5 toons, two dual core PC, or I hate fractions.

Okay, so here's the situation:

I've been successfully 'multi-boxing' my 1pally 4shaman team from a dual core 2GB machine with one large LCD monitor (1920x1200) and one CRT (1600x1200) configured as dual displays.
The main pally is on the 1920x1200 and the other four shaman alts are in quadrants on the 1600x1200.

So, in celebration of hitting level 40, I put together another identical dual core 2GB machine and bought another 1920x1200 LCD monitor. The new machine has better video card.

So here are my options:

Option 1:

Resourcewise, I think it would be ideal to run two game clients on the first PC and three game clients on the newer better PC2.
That way every cpu core is being used, with one core running two clients. The PC that runs three clients would have an LCD and
a CRT, with the CRT running the main and the LCD divided in two running the alts. The PC that runs the two clients would have
just an LCD divided in two running the other two alts.

i guess it could look something like this:

PC1 PC2
A|A M A|A
LCD C LCD

Option 2:

Alternatively, I think the alts would be more 'synchronized' if all four of them ran on the same computer with each core
handling two game clients. One of the cores on the main goes unused. I wouldn't have to use the CRT, and that would
look like this:

PC1 PC2
M AAAA
LCD LCD


So what's the better option here? Should I go for utilizing all CPU power, or maybe sacrifice some display and efficiency for more in game 'synchronization'?

Right now, everything runs perfectly all on one machine, so I'm pretty sure either way would work, just wondering what is best ?

I'd try 4+1 and use your better machine for the 4 (alts). The main character can be run at higher res, with sound, and can use better graphics options that way. Also, you can alt-tab on to websites and such with your main PC with less load.

One consideration is that you may want to have 3+2, so that you have a second character to control easily in case the pally dies... I don't know the specifics of your targeting/control scheme, but it might not be as easy to pull off a new leader switch if it's on a second PC.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 'Boylston',index.php?page=Thread&postID=123261#pos t123261

I'd try 4+1 and use your better machine for the 4 (alts). The main character can be run at higher res, with sound, and can use better graphics options that way. Also, you can alt-tab on to websites and such with your main PC with less load.

One consideration is that you may want to have 3+2, so that you have a second character to control easily in case the pally dies... I don't know the specifics of your targeting/control scheme, but it might not be as easy to pull off a new leader switch if it's on a second PC.

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Oh I got the 'if the main dies' thing under control with macro modifiers using alt, shift and control and KeyClone hotstrings. It's actually very cool, I don't really have a 'main' per se.
I just switch to whatever alt window and start casting, keyclone sends the modifier combination to all the other clones to advertise 'who' is currently casting and the macros are set
up to interpret the modifiers and assist the appropriate toon. No fuss no muss. The only crappy part is going from the big screen to the small screens, but KeyClone's PiP (F8-F9) switch
is rather long and I would imagine fatal in PvP. (I have done limited pvp)