question re: hardware req for 10 boxing

Hey all. Question is basically the title.

Am contemplating 10 boxing for cata, and would like to get my feet wet with wotlk. Had been 5 boxing with no problems on C2Q 6600, 8g ram, ati 4850, win 7 64 but I doubt this setup will be sufficient for 10 instances.

Sooooo..... if anyone has an idea on what is needed as a baseline to successfully run 10 instances of wow in raids, would be very thankful if you can share your knowledge. Dont need anything crazy like being able to run across dalaran in prime time with all effects maxed out on all alts doing 60+ fps, just something that will allow me to run 10 in raids/quest without too much headache.

Thanks in advance to any who can help, have a great evening. :)

Another pc just like the one you have then run 5 per pc? (thats how i 10 box)

I'm interested in this also but I only want one machine.

I only have a Quad Core Q9550, 8GB DDR2 RAM, 2x SSD and a single ATi Radeon 5870

I have two monitors, a 'main' 27" Dell and a 23" Acer which has my 4 Slaves on it atm.

I really love swapping PiP and love how fast IS is at it, I'm wondering if I used a system with 2 graphics cards and forced ISBoxer to make the 2nd set of 5 characters use the 2nd card?

Still not sure how I would do monitors though and I'm probably going to need newer Gen2 SSD's.

I'd love to see ISBoxer be able to manage full window set swaps with one key. ie make slot 1 and slot 6 (main and main 2) swap. Or make slot 1 2 3 4 5 swap totally with slot 6 7 8 9 10.

Would be cool to be able to do that so I could have one team sitting in Dalaran Crafting while I did an instance on the others.

Anyway I'm just babbing on but will keep an eye on this thread.

Thanks for your feedback Nitro. I will look into that option. :)

Hi Slats, When I posted this thread I was thinking the same thing you are, trying to make one box that can handle all 10. I PM'ed Mercurio since he seems to be doing very well for himself boxing ICC, and he was kind enough to let me know that he is also doing what Nitro said. (2 PC, 2 monitors with 5 toons on each monitor, keyclone only).

So, unless someone can configure a rig that can handle 10 wow on one PC with multiple monitor output, I guess that's that. :/


on a tangent, does anyone here run newer hardware like the core i7 and DDR3 mems? If so, have you tried to stress test your system and see how many instances of wow you can handle smoothly? Thanks in advance to any who can help! :)

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Originally Posted by echo

So, unless someone can configure a rig that can handle 10 wow on one PC with multiple monitor output, I guess that's that. :/


on a tangent, does anyone here run newer hardware like the core i7 and DDR3 mems? If so, have you tried to stress test your system and see how many instances of wow you can handle smoothly? Thanks in advance to any who can help! :)

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Many of us run i7 systems, but I personally haven't stress tested how many instances of Warcraft I could run. I fully believe that you can run (and I think a couple people do) run ten characters on one i7 rig. Obviously all your wows would be running at a lower resolutions with a minimum of mods/settings, but it is doable. That said using two machines makes things go much smoother.

As far as multiple monitors go, it depends on a couple things: The graphics card you have, the size of the card, and the layout of your motherboard. For a normal graphics card (two outputs, the newish ati 5XXX series support eyefinity/3 cards each) you get two monitors per card.

Still musing this over. I think I'll wait till a decent amount of Cataclysm raids are being cleared to decide if this idea still interests me as much as watching Thera/Mecurio's videos now. :D

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Originally Posted by Slats

Still musing this over. I think I'll wait till a decent amount of Cataclysm raids are being cleared to decide if this idea still interests me as much as watching Thera/Mecurio's videos now. :D

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This

and ... if you make a new system that can handle 10 clients fine in the present, then you might regret that decision when cata hits. 2 'normal' systems that can handle wow now and that are scalable (easy upgrades) seems the way to go imo.

Echo, with a bit more RAM you could 10 box :/ I ran 10 with i7 920 12GB of RAM and 9800 GT 1 GB. I ran two 7200 rpm drives in RAID0, Windows 7 Ultimate.

Something to note . . . I turn everything down in Windows 7. Everything that I don't need. It looks like Windows 2000 now, lol.

Thanks Colt! Good to know the config of someone that's done it with one box. Though a lot of the other replies re: 2 boxes make valid points. So now I'll need to decide which one will better suit my situation. Thanks for your answer though. :)

Now I just need to find wow battlechest on sale again. Missed the sale at fry's like 5 days ago when it was going for $20. ><

if you can get 24 G ram (either 12 slots X 2G or 6 slots X 4G) and can run the whole wow folder in ram then you are golden, then the limit would be whatever is left over and like 600K per client (wild guess).

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Originally Posted by Sam DeathWalker

if you can get 24 G ram (either 12 slots X 2G or 6 slots X 4G) and can run the whole wow folder in ram then you are golden, then the limit would be whatever is left over and like 600K per client (wild guess).

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Except that's prohibitively expensive and you'd be better off (money wise) using one (or a couple) solid state hard drives in raid.

If you're wanting to box 10 on one pc, i7 is the best route.

Quad has 4 cores, and I7 has 5, I found each core could handle 2 wow's running, anymore added fps issues, and lag.

Ram really is important, but even with 12 gigs, I was fine at lowest rez, the more the smoother it will be. I have 24gigs now, and there is never any lag at all.

There is a section within keyclone, called CPU affinity, you can assign each wow to a core.

Also if you plan to buy a super pc, maybe turn your old one into your main pc , and run your tank on it. Keep your boxing pc clean too, all thsoe programs can boggle your performance up.

Do you have the wow folder in a ram drive?

What motherboard/ram you using to get the 24G?



Why run a warrior when you have a Paliden as tank? You are able to off tank with a mellee while running a main tank also?

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Originally Posted by Sbrowne55

If you're wanting to box 10 on one pc, i7 is the best route.

Quad has 4 cores, and I7 has 5, I found each core could handle 2 wow's running, anymore added fps issues, and lag.

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I think you mean the i7 has 4 physical cores and 4 logical cores, I think they are called

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Originally Posted by Sbrowne55

There is a section within keyclone, called CPU affinity, you can assign each wow to a core.

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Wow has this built in and other boxing software has a way to set it also. For a quad, it is 255 but I do not know it they have shown the number for 6 or 8 cores. I think you use 1 set per toon such core 1 & 2; 3 & 4 so you use 1 of each type core.

Actually, for a quad I think it's 15. You have to count in binary. For 8 cores (logical or physical) it's 255.

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Originally Posted by Owltoid

Actually, for a quad I think it's 15. You have to count in binary

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+1
Yes, for Q or i7 and HT off it s 15.

intel quad is more called 2+2 cores .... and the i7 is a true 4 physical cores and 4 logical cores with HT off or 8 logical cores with HT on.

The last new i7 980x and i7 970 are with 6 true physical cores so 6/12 logical cores without/with HT.