Upgrading decisions

[thinus]

I feel like the time is almost upon me, the hardware is starting to labour under the strain of WotLK and with an eye towards the expansion and improving PvP performance I am looking at buying a new PC.

My current specs:
Q6600
8GB RAM
GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
Vista 64 Ultimate
2x 22" LCD (main fullscreen, 4 clones on 2nd monitor)

This is not a bad machine and it has served me well for some time now. Ideally I would like to keep it and use it to run either 2, 3 or 4 accounts. Running all 4 clones on it seems the best approach in regards to key broadcasting etc. Or maybe the other way around, keep it for the main and use the new machine for the 4 clones. Maybe add a SSD in there and it should be golden.

So the question I have is mostly about how to handle the layout?
With a single machine setup I can swap windows easily to collect ground spawn items for questing. With multiple machines this is not happening. One idea is a 3 monitor approach with 1 for the main and 2 for the clone machine, one session big on the 2nd monitor and the other 3 spread over the 3rd monitor. Difficult to keep an eye on things happening to the clones when it is spread over 3 big monitors.

I will still need Synergy / MaxiVista to mouse to a clone to loot the ground spawns and when switching mains.



Or should I just save myself lots of headaches and either buy a new monster machine and keep running 5 on a single box or just go full hardware?

[Ualaa]

I'm not sure how much you want to invest in a new machine.

I upgraded from a similar machine.
Well kept the same hard drive and video card, case and power supply.
But got a new motherboard, ram and cpu.

My i7 920, with 12gb of ram runs 5 toons very smoothly pretty much everywhere.

You could try something like 1-2 toons on one machine and 3-4 toons on another.
But if you upgrade to an i7 or the equivalent, you might be able to run everything smooth on the one box.
Especially if you went with an SSD, which can be a huge improvement.

I'm going to go with a generation 2 SSD and windows 7, as my next upgrades.

[thinus]

A friend of mine that boxes LOTRO just bought one of the older SSDs (128GB) as he runs all his sessions in VMs due to LOTRO requiring the window to be focused. He is raving about it so I am quite interested as well. I am quite happy with the newer ones even if I have to drop down to 64GB as it would be big enough for the OS, WoW and frequently loaded stuff. The rest can stay on the old drives.

Maybe I should just go for a really good i7 and keep all 5 on a single box. At least it gives me the option to still mess around with spreading the accounts over the two machines if I still feel the need to experiment.

[Ogloo]

with the looting factor, use the click to move/interact target functions.... much easier than moving over to loot, unless there is some reason u need to for like right click functions "herbs, exc."

[Fef]

I got one of these almost a year ago :
http://www.apple.com/macpro/

Obviously, I could justify it for other things than gaming. Anyway, I am now also 5-boxing WoW on it. Really, the confort of 8 physical cores is amazing. With 6 and 8 cores processors in the pipe, this kind of power is going to become much more mainstream in a matter of months. I would really not invest in a full hardware-boxing solution now.

[thinus]

Ok, I am convinced :)
I'll stay on the single monster box option.

I tried AB last night and it was the worst performance I've had so far in Northrend, including Dalaran. I literally had stutters. It would just lock up for 1 or 2 seconds and then I could move again.

[thinus]

with the looting factor, use the click to move/interact target functions.... much easier than moving over to loot, unless there is some reason u need to for like right click functions "herbs, exc."

Collection quests with ground spawns and herbalism/mining really. I usually have mining on the main anyway for exactly this reason.

[Drommon]

I got one of these almost a year ago :
http://www.apple.com/macpro/

Obviously, I could justify it for other things than gaming. Anyway, I am now also 5-boxing WoW on it. Really, the confort of 8 physical cores is amazing. With 6 and 8 cores processors in the pipe, this kind of power is going to become much more mainstream in a matter of months. I would really not invest in a full hardware-boxing solution now.

Seconded ^

Full hardware boxing is a thing of the past with the all the new CPUs coming out in the next 18 months. Today you can get a mobo from Intel that allows you to put two I7's on it and have up to 96G of ram.

Thinus -

My hardware is similar to yours except I have a Q9550 quad core and 2 ATI 4850's with each card driving one monitor. My big advantage? SSD. Get one. They are cheap now (compared from before). If you want, RAID 2 SSD. Wow just doesn't need all that CPU power unless you want eye candy mode for all clients and if you do, then get 3 more monitors...etc...etc..

Drommon

[king.pa]

12 GB of memory Ram is almost mandatory !!! this prevent you from using a mamory swap file..
very conveignant !!!

[Dramoth]

Windows uses a swap file regardless of how much ram you have.

In response to the OP.

I have a very similar setup to yours except that I am running 2 8800GTS 640Mb cards and I am running win 7 64.

I have 2x19" monitors and 1x22"

The 22" is for the main window and the 19" in position 3 is for my 4 clones. the 19" thats left over, I sometimes run a movie in so that I have something to watch when I am doing boring shit and I dont suffer from any sort of lag or cpu drag from the setup.

The next major upgrade to the machine is going to basically be a whole new computer really...

i7 mb, i7 920 D0 cpu, 32Gb of ram (if I can get a motherboard to support that much :))... 2 of whatever the latest and greatest video card is and probably 2x2Tb hdd.

