liquid Cooler
16gb RAM
Radeon HD 6870 2gb
WD 1TB HDD @ 7200 (I know, how bad of me not to use a SSD)
Windows 7 Enterprise
750w Seasonic PSU

If you wanted, you can actually OC your processor a little more. 55-65c on load really isn't that high. When you OC, stress test your settings for an hour. If you don't break 95-100c, you're good.
Personally, I haven't gotten ISBoxer to work although i haven't really messed with it. I think he can run more because the minimum window size can be overridden.

Also, care to explain why you are trying to bot on Linux?
Just get a stripped own version of Windows 7.

I run 4 bots + d3 on one computer (no VM) with chrome and a copy of GW2 and sit around 85-95% CPU load.

You might want to wait until someone who can run that amount of bots can list their specs.
Quit my job so I can't afford anymore upgrades.

 

[declensionsone]

That gives me an idea... currently my d3 clients are all running at 800x600. is there some program I can install to make them run at an even lower resolution? would that help?

edit: omg i'm so dumb.. so I just realized that I can run d3 in fullscreen windowed mode, and vmware can adjust the resolution to 100x100 if I wanted. Gonna try this and report back.

I'll probably wait till winter comes to overclock some more xD.

I have to use vmware or some kind of virtualization, no way I'm going to run 10+ bots from the same IP, that's just asking for it.

Using linux because Win 7 has a TDR function which kept crashing my GPU driver, resulting in black screens in VMware and screen freezing.

My bots are running pretty smooth now in linux, the weird thing is that sometimes there will be fps lag, and sometimes there won't, while running the same # of bots. (i have each client set on 35 max fps). The other weird thing is that while all 8 bots are running, sometimes my cpu usage will sit at 40-50%, and other times at 70-80%. No idea why it fluctuates this much or if the system monitor is inaccurate

edit:

oh , you're playing GW2? add me on there haha. Could use some help, never played a 3D mmo before, confused as shit.

 

[bambam922]

edit:

oh , you're playing GW2? add me on there haha. Could use some help, never played a 3D mmo before, confused as shit.

I actually don't think I'll be paying it too much longer. I got used to WoW a few years ago and GW2 feels extremely slow paced to me.
I started playing at the 3 day headstart and im on level 15.

 

[declensionsone]

hmm.. i tried setting each VM client at a lower resolution, but my cpu usage actually went up to 90%.. wtf? Furthermore, when the profile restarts the d3 client, it reverts back to window mode at 800x600. Any idea how to make it start or stay in "window fullscreened"?

 

[ChuckyEgg]

I actually don't think I'll be paying it too much longer. I got used to WoW a few years ago and GW2 feels extremely slow paced to me.
I started playing at the 3 day headstart and im on level 15.

Damn, I am sooooooo tempted to try it out. I like that it takes time to get things done, much like it was in the early days of WoW, although it took a couple of patches before it went from painful and rewarding to challenging and rewarding.

The only thing is, it's actually sold out on Amazon UK!

Probably a good thing. I'll try and stay away from it for a bit longer.

 

[bambam922]

Damn, I am sooooooo tempted to try it out. I like that it takes time to get things done, much like it was in the early days of WoW, although it took a couple of patches before it went from painful and rewarding to challenging and rewarding.

The only thing is, it's actually sold out on Amazon UK!

Probably a good thing. I'll try and stay away from it for a bit longer.

Sorry for hijacking your thread by the way declensionsone..

But yea. in the starting areas you have to find vistas, points of interest, random activities, and people to help to get your exp. I always ended up being 2-3 levels under the recommended level for "my story" quests.
I don't like the grind. I would much prefer that I would get enough exp in my starting area to keep doing the storyline quests.
And the world is huge. takes forever to get everywhere.

Also back on topic. I got ISBoxer to work. It seems to have lowered my CPU usage by about 10-15%.

 

[arielmz]

Well, first of for the price of that air cooler, u could have a water system...
32gb of ram is a waste even more if not high performance one...
Each d3 + VM + DB here uses less then 700mb...

Have at last u cheked the ssd? Ain't it too much for the buffer?

Well I use 2 corsair neutron gtx series on raid... with a 3930k on water I sure can run 16+ bots here w/o any lag...

