Why use more pc's ?

[Notes]

The question is as simple as it gets ... Why do most people use 3, 4 or even 5 pc's, and more ofcourse ?

My pc is slower then any thing I've seen on this forum so far, yet I'm able to run 5 WoW's without getting my CPU ussage over 80%, with 4 WoWs running minimized in 800x600 and 1 in full screen, 1680x1050...

Is the bennefit you won't get banned by Blizz? Or because you have acces to each character at any given time to manualy control it ?

For me 1 pc works out great, and it's alot cheaper ofc...

Why oh why ?
Greetz the note family :wink:

[Scribbler]

I'm currently playing 2 chars, with a monitor for each on one PC, I like to be able to see my characters.

My PC wouldn't handle more than 2 at the resolutions I run, plus I'd need more monitors :|

[pomo]

once you have more computers in play it gives you more customization in your setup. instead of alt tabing to each box or using AHK.

i personally think its preferance i got a 3 comp setup , but if i am lazy i just boot them on my main which can more then handle it .

[Xzin]

I use 10 computers to play 10 accounts for the following reasons:

1) Reaction time - 10 computers have no bottlenecks running a single application, with full access to the bus, memory and hard drive.

2) Hardware only - Dedicated hardware is going to work or not. Synergy slows down for me at times, I don't like the concept of AHK nor do I like its inability to select a single window (?) nor do I want to script it. With hardware, you set it up and forget it and it works 100% of the time. With synergy, when one screen is loading (even on a quad core machine), it refuses to switch out to another client and there are all sorts of odd effects of software when the machine gets bogged down.

3) KVM friendly. I want to press 1 button and be able to direct my main keyboard and mouse to a single machine and KNOW for a fact that that machine and ONLY that machine is getting input. This is important when I type passwords, etc - but also for spell casts, etc. AHK and the like, I think, can do something similar - but I have no interest in setting that up - due to its somewhat scriptability and software limitations (cannot run 10 WoWs at 60 fps on a single PC).

4) Video card, memory, hard drive, CPU bottlenecks. Once you start to load up more and more copies of WoW, your machine starts to get pulled in different directions. The hard drive starts to need to load a TON of data when you zone. The CPU will get maxxed out and the way video cards function makes it such that running more than 1 port per card will slow down those WoWs to a crawl.

5) Eye candy/information density - I want to be able to run WoW at 1600x1280 or 1280x1024. Not 800x600 with minimal settings. This helps increase the amount of information I have available on screen (which allows me to monitor health, castings, etc) and also gives me a clearer view of the battlefield in PvP. Running lots of small WoWs will get you playing but will hinder your overall view of things greatly.

6) Latency - Try loading one copy of WoW. Zone into an instance. how fast does it load? Then load 5 copies of WoW and zone in. How quickly does it load? With 5 computers it would load as fast as 1. With 5 copies of WoW on a single machine - it will load really slowly. Multiple computers eliminates this latency. Also, if your computer needs to do something CPU intensive, like say a background application, your entire setup does not slow to a crawl.

7) Redundancy - Yes, more systems means more can go wrong but the chances that one machine will crash or blue screen is the same (or less due to less resources being used) as a single machine running your entire team. If your one box locks up, your entire setup goes down. With my setup, if one box goes down, I only lose 10% of my team.

8) Ease of setup - Ok, well my setup is complicated. But I know that each character has a dedicated box that I can direct input to. And I can do it in hardware, so each port of the multicaster goes to a dedicated machine that is running ONLY that character. So troubleshooting is easier (assuming its all well labeled) and the physical setup is easier to direct inputs to (or modify those inputs). Say I want to send data to the warlock team - I hit the button to cast warlock spell 1. Then I can modify that in hardware (instantly) with another button press and then it sends the cast spell command to just the mage team. One more modifier and it sends the same command to both. This is trickier to do in software and due to network latency, software glitches (memory leaks, errors, unknown interactions, etc) it is likely to be off or fail in some situations while the hardware simply sends the command and the box responds.

9) Framerates - When things get REALLY hectic (large scale PvP) your framerates suffer. They suffer the most when the system is taxed. When you are running 5 copies of WoW, you are taxing the hell out of your GPU all the time. So when it needs to ramp it up - you have no extra reserves and frame rates suffer. With 5 or 10 dedicated boxes, you have plenty of reserve "horsepower" such that when you need the extra FPS - it is there immediately with no graphics lag.

10) 3rd party programs - With hardware only and 10 computers, you are not running the (low) risk of violating the EULA. AHK is.... a bit of a gray area as it is. Hardware is undetectable (mostly) and is what I see to be a creative use of game mechanics rather than a scriptable setup that could be used to automate gameplay.

11) Other little items - you are running 4 WoWs minimized. So they aren't actually being on screen. If you had them running, your FPS would be nearly 0. So, you can't even see what is going on. I need to be able to know at a glance which character is where- did any get sapped or fall behind? Your setup cannot do that. I can quickly jump every single characters controls to another character and keep playing by looking at their screen.

There are more reasons but these are ones that I see to be some of the more important ones for me. I built my setup entirely to PvP - so your or others goals or objectives may be different than mine but I still feel like playing with 4 WoWs minimized is hobbling yourself too much.

The reason why you can do that is due to the fact that WoW uses very little CPU, especially if it is not rendering anything. When you start rendering the game (or multiple games) - your performance will quickly suffer. Especially if you try to span multiple ports of the same video card, or run multiple copies on the same card. WoW is mostly GPU limited.

[Notes]

The master himself has spoken :wink:
Thnx for the great explanation !

I think I'll stick to 2 WoW's at the same time ... Cheaper and also works allright... hehe

Nothing but respect for you, Xzin oO
imba 1337 stuff :wink:

[Xzin]

The master himself has spoken :wink:
Thnx for the great explanation !

I think I'll stick to 2 WoW's at the same time ... Cheaper and also works allright... hehe

Nothing but respect for you, Xzin oO
imba 1337 stuff :wink:

Thank you :) Glad I could help.