How good computer for 10 toons

[kaiverrettu]

How good computer would you approximately need to box 10 toons on lowest WoW settings?

Could


AMD Athlon™ II X4, Quad-Core 64 Bit, 4x 2.3 GHz
8 GB DDR3-RAM

Get me anywhere close?

Thanks !

[Ualaa]

Not sure how well you would 10-box with that.

Warcraft would be physically limited by the amount of video ram you have.
If you don't have enough, then the game will not start at all.

After that, not enough ram is probably the biggest bottleneck.
And the cheapest fix, too.
I generally like to have 1GB for the OS, plus 1GB per client.
But I'm sure you could play with less than 1GB per client, particularly with minimal addons.

It can be a toss up between Processor and Hard Drive for the next upgrade.
A low end SSD can be an enormous boost in performance.
But the game is much more processor dependent than any other aspect of your system.



You can get trial accounts for free.
And while they cannot trade, use the auction house, whisper to anyone who does not have them on their friends list, etc...
They can have toons loaded on them, in SW/Org...
Which is a good indication of the stress level your system will face.

Grab a bunch of the trial accounts.
And see how many your system can handle.

You could also run Perfmon while doing this.
To get an idea what your bottlenecks are on the system.
Which are the ingredients you would ideally like to improve first.

[katsurahama]

I have an amd phenom ii x4 940 and my mobo only holds 8g of ram. My computer does five *acceptably* but i cannot see it doing ten. I doubt yours will either.

Do the trial acct thing first.

[kaiverrettu]

I have an amd phenom ii x4 940 and my mobo only holds 8g of ram. My computer does five *acceptably* but i cannot see it doing ten. I doubt yours will either.

Do the trial acct thing first.

Yeah im just thinking wether it would be worth it.. do you think 16gb of ram would do the job?

My current comp is fine for most of my needs, im just thinking wether I'd hit something like this for some multiboxing fun on the PTR's, wether I'd invest into something like this in the future.

If 8gb won't do the job I'll probably have to think about other solutions. But thanks for your help :)

[Sam DeathWalker]

I can do 7 with 8G, I would not go for more then seven though with your system. Seven is pushing the limit I might add, with an 8G system.

And thats playing full screen and with minimal effects, and you will lag in cities.

[EaTCarbS]

i7 w/ 12g ram.

save yourself any problems or meaningless speculation.

[MiRai]

i7 w/ 12g ram.

save yourself any problems or meaningless speculation.
I'm going to speculate...

Saying 12GB of RAM I'm assuming you are talking about socket 1366 i7's... which are over 2 years old at this point. Instead
of spending money on, at this point, a dying CPU/RAM combo he could spend about $100 more and and pickup a nice Sandy
Bridge 2600 CPU and a total of 16GB of RAM.

[coglistings]

I have an amd phenom ii x4 940 and my mobo only holds 8g of ram. My computer does five *acceptably* but i cannot see it doing ten. I doubt yours will either.

Do the trial acct thing first.

here is the thing about trial accounts. trial accounts will not test your setup's ability to handle a pvp heavy exchange, especially if you are on a low population server where running around org / stormwind is your test. I have ran around with substandard systems that were just fine for lvl'in ,but they had issue with lag and follow breakin when I hit LK areas, although they performed just fine in bc/vanilla content. Not sure how cata has effected it as since those systems have been parted off to friends/family as I have upgraded my setup.

GL

[Kicksome]

here is the thing about trial accounts. trial accounts will not test your setup's ability to handle a pvp heavy exchange, especially if you are on a low population server where running around org / stormwind is your test. I have ran around with substandard systems that were just fine for lvl'in ,but they had issue with lag and follow breakin when I hit LK areas, although they performed just fine in bc/vanilla content. Not sure how cata has effected it as since those systems have been parted off to friends/family as I have upgraded my setup.

GL

I agree with this. I had the same issues.

I ended up running 10 pretty well with i7 920, and 12 gigs of memory, 580gtx card, and SSD drive. I had to close down a lot of apps since 10 copeis of wow takes up close to 7-10gigs of memory. I ended up buying 24 gigs of ram for $300 and everything runs fine, aside from really heavy/ big TB battles. You probably don't need 24 gigs, but I need to keep programs like photoshop, visual studio and others open for work - so I needed it.

[Kekkerer]

dual 6core xeon and 24gigs of ram =)

[Ualaa]

The trial account route is not as stressful as a pvp intense situation.
But it is an indication, and doesn't cost you anything except a bit of time.

