Oh... minimized will work fine. I thought they were all visible.
Still.... quite playable but suboptimal, IMHO.
Printable View
Oh... minimized will work fine. I thought they were all visible.
Still.... quite playable but suboptimal, IMHO.
Xzin - no offence. You are the man mate. I have serious respect for you and the playing skill. I personally can't wait to get into this all. I've seen your (hardware) setups and they are sick. I want want want :PQuote:
Originally Posted by Xzin
Suboptimal maybe - but we aren't all as lucky as you with that hardware to hand. What this gives you is that "dip in the water" to see what its like. I didn't know if you could do this, but now I know you can I'll be doing it this week. If it goes well I hope to get the hardware to match. No idea if I'll get to the same level as Xzin, but if it even gets me 50% of the way it will be a laugh.
Me? Well I've played since release, been a raid leader, worked to much for a guild, and my love of the game sort of vanished. Now tho - this is really getting my mind to wander at work.
Dangerous man Mr Xzin is. Be warned :)
Thanks to all who have gone before us, but remember the accessibility for everyone. Thats really really key...
(but agree hardware >> software. For EULA - tho is it really legal that crap.. and for response times and usability. Plus hardware on the desk always looks great) :P
Edit: typos and end.
I can run 4 WoW instances all visible with a fairly mid-tier machine: AMD x2 6000, ATI x1650 Pro, 4 GB of RAM. They are at 800x600 windowed with most graphic options turned down and sound off, but frame rate is smooth and the machine isn't even really bogged down, runs around 30-50% CPU and maybe around 1.5G of RAM in use, a bit higher in cities.
I have a q6600 running 2gb of ram on an xp pro machine with an 8800gs
Runs 3 windowed instances fine at once, 5 minimized with no problem.
You make several good points. I think I should clarify a bit. 5 on 1 computer will eventually be the way to go. For all sorts of reasons it is not right now. It gets you going though and for many (most) this is not a hobby they want to spend $10k or more on. I totally respect that. The software approach will get you what you want. It's a Honda Accord vs a Lexus 430. You don't need the Lexus to get from point A to point B. But damn if its not so much more safe, comfortable and more flexible in the Lexus.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ubor
So by saying it was sub optimal... yes it is not the best solution out there in my opinion. But you can get 90% of what I have for 10% of the cost with software or minimizing screens, etc. Just don't expect to be a 2700 team in Arenas either though. Does that help clarify a bit? This hobby is not cheap but given the amount of entertainment you get from it - the costs are staggeringly low compared to movies, bars, etc. Even 5 boxing. Most of the time anyway.
Anyway, my goal was not to dig on people who cannot afford but to point out there are some things you give up by not doing things a certain way. That's all.
That's odd, since WoW and HL2 are listed as SLI supported games here:Quote:
Originally Posted by Bena
http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone2_game.html
You may want to make sure you're not overriding the customized driver profiles with your own settings. I had a 7900GTX SLI setup for a while before moving to a single 8800GTX and I found most games supported SLI, although how much faster they were was widely varied.
At work I have dual quad cores. Its an amazing setup, I am thinking about purchasing one for home.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gigatron
http://screencast.com/t/Yjrwahtaiz
I've been 5-boxing on a Core 2 with a similar setup. 5-boxing isn't really playable. 4-boxing barely works. 3-boxing works pretty well. I was considering upgrading to a quad core, but instead picked up 2 Pentium 4s to act as slaves. I'm still trying to get it setup.
Where did you see Xzin's hardware setups? I though he said he didnt want to show anyone.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ubor
P.S. Building out my Quad Core setup as we speak (Q6700). Setting up Dual Boot Vista Ultimate / XP Pro atm. I'm tired but i cant sleep till it's done :p
multiboxing on a single PC seems great at first, because its your first experience running multiple characters.. but you dont realise how sub-par it is until you actually start running dedicated boxes. ive been 10 boxing shadowbane since it was released (4+ years, i think?) and 5 boxing WoW for 8 months or so.. i thought i was doing fine until i finally decided to start doing it more seriously. consider the difference between 5 boxing on one pc (even a high end one) and 5 dedicated boxes.. the same difference between going from one toon to 5. the effectiveness of your group, your response time (and thus your survivability) goes up immensely.
1: the most ANNOYING thing.. whenever you hit high load areas (cities, heavy casting, new zone, PvP, lots of mobs, pretty much anything that requires you to pass a load barrier).. the windows that arent in focus start to lag behind and will eventually drop out of /follow. the higher the load and the faster youre moving (faster data has to load) the more it happens. very, very irritating when youre on horse. this has nothing to do with your hardware or your connection.. its a client issue caused by a combination of latency and not having CPU focus.
2: you dont realise how amazing being able to instantly view each character and their HP bars (group bars are nowhere near as reliable), whats hitting them, debuffs, buff times, different points of view, etc.. until you have a screen for each toon.
3: your system performance will rapidly degrade over a period of X hours (more clients = faster) because of memory/gfx memory leaks. eventually you wont be able to restart any clients (which you will need to do occasionally, since WoW errors a lot when you box on one machine) without a reboot because all of your graphics RAM is locked up from the software leak. FPS degrades hideously and it gets to the point where you lock up every time something needs to load. you may think having to reboot every 2 hours or so isnt a big deal, but you notice the performance difference quickly.
personal experience on my existing high end gaming rig, i can tell you first hand that the difference is absolutely huge. no matter how high end your rig is, WoW doesnt window well. and, at the end of the day.. why not buy more PC's? i just bought 4 PC's to use with my existing gaming system.. cost me under AU$650 per machine (around US$450, i think?).. thats including a 17" LCD.. combined cost equal or less than that of a serious high end machine ( that you will NEVER use to its full potential if all you play is WoW and MMORPG's).
and theyre hardly 'poor' systems..
E2160 (oc'd to 3.2GHZ)
2G 667 RAM (oc'd to 800)
8600GT (oc'd to 1400mhz)
P5B
CAC-T05 /w 430w PSU
really sweet machines for the prices..