Interested in multi-instancing and I have a few questions

[scotty562]

I'm looking for a few guides on the details of setting up 5 characters on one box rather than on 5 machines. I found one guide that showed the majority of it. The rest of them seem to be designed for multiple boxes. I'm not sure if I need one video card or two. Can I display my main character on one monitor and then all 4 of the others on another monitor or do I need two video cards to display my main on one and my others on the other monitor.

The reason I ask is when I use a second monitor with my laptop I can only have one window open and it kind of blanks out the others.

Thanks!

[elsegundo]

some laptops have this limitation. if you cannot get your laptop to extend the desktop to the attached monitor, then you may have to check to see if there are updates to the drivers and such. otherwise, i dont see it working out.

you can use keyclone's maximizer with picture-in-picture. but this will take up single screen real estate.

[Jamien]

One video card will work for 5 copies of wow, needs to be beefy tho.
What setup are you currently running?

At home I have a 22" and a 24" connected to the one graphics card.
My main displays on the 24", while the slaves are "maximised" into 4 sectors on the 22". Effectively the 4 wows are arranged 2 along the top, 2 on the bottom, each has the same amount of space on the monitor.

[lacitpo]

I 5box PVE instance on a Macbook Pro upgraded to 4GB of ram. I use a second monitor for my 4 slaves and keep my brain maxed on my laptop screen.

If you are looking for ingame macro stuff I may be able to help you out. My multiclass PVE team is about to ding 30 and I've gone through a ton of revisions on their macros and I'm pretty satisfied with the state they are in.

My biggest suggestion is keeping things simple as you can. Talent specs should be designed to keep your DPS macros simple and spamable, and keep that philosophy across your whole setup.

As for your hardware issues, try and see if you can handle 5 boxes, and then upgrade if needed.

[scotty562]

Sorry I was not more clear. I will be building a quad core, 4 gig system with a velociraptor 10k hard drive. I won't be doing this with my laptop. As far as a video card goes, I'll buy one of the newer model Nvidia cards. I'm interested in this just to see if I'll be able to do it with the setup I'm thinking about. I don't see any reason why this system couldn't handle 5 instances of wow.

Two 22" or 24" monitors would probably be the option I'll go.

"the slaves are "maximised" into 4 sectors on the 22". Effectively the 4 wows are arranged 2 along the top, 2 on the bottom, each has the same amount of space on the monitor."

That's exactly what I'm after. If I had to, I could add a second video card to handle the other monitors right?

Edit:
lacitpo,
I saw your post after I posted. Thanks for the info. I'm thinking about a 5 mage setup or a 4 mage 1 priest setup. I just found out that this hobby existed today so I'm still learning :). I'll do my best to take your advice into consideration.

What setup do you have and how do you like it?

[Jamien]

Let me just say, from personal experience that is, having two 22" or 24" may be overkill.
Until last night I was happy chugging along with a 22" wide as my main and a 19" as my alt screen. Now the 22"s there ... well I haven't set it up but god damn theres a lot more space now.

As you're getting a quadcore, you can use Keyclone to designate cores to separate copies of WoW, so that each (bar 2) run on their own core. The ram will be enough for the job.
and as long as your graphics card is mid-high end (I'm running 5 on an 8800gts 640mb) you're fine to just have the one card for your setup. Most bottlenecking occurs with hard drive I/O, which is where mklink comes into play (search for it :))
If you really do want to you can add a second graphics card for the other WoW's, but theres no real need. If you're going to be running vista keep in mind the cards have to be the same brand. You can no longer run ati and nvidia drivers at the same time, and all cards run off the same single driver.

Have a quick look into Keyclones maximiser (and PiP - picture in picture), as it will be able to handle what you're after.

Good luck and have fun!

[Solon]

I just built a quad core system

CPU INTEL|C2Q Q6600 2.4G (overclock 2.8G)

VGA EVGA 512-P3-N975-AR 9800GT 512M

4gig RAM and Vista 64 Ultimate. 22" and 19" widescreen monitors. I am using the 19" as my main atm, because you can see just enough more with 4 windows on the 22" to make it worth it. Get 2 22" monitors. Otherwise this system kicks the crap out of 5 WoWs. Those two parts are quite reasonable at newegg.com.

[Razman]

For PvE all you really need is 1 system, 1 screen and Keyclone.I have this set up and using the PiP commands on Keyclone, PiP is the ability to swap in any of your 4 small screens into the largest one. Dont need anything else at all. For PvP its a bit different but PvE anything else is just doing it for the hell of it imop. If you have a decent up to date system u can run 5 clients of wow on it no probs as you know wow isnt exactly heavy on the requirements.

[lacitpo]

Not to rip on keyclone cause I've personally never used it but....

Friend of mine had a lot of trouble with it so you might also experiment with Octopus before getting locked in to either and decide which you like most.

As for my setup, check this post ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=126608&highlight=#post126608')

[Trammel]

lots of people have problems with lots of things.

lots of people are also dumb.

lots of people use keyclone.

[Ualaa]

I'd recommend looking at both the hardware and software options available.
I personally went with Keyclone as the software option.
That might or might not be the best option for you. Everyone is different, and has different perceptions.

I'm running 5 copies of WoW smoothly. My system was near top of the line a year ago, so is still decent today.
WoW runs well, but most of my options are turned down; one account with every option up is a little smoother, but five is definitely playable.
Vista 64-bit, Q6600 o/c to 3ghz, 8gb DDR2 pc3200, 8800 GTX 512mb.

Over the summer I've upgraded from a 22" Samsung 225 BW to a 30.5" Samsung 305 T.
I much prefer the real estate on the newer monitor but if I can make room on my desk might run both monitors.

I'm thinking of upgrading my video card to a Sapphire HD 4870 X2, I'd like to have graphic options cranked for WotLK and still play smoothly.
I know that's overkill for WoW, but its barely in the budget, and I'd really like to have the graphics all the way up.

[scotty562]

Thanks for all the information guys. I didn't realize that Keyclone did so many other functions in addition to just passing keystrokes. I'll be sure to get a copy of this. I think I'm going to set up <that which must not be named> http://solidice.com/images/Ninjafade.gif

I could do a 30" screen, but I'm pretty anal about my multiple screens being the same size.. I suppose that doesn't leave 2 30" screens out of the picture :). Come to think of it, a few guys dual boxing on a private server could easy fill out a 40 man raid.. interesting.