Still, when you go to the Stormwind auction house on a Saturday afternoon.
And stand there with ninety three players, each doing their thing.
It is an indication, of what your system might handle or be lacking on (with the Perfmon tool).

[kaiverrettu]

I agree with this. I had the same issues.

I ended up running 10 pretty well with i7 920, and 12 gigs of memory, 580gtx card, and SSD drive. I had to close down a lot of apps since 10 copeis of wow takes up close to 7-10gigs of memory. I ended up buying 24 gigs of ram for $300 and everything runs fine, aside from really heavy/ big TB battles. You probably don't need 24 gigs, but I need to keep programs like photoshop, visual studio and others open for work - so I needed it.
Awesome. This one pretty much sums it all up for me.

Thanks !

[Shania]

Im getting closer to my upgrade.

cards we looking at are: Gigabyte 1536M GTX580 PCI-E VGA Card
cpu i think we are going for Intel Core i7-950 3.06Ghz LGA1366 CPU, not even sure what is the new or old ones, fiance has a better understanding then myself.

With ram, all I know is, its ddr3 and think 12 gigs, Im not sure if anything special about ram is needed to be known ?

I want to run 5-7 clients in cities without 3fps and hoping to have vid settings on at least good or next one up.

[d0z3rr]

Shania,

Avoid Gigabyte. Never had pleasant experiences with any of their products. Might want to check your CPU too, it may like running in triple channel mode with your ram, so you would need 3 sticks. I don't know off the top of my head and I'm too lazy to check exactly what CPUs run in triple channel.

[MiRai]

cpu i think we are going for Intel Core i7-950 3.06Ghz LGA1366 CPU, not even sure what is the new or old ones, fiance has a better understanding then myself.
I'm curious as to why he has chosen a 1366 processor over an 1155 processor? It's something I like to ask people... kinda like
a survey. :)

[Bollwerk]

I'm curious as to why he has chosen a 1366 processor over an 1155 processor? It's something I like to ask people... kinda like
a survey. :)
Wondering that myself. Why get an older, slower processor?
I suppose if you already have the motherboard and don't want to buy a new one, I can understand.

[coglistings]

I'm curious as to why he has chosen a 1366 processor over an 1155 processor? It's something I like to ask people... kinda like
a survey. :)

no known issue with a 950, plus you can nab them at a cool 200 bucks. 1366 was considered the enthusiast chipset, while the 1155's have won out in the end, didn't mean there was something wrong with the chipset, nor that 1155's can always outperform a 1366 though the instances where this is true do not appear to be in a wow client case. also, with the 1366 chipset, you can achieve 12 gig's on a single channel 4*3 where you have to use both channels on the 1155 to get pass 8 gig's. not certain if it applies to 1155's chipset, but I could have sworn I saw a post regarding a slight performance in running just one channel instead of using all channels on the 1366 side.

[lightstriker]

Get 12 cores
(http://store.apple.com/us/configure/Z0M4?mco=MTg2OTQ5OTk)

[EaTCarbS]

Get 12 cores
(http://store.apple.com/us/configure/Z0M4?mco=MTg2OTQ5OTk)

Waste money on Apple products

[MiRai]

no known issue with a 950,
Anyone building a PC should know exactly what happened with 1155 months ago. The only way you're going to get your hands
on a non-B3 revision board is if you actively seek one out.

plus you can nab them at a cool 200 bucks.
1366 Core i7 950 - $270 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115211)
1155 Core i7 2600 - $300 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115071)

1366 was considered the enthusiast chipset, while the 1155's have won out in the end, didn't mean there was something wrong with the chipset, nor that 1155's can always outperform a 1366 though the instances where this is true do not appear to be in a wow client case.
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4083/35049.png

This benchmark was taken at 1024x768 resolution so that the GPU would not be the bottleneck and the CPUs could flex
whatever it is that CPUs flex . Source: Anandtech (http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/4083?cPage=9&all=False&sort=0&page=20&slug=the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested)

also, with the 1366 chipset, you can achieve 12 gig's on a single channel 4*3 where you have to use both channels on the 1155 to get pass 8 gig's. not certain if it applies to 1155's chipset, but I could have sworn I saw a post regarding a slight performance in running just one channel instead of using all channels on the 1366 side.
You're absolutely correct that filling up more banks increases the time that it takes the CPU/Chipset to access the memory.
However, the increase of access time is quite negligible. The only people who care about filling up RAM banks are those
trying to break overclocking records where milliseconds may actually mean something.

