Is this computer setup good?

Hi everyone, I'm new but not heaps new to multiboxing on wow..I quit wow 2 years ago, but wanting to start again with 3 shamans.

I am building a sweet system just wanting to know your view on it.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz 12MB L2 Cache - I would get i7 260+ but the 16gb ram is only supported by 775 P45 and P43 motherboards and its ddr2
Mobo: Asus si ve intel 775 P45
Case: Thermaltake V9 Gaming case with liquad cooling
HDD: 1.5TB
RAM: 16gb Platinum DDR2
Video: Geforce GTX 260+ overclocked
Monitor: 24" widescreen LCD/HD
OS: Vista Ultimate

It will only be running 3 or 4 clients all shaman.

would go with i7 and less ram, you can always upgrade your ram later to 24gb when the kits become available and for 3 shamans you dont need anywhere near that much anyways

100% agree with Nitro, 6gb will be more than enough for a 4 box. I 5 box well on 4gb in all places apart from dalaran. Get the i7 processor, you wont regret it :)

if you go intel go i7 and just pick up a pack of 6gb ddr3 ram

Thanks..

Yea Ive changed my specs now.

This is what im getting in 4 weeks time.

Thermaltake armor + liquad cooling system
intel i7 920 overclocked to 4ghz
12gb ddr3 memory
Geforce GTX 295
1TB sata II
Blue-ray/dvd/cd burner
1000W psu
I don't like vista, I have Windows Pro 64bit so ill use that.
BenQ 24" widescreen 2ms

Is that a better setup you think?

Ill be running 4 shamans now, I know its over doing it with system specs but I won't just be using it for wow.

24G or more of DDR2 will be very little less performance then DDR3, in my opinon. Ya DDR3 is faster no doubt but both are tons faster then the HHD. Goal should be to get rid of the HDD, and its way way cheaper to go with DDR2 then DDR3.


HDD to DDR2 HUGE IMPROVMENT

DDR2 to DDR3 Improvement but is it worth the cost?

Think really, REALLY hard about overclocking things. Is it really worth it for another 5% FPS? WoW isn't a twitch game. ;)

gtx 295 is overkill get the gtx 285, save yourself 200 bucks. You wont notice any differene in wow between the 285 and 295 so its not worth the extra money.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...1797&Itemid=38 so you can keep with your liquid cooling

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Originally Posted by 'Sam DeathWalker',index.php?page=Thread&postID=204552#p ost204552

24G or more of DDR2 will be very little less performance then DDR3, in my opinon. Ya DDR3 is faster no doubt but both are tons faster then the HHD. Goal should be to get rid of the HDD, and its way way cheaper to go with DDR2 then DDR3.


HDD to DDR2 HUGE IMPROVMENT

DDR2 to DDR3 Improvement but is it worth the cost?

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I dont think DDR2 is an option for an i7 board (please correct me if im wrong)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130221

MSI mobo for that i7 chip and no ddr2 support on it

Im not pushing I7 anymore, I think 32G of system ram is way better then I7:

Wow folder in System Ram for $800

Even with top I7 system you still are limited by the 3Gbit/Sec Sata2 buss (even if your SSD can saturate that buss which it can't). What good is 24Gbyte/sec I7 when your texture data is coming in at 3GBit/Sec?

Right do not overclock, if you want a faster processor just buy a faster processor.

Right no I7 board supports DDr2.

Thermaltake good choice for case (I use the shark) and cooler (I use big typhoon) though.

you will be processor bound long before you are memory bound when we start talking about running multiple clients with 8+ gb ram

thus the need for i7

Anywhere you have to load textures from your wow data folder (i.e. cities with lots of characters) your lag is cause by the hdd churning.

Easy to prove; go to Darlen and look at your HDD light. Light off in someplace where there are no people (look at wall) FPS is high. Turn and look at people HHD light starts blinking big time and FPS is low. See for yourself.

The only reason that your CPU is limited, if it is, is because its moveing data from the HHD to System Ram to itself to video ram. Ya I7 is super fast System/CPU/Video lanes but once the HDD gets in there everything goes downhill. By having the wow folder in system ram you take away the overhead from your cpu of moving data from HDD to SystemRam.

I doubt WoW uses the CPU for much at all, just some calculations, why do you think the CPU is pegged even with 8 clients? Lax would know better then I would though, but I think a lot of posts show people getting good results going from 4-8G ram rather then moving to I7 cpu.

Also its not that the I7 cpu is all that (see the clock speed); its that the I7 Platform is 24GByte/sec SystemRam/CPU/VideoCard which blows everything else away.

