Rate My Rig + General Tips for a first timer?

Hey folks!

I'm trying to evaluate my options in terms of how many "boxes" I can run on my current computer. I'm extremely new to this and I've been away from WoW for a while but I think I could learn to like it again with a challenge such as dual-boxing. Since I don't have any real experience in how to gauge what resolution or what # of clients can be run on <insert hardware here>, I'd appreciate any help. I'd also appreciate any critiques of the hardware and/or suggestions for potential upgrades to better enhance my multi-boxing. Caveat: Generally, I'd prefer to software multi-box (vs the hardware route) since this rig cost a fair amount to put together.

I'm currently planning to start out with 2 characters, and if all goes well with those, i'd like to eventually roll out an all-druid 5-box given the flexibility between having tank/melee/caster availability. Also, any class combo suggestions would be welcome also.

Here are my specs:

OS: Win XP SP2
Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme 2.66GHz QX6700 [no overclock]
Graphics: single XFX GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB DDR3 PCI-e [no overclock]
Motherboard: ASUS p5N32-E SLI LGA 775 Nforce 680i ATX
RAM: Mushkin (#996564) 4GB (2x2GB) 240-pin DDR2 800 PC2 6400
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad
Display: Dell 2407WFP 24" LCD Monitor @ 1920x1200 [connected via DVI]
HDD: Samsung 250GB 7200rpm

Questions:

1) Should I bother investing in a discrete physics card (e.g Ageia, etc)? Or does that really enhance the smoothness/frame rate of WoW when multi-boxing on the same machine?

2) Right now, I'm using maximizer (via keyclone) to run my two characters in a couple of 800x600 windows at the top of my screen. The fps is generally in the 50-52 range, but seems to get randomly choppy sometimes. Is there any way to prevent this, or is it just part of what happens when you multi-box? (The choppiness is present in the Tauren starting zone with not a significant amount of other players on-screen).

3) In order to eventually run a 5-man group, I'm sure that i'll need to add another monitor. Would it be best to go for another 8800 GTX and multiple 19" monitors, or just another 24" Dell like the one I already have and run both 24s from the GTX? (assume economics are equal b/w both, i'm more interested in performance than saving an extra $150)

4) Within keyclone, i've assigned each instance of WoW to a specific core of the processor(e.g. WoW1 to CPU 1, WoW2 to CPU 2); is this the best way to do it? Or am I gimping performance? Performance-wise, should each instance be run from a separate hard drive, or is putting both game directories on 1 HDD fine?

5) I am currently running Win XP SP2, but I have a clean HDD with Vista Ultimate 64-bit installed, same physical specs as the current drive I'm using. Which OS would be best for trying to multi-box? Given that the software and drivers support for Vista Ultimte 64x is still very very immature, I'm halfway afraid to try and migrate to Vista just yet. Hell, I'm not sure if keyclone would even run in a 64-bit environment. Any thoughts/opinions?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read the post! (and hopefully contribute advice!) :D

hi brandonbwt and welcome to the forums!

taking your questions in order:

1. your rig looks like it should support 3+ wows at a time, depending on what you'd like for fps on each clone. i don't think the extra board will bring much. i'd suggest getting 5 trial accounts and see if they all run and what kind of fps you get. if they all work fine, i'd suggest getting a 2nd monitor and putting 4 on one and your main on the other.

2. i'd suggest reducing your maxfpsbk to 20 or so (24 fps == movie quality). lower fps saves cpu and gpu.