As Kicksome stated, he had to upgrade to 24GB of RAM (from 12GB) when he switched from 5 to 10 boxing on his 1366
setup. My 1155 board currently has 16GB in it and I use less than 12GB with very nice settings on all my windows. And...
when 8GB (non-ECC) DIMMs come out I can upgrade to 32GB if I think I might ever use that much. Which [I]also means
that you'll be able to fill up 2 out of the 4 banks on an 1155 board and have 16GB and not worry about those extra
milliseconds of access time by filling up all 4 banks.

Get 12 cores
(http://store.apple.com/us/configure/Z0M4?mco=MTg2OTQ5OTk)
Here are some 8 and 10 core Intel processors. (http://www.intel.com/products/server/processor/xeonE7/index.htm)

[coglistings]

haha, don't buy CPU's from newegg!

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0346210\

appears its onsale for $179.99. If you have a microcenter intown though, you can pick up an i5 2500k for exactly same price. no such limitation on the i7 950. mail order as you please

(there was also a bundle deal where you can get a high end asus mb with 1tb hitatchi for almost 300 but can find link)

the other things will need more research to answer without me just running my keyboard, but lets not forget that if you ever go for an intel extreme processor, you will be on the 1336 chipset, not the 1156. IDk about you, but I do enjoy hyperthreading that i-7's offer.

from this point, its really all just academic. the test that really matters is to actually get everything up and running and then report what you find to the community!

[MiRai]

haha, don't buy CPU's from newegg!

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0346210\ (http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0346210%5C )

appears its onsale for $179.99. If you have a microcenter intown though, you can pick up an i5 2500k for exactly same price. no such limitation on the i7 950. mail order as you please
Exactly, you have to live by one in order to take advantage of that.

(there was also a bundle deal where you can get a high end asus mb with 1tb hitatchi for almost 300 but can find link)

the other things will need more research to answer without me just running my keyboard, but lets not forget that if you ever go for an intel extreme processor, you will be on the 1336 chipset, not the 1156. IDk about you, but I do enjoy hyperthreading that i-7's offer.Sounds like you're confusing 1156 with 1155 -- we're talking about two totally different chipsets.

from this point, its really all just academic. the test that really matters is to actually get everything up and running and then report what you find to the community!
I agree, everyone's computer is different; but, the 1155 processors, from benchmarks I've seen, handle everything overall
much better than last generation's 1366 processors for practically the same price.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Intel still hammering AMD ...

I'v had good results with gigabyte and pretty much use them and asus only.



Computer you want to play WOW?
Don't have a Cow, just go ask Sam
And as he says: Just add more Ram!

[MiRai]

intel still hammering amd ...

I'v had good results with gigabyte and pretty much use them and asus only.



Computer you want to play wow?
Don't have a cow, just go ask sam
and as he says: Just add more ram!
DJ Sam DeathWalker at your service.

[Bollwerk]

IDk about you, but I do enjoy hyperthreading that i-7's offer.
If you do things other than gaming (like video encoding, or other tasks that are heavily multi-threaded), then hyperthreading can be nice. But for those (like me) who only use their PCs for gaming (or porn), hyperthreading is a waste of $.

Until later this year, the i5-2500K is, by far, the best gaming CPU for the money. I'm running mine at 4.2GHz and I only had to press one button to OC it. =)
(thanks to my MSI P67A-GD65 board)

[coglistings]

Until later this year, the i5-2500K is, by far, the best gaming CPU for the money. I'm running mine at 4.2GHz and I only had to press one button to OC it. =)
(thanks to my MSI P67A-GD65 board)

Id would be interested in how long your system stays stable, cause at the bottom line you don't really save money if you while waiting from RMA's :P I am interested in how people still think that running multple concurrent clients is not CPU / system intensive operation. If you were talking about a singular FPS shooter or a regular, non-multiboxer wow player, yes you would be correct that an i5 is the way to go. I tend to believe that most people in the db community are aware that regular tests do not simply scale, but hey, been wrong before and happy to be wrong again, as long as the path is right.

What I and perhaps OP talk would like to hear is how someone with an i5 setup works with first 10 trial accounts, and then maybe with 10 fully lvl'ed accounts if possible.

