computer specs for 5 boxing

Hi there,

i am new to the world of multiboxing and i want to do it right from the beginning, 5 boxing that is :)

now i have some old rigs but im not sure how many clients they can handle, i have money for some small upgrades but not a whole new one (else i would buy a quad core...).

i have 3 pc's available:

one dual 3gig core, 1gig memory and a geforce 7600GT (256mb i believe), running xp
one amd athl 2600+ (2.09GHz), 512 mb and a ATI radeon 9200, running xp
and a laptop: amd turion64 2x 1.6GHz, 1gig memory and a intergrated ati radeon xpress 1100, running vista

one client on all these pc's give no problems but i never tried 2 or more.
I am going to upgrade the memory of my laptop anyway as Vista eats most of it and i cant do much without waiting...

I would like it the most to run all 5 clients on the first compu, or else run 4 clients on it and one on the laptop, but i dont know if it can handle it (with a doable fps)

can you maybe give some advice on upgrades, if needed? (oh, and the pc's have agp slots, so most new cards are not an option for me:()

Thanks

Rob

I'ld try to go for 2 on the laptop and 2 on the dual 3gig and 1 on the amd athl 2600+,
and see from there how they handle.
I wouldn't reccomend running them all from one machine with that amount of memory.

I used to box on 3 single core machines at 3Ghz as my main and 2x 2.4Ghz for my slaves.
All had 1Gb ram and ran XP 32-bit
It ran quite smooth in Shatt,
I couldn't check for anything more demanding at that time.

I'm no expert tho (well, I can keep up the appearance to my boss)
I usually go by trial and error when it comes to these kind of decisions.

Do check out the symbolic links script if you plan on running multiple copies from one harddisk
(yes i know, i linked it twice before this week, but it saved me a lot of time and gave me a great performance boost)
and get those graphic settings macros ready

cool, tnx, i was already thinking in that direction, but i would like it most to use only 2 machines

does anyone know if putting 4gb in the dual core machine make it strong enough to run 4 instances?

I run an q6600 quad, 780i, 4gb ram, and my trusty old 7800gtx. I can 5 box with 20fps on alts, and 60+ on the main. My bottleneck was video settings.. I turned down everything I didn't REALLY need, and it made a difference like night and day.

And if you want to know what I started 5 boxing on? An AMD 3000+ Venice.. that's 1.8ghz, 2gb ram, and a 7800gtx. I made 10fps alts, and 20(outside of cities) on the main. Didn't even bother trying to walk into a main city with all 5. Had to go one at a time. And I made it to 30 on my druids with that setup. :(

With parts prices nowadays.. I bought my q6600, evga 780i, and 4gb ram for 540 bucks out the door. Added my old case, hdd, 7800gtx, power supply, etc etc.. and I can run my 5 druids, plus my main without a sweat. Can even run in and out of Orgrimmar as I please! :)