Hmmmm, what to do...?

So I am a long time fan of multiboxing and forum cruiser, but haven't posted much. Now I have quite a deleama: I now have enough money to multibox and build an i7 beast that can handle 5 instances of WoW, BUT I'm leaving the country in about 8 months and don't want to fork out the cash for that kind of computer only to have to sell it for half what it's worth or leave it behind to collect dust.

So..... right now I have a laptop with specs: Intel core 2 duo @ 2.1 ghz, 4 gig of ram, 160 gig HD, with vista 64 bit Home edition, not sure what the video card is, probably integrated in the MB.

I found this deal online for these computers which seems like a pretty good price:

Comes with:
Monitor - Acer 19", DVI Connection, Keyboard, Mouse, Headset.

MEMORY 2 GB - DDR2 PC5300, VIDEO Card - Nvidia 8600 GT (SLI, DVI, VGA, s-Vid), SOUND Card - Creative Soundblaster Audigy-SE 24-Bit
MOTHERBOARD - Asus AM2 socket, SLI M2N-SLI, HARD DRIVE - Hitachi 160 GB 7200 RPM SATA, 16x DVD, 52x CD Read Only, PROCESSOR - AMD2 Dual-core, 2.44ghz x2, 32/64 bit, CASE - Antec Sonata Plus 550

only $225 (including the monitors/keyboard/mouse)



SO..........I was thinking I could buy two of those computers + my laptop and have enough computing power to 5 box. My questions are:

- Is this enough power to be able to pvp without a ton of lag?
- Should I upgrade to windows 7 and stick some more RAM in the two desktops?
- What other hardware will I need, do I need a KVM switch or is there a software solution?
- Any other thoughts or suggestions?

sorry i'm a noob when it comes to hardware.

I asked myself the same question at some point, and what i did was to create 5 trial accounts and got my 5 lowbie toons to the most busy/laggy places i could think of.
Running to the silvermoon ah for example, or any other place you wish (obvisouly can't go to Dalaran with those accounts, but still)

If you notice a bit of lag with this simple testing, then you can probably conclude that your machine will be too weak when it comes to more demanding situations (pvp with lots of effects)

make sure you play with the video settings however.


as for 'other' software you will need something to pass your keys to all wows. Most people seem to use either ISBoxer($36/year), keyclone($20) or Autohot key (free), but check the wiki (lnk up top) to see which will match your needs best as they all are a bit different.

cheers
-Zub

PS. are you othe pandamonium from the wow youtube movies (cata beta etc). ?
if you are, grats! they are nice :-)

Nope, different Pandamonium. I actually haven't played WoW in over a year, I quit, and vowed to never come back except to multibox. Also is this less of a time investment/addiction? (very subjective I suppose)

Isboxer is good for your software, hardware wise...they'd do with everything on low. Definitely put more RAM in them.

Getting two of those PCs will likely work, but not be very smooth. If you're leaving in a few months, defenitly hold off on a uber PC so you can get something better when you return for the same price. The 'junk' systems will need more ram, but I imagine the motherboard has only two slots for ram & the vendor prolly stuck a pair of 1gb in each. So you'd be SOL if you're running XP.

I wouldn't recommend upgrading both machines to Win7... but if they already come with it then you can trash the 2gb ram and go to 4gb+ in each PC for a very low cost. Not sure about that video card, doubt its anything good so you'll likely have to play WoW with very miniumal visual settings - even on the 'main' screen. If you plan to use the laptop in the connection, then maybe you'll get better performance but even then its hard to say. Good luck.