Is This Possible? (computer question)

[Brian]

Is it possible to play 20 tables of poker as well as have Poker Tracker importing hands and GameTime+ spitting them back onto the screen?

The reason I ask (for those familiar with my other threads) is that I just got in my new system from Digital Tigers that runs off of 2 Intel Xeon 2.8ghz processors, and it is not able to do it at the moment. I'm also having a ton of lag running just 20 tables off of 6 monitors (without PT and GT+), and I've been on the phone with the tech support guy all day for the past few days. I've also been getting some issuses with random cutoffs and the computer not wanting to reboot for 30 minutes, but that's another issue entirely /images/graemlins/smile.gif Or is it? (Only happens while running World of WarCraft)

Anyways, I just got off the phone with the support guy and during the conversation he asked me if I had ever seen or heard of anyone being able to play 20 tables at the same time as well as running these databases/etc. in the background. So does anyone happen to know? Or would this require some sort of super computer that would cost billions to buy? Thanks,

-Brian

[EDIT] Sorry wrong forum. I meant to post this in the Zoo. But I'll leave it up in case someone here knows. Sorry for the poker content.

[rmarotti]

No poker software is optimized to take advantage of the power in your rig.

[Diplomat]

First things first:

[ QUOTE ]
I've also been getting some issuses with random cutoffs and the computer not wanting to reboot for 30 minutes, but that's another issue entirely

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds like you might be overheating. How closely do you monitor your computer's temperature? I had issues with this and decided to go to liquid cooling, which results in a much lower case temperature and lower CPU temperature. I've got the Kingwin water cooling kit... it's a bit underpowered for my system, but does an ok job keeping my CPU temperature at around 40 degrees C. while playing poker (around 48-49 degrees C. while gaming). The biggest benefit though is case temperature -- almost 20 degrees C. lower than typical fan/heat sink setups because all the heat is piped outside the case instead of being blown around inside the case. There are a number of manufacturers that make liquid cooling systems, ranging from about $100 bucks (Kingwin) up to about $1000 for systems that actually keep your components below freezing (coming equipt with a compressor for refrigeration).

Your processors are pretty good, but you could probably overclock them to get a bit more speed out of them. (if you haven't already)

How much ram do you have?

What is your hard drive setup?

-Diplomat

[Diplomat]

BTW: 20 tables? WTF?

-Diplomat

[Brian]

Hey Diplomat,

Thanks for the response. This is the computer that I bought:

http://www.digitaltigers.com/stratosphere-elite.shtml It's the GT6

But I added another GB of RAM to make it 2GB of RAM.

I have a few other threads about my computer buying experience here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=inet&Number=2045002&Forum= ,,,All_Forums,,,&Words=&Searchpage=2&Limit=25&Main =2045002&Search=true&where=&Name=4153&daterange=&n ewerval=&newertype=&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev= #Post2045002) and here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=inet&Number=2073985&Forum= ,,All_Forums,,&Words=&Searchpage=1&Limit=25&Main=2 073985&Search=true&where=&Name=4153&daterange=&new erval=&newertype=&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#P ost2073985).

A lot of my friends have told me that it sounds like an overheating problem. I have been running a CPU temperature program that I downloaded in a link from a Digital Tigers CS person, and the temperature never breaches the little red mark on the thermometer that is it's maximum heat capacity.

I have spent maybe 6 hours total troubleshooting this over the phone, and they deduced that it was a problem with one of the 2 GeForce 6600 GT's in my system, which we'll call video card #1 (the 3rd card is a Quadro card). He said that the "production team" had seen problems similiar to this one due to faulty video cards, and also it made sense to me because whenever I played World of WarCraft off of video card #1, the computer would shut off and not turn on again for 30 minutes, but whenever I played it off of video card #2, it worked fine.

Well, until last night, that is, when my girlfriend put the case back on the computer (I had been keeping it off because I was getting tired of taking it on and off again). 20 minutes later, bam, shutdown, no reboot. One of my friends came over and he noticed a filter on top of a fan that was on the front of the computer. He took it off, and the temperature program dropped about 10 degrees while playing World of WarCraft. And, World of WarCraft was now running fine off of either video card.

Problem solved? Not quite. Just about an hour ago, the system shut off again. Case on, filter off. Back to the drawing board.

There's currently another GeForce 6600 GT being shipped to me in the mail, but I have a feeling that it won't fix my problem either. And, even if it does, I am left with the problem of mouse jerkiness/tables loading very slow/cards dealing out really slow/etc., which I never had on my old computer...

I am probably leaving out a few details here and there... It's hard to keep track of as I have been on and off with technical support since I got the computer Wednesday night. Sorry if this is just incoherent rambling, but I've been up all night so that I could be awake at 9:00 A.M. when Digital Tigers opened.

I just got off the phone with the guy a few minutes ago, and he told me that maybe "these poker applications" weren't meant to be run in such excess, and that it's a problem with the way they were designed, not with the Xeons. When I told him that my old computer (and I told him the spces on it) ran the tables just fine, he went on to say that it could be a problem with any number of things, internet connection, overheating, etc., and to wait to see how it ran when I get my new video card in.

After paying 12 grand for the system (5k for the box), I'm of course getting pretty irate. I decided to let my girlfriend handle it, as she has a bit more mettle than I do, and hopefully she will get some better responsiveness out of them. I mean, they've been very accomodating thus far, but now he's starting to shy away (I always deal with the same guy) when I'm mentioning all of the lag I'm encountering. I mean, my girlfriend questioned them (as did I, but less so) before we bought the computer about heating issues, whether or not it'd be able to run a lot of programs + databases, etc. and they said it should run what I need it to be able to. Plus, their website even says:

"Target users

Business users with demanding multi-tasking, multi-screen requirements. Especially suited to financial traders and others who run multiple simultaneous applications, which operate more fluidly across multiple CPUs."

But now he's saying that maybe it just can't handle the Poker load, and definitely not the database. He questioned whether or not any computer period could run 20 tables + the database.

Alright, this post has gone on way too long. Diplomat, astroglide, any words of wisdom would be appreciated. I'm pretty much at a loss right now..... I'm fine with overpaying for the system, but in overpaying I was hoping fo rsomething that would work. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

-Brian

[Brian]

[ QUOTE ]
BTW: 20 tables? WTF?

-Diplomat[ QUOTE ]


When you suck at poker and all you are good at is playing in a robotic fashion, you find as many ways as possible to add in extra tables. I ran 18 on my old one with 2 monitors, and now that I have the 6 monitor setup, I was hoping for 20+. Of course, if it can't even run 16 without chugging...

-Brian

[TimM]

It's possible Windows may not be balancing the load well among both processors:

Getting More Bang Out of Your Dual Processing Buck (http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040528/)

Or, you may have a bottleneck somewhere that has nothing to do with the processors. One thibng you can try is to bring up the 20 tables (just observing), and then hit ctrl-alt-del to bring up Task Manager. Click the Performance tab, and you can see CPU and memory utilization, and on the Processes tab you can see it for each program that is running.

You could try disabling saving of the HHs to hard drive, and see if that changes anything. I know you won't want to play that way, but it might give a hint as to where the bottleneck is.