[coglistings]

Exactly, you have to live by one in order to take advantage of that.
Sounds like you're confusing 1156 with 1155 -- we're talking about two totally different chipsets.

no, you misread, or didn't fully read, you have to live by one to get the i5 for the same price, you can order as many i7 950's as you want online. Please, your quote of my post has that part in it :P


On another note, I just reread the specs on Intel extreme processors and they are on the 1336 sockets and 1336 sockets are not compatable with 1155 or 1156 anyway you read it / force push processor into slot. 1366 and 1336 remain the enthusiast chipset while 1155 and 1156 are considered more entry level, hense no extremem processor for the 1155 nor 1156 socket

So for a test, I took a i7 950 and disabled hyperthreading in the bios and found that most of the time, I was peggin all cores over 60 percent just sitting on a bird in org with five clients. when flying around, follow did not break on the characters, but core utalization pegged out at 100 percent on some cores with descent frequency. when i am in a pvp battle with hyperthreading, I don't get above 60 percent on my box as a refference. the feel also wasn't as fluid as it is with the hyperthreading enabled IMO. I only have 12 gig's on this rig but I will see how well I can push more clients to help the OP's decision

cont...

on another rig although with a i7 930, I was able to run 9 clients with low graphics settings. the ram consumption was not what I expected from Kick's setup, only used about 6.8 GBs, possibly cause it only reserves a certain portion of ram and not a set amount unless below the true mim requirements. anyone who has delt with citrix desktop virtualization of windows desktop application will have seen this result as well as this has been the only other place where I have cared to look. I think I saw this ram consumption result also on another dual xeon test rig that was setup by a friend. anyway, I also did a flight test just running over the population of org and found that there was no follow breaks. turning off hyperthreading resulted in clients breaking follow in the flight test. Of course, I can not be sure how the faster non hyperthreaded processor i5 will deal, but at least we have two systems, one by kicksome and another by myself, that can do what you want. still need someone to do a Proof of Concept for the i5. btw, the 9 client rig was running with a much older graphics card than kick's, a 260 Nvidia.

@OP, hope this helps

thanks for all the fish

[JohnGabriel]

RAM is very important yes, but for most cases the biggest improvement you can make for boxing is your harddrive.

Even a high speed raptor hard drive isnt really good enough for multiboxing. SS drives are something like 100 times faster than the fastest traditional raptor drive. (dont quote me on that though, cant remember exactly the speed difference)

I'd choose a priority system like this:
Get 8 gigs ram > get 64 bit windows > get solid state drives > get 12 gig ram

[d0z3rr]

RAM is very important yes, but for most cases the biggest improvement you can make for boxing is your harddrive.

Even a high speed raptor hard drive isnt really good enough for multiboxing. SS drives are something like 100 times faster than the fastest traditional raptor drive. (dont quote me on that though, cant remember exactly the speed difference)

I'd choose a priority system like this:
Get 8 gigs ram > get 64 bit windows > get solid state drives > get 12 gig ram

Competely false. I've been multiboxing on 7200rpm 16mb cache hard drives for years. The biggest improvents in performance I had was when I upgraded from a q6600 to an i7.

Hard drives will absolutely not increase your frame rates or the number of clients you have. All they do is reduce the amount of time characters load in large areas, and your loading screens. Who cares about loading screens in WoW anyways? On my crappy 7200 rpm drives I don't believe any loading screen in WoW lasted longer than 5 seconds.

[Ualaa]

I would say if you don't have enough RAM, then RAM is your cheapest upgrade.
And lacking enough, also your best upgrade possible.
Once you have enough, more doesn't do you much.
And you might need a 64-bit OS, to use the ram otherwise having it is pointless.

Processor is massively important for Warcraft.
Almost all of the video effects are more processor intensive than video intensive.
If you have enough ram for your clients, this would be the biggest upgrade.

Hard Drive upgrades from a platter drive to a solid state drive is a huge upgrade too.
And given the relative cost of a low end SSD, versus a processor upgrade that might require a motherboard and ram as well...
Per cost, an SSD might be a larger improvement... but this is more for loading times, zoning times, etc... not nearly as much of an impact as the processor once you're in the zone and playing.

Personal experience may vary.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I just took out my SSD (OCZ PCI one) and went back to the raptor.

Im getting on the more system ram bandwagon now.

In theory the HDD access time is very important for loading new character textures but maybe Win7 is good enough at checking system ram first for data before going to the HDD. I don't know. Maybe I bought the wrong SSD or maybe its just not good for a system with 4G ram (I usually use my main computer to run just one client). Maybe over time it just has that trim proplem but overall its just not worth it. Better to get a 2G video board I thinks.