Thats not to say the I7 isnt a very excellent choice, expically when you can get 24G (can you put the whole wow folder in ram with 24G and 5 clients?); just its not the current cost effective choice. What would 24G of DDR3 ram cost lol ....

And that board I recomend has "propietary power connectors" and no audio. Still its used in a lot of servers; so it can't be bad either.

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I doubt WoW uses the CPU for much at all, just some calculations, why do you think the CPU is pegged even with 8 clients? Lax would know better then I would though, but I think a lot of posts show people getting good results going from 4-8G ram rather then moving to I7 cpu.

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There is a pretty good amount of CPU work going on, I'd say it's easier to be CPU bound than GPU bound for example (given the graphics settings can be put in performance mode). All of the Lua built into the game interface, including Addons, will be running on the CPU, and each frame the game needs to do a nice handful of calculations to move characters, check distances, handle queues of I/O, etc. The thing about RAM is that you need to run out of it before adding more (all else equal -- more bandwidth/faster clock is a different issue) is going to be largely beneficial, but you can always find something to do with a faster CPU or more CPU cores. All that said, I'm not sure why going from 4 to 8 GB would be much of an improvement compared to doubling CPU cores, unless they were running out of available RAM. I'm with you on the putting WoW data folder in RAM for anyone who wants to get what today is a massive amount of RAM though ;) If I had the money to spend I'd do some benchmarks on that.

I'm not sure how performance compares between the i7 and a non-hyperthreaded quad core, but I wouldn't expect it to perform as well as having a full 8 cores, all else equal. Benchmarks on every site I see/know of seem to be single instance of various games and benchmarking standards. Maybe we need to figure out how to set up and fund a multiboxer benchmarking studio so all these questions about how good systems are for multiboxing can be properly answered with some hard numbers and as few variables as possible between comparisons instead of random person A's PC+options versus random person B's PC+options ;)

On topic: The system with the given specs will probably perform pretty well. I'd recommend trying Windows 7 64-bit (free until next year!) and compare your results to your other Windows flavor of choice.

I only have the core2 Q9450 and if I run 4 at lowest gfx settings and one higher, I'm fine (all 5 at 1680x1050 rendering). But after the last patch, it reset all 5 up to something higher and I started seeing lowered frame rates. I checked task manager performance and saw all 4 cores maxed at 100%, ram usage was only at about 6 gig out of 8. I'm sure there was no texture loading speed issue due to using a 32 gig ram disk for my wow folder. I'm also pretty sure that if it were the graphics card that couldn't handle things, then my cpu would have been less than 100%. So I'm definitely in favor of going i7, and will be doing so soon myself.

How do you have a 32G ram disk? Whats the hardware?

I run 6 instances with 3.2 duel core athlon but they are 1280X960 and low visual setting and 20fps max, but i do ok.

Well I suppose as you increase video gfx settings not only do you need more gpu power but the cpu still (even from system ram) has to get data to the video card, and more gfx going to mean more data. Also distance is a key gfx setting that makes the biggest difference.

How is wow taking advantage of more then 2 cores, its not made for 4 or 8 cores? You can set it so that it does use all 4 or 8?

Sum core stuffs here:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....sid=1&pageNo=1

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The WoW engine is designed with the intention of running on ONE processor core only. Trying to force it to run on multiple cores will only slow it down. The fact Crysis can run with good FPS on your computer is that Crysis' engine is designed for high-end computers. WoW's engine, on the other hand, isn't. So by using a processor which has its total capacity performance split into two different cores, you kill WoW performance.

So instead of using a 1.5ghz dual-core processor (one which runs 1.5ghz on each core), you'd have much better results using a 3ghz single-core processor (hypothetically, I don't have the monetary capacity to test this myself).

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Look how much you have to spend to get 3.2GHz like I have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_3

Well no doubt I7 is the best, if you have the monies then sure.

Ya all reviews are single instances, our multiboxing needs may required things different.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...pHoUviDYaQV671

Cpu stuff

Ahh well that clears things up for me. WoW only uses two cores, but two cores per instance of wow.

So in one wtf config file you set it to "3" (yur main) and it uses the first two cores, and in another config file (yur alt) set to "196" and it will use cores 6 and 7. Don't use two virtural cores though.

Yer I won't be overclocking it now.

Thanks for the advice, I'm spending $4000 for the setup for keyboards, xkeys, mice, monitor and computer..just upgrading from my old gamer machine to a new one.

I won't just be using it for wow, its going to be used for my work.

I guess its over doing for most things but I like big things..hehe ( I'm female ;) ).

Can't wait till I get it :)