 

[declensionsone]

Well, first of for the price of that air cooler, u could have a water system...
32gb of ram is a waste even more if not high performance one...
Each d3 + VM + DB here uses less then 700mb...

Have at last u cheked the ssd? Ain't it too much for the buffer?

Well I use 2 corsair neutron gtx series on raid... with a 3930k on water I sure can run 16+ bots here w/o any lag...

I got the cooler + 6 scythe gentletyphoon fans, a total $200+ value (if brand new). for $80. I don't want a water cooler system, cus if my fan fails, I still have the heat sink to dissipate hot air. What happens if your radiator / pump fails on a water cooler? + too many horror stories of leakage. The day I get a water cooler will be when I can afford to wipe my ass with $20 bills.

32gb isnt a waste, it was on sale for $130. 16gb would have cost me almost the same. There isn't any noticeable difference between 1333 and 1600 ram. Personally each of my VM requires 1600 mb to run without problems. 10 bots puts me at a total of 22 gb ram usage. Furthermore, vmware has this bug where it steals your available ram (no idea where it goes). For example, I'll open up 10 vmware guests. Initial usuage will be 18 GB.. but 24 hours later it will end up being 28 gb. Only way to get this missing ram back is to restart the entire workstation.

checked my SSD...don't understand what you're asking... I got an ssd because of the high IOPS, which is more than enough for botting, i'm not doing any heavy read/writes.

For a botting comp, I don't see why you would need 2 SSD's in raid, that's overkill and a waste of an ssd. I know 3930k can run 20-30 bots, question is, are you running 1 d3 per VM? Also, how are you getting 700 mb? My d3 takes up 1200 mb at least

 

[arielmz]

I got the cooler + 6 scythe gentletyphoon fans, a total $200+ value (if brand new). for $80. I don't want a water cooler system, cus if my fan fails, I still have the heat sink to dissipate hot air. What happens if your radiator / pump fails on a water cooler? + too many horror stories of leakage. The day I get a water cooler will be when I can afford to wipe my ass with $20 bills.

32gb isnt a waste, it was on sale for $130. 16gb would have cost me almost the same. There isn't any noticeable difference between 1333 and 1600 ram. Personally each of my VM requires 1600 mb to run without problems. 10 bots puts me at a total of 22 gb ram usage. Furthermore, vmware has this bug where it steals your available ram (no idea where it goes). For example, I'll open up 10 vmware guests. Initial usuage will be 18 GB.. but 24 hours later it will end up being 28 gb. Only way to get this missing ram back is to restart the entire workstation.

checked my SSD...don't understand what you're asking... I got an ssd because of the high IOPS, which is more than enough for botting, i'm not doing any heavy read/writes.

For a botting comp, I don't see why you would need 2 SSD's in raid, that's overkill and a waste of an ssd. I know 3930k can run 20-30 bots, question is, are you running 1 d3 per VM? Also, how are you getting 700 mb? My d3 takes up 1200 mb at least

Well, didn't had any problem so far with waters ^^, although mine are home made...

Just found this chart...


When we talk about low cas ram, there's a big diff... a 1333 vs a 1600 cas 7... is about 30%...

About the ssd... the neutron gtx has as Controller a Link A Media Devices LM87800 that works super dup over servers mobos... makes the vertex 4 looks a baby... but well on the other hand on a common mobo will run slow then the vertex

Yeah 1 d3 per vm. I actually don't run only d3 here... but 1 game per VM yeah...
Well if ur running 10 systems + d3 + 10 db then u have some heavy read/write...

No idea why the ram diff... prob the whole set up... proc/mobo/low cas ram/raid ssd...

About the VMware... its not a bug...

Go to tab "Edit">"Preferences">"Memory"...

 

[ezpwnd]

you can use a relogger like drelog to make the size of your d3 windows smaller. you will have to use a relogger anyway if you want to start running alot of bots.

also, the limit factor in your rig is the gpu for sure. not exactly the gpu but its vram. 1gb is too few to run more. im running 9 clients and its @ 1.5gb out of 2gb vram if i remember correctly. as soon as all the vram is used up fps will seriously drop.