If you run from one area of Org to another and get a lot of stuttering lag then your HDD to video card ram is loading textures to slow. Standing in one spot won't stress that as much as fewer new people will come into your sight.

[Bollwerk]

Id would be interested in how long your system stays stable, cause at the bottom line you don't really save money if you while waiting from RMA's :P I am interested in how people still think that running multple concurrent clients is not CPU / system intensive operation. If you were talking about a singular FPS shooter or a regular, non-multiboxer wow player, yes you would be correct that an i5 is the way to go. I tend to believe that most people in the db community are aware that regular tests do not simply scale, but hey, been wrong before and happy to be wrong again, as long as the path is right.

What I and perhaps OP talk would like to hear is how someone with an i5 setup works with first 10 trial accounts, and then maybe with 10 fully lvl'ed accounts if possible.
So far, it has been rock solid. I'm completely in agreement about stability. I'm not interested in an unstable or unreliable system, no matter how fast.

I'm not sure where you get the impression that people here think that multi-boxing is not CPU intensive. All some of have said is that hyperthreading doesn't seem to offer any benefit when gaming (or multi-boxing), but that may have changed with newer processors. I'd like to see some concrete tests to compare.

[coglistings]

well, back on the system I am testing, i7 930, hyper threading does allow for smoother video as you fly around one of the busiest areas on a high population server, but with hyperthreading turned off, it becomes a slide show on both main accounts as well as slaves. I played around with some things this morning and corrected the follow breaking issue, but it still isn't as agile as when hyperthreading is turned on, as there appears to be a queuing of keypresses, meaning I can stop pressing buttons and my button presses are still going through for up to two - three spell casts.

returning to the OP question, 10 boxing on one machine, we have to take care when advising and quoting tests that are typical of no more than 5 boxing, as most of the community minus a handful, do not play more than five accounts. I can see that hyperthreading really doesn't offer to much of a difference at the five boxing lvl, but when we start to push 10 clients on the same machine, its an edge that is worth it even if its an "older" technology die process, especially if you can get it for or below the same price. so there is your evidence, though its not a screenshot with a numerical figure and bar graph on it :P On another note, more to the whole viability of trial accounts to test your end game machine setup, both setup handled flying around durator nicely, though again with hyperthreading enabled, it was still more fluid than with it disabled.

I must admit though that all I am doing is cycling between having hyperthreading on vs it not on with a stock clock/system. The i5 does have a faster clock speed than the i7 930 and there is a possibility that it may just be enough to push it to the performance of the slower clocked i7 with hyperthreading enabled. What is clear to me though, when 9 boxing, hyperthreading does help an i7 system as 9 boxing does approach the limits of the processor.

gl on your setup and please provide feedback on what you go with and what you find!

[MiRai]

Id would be interested in how long your system stays stable, cause at the bottom line you don't really save money if you while waiting from RMA's :P I am interested in how people still think that running multple concurrent clients is not CPU / system intensive operation. If you were talking about a singular FPS shooter or a regular, non-multiboxer wow player, yes you would be correct that an i5 is the way to go. I tend to believe that most people in the db community are aware that regular tests do not simply scale, but hey, been wrong before and happy to be wrong again, as long as the path is right.

What I and perhaps OP talk would like to hear is how someone with an i5 setup works with first 10 trial accounts, and then maybe with 10 fully lvl'ed accounts if possible.
My system is very stable at 4.5GHz. What's this talk about RMA's? And why do you keep saying i5 when I clearly own an i7
on the 1156 chipset.

no, you misread, or didn't fully read, you have to live by one to get the i5 for the same price, you can order as many i7 950's as you want online. Please, your quote of my post has that part in it :P
I read your post, you retaliated against my Newegg price comparison with a link to Micro Center's in-store price. You can't
order those 950's online from Micro Center... in-store pickup only. So... again, you have to live by one in order to take
advantage of that price.

On another note, I just reread the specs on Intel extreme processors and they are on the 1336 sockets and 1336 sockets are not compatable with 1155 or 1156 anyway you read it / force push processor into slot. 1366 and 1336 remain the enthusiast chipset while 1155 and 1156 are considered more entry level, hense no extremem processor for the 1155 nor 1156 socket.
No one is talking about Extreme Edition Intel processors, only you. My $300 processor is on par with the $1000 980X... look
around the internet at benchmarks. At this point, if you dropped $1000 for a 6 core processor to 10 box World of Warcraft
you're an idiot when people are clearly 10 boxing on old school [and new school] i7's for much less money.

