How well will this WoW?

[Smithnweson]

As the post states, I'm curious on how well this will run wow, if possible, how many wows would be playable efficiently (minimal lag in major cities).


Affinity 7125Mi desktop
3.1GHz Intel Core i3-2100 processor
Intel H67 Express chipset
12GB DDR3 memory
1TB SATA II hard drive
22X DVD+/-RW optical drive
ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics with 1GB VRAM
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit

[Ualaa]

Not sure how well an i3 will run.
Rather how many copies at once.

Plenty of ram.
Video is quite decent for warcraft.
Hard Drive is good enough; likely a cheap SSD would be the largest improvement for Warcraft, if you want improvements over what you have.

How many accounts were you looking to run?

[Smithnweson]

I'd be happy with 3, prefer to have 5 going.

[Sajuuk]

Should be fine for 3 (or 5, although when doing 5 expect more performance issues). Two things to change would be (if you want to do 5 clients right now): get an i7-2600k cpu, faster GPU (ATI 6XXX series or nvidia 5XX series) for the latest tech/improvements. Also throw in a solid state drive for your wow folder. Sooo, probably look at spending an extra 500. Note: all of these things should be able to be switched out at a later time if you so choose.

[Smithnweson]

My Previous Setup:

HP Pavilion dv7 Laptop
2.00GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350
4GB RAM
286 GB Hard Drive
Blu Ray Player
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
Windows Vista Home Premium, 64-Bit

With this set up before Cataclysm it was possible to 5 box, however major cities was painful, pvp was out of the question. But 3-4 boxing was easy enough. Post Cataclysm 3 boxing was a stretch but doable. I don't mind playing on less than Ultra settings. Its all about game play over visual bells and whistles.

I would expect my new system to handle these issues much smoother, am i wrong?

[Ualaa]

I've five boxed with both a GTX 275 (Current) and an HD 4870X2 (Conflicted with something), and video is not a limiting factor for me.

You have plenty of ram.

The hard drive will certainly work.
An SSD would be a cheap ($100 or less) upgrade, which I'd guess would be the best bang for the buck.

Not sure how your i3 compares.
My Q6600 really struggled, and realistically was not good enough for massive things like AV or Wintergrasp, in the WotLK expansion.
My i7 920 (stock speed) handles 40 alliance without issue, and mass pvp/combat with 4x Army of the Dead etc.. without any issues at all.

I'd think if you had medium-high settings for view distance on the main.
With medium settings for the rest.
And lower settings on the slaves, you'd run fine 5-boxing.

Sajuuk definitely knows a lot more about hardware than I do.

[Sajuuk]

I've five boxed with both a GTX 275 (Current) and an HD 4870X2 (Conflicted with something), and video is not a limiting factor for me.

You have plenty of ram.

The hard drive will certainly work.
An SSD would be a cheap ($100 or less) upgrade, which I'd guess would be the best bang for the buck.

Not sure how your i3 compares.
My Q6600 really struggled, and realistically was not good enough for massive things like AV or Wintergrasp, in the WotLK expansion.
My i7 920 (stock speed) handles 40 alliance without issue, and mass pvp/combat with 4x Army of the Dead etc.. without any issues at all.

I'd think if you had medium-high settings for view distance on the main.
With medium settings for the rest.
And lower settings on the slaves, you'd run fine 5-boxing.

Sajuuk definitely knows a lot more about hardware than I do.

There's no doubt that older generation video cards will work just as well, but if you're buying from scratch and do some looking you can get newer generation stuff for about the same price, unless you move to the used market. Even then, I haven't exactly perused that market much myself (mainly because I don't want to end up spending a boatload of money. :p)

For some reference the 5450 is on the low end of the scale for graphics, but if found to be an issue can certainly be swapped.

As for the i3, it looks to be a dual core with hyperthreading, so it can act like a quad core. So it should work fine for multiboxing five. If issues come up it's just an expense issue to upgrade to a higher level processor. (i7-2600k, aka the sandy bridge equivalent of the i7-920/930, or an i5 level processor if you so choose.)

[Bollwerk]

FWIW,
Hyperthreading gives absolutely NO benefit in gaming (and multiboxing) such as WoW. It can actually DECREASE performance slightly, by some reports.

I would strongly recommend the i5-2500K over the 2600K if you are mainly just boxing WoW (or gaming in general). The 2600K is a wasted $100 more that could be spent elsewhere.

Also, the 5450 is REALLY low end. I would suggest something better, especially since you're boxing. Look at how low the 5450 is on this chart - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-graphics-card-geforce-gtx-590-radeon-hd-6990,2879-7.html - It is on par with Intel's integrated 3000 graphics chipset and some other REALLY old cards. (it's considerably WORSE than your laptop's 9600m GT)

[Smithnweson]

Computer Parts in general, I wish they would make a standard so that anyone can easily see what is better than what. While swapping the video card will be simple, I am not good at messing with the innards of a computer.