I might also look at upgrading the two 19" monitors for another 22" and a 24"

PS: I might also look at getting an SSD to put the games on :D

[alcattle]

12 GB of memory Ram is almost mandatory !!! this prevent you from using a mamory swap file..
very conveignant !!!
you can only get 12 gigs on the I7. OP has an old Quad MB CPU. 8 is the most you can use without using 4 gig $tick$

[zenga]

Another idea - before you spend $ on hardware upgrades - might be to install and try Linux. I have a E8400 dual core (3ghz), 8 GB ram (ddr2-667), GeForce 8800 GTS videocard (512mb), Asus P5N32-E SLI+ motherboard , 2x 320gb samsung HD and 2x 24 monitors, which sounds similar to your specs.

I haven't reached any 60+ content in the game as I'm brand new, however I have installed a Vista 64 bit on the same machine to compare. My findings are really simple. My 5 team groups runs way smoother on Linux (32 bit) than on Vista. On vista I have to run 4 alts on the lowest settings and the main on medium, and when I arrive in a crowded place I often get lag. Under Linux I can run my alts with medium settings and full throttle on my main, without getting any lag, ever (on a side note: I didn't go through the trouble to benchmark it, what I see with my eyes & my playing experience in terms of lag is enough for me).

Setting up Linux (I use opensuse 11.0 with kde 3.5 myself ) is very easy and straightforward nowadays. The more cause you no longer have to worry about security as you have to on Windows. Or at least way less. I realize that changing your OS is a big step, and it requires a willing-to-find-this-thing-out kind of mind.

I have tested AHK & Keyclone and they both work (however I use xdotool for my keybroadcasting). I don't use/like maximizer though.

Long story short: before spending the $ on hardware, trying out Linux might be a viable option.

[boxblizzard]

can anyone speak from experience regarding switching from windows xp to vista 64? or windows 7. any marginal improvements? obviously the increased amount of ram utilized

[Aragent]

can anyone speak from experience regarding switching from windows xp to vista 64? or windows 7. any marginal improvements? obviously the increased amount of ram utilized

Outside of the Memory increase (Performance) for 64 Bit system, You will find very little performance increase from Vista Unless you turn a ton of Services off.

Windows 7 Is a good program, (and is not at End of life meaning that you will get upgrades and improvements as time goes forward, theres is little actual performance increase from Vista to windows 7 however there is a Perceived Increase in performance. this is caused by how windows 7 handles Hard drive access and Video, where as the actual performance is not increased much it does created a smoother and less choppy experience giving a cleaner and smoother experience.

Windows 7 also handles SDD's better and duo video cards.
SO I would recommend going with a windows 7 64.

[Bovidae]

I was in the exact same position you are in. 8800gts -> gtx285 and added a small ssd which only houses the /data folder.

$500 later, problem solved (and these parts are easily transplantable to an i7 build if I choose to go that route)

[rocnroll]

Another idea - before you spend $ on hardware upgrades - might be to install and try Linux. I have a E8400 dual core (3ghz), 8 GB ram (ddr2-667), GeForce 8800 GTS videocard (512mb), Asus P5N32-E SLI+ motherboard , 2x 320gb samsung HD and 2x 24 monitors, which sounds similar to your specs.

I haven't reached any 60+ content in the game as I'm brand new, however I have installed a Vista 64 bit on the same machine to compare. My findings are really simple. My 5 team groups runs way smoother on Linux (32 bit) than on Vista. On vista I have to run 4 alts on the lowest settings and the main on medium, and when I arrive in a crowded place I often get lag. Under Linux I can run my alts with medium settings and full throttle on my main, without getting any lag, ever (on a side note: I didn't go through the trouble to benchmark it, what I see with my eyes & my playing experience in terms of lag is enough for me).

Setting up Linux (I use opensuse 11.0 with kde 3.5 myself ) is very easy and straightforward nowadays. The more cause you no longer have to worry about security as you have to on Windows. Or at least way less. I realize that changing your OS is a big step, and it requires a willing-to-find-this-thing-out kind of mind.

I have tested AHK & Keyclone and they both work (however I use xdotool for my keybroadcasting). I don't use/like maximizer though.

Long story short: before spending the $ on hardware, trying out Linux might be a viable option.

How are you running WoW on Linux? WINE, VMWARE or other Virtual Machine?

Maybe you could post in another thread about how to set WoW up in Linux.

[zenga]

How are you running WoW on Linux? WINE, VMWARE or other Virtual Machine?

Maybe you could post in another thread about how to set WoW up in Linux.

The wine way. It's been covered in the wiki how to setup wow in Linux (and in many other places). It's pretty straightforward and it would only make me duplicate info that is available elsewhere. The only thing I did/do different is that I make use of a self brewed broadcasting xdotool script, as I've found the available (commercial) tools uhm ... too different from what I need (that is how they behave under linux). It's a work in progress and I change it every other day. Meaning that I don't have plans to make that public any soon, as it will most likely result in many questions that I can't answer. :P For now I wanna focus on playing the game (playing for less than a month, so a lot to learn).

Sorry for going off topic