[coglistings]

My system is very stable at 4.5GHz. What's this talk about RMA's? And why do you keep saying i5 when I clearly own an i7
on the 1156 chipset.

I read your post, you retaliated against my Newegg price comparison with a link to Micro Center's in-store price. You can't
order those 950's online from Micro Center... in-store pickup only. So... again, you have to live by one in order to take
advantage of that price.

No one is talking about Extreme Edition Intel processors, only you. My $300 processor is on par with the $1000 980X... look
around the internet at benchmarks. At this point, if you dropped $1000 for a 6 core processor to 10 box World of Warcraft
you're an idiot when people are clearly 10 boxing on old school [and new school] i7's for much less money.



I was reffering to bollwerk, not you, You have no post in this thread discussing your stock / oc'in or what you run. unsure while you are in a bind about this but oh well. Bos already answer my quote on it as well and I think the two of us agree with eachother on stability being the an important concept when OC'in, besides, I think we both got a chuckle over the exchange. Sorry if you missed the ride on that :P I do tend to blaze from one posters comments to anothers commenter's idea presented without specifically mentioning the transition, so I can accept that I have some responsibility for the confussion, but only as long as we can ingame "hug" eachother. :D

As to the instore pickup on the i7 950, yes you are correct, I did infact misread the add I posted in the forum, but it still remains that the two are near evenly priced to each other, and also from my own tests, hyperthreading may play an important role in a 10 boxing situation where it has been dismissed previously.

On the i7 extreme processor, I only brought it up since it is a reason to stick with the enthusiast chipsets and not go with the 1156, 1155 chipsets. I don't know if you five, ten, twenty box or whatnot, not going to search your posts to find out either. But if an intel extreme processor with the extra 2 cores helps you sucessfully perform 10 boxing with greater creature comforts, like view distance, particle density, etc, and saves you from purchasing an entirely new system, the I would say that it is a smart purchase. I do 10 box, but I preffer to do it on two different computers cause I do not enjoy the ingame experience when it is on one pc with no OC'in involved with any of the three i7 processors I have on hand. I am interested in seeing how an intel extreme processor will handle the load and test, which is why I bring it up. If you are on the 1155 chipset, you can't just pop in an extreme processor, you have to get a different mb as well.

If you or anyone else have personal experience 10 boxing with an extreme processor that you have on hand, then we should get together and run ideas with eachother as I would be interested in your observations. However, if we are just going to go back and forth over speculations, then lets take it to PM's :)

[MiRai]

unsure while you are in a bind about this but oh well. However, if we are just going to go back and forth over speculations, then lets take it to PM's :)
No one's in a bind, brah! I'll see you on the battlefield...
now i have to get to level 85

[coglistings]

No one's in a bind, brah! I'll see you on the battlefield...
now i have to get to level 85

I will still hug you ingame, creating lvl 1 alt on your server right now! YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM MY HUGS BRAH! :D

oh wait, you are on Kiljaeden. Hmmm, though I hate LK, I think I can make an exception to make sure you get your hugs ingame

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well its always been my opinion that WoW is not CPU limited at all.

Of course if you start talking about 10 boxing on a single computer then might want a stonger processor.

I think money should be spent in the following order as follows as far as improving your fps and what not per $1 invested (just talking about wow if you use your computer for other things then priorites might be different) (i.e. a buck spent on more video ram will improve your fps a lot more then $1 spent on better monitor or cpu).

Video Ram
System Ram
Motherboard Chipset (DMA and Buss speeds) / HDD / SDD
Video GPU
CPU
NIC card if on board not good enough
Monitor

[fleaplus]

Sandy Bridge is the best choice for 10 boxing. Higher IPC, higher clock rates in general, as well as smaller die process that is more refined which can allow for higher overclocks if you do that.

I would suggest getting the 2600/2600k model and using hyperthreading. WOW, and games in general, are very monolithic single threaded applications, so the chance that a single thread might try and lock down resources are decently high. By using hyperthreading, it can allow another thread to continue to use remaining resources in a core rather than having it be completely locked down by one thread. For a single game running, this will never be a problem (and the overhead could actually reduce performance) but for five games running it can be very useful.

Oh, and WOW is definitely processor bound. It is basically a huge scripting engine that communicates via a network and draws objects to a screen. Most of the lag in the game is caused by the scripts either waiting for more data over the network, or being overwhelmed with the amount of data that is being recieved.