5 Boxing on 1 PC - Possible?

[Evilseed]

Hello there!

I'm new to the 5-box scene, but not new to multiboxing in general. My max has been with 3 PCs, way back when WoW first came out.

I recently purchased a new system and had an idea - Is it possible to multibox 5 WoWs on 1 system?

With the advent of fast, core 2 duo processors, screaming hard drive arrays, and killer amounts of memory, what if you did this:

SETUP:

Intel Extreme E6850 Core 2 Duo, 3.3ghz
8 GIG DDR2
(4) 15k RPM SATA2 150GB HDs in RAID10 (screaming fast btw)
(2) Dual SLI Nvidia 8800 GTX OC 784MB Video Cards
1000watt power
(2) 22 Inch Samsung Monitors
Windows Vista 64bit

CONCEPT:

Run your main WoW account in the left monitor
Run 4 wow accounts on the right monitor, each 1/4 the screen size
Assign your main WoW account to run on 1 processor dedicated
Assign the 4 other WoW accounts to run on the other processor, sharing cpu

Right now I can run 5 WoWs at once, however, I only have 2 accounts to test with. Do you think 5 could actively run? I don't think you need much processing power to send simple commands, do you? Only the main WoW account needs the power, which it has by dedicating a CPU to it.

QUESTIONS:

Would Keyclone be the way to go to send commands?
What would be the best external keypad that I should get?
Is there any chance to get banned in this setup?
What characters should I choose? I was thinking 5 shamans. They are good for PVP and even good for end-game 5 man instances (and heroics) right? Any other suggestions?
What suggestions do people have for leveling 5 noobs up fast? Do they grind inside instances the whole time?

Thanks all and great job with the dual-boxing.com website!

Evilseed/Tim

[kermitforney]

Hello there!

SETUP:

Intel Extreme E6850 Core 2 Duo, 3.3ghz
8 GIG DDR2
(4) 15k RPM SATA2 150GB HDs in RAID10 (screaming fast btw)
(2) Dual SLI Nvidia 8800 GTX OC 784MB Video Cards
1000watt power
(2) 22 Inch Samsung Monitors
Windows Vista 64bit
Evilseed/Tim

This setup it more than adequate to 5box with a single PC. I currently 5box without aby problems. My specs are as follows:

Intel Core2Duo E6400 2.16ghz Overclocked to 3.1ghz
2gig 1066DDR (Soon to be 4gig)
Single Nvidia 8800GTS 320mb
(2) 19' Dell LCD's




CONCEPT:

Run your main WoW account in the left monitor
Run 4 wow accounts on the right monitor, each 1/4 the screen size
Assign your main WoW account to run on 1 processor dedicated
Assign the 4 other WoW accounts to run on the other processor, sharing cpu

Right now I can run 5 WoWs at once, however, I only have 2 accounts to test with. Do you think 5 could actively run? I don't think you need much processing power to send simple commands, do you? Only the main WoW account needs the power, which it has by dedicating a CPU to it.
Evilseed/Tim

You can run your main account on the left monitor, but if you open up ALL accounts at once your system will bog WAY down. WOW (World of Warcraft) is INCREDIBLY CPU intensive so you can get by with a lower graphics card, but your CPU is key. I have my processoer bumped up pretty close to your frequency (speed). I am not sure how your processors extra L2 Cache and 2 extra cores would help. I am sure they have some benchmarks available. Also, I am not certain, but in order to run different applications or instances of WOW on specific processor's the app would have to have multitreading written into the application to take advantage of it.



QUESTIONS:
Would Keyclone be the way to go to send commands?
What would be the best external keypad that I should get?
Is there any chance to get banned in this setup?
What characters should I choose? I was thinking 5 shamans. They are good for PVP and even good for end-game 5 man instances (and heroics) right? Any other suggestions?
What suggestions do people have for leveling 5 noobs up fast? Do they grind inside instances the whole time?
Evilseed/Tim

KeyClone is an excellent program and I am speaking from personal experience. :o)

The keyboard I currently use is the LogitechG15, it has 18 extra keys that you can set in three different sets or series'. I love the thing, but I haven't been 5 boxing for long so you may want a few more opinions.

For your other WOW specific quesions they have been answered several times over if you have a few minutes to search a bit.

Also, you are going to realize soon that macro's and scripts are your best friends while boxing. If you have experience coding (C, Visual Basic, etc.) or scripting (Perl, etc.) it does come in handy with familiarity and all.

Any other questions feel free to ask, I have only been here for awhile but the community is one of the best. :D

[crazycat]

its posible, iam doing it.

[keyclone]

possible with keyclone. my sig shows a pic of 5 wows on 1 pc. all 800x600 and low res grfx.. but my system wasn't very extreme (2GHz, 2G RAM, 256 grfx RAM)

you could... run 4 on one box in quad screen view using the built-in maximizer and run you main alone on another box.