 

[warbux]

Alright, I am speaking from experience here. I owned a web hosting company for several years and do a lot of virtualization. Your CPU usage is fine. It is going to go up and down depending on the load from each of your VMs. These guys who are saying it only takes 700 MB of RAM are not running VMs. A stripped down windows 7 load will take 400 MB of RAM. If you really want to run that many bots on VM Ware you are going to need to invest in either a dual processor machine or a bigger processor. Your best bet is to get the graphics card in there taking some of the load off of the rest of your hardware. With VMware workstation you cannot do this. What I suggest is switching to windows 2008 R2 and installing Hyper-V. Use the remoteFX feature and it will bring that graphics card into play. Windows 2008 wont use the graphics card at all so you dont have to worry about it crashing your host machine plus Hyper-V has way less overhead than workstation and it automatically assigns unique mac addresses to each client which will help you stay under the radar. Hyper-V is really a dream to use.

P.S make sure your bios is setup for virtual machines. The issue your going to face is that your hardware is not really made for hardcore Virtualization. IE your RAM is not ECC Registered Unbuffered RAM. Meaning if one VM ends up doing something that it shouldnt to your RAM all of your VMs are going to feel the effects. If you would have purchased a SuperMicro server chassis like this one

Supermicro | Products | SuperWorkstation | 4U | 7046A-3

you could be up and running right now without any issues

P.S.S
The guys who are saying its your GPU are running their bots all on 1 instance of Windows 7 and not on VMware (maybe ISBoxer is different) .

 

[shaliuno]

(removed)

 

[arielmz]

Alright, I am speaking from experience here. I owned a web hosting company for several years and do a lot of virtualization. Your CPU usage is fine. It is going to go up and down depending on the load from each of your VMs. These guys who are saying it only takes 700 MB of RAM are not running VMs. A stripped down windows 7 load will take 400 MB of RAM. If you really want to run that many bots on VM Ware you are going to need to invest in either a dual processor machine or a bigger processor. Your best bet is to get the graphics card in there taking some of the load off of the rest of your hardware. With VMware workstation you cannot do this. What I suggest is switching to windows 2008 R2 and installing Hyper-V. Use the remoteFX feature and it will bring that graphics card into play. Windows 2008 wont use the graphics card at all so you dont have to worry about it crashing your host machine plus Hyper-V has way less overhead than workstation and it automatically assigns unique mac addresses to each client which will help you stay under the radar. Hyper-V is really a dream to use.

P.S make sure your bios is setup for virtual machines. The issue your going to face is that your hardware is not really made for hardcore Virtualization. IE your RAM is not ECC Registered Unbuffered RAM. Meaning if one VM ends up doing something that it shouldnt to your RAM all of your VMs are going to feel the effects. If you would have purchased a SuperMicro server chassis like this one

Supermicro | Products | SuperWorkstation | 4U | 7046A-3

you could be up and running right now without any issues

P.S.S
The guys who are saying its your GPU are running their bots all on 1 instance of Windows 7 and not on VMware (maybe ISBoxer is different) .

Well, the VMware 9 does use a bit of gpu... but it still a virtualization for data transfer(cloud) and not really graphic processing, but there are program that are super b at that like the hyper-x... so that's why I didn't say a word about the vga... since if hes using VM... will be pretty much end up a waste of money on an upgrade... and if he wanna move to a server system will take him at last the price of a new system...

Well d3 uses 500mb(600mb on battle), demonbuddy 100mb, w7 bus bout 100-150m, so even if I like, I can't get to 1gb... and I'm not running on lowest setup.. fps still fine at 60+...


Each running a game + bot (not d3) but still as large/process taking as...

The biggest problem would be, that VMware, uses ur hd/ram/proc at most for graphic instead of vga, so each new vm would overdoo the processor or hd or ram... for me it is bandwidth problem and not really the vga... unless hes using ISboxer or any program alike...

