3 Accounts, 1 Box equipment suggestions?

[Wrex]

Hi guys.

Im interested in 3 boxing for PvP. I need to upgrade at this point anyways. Im curious as to what you would suggest for playing 3 accounts on one PC. I have a couple WD Raptor 10k rpm drives that are currently in Raid 0. I was thinking when it comes time to rebuild I would drop raid, add one more Raptor and run 3 drives with 1 copy of WoW on each.

So I need to know what you all think would be good for Processor, MOBO, and Graphix Card?

Or any other suggestions you may have.

Thanks in advance! I cant wait to give this a spin.

[Wrex]

Oh and any info from anyone who has three-boxed mages in arena's would be great as well.

[Kaynin]

You might be able to get away with 2Gb ddr with only three wow instances, but I'd still advise the following. :p

quad CPU + 4Gb DDR + 8k+ geforce (pref 8800) and at least the GT type, preferably GTS or Ultra. It's doable with 2Gb but 4Gb will just feel smoothly.

I 5-box on one pc, 2,4 Ghz quad / 4Gb DDR3 and 8800 ultra enforce. Asus motherboard/graphic card (I always try to use the same brands as much as possible, Asus never failed me.) And it runs smooth, when I had 2Gb ddr it was still doable, even with 5 windows. But towns were nearly impossible to get through, I had to walk past AH one by one, now I do still experience some lag at some points, Auctionhouses, but at least I can get past with all 5 together, with some lag.

If you're looking for minimum requirements, 2Gb should be enough though. If you lag in towns doesn't mean you lag in instances/pvp, it's usually far better when it matters anyhow. :)

[Anozireth]

I think 2GB of ram and any dual core would be more than sufficient for 3-boxing. However, when the bug bites harder and you decide to move up to 5, 4GB and the quad core is where it's at.

[Chorizotarian]

I would suggest keeping the RAID0 and using symbolic linking to create virtual directories that map to the location of your physical WoW directory. I wrote a handy script that does the mapping for you in one step (requires Vista):
[Other] PowerShell script to create symbolically linked (mklink) copies of WoW ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=4854')

For RAM I agree that 4 GB is better. It's pretty cheap these days. No reason to skimp.

[Warsage]

I would suggest keeping the RAID0 and using symbolic linking to create virtual directories that map to the location of your physical WoW directory. I wrote a handy script that does the mapping for you in one step (requires Vista):
[Other] PowerShell script to create symbolically linked (mklink) copies of WoW ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=4854')

For RAM I agree that 4 GB is better. It's pretty cheap these days. No reason to skimp.I am currently running Vista and when I was going through all the tutorials I followed the instructions of one and copied my C:/Program Files/World of Warcraft folder and made C:/wow1, wow2, wow3.

Since I've already done that should I delete them and just use your script to make the copies run at a higher rate of efficiency? Thanks for any input.

[Silly Gooooose]

You might be able to get away with 2Gb ddr with only three wow instances, but I'd still advise the following. :p

quad CPU + 4Gb DDR + 8k+ geforce (pref 8800) and at least the GT type, preferably GTS or Ultra. It's doable with 2Gb but 4Gb will just feel smoothly.

I 5-box on one pc, 2,4 Ghz quad / 4Gb DDR3 and 8800 ultra enforce. Asus motherboard/graphic card (I always try to use the same brands as much as possible, Asus never failed me.) And it runs smooth, when I had 2Gb ddr it was still doable, even with 5 windows. But towns were nearly impossible to get through, I had to walk past AH one by one, now I do still experience some lag at some points, Auctionhouses, but at least I can get past with all 5 together, with some lag.

If you're looking for minimum requirements, 2Gb should be enough though. If you lag in towns doesn't mean you lag in instances/pvp, it's usually far better when it matters anyhow. :)

I Don't think you need that much, but more is always better,

I run 3 normaly, and 5 when my second computer decides it doesn't want to work for the day on:

2 gigs of ram (2 runs all 5 fine, on min settings)
8400gs 51mb ()http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814136025)
AMD athalon 3200+ and combo CPU that came with it, I have no idea about it's specs. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135058)
Old HD from an old comp.
350W power supply

I built this cheapy comp for about 250$ with some old parts from an old comp (case, HD, monitor, keyboard and mouse)

It's meh in main cities when I run all of my chars there, but when It is only running 2-3 WoWs it does just fine, never have a FPS drop from my 15 FPS back, 40 FPS front (though i never have 1 up front, I control it all from my main comp.)

[Wrex]

Thanks for the info guys.

Btw I thought WinXP couldnt deal with 4gb of ram? Thought you had to ..... shudder..... use Vista in order to access more then 3gb of ram?

[Wrex]

I Don't think you need that much, but more is always better,

I run 3 normaly, and 5 when my second computer decides it doesn't want to work for the day on:

2 gigs of ram (2 runs all 5 fine, on min settings)
8400gs 51mb ()http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814136025)
AMD athalon 3200+ and combo CPU that came with it, I have no idea about it's specs. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135058)
Old HD from an old comp.
350W power supply

I built this cheapy comp for about 250$ with some old parts from an old comp (case, HD, monitor, keyboard and mouse)

It's meh in main cities when I run all of my chars there, but when It is only running 2-3 WoWs it does just fine, never have a FPS drop from my 15 FPS back, 40 FPS front (though i never have 1 up front, I control it all from my main comp.)wow lol, i have most of that already.

I have the following currently:

AMD 3800 processor
2 gb (4x512) OCZ Platinum
2 x 37gb Western Digital raptors, + 160gb WD extra drive
I HAD a pretty good graphics card, but it grenaded on me, so im using an old one atm, 128 mg piece of junk.

According to what you have there, all I need to run 3 instances is a new graphics card?

Oh and to make things worse, the vid card, and the mobo of course, are AGP.....

So yeah, I am in dire need of upgrades :p