[Tonuss]

SETUP:

Intel Extreme E6850 Core 2 Duo, 3.3ghz
8 GIG DDR2
(4) 15k RPM SATA2 150GB HDs in RAID10 (screaming fast btw)
(2) Dual SLI Nvidia 8800 GTX OC 784MB Video Cards
1000watt power
(2) 22 Inch Samsung Monitors
Windows Vista 64bit

That should be plenty for what you are describing. I run one account on a Core2Duo 6600 @ 2.4GHz and four accounts on a 2.2GHz dual-core Athlon XP with 3GB memory and a GeForce 7800GTX with a 20" monitor. I have four 800 x 600 windows tiled as best as I can (very slight overlap). With all graphics settings at their lowest, they run at ~20-25 FPS with noticeable stuttering, but everything works.

I'm going to upgrade that second system with a 2.4GHz quad-core CPU now that they're relatively inexpensive. I may upgrade the video at some point but it should do just fine for now.

run 4 on one box in quad screen view using the built-in maximizer and run you main alone on another box.
What do you mean by "built-in maximizer"?

[keyclone]

keyclone has maximizer functionality built into it. it will run the applications via a command and strip off/position it as per your region definition

http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums2/viewtopic.php?p=10052#10052

[Tonuss]

Oh that's awesome, thanks! I thought the program was excellent already, hah! =)

[Evilseed]

Hey Keyclone guy!

Just to double-check, will keyclone work on setups with 2 monitors? I don't see why not, but I just want to double-check.

Thanks!

[keyclone]

it should work normally.

if you are using the built in maximizer, it will only use one monitor at this time (i haven't put in the multi monitor code yet)

[Djarid]

according to the multiboxer addon readme.txt, JDRaughn is using process.exe to set the priority levels on non-focussed WOW instances to below-normal, freeing up system resources for the focussed instance.

JD can you provide more details?

[Evilseed]

it should work normally.

if you are using the built in maximizer, it will only use one monitor at this time (i haven't put in the multi monitor code yet)

What do you mean by the built in maximizer?

So I will have 1 monitor with 4 wows, the other with 1 (my main). Can Keyclone do those 4 wows in my other monitor?

[Zseth]

Keyclone has a maximizer built directly into its setup function.

First: Open keyclone
Second: Click Setup -> Maximizer -> Position bar according to desired setup
Third: Apply
Fourth: OPEN WOW's should be good to go

Works well if you don't have 10 monitors for 10 guys or anything in between single user and OMFG TOO MANY

[keyclone]

maximizer will 'maximize' a program that was executed using a command.

the command editor is also in the setup area

so, you'd make a command called wow1 and hit the 'program' button to find wow.exe
hit the '+'
go to maximizer, enable, and define your regions.

hit ok

keep in mind, you should force the wow launcher to run every tuesday (or whenever there is a new update) in order to keep your wows in sync. wow.exe, which your command would be executing, would not check for version updates.

also, the built-in maximizer currently only works for a single monitor system. if you are using a dual monitor system, i believe the 2nd monitor would go unused.

[Bollwerk]

Will the maximizer function in keyclone work with multiple wow directories?

[keyclone]

re: will keyclone-maximizer work w/ multiple wow directories

yes. you just need to create a new command for each wow... naming them wow1, wow2, etc would make sense. if you use keymaps, you can also associate the appropriate keymap with the specific wow

then you would run them by typing

wow1;wow2;wow3;wow4

into the connection combobox (re-using an area.. sorry about the dual use)
that command will run 4 wows, load any keymaps required, and automatically put them into the keyclone list. if you enabled maxmizer, it would also place them in their respective regions.

i would also recommend auto-hiding your taskbar... looks much nicer

[Bollwerk]

Excellent. Thanks. You might want to add this to your FAQ. (Unless I'm blind, I didn't see this in there)

[keyclone]

yea... the FAQ and the tutorial haven't been revisited in a while.

hopefully soon... some minor bugs to fix and then the final bits for multi-language support are up first

[Tonuss]

That should be plenty for what you are describing. I run one account on a Core2Duo 6600 @ 2.4GHz and four accounts on a 2.2GHz dual-core Athlon XP with 3GB memory and a GeForce 7800GTX with a 20" monitor. I have four 800 x 600 windows tiled as best as I can (very slight overlap). With all graphics settings at their lowest, they run at ~20-25 FPS with noticeable stuttering, but everything works.

I'm going to upgrade that second system with a 2.4GHz quad-core CPU now that they're relatively inexpensive. I may upgrade the video at some point but it should do just fine for now.
Just thought I'd update this. I upgraded the dual-core Athlon with a 2.4GHz quad-core Pentium yesterday. Turned out the older motherboard used DDR memory and the new one uses DDR2, so I went from two computers with 3/4GB memory to two computers with 2GB memory.

However, upgrading to quad-core has made an enormous difference. The four windowed WOWs run smoothly and at 70-85 FPS most of the time. The video card is the same and the memory has actually been reduced, so it seems that a relatively inexpensive CPU upgrade (~$270 for it, motherboards can run $100-220 or less) can provide the biggest benefit for running multiple WOW accounts on one computer.