3. another monitor would make doing 5 characters at once easier. (see above)

4. change the cpu settings around and see what you get. you shouldn't see any real change. as for another harddrive, multi readers pulling the data is better then one... but if the data is shared across a DLL, then multi instances would hurt your memory usage. i think the 4GBs should be fine

5. 64bit vista? not sure... i've personally not tried it. someone else here should be able to answer that one

keyclone works w/ 64bit vista, its what i run on.. umm im not familiar with the Intel Core 2 Extreme.. is that a Quad? cuz i have the Intel Core 2 Quad the one that costs around $300ish well anyways everything you got looks like about what i got or better.. i run 5 characters.. i cap the fps though at 50 on the main and 25 for the background windows.. although i could easily get 50++ on each, so I would say just try trial accounts and see if it works... as for switching to vista... its up to you, if its just for wow id say go ahead, if you are going to be using a lot of other programs also take more time to think it over cuz there are a lot of programs that arent compatible yet with the 64bit although i havent found many that arent..

well thats one 15 yr olds opinion :P

-matt

@ keyclone & matt, thanks for the input! It was great to see such a quick response to what are probably pretty dumb questions :)

@ matt: yep, the Core 2 Extreme is a quad-core processor, though I'm not sure the difference (mechnically at least) with the processor that you have.

I'm thinking of switching my WoWing over to the Vista Ultimate 64x environment b/c it seems to be better suited to utilize my hardware. Given that XP can only use ~3.2 GB of my RAM, I figure that might help with some of the choppiness I'm seeing in my other wow client.

At risk of sounding like an idiot, I've got a few more questions:

1) what does maxfpsbk stand for exactly? (I'm assuming the max frames per sec for the back/non-focus window?) Also, in my current maximizer setup, I have the maxfpsbk value set for 25 on each respective WoW client. Should they be set to different values for my main's WoW window and my helper/alt WoW window? Or is setting the same value throughout my various client windows appropriate?

2) I tried to play around with getting a 2nd monitor set up (I had an old SyncMaster 930B that was gathering dust in a closet) but ran into the problem of having two displays at different resolutions. My 24" Dell is set to 1920x1200 while the Syncmaster can (at max res) only get to 1280x1024. I ran each monitor from a different DVI port on my 8800 GTX, but couldnt figure out a way to make them both work unless I scaled the 24" widescreen down to the lower matching resolution. Are there Nvidia software/utilities to help with this problem, or does this mean that I'm kind of shoehorned into either a) getting another widescreen monitor or b) using the lower res for my larger display?

3) Assuming that my maximizer fps and fpsbk values are set to 50 and 25 respectively for both my main's window and my alt's window, is it normal for the non-focus WoW window to be choppier than the focused window? Whenever I'm manipulating my UI or looking around the game world, whichever WoW client that I don't have selected as my focus window is slightly choppier than the focus window. I'm just kind of wondering if this is normal.

4) I've was also looking at the Nvidia tweaking utility nTune last night. While I haven't run it yet, I was thinking that perhaps I could smooth out some of the frame rates I've been having by letting the software do a small overclock on my processor and my video card. Excluding the risk of voiding the warranty by overclocking, does this seem like a reasonable way to increase performance, or would the performance gains from the overclock probably not really be that noticeable?

Thanks again folks!

1. Run 64bit vista (works great with WoW, other stuff... YMMV) 4gb ram and no issues with different sized monitors.
2. Your system is as good or better than 99% of the people who run 5 clients on 1 machine, you just need to set processor affinity, and max min fps
3. The main thing you need to decide is how you want your clients displayed. You could go with 2 monitors off of the 8800gtx, or 3 monitors on the gtx and pretty much any other 8series geforce card. 2 widescreen monitors in portrait mode on either side of your main screen seems to be the optimal setup for 5box 1 machine, but 1 on a 24 and 4 on another 24 is nice also. Check out the screenshot thread for ideas...

Your rig beats the snot out of mine so I'm really not sure what to say. I run 4 on the following
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz
4GB ram (3.5 in xp, yay)
PNY 7800GTX video (single)

I'm even running in dual view on 2 monitors in portrait mode, which several have said drop the framerate, and I run at 1024x768 stretched with WoWMaximizer.

It may be just in your video settings. On mine I pull the terrain distance, spell detail, EVERYTHING back to the minimum because 80% of the time I'm looking at my main machine which is all bright and perty. The same should go for you, just keep the settings however you like on the window that's your 'main' and cut the settings back on the others.

That may be obvious and already done but I just can't think what else could be bogging you.