As I think back to the time that I tried to put a new heatsink on my old computer and i messed up and fried the board >.>

Even the thought that I bought an inferior machine to my laptop irks me as I now have to wait for the computer to arrive to decide whether or not I want to send it back. The fact that the 2 main parts (the CPU and the Graphics aren't all that great. just deflated the thought that I got a decent deal. :/

[Bollwerk]

Your frustration is very understandable. Companies like AMD/ATI and Nvidia seem to go out of their way to confuse people with their marketing names and numbers. But at least there is no shortage of info out there to clarify things and people here to get advice from. The older I get, the more research I tend to do before buying anything. I'm tired of being burned by misleading claims.

BTW, the processor isn't all that bad. It's still a Sandy Bridge, but it's only 2 cores. If you're going to be 5-boxing, you definitely will want 4+ cores (real, not hyperthreaded). The video card though is extremely cheap/low end, but video cards are easy to replace. HOWEVER, you need to make sure the power supply can handle a higher end video card, if you decide to keep the machine and replace the video card. More powerful video cards will have their own PCI-E power connectors (1-2x 6 or 8 pins). Also keep in mind that you could use both the laptop and the new machine together to 5-box with 2 or 3 on each machine. You just need the software to send the keystrokes to the 2nd machine. (ISBoxer can do this)

[Smithnweson]

I do know that this computer has PCI/PCI Express slots, but I don't know specifics... it wasn't printed. I think the major issue for me is the fact that even though changing a graphics card is easy (ive done it many times) the CPU will still be fail. I've decided to do a return of the product the moment it arrives. It is unfortunate that I will lose the shipping cost. But hopefully I will find something in my price range that can do what I want. Its just trying to figure out how sit down and actually take the time to read all that mumbo jumbo and see what is good.... which I hate sifting thru all that stuff... but i guess I ought to :/

[Bollwerk]

I do know that this computer has PCI/PCI Express slots, but I don't know specifics... it wasn't printed. I think the major issue for me is the fact that even though changing a graphics card is easy (ive done it many times) the CPU will still be fail. I've decided to do a return of the product the moment it arrives. It is unfortunate that I will lose the shipping cost. But hopefully I will find something in my price range that can do what I want. Its just trying to figure out how sit down and actually take the time to read all that mumbo jumbo and see what is good.... which I hate sifting thru all that stuff... but i guess I ought to :/
I can offer some basic recommendations.

CPU - Intel i5-2500 (or 2500K if you feel like overclocking it)
Motherboard - Anything based on the P67 chipset (especially if you want to overclock) - make sure it has the "B3" stepping (the older versions have that SATA bug which caused the Intel recall)
**special note on MB** - The MSI P67-GB65 motherboard has a ONE BUTTON overclock on the board itself. It does not get any easier than this. (I have this board and it kicks ass)
RAM - 8GB should be fine, but go with 2x 4GB sticks, so you have room to upgrade later if you want
GPU - depends on 2 factors - what size monitor(s) you will use and how much money you can afford - if you let me know these 2 things, I can offer more specific card recommendations.

Ultimately, I would suggest either having a PC guru buddy put a machine together for you, or find a trustworthy place that will not just build it, but will also do a burn-in and make sure the system is stable. Puget Systems - http://www.pugetsystems.com/ - is a fantastic place, but they can be a bit pricey. However, they are well worth the price for their attention to detail and outstanding customer service. I'm sure other folks can offer good suggestions too.

[Smithnweson]

I'm leaning towards the thought process of "as long as it does what I need it to do as well as I can afford it to do it, I'm happy".

The technolingo is just confusing to me.

Overclocking isn't important to me, and I don't want to burn out of CPU faster by doing so, doesn't seem worth it to me.

Best thing for me is having something pre-built.

I don't have much cash onhand, I went with the PC i went with because I was able to get a flex pay which allowed me to pay so much per month which alleviated the problem of having up front money to blow. I don't want to pay more than $1200, that includes everything plus shipping/handling.

My current monitor is a SyncMaster 226BW monitor from Samsung.

[Bollwerk]

$1200 is a difficult target to hit for a PC that can 5-box. I tried to customize a PC on a few sites, but kept coming out at about $1300 or so before shipping and tax. My personal feeling is that it would be better to save up a bit more money and get something you'll be happy with for a long period of time, rather than skimp on components and end up stuck with a machine that chokes in places like Stormwind, etc.

Update - Tom's just came out today with a $1000 enthusiast PC - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6950-unlock-build-a-pc-overclock,2893.html
Note that this is assuming you build it yourself, so if you pay someone to build it, you're getting up to $1200 or more.