VBox on Mac Pro Dual Quad Core, Mac Mini or XServe?

[Apocolyse]

Hello,

I was looking into the Mac Pros and noticed you can rig a dual quad core machine with 4 or 5 graphics cards and was interested in the opinions of this board as to its feasibility for quad or VBoxing on one machine.

This is the base setup.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/9094003/wo/wK3aqH2N60qf2yqmBDtiHbMBwOK/8.?p=0

# Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
# 4GB (4 x 1GB) RAM
# 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
# 4 or 5 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB Cards

I was also wondering if having multiple hard drives for each instance of the application would help or be recommended to increase performance and frame rate.

Would the Mac Mini run smoothly enough or is the processor too slow?
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/9094003/wo/wK3oEfZP3AeB2JAYw1K6iRtYqZP/8.?p=0
Was looking to get 4 of these with the above if it wont run multi on the one machine.

I was also not sure about using a barebones set of boxes and a server. Is this possible? Was looking into an XServe:
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/9094003/wo/wK3aqH2N60qf2yqmBDtiHbMBwOK/18.?p=0

Or using the above Mac Pro as a server and getting the Mac server software installed.

Thank you for your time, I appreciate it. :)

[cubbs80]

The only thing I can comment on here is the Mac Mini performance, which I researched some time ago. A quick googling yielded the following couple of sites:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=183498

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/games/mac_wow_performance.html#storytop - scroll through for some mac mini info, as well as some other tidbits that may be of use to you.

[Stabface]

My friend has one of the new mac mini and WoW is what I'd call barely playable on it. It will run around 15-20 FPS in instances, more like 5 FPS in a major city.

As far as the mac pro tower goes, it may work but you'd spend 6K$+ on that machine... it's overpriced and not worth it IMO. You can build a very good WoW machine for much less than 1000$, easily. So even building 5X of them you'd save 1K$+ without a doubt.

[Xzin]

I have a machine that can, in theory, 5 box "well".

I don't.

Too many reasons to list, some driver based, some graphics, etc.

Buy 4-5x $500 boxes and save the headache and $2500+

[Apocolyse]

I was looking to buy the Mac Pro with the below specs becasue I love the Mac OS and produce my own music as I play guitar.


* Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
* 2GB (4 x 512MB)
* 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI)
* Two 16x SuperDrives

But then I was bored and my friend talked to me about dual boxing and I started looking and found this.

Anyway. Are there any problems associated with using a Mac and then having 4 bareboned windows machines?

It is all just splitter into each machines? Just wondering I think This will be the route I go as you cna boot windows on the Mac if there are problems, but does anyone know the problems, if any, of this setup if I use Mac OS on the Main machine?

[Apocolyse]

I have a machine that can, in theory, 5 box "well".

I don't.

Too many reasons to list, some driver based, some graphics, etc.

Buy 4-5x $500 boxes and save the headache and $2500+

yea man I was thinking about this. I am not a programer so I cant write a multi app keysplitter for mac lol. I will need multi boxes and the Mac minis are what I figured, minimums and barely run WoW.

[Xzin]

I would avoid macs and the mac mini in particular. Unless you go all hardware - even then.