 

[declensionsone]

yea it's definitely a bug. shaliuno has the same problem.


example, i start 5 VM, with 1.5 GB each. total usage should only be 7.5 gb. however, several hours later the ram usage becomes 10gb or 12gb. No idea how to explain this but it doesn't make sense.


numerous benchmarks have shown that there is not much much difference in ram performance between 1333 and 1600, or even 1333 and 2100. In real world performance there is even less noticeable difference

actually, what's strange is some of my d3 are using 800 mb ram, others using 600 mb. Either way, I still end up with error messages even with low memory warning messages disabled if I don't set at least 1500 ram per VM

Ariel your screenshot looks about the same as mine in terms of memory usage, but inside each of the vmware-vmx.exe process it's using at least another 1 gb for windows + d3

I can run 4 bots fine no problem, the issue is when I try to run 9+ all of the FPS starts dropping

 

[declensionsone]

Alright, I am speaking from experience here. I owned a web hosting company for several years and do a lot of virtualization. Your CPU usage is fine. It is going to go up and down depending on the load from each of your VMs. These guys who are saying it only takes 700 MB of RAM are not running VMs. A stripped down windows 7 load will take 400 MB of RAM. If you really want to run that many bots on VM Ware you are going to need to invest in either a dual processor machine or a bigger processor. Your best bet is to get the graphics card in there taking some of the load off of the rest of your hardware. With VMware workstation you cannot do this. What I suggest is switching to windows 2008 R2 and installing Hyper-V. Use the remoteFX feature and it will bring that graphics card into play. Windows 2008 wont use the graphics card at all so you dont have to worry about it crashing your host machine plus Hyper-V has way less overhead than workstation and it automatically assigns unique mac addresses to each client which will help you stay under the radar. Hyper-V is really a dream to use.

P.S make sure your bios is setup for virtual machines. The issue your going to face is that your hardware is not really made for hardcore Virtualization. IE your RAM is not ECC Registered Unbuffered RAM. Meaning if one VM ends up doing something that it shouldnt to your RAM all of your VMs are going to feel the effects. If you would have purchased a SuperMicro server chassis like this one

Supermicro | Products | SuperWorkstation | 4U | 7046A-3

you could be up and running right now without any issues

P.S.S
The guys who are saying its your GPU are running their bots all on 1 instance of Windows 7 and not on VMware (maybe ISBoxer is different) .

Are you saying hyper-v will fully utilize the GPU 100%? Also, is this your current set up? I think shaliuno tried win 2008 but was having some problems.

Also, how much does that server cost? My budget at the time was under $1000

 

[warbux]

Can DemonBuddy with Hyper-V + RemoteFX do actual botting with RDP disconnected and not write "omg process frozen" in logs when no RDP connection is made?

Yes it can... You cant use RDP to connect to the desktop while running D3 RDP does not support 32 bit color mode and D3 will error out. I use teamviewer to connect to the VMs.

 

[warbux]

yea it's definitely a bug. shaliuno has the same problem.


example, i start 5 VM, with 1.5 GB each. total usage should only be 7.5 gb. however, several hours later the ram usage becomes 10gb or 12gb. No idea how to explain this but it doesn't make sense.


numerous benchmarks have shown that there is not much much difference in ram performance between 1333 and 1600, or even 1333 and 2100. In real world performance there is even less noticeable difference

actually, what's strange is some of my d3 are using 800 mb ram, others using 600 mb. Either way, I still end up with error messages even with low memory warning messages disabled if I don't set at least 1500 ram per VM

Ariel your screenshot looks about the same as mine in terms of memory usage, but inside each of the vmware-vmx.exe process it's using at least another 1 gb for windows + d3

I can run 4 bots fine no problem, the issue is when I try to run 9+ all of the FPS starts dropping

The reason your RAM useage is climbing is because you are using desktop RAM.... If you were using a real hypervisor like Hyper-V and Registered ECC RAM (Server RAM) you would not have all of the problems with RAM that you are currently having.

 

[warbux]

Yes I have two dual processor servers each with 80GB of RAM and two xeon processors running my network. You could build a budget server for close to the same price as a regular desktop. Hyper-V will use the GPU for all of the graphical needs. It sounds like Shaliuno was trying to use RDP with 2k8 and you cannot use RDP to connect to the VMs because it does not use 32bit color. D3 requires 32 bit color or it will error out.

 

[declensionsone]

hmm.. sounds like a plan that i will try if I make another $1000 from botting xD.

mind sharing those specs? I'm wondering what parts are important in this setup for botting? Do I need a high end CPU? high end GPU? What kind of ram exactly? I thought ECC ram can cost couple hundred /thousand dollars
can you use the intel xeon e5 sandy bridge processors or what is the best processor for this job?
If I built a server I would like it to be future-proof in case I decide to switch to botting a different game.

Also, how many bots can you run with such a system? I mean, what would be the limiting factor in this system? CPU or GPU?