Hardware Advice

[Aragent]

I will be upgrading a few things come the 1st of the year Just minor Upgrades (Its that time)
My gear have been slowly built up or Professionally donated.
before having to be forced to retire So money is an object.

I currently have 4 I7 920s with 8megs ram the 2 primary machines have 2xNvidia 250 the other 2 have 1x Nvidia 250
all 4 have Ultra LSP 750 Power supply all 4 machines run windows 7 Ultimate
all run through Cisco Router and both Hardware and software KVM. supporting 5x22" Monitors.

I am planing on upgrading to 16 megs ram on each machine and adding 2x Nvidia 250 so all machines will have 2 and adding 5x22" Monitors (Friends work is donating the Monitors)

Here is where the reaI question comes in I am thinking of adding a File-server probably a [NAS] but thats still open.
running raid SSD I am Thinking that I can run all copies of wow from the File-server from the 4 pcs.

I am thinking the transfer rate should be fast enough not to have a Bottleneck on the 4 pcs.
or do you guys think that the transfer rate of the file server will be to slow and lose the benefits of the ssd raid.

So what are your thoughts ?

[Sam DeathWalker]

I wouldn't run duel video cards.

A 285 or 5870 (I think it is) is the best you can get right now, single gpu on a single card is the win for wow as it dosnt utilize 2nd gpus very well if at all. 1G video ram is a plus also.

I have no idea on the file server but I have a strong suspicion that any additional layer of complexity will slow things down.


If, as some have suggested, Win7 will use all that 16 Meg up as cach for your textures as you use them (i.e. once something is put in ram it stays there untill the system is out of memory and has to overwrite it) you will have little acess to the SSD's and may as well just use raptors. I am not sure that is what happens though and if it dosnt (i.e. wow always go to the hard drive when it needs textures not in video ram) then raid SSD seems yur current best choice.

Wow itself won't cache more then 1/2G .... still not sure about the OS.

[Iceorbz]

I wouldn't run duel video cards.

A 285 or 5870 (I think it is) is the best you can get right now, single gpu on a single card is the win for wow as it dosnt utilize 2nd gpus very well if at all. 1G video ram is a plus also.

I have no idea on the file server but I have a strong suspicion that any additional layer of complexity will slow things down.


If, as some have suggested, Win7 will use all that 16 Meg up as cach for your textures as you use them (i.e. once something is put in ram it stays there untill the system is out of memory and has to overwrite it) you will have little acess to the SSD's and may as well just use raptors. I am not sure that is what happens though and if it dosnt (i.e. wow always go to the hard drive when it needs textures not in video ram) then raid SSD seems yur current best choice.

Wow itself won't cache more then 1/2G .... still not sure about the OS.

You can choose a 2nd GPU using innerspace.

[Owltoid]

i7 920s can have motherboards that support 8MB RAM? I thought it had to be in multiples of 3...

[Ualaa]

I was pretty sure the i7 920 was multiples of three.
But there's an i something 860, which is almost the same as an i7 920, but with 2 memory channels instead of 3.

I would personally recommend a single video card per machine, instead of the SLI/Crossfire or a X2 card. Only IS Boxer can force warcraft to run each copy on a specific video card, but your FPS nosedive if you PiP swap while doing this.

Depending on your finances, you could go with an Intel (Gen 2) X25-M for the operating system and wow folder per computer. I'm not sure if one of those would work as a file server or not. I don't have experience in that area. I would probably go with a low-middle end (Gen 1) SSD, purely for the gaming folder, with one drive per computer; it will likely cost you less then a single Gen 2 SSD.

[Fizzler]

Let me see if I have this right. You want to move your WOW installation to a SSD NAS device and network your 4 PC's to play off the WOW folder on the NAS?

I am not sure this would be wise at all how are you connected to the NAS? Gig-E?

[Aragent]

Let me see if I have this right. You want to move your WOW installation to a SSD NAS device and network your 4 PC's to play off the WOW folder on the NAS?

I am not sure this would be wise at all how are you connected to the NAS? Gig-E?

Yes that was the Idea,
and also yes Gig-E

I questioning if the gain from Raid SSD from the NAS will be enough gain or will I lose the benefit of the SSD by getting a bottleneck trough put from the Gig-E

[Fursphere]

Yes that was the Idea,
and also yes Gig-E

I questioning if the gain from Raid SSD from the NAS will be enough gain or will I lose the benefit of the SSD by getting a bottleneck trough put from the Gig-E

You're probably the only one doing this. So you're breaking new ground here.

I think Gig-E will kill performance, but try it. Maybe it'll work!

[moosejaw]

BTW you can run just about any ram configuration you want with an i7. You just have to stay within the limitations of your MB. Of course if you want triple channel you want to populate 3 slots with the same ram but you are not locked into that configuration.

My user manual for the Asus i7 p6 board had lots of combinations that were supported. I ran 8 gb in a 4 x 2 gb configuration with triple channel enabled. It was supported and it worked.

[Sajuuk]

You're probably the only one doing this. So you're breaking new ground here.

I think Gig-E will kill performance, but try it. Maybe it'll work!

I've done something similar, if you count playing wow where the data was on an external server since the computer I was using didn't have enough hard drive space for wow. =P I'm not sure if I raided that night or not...


I wouldn't run duel video cards.
As stated, Innerspace can allow you to split games between graphics cards, even if you're still using the main monitor. Using two 9800GX2s I put two clients on one GPU, two on another, and then had my main on the primary GPU. The last GPU I left alone. I had wonderful performance. Going from two 9800gx2s to one 5850 was noticeable (FPS/smoothness wise) in dalaran. Do it right and you can really benefit performance-wise.