How to best split up 4-5 on 2 pcs.

[fling]

I'm about to start experimenting with 4 or 5 accounts, depending on performance, and I wanted to get some opinions on what is going to be the best bet, setup wise. I am interested mostly in PVP, aside from leveling to 70 and farming up mount and tradeskill stuff. I want to do alot of AV with the full team, and arenas with all or part of it.

My main system:

Core 2 Duo 2.13, OC'ed to 2.8
4gig DDR2 RAM
2x 7200rpm, 8mb cache SATA2 drives in RAID0 config
8800gts 320mb (SLI is a possibility)
Windows Vista Home Premium (I can switch OS's if I have to)
22" Widescreen LCD

2nd System:

AMD Sempron 1.8ghz
2gig ddr dual channel
Radeon X800pro 256mb (agp)
Single SATA 7200rpm HD
Windows 2000 Pro (Until I can find my XP disk)
17" Standard LCD

I am currently running 1 account on each PC, pretty much maxed out, or 2 one the main PC with one maxed, one min settings. Both work great, I am using Keyclone to pass keys, one copy on each machine.

What is my best bet as far as PVP performance? So far I am thinking 3 on the main, 2 on the alt pc, or maybe running my main character solo on slower pc, and the 4 alts on the more powerful system. Do I need to change OS's or update any of the hardware (I have a limited budget)

[Zseth]

I've found that it works best to have your "main" machine with the least load on it. I built my secondary machine with more processing power and less graphics power than my main in order to do it though.

[Wilbur]

I'd try running your 4 clones on the Dual-core PC, then running your main on the lower specced PC. An X800 Pro (I have one in my box :-D) does cope quite well, even in outland for a single character. Plus the added benefit is having more screen-space for the clones.

I'd make sure you are running a 64 bit version of Vista in order to get the full benefit of all your RAM, see what its running at under load and test the systems out before commiting to buying the other accounts. That said, It *might* be beneficial to go and buy a Quad core Q6600, thereby giving you more cores to play with. Your 8800GTS should give you good FPS for the 4 clones, if they are put on reasonable settings.
Additionally I'd buy an extra cheapo 15" monitor for the box you run your main character on, just so you can browse the interweb, IRC, MSN, etc.

[Mattx10x]

I'm about to start experimenting with 4 or 5 accounts, depending on performance, and I wanted to get some opinions on what is going to be the best bet, setup wise. I am interested mostly in PVP, aside from leveling to 70 and farming up mount and tradeskill stuff. I want to do alot of AV with the full team, and arenas with all or part of it.

My main system:

Core 2 Duo 2.13, OC'ed to 2.8
4gig DDR2 RAM
2x 7200rpm, 8mb cache SATA2 drives in RAID0 config
8800gts 320mb (SLI is a possibility)
Windows Vista Home Premium (I can switch OS's if I have to)
22" Widescreen LCD

2nd System:

AMD Sempron 1.8ghz
2gig ddr dual channel
Radeon X800pro 256mb (agp)
Single SATA 7200rpm HD
Windows 2000 Pro (Until I can find my XP disk)
17" Standard LCD

I am currently running 1 account on each PC, pretty much maxed out, or 2 one the main PC with one maxed, one min settings. Both work great, I am using Keyclone to pass keys, one copy on each machine.

What is my best bet as far as PVP performance? So far I am thinking 3 on the main, 2 on the alt pc, or maybe running my main character solo on slower pc, and the 4 alts on the more powerful system. Do I need to change OS's or update any of the hardware (I have a limited budget)

Would like to know what kind of performance you got running 5 out of your set up, as I have something similar.

[fling]

Just a quick update, ran 4 instances with test accounts on the dual core machine, with 4 800x600 windows, min video settings, and was getting 40-60 fps on each one in the Orc newbie area. I didn't try leading with an account on the slower machine, but I will probably end up running 1 and 3 or 1 and 4 with older pc / newer pc, since it is very playable.

I may level up whichever 4 I end up going with (thinking shamans or warlocks) on the main machine, and once they hit 60 change things around. I'm thinking I will stick to 4 of the same class, and let someone else be my healer so simplicities sake.

If that doesn't work out I may xfer characters that I currently play in arenas around so that I can farm honor for several at once, but we'll see how it goes.