Seeking the advice of all you veterans...

[Hitpoints]

For the last week or so I've been reading through most of the threads here, and with each one I get more excited. I'm hoping that my hardware can handle 5 boxing on one system.

Current specs are:
AMD Athlon dual core 3ghz
Sata 3gb/s 500gb HDD
EVGA 512mb 8800gt Factory OC'd
2gb of DDR2 RAM (could upgrade to 4gb or 6gb if needed)(Not sure of speed offhand, it's the one between 667mhz and 1066mhz, 8xx or something)

I have a second (and more outdated) machine I guess I could use if needed, although I'd prefer to keep everything on one to minimize internet delay:

AMD Athlon single core 2ghz or so
EIDE HDD, 60gb or so
1gb ram (olol)(two 512 sticks, one DDR266 the other 400mhz)
Radeon 256mb 9600XT

My laptop probably couldn't handle WoW with its integrated video card (too embarrassed to mention the capacity), but hopefully I'll be able to use it as a second monitor to save myself $200 or so.

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For the team layout, I would love to be able to run 5mans efficiently, so that'd probably put a prot pally as my main. I had planned a priest as healer, then either mage/mage/lock or mage/lock/lock for dps, as well as specialty spells (water, SS, portals, etc).

I'm not completely satisfied with my lineup, and something about the symmetry of 4 identical macro drones chasing after a main excites and endlessly amuses me, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Pre-70 I plan on doing 98% pve/2% pvp (probably just enough to get epic pvp mounts).


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I apologize for another 'Is my computer good enough..' or 'What about this team: ....', but I was afraid that if I posted in somebody else's thread, things would go unnoticed.

I also apologize for not posting this in the beginner's forum, but this seems like the place to be.


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Thanks!
HP

[Kyudo]

Well firstly you'd probably get more answers to it in either the hardware or beginners forum, but I'll bite anyway.

In terms of hardware, your PC spec is v similar to mine except I have 3gb ram and only an 8600 GFX card. I run 5 wow's passably on this, so if you are for e.g. doing 4 on that pc and 1 on another, you'll be getting pretty good performance.

In terms of group setup, I strongly advise you once you've got all the accounts, to make up your preferred team and give them a shot to 20-30 or so, it doesn't take too long, and you'll have a great flavour of it by then.

I personally started out 4 boxing a druid, 2 locks and a shammy, since then they are on the shelf as I 4 box 4 shammies (to 61 so far).

Welcome to the forums and good luck with it.

[Hitpoints]

Thanks! (I feel a bit stupid for not even considering the Hardware board, but this post was never meant as a hardware one, it just kind of...happened on accident)

When you say run one account on the other machine, would that be better off the main, or a random drone. I'd imagine it'd be easier to run all the drones on the same comp since I'd want all 4 on one monitor, but it just kills me to have just spent $1000 or so on this build and not being able to even directly use the system.

[marvein]

I would suggest upgrading the ram to 4, its cheap and WoW loves more RAM (with all 5 clients opena dn varous stuff in teh background I use around 2.7gigs of memory)
video card is fine
get a second monitor, larger the better since the 4 alt windows will be quite tiny and you still sometimes need to see what is going on over there (I use 2 22" widescreens)
if your laptop has a DVD player learn to love it lol. set it off to the side of your setup and use it to watch videos as you level it makes it much more enjoyable/bearable.

1 paladin +4 almost any caster is a win. 4 shamans, 4 priests. 4 boomkins. 4 locks not so much because no heals but 3 locks 1 priest is fine. One other thing is that if you have never done it before the simpler the better (ie not doing lots of different classes) the few the class difference the easier it will be to learn it.

Currently leveling 5 shamans myself. they will be atleast 30 by tonight.

[Hitpoints]

Yup, laptop has a DVD player :D

Another monitor shouldn't hurt too bad, I can get a decent Acer for cheap with a combination of employee discounts and mail in rebates (same for the RAM, I could probably get http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0245599 or http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0274412 for decently cheap)

For the Paladin/casterx4 set up, which would be best for pve/dungeons?

I'd imagine that priests could be fun with healing attacks, or shamans with healing totems and chain lit.

[marvein]

Yup, laptop has a DVD player :D

Another monitor shouldn't hurt too bad, I can get a decent Acer for cheap with a combination of employee discounts and mail in rebates (same for the RAM, I could probably get http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0245599 or http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0274412 for decently cheap)

For the Paladin/casterx4 set up, which would be best for pve/dungeons?

I'd imagine that priests could be fun with healing attacks, or shamans with healing totems and chain lit.

I have that acer monitor from microcenter (the one for $229 or w/e) As fpr [ve/dungeon. either of those setups are excellent. paladin and 4 priest or shamans. I personally love shamans so id do pally/shaman but both choices are very strong.

So employee discounts. you work at a microcenter eh? which one?

[Hitpoints]

The Westmont, Illinois store.

Forgot to mention, I'm kind of tempted to run the 42" LCD tv as a second monitor. I wouldn't get the same resolution, but nonetheless...

[Lost Ninja]

I may have missed it but any OS that is not 64bit (except perhaps a 'nix) won't support more than 3Gb realistically. If you really want to run 4/6/8 Gb you will see performance increases but not on 32bit variants of XP or Vista.

How many clients can you run at once? Make five trial accounts and run them in IF at a peak period. Make sure the foreground Client has maxfps set to 30+ and the others are set to maxfpsbck 15. Then see if the game on a single PC is playable.

Playing through software is cheaper than running through hardware, and IMO a bit easier to set up, unless you have five machines.

For more than 2 clients I think 2monitors (or more) is essential, but make sure you can run them in span mode (nvidia) as otherwise under XP at least you get a major slowdown. Span won't work well across 2 different resolutions (it won't work at all but there are ways round that if you run CRTs).

[Hitpoints]

Alright, I'll get some trial accounts up and running in a day or two.

I might just take the slower speed 1gb of ram from my other comp and toss it in this one to see whether or not it can keep up.

As for span mode, I'd imagine that I'd be ok. From reading posts here, the 8800gt seems to be a common card with multiboxers.

Regardless, I really appreciate the input!
~HP

[Slats]

AFAIK, dropping in slower speed ram causes the existing ram to drop to the lowest speed chips availible.

At least thats how it used to work, could have changed.


-Slats

[Hitpoints]

Oo, I wasn't aware of that. If that is the case.... :?

Any idea if that applies with dual channel ram?

[Lost Ninja]

As far as I know it applies to all RAM...

But bear in mind that mixing speeds/types/makes can also give other errors.

[Vos]

different mobo's work differently on this issue. Some can run different speeds in dual channel, almost all will default to the lowest speed though. However didn't you say that one pc was ddr and the other was ddr2?

if it is the same, then 3gb of ddr2667 will be much faster than 2gb of ddr2800 and a page file on a hard disk....