Please suggest the most useful system upgrade...

I've seen a lot of people mention their machines and how they get 40+ fps in Dalaran, at peak times blah blah blah, but that's not the case from me. So I've been really disappointed with my 5 man team not being able to visit Dalaran, at all, ever. I might see 0.2fps (yes, that's zero point two) at peak times...my toons land from the flight path and it takes 10 minutes of run and stop, run and stop, hit follow, go back and pick up toons, run and stop, etc to get them to the portals. Not even do anything there, like the use the bank, or look for pug's for the weekly raids, or anything else.

Current computer setup:
5 accounts on 1 computer, ISBoxer running 1 big window with 4 slave windows along the bottom of the screen
CPU: Q6600 quad core
RAM: 4 x 1GB
Video Card: Radeon HD 5770, 1GB RAM (just got this - love it!)
OS: Windows Vista 32-bit -- Win7 64-bit has been ordered, hope to get an improvement from full use of my 4gb (+1gb video) RAM


So here's the question: What should I look at as the most bang for my very thinly stretched, student-budget dollar? Here's what I've been thinking about:

8GB of RAM - about $200 or so.
Intel 40gb SSD drive - about $125 or so. This would only be used for WoW folder and addons.
Second 40gb SSD drive -another $125 - running paired in RAID-0 for better performance.
Second monitor for my main toon - about $150-200 - moving the slave windows onto the second screen. not a performance addon, but huge for just nicely seeing what is happening instead of squinting at my 1/2 inch tall toons LOL

What would I see a bigger improvement from: the RAM increase, or the SSD (either 1 or 2 in RAID)?

I can run heroics etc just fine with the setup I have now, so I'm actually leaning to the monitor first, and seeing what 64bit Windows does for me as far as making all my current RAM usable.


Any thoughts? Please post suggestions or alternatives, I'd love to hear ideas and your personal experiences with upgrading your system.

If Windows 7 x64 is already on the way then 4 more GB of RAM would be my suggestion.

tough one, your on the border with only 4G of ram.
I would have to say the extra memory first, then the SSD drive.

Once you have win7 64bit, the memory upgrade will have the biggest affect on your FPS in dalaran.

One thing you don't mention though is your network connection spped. Having boxed on a laptop from numerous nets, I can confidently say most people underestimate the effect that net bandwidth has. In a place like dal, the server is sending quite a bit of data your way because of all the other toons NPCs etc around. Multiple that by 5, and it becomes a lot of data. Extra memory will help some by increasing the physical to virtual memory ratio each client is experiencing so that you VM system doesn't thrash but it can't fix everything.

RAM then SSD

8 GB ram would be the top priority.

as you are on a student budget, I would probably look at getting a cheap second HD (not SSD) and move wow to that drive. You will get the performance boost of wow being on a different drive to the OS and page files for the system. At a later date when funds allow you can upgrade to an SSD.

8 gb RAM first , then later you can upgrade to an SSD. The RAM alone will boost your performance significantly.

I agree with the RAM. I started with 4 as well and once I went into wotlk content while leveling I constantly lost follow, had screen freezes. Even with details off on all chars. I upgraded to 8 and the game ran great with 4 chars low details and 1 nearly full(shadows 50% but runs with full).

It`s funny because before that I ran 4 shamans on a singlecore2800+ (if I recall correct lol) with 2gig ddr1 266hz. I had all details low and view distance on all at around 50% and it ran better then 4gig ddr2 and a quadcore3gig. Pretty weird haha but anyway 8gig is the way to go, I use around 5,6gig of it in dalaran.

I wouldn't bother with a SSD for WoW. For your OS? Absolutely. SSD for WoW is utterly pointless.

I have the same exact proc as you (stock 2.4 clock), no SSD, 8gb ram, and a gtx 260 and I get good FPS in Dalaran.

But the best upgrade I ever did was build a second computer. If you can save up about 500 bucks you can easily build another computer that could run the other 4 WoW windows. Then your main will be max resolution with all the eye candy, and could FRAPs well too.

64 bit OS and RAM > Monitor > SSD I would take the monitor over the SSD just because i like to see what is going on with all my toons.

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

I wouldn't bother with a SSD for WoW. For your OS? Absolutely. SSD for WoW is utterly pointless.

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I 100% believe the opposite. SSD is pointless for your OS and absolutely useful for WoW. Single boxers don't need an SSD, but multiboxers are constantly hitting their harddrive (unless you have it in a RAM disk) and an SSD is key.

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Originally Posted by Owltoid

I 100% believe the opposite. SSD is pointless for your OS and absolutely useful for WoW. Single boxers don't need an SSD, but multiboxers are constantly hitting their harddrive (unless you have it in a RAM disk) and an SSD is key.

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Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Nice.



Wait, you're not being sarcastic? :confused:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Nice.



Wait, you're not being sarcastic? :confused:

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There are tons of threads on this site with peeps boasting how much an SSD helped their performance...

ok trying to understand the debate on SSD:

from what i understand, a solid state drive will allow you to load files from the disk into memory much quicker than a normal drive.
while playing wow:
- what needs to be loaded from the OS ? (hum, not sure. nothing? everything should already be in memory when you start playing),
- what needs to be loaded from WOW folders ? (textures, loading zones, pretty much everything when moving or when players come and go)

so from the above, i would tend to think that Owltoid is right, and that having WoW on SSD is more beneficial than having the OS on SSD. (at least , when playing wow)

does that make sense?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zub

ok trying to understand the debate on SSD:

from what i understand, a solid state drive will allow you to load files from the disk into memory much quicker than a normal drive.
while playing wow:
- what needs to be loaded from the OS ? (hum, not sure. nothing? everything should already be in memory when you start playing),
- what needs to be loaded from WOW folders ? (textures, loading zones, pretty much everything when moving or when players come and go)

so from the above, i would tend to think that Owltoid is right, and that having WoW on SSD is more beneficial than having the OS on SSD. (at least , when playing wow)

does that make sense?

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Yes. In addition to that... SSD's have more of a limit to how many times they can be written to than platter drives do. I'm just going to take a big educated guess but I can see your system drive being written to on a constant basis, essentially burning out your SSD quicker than if you were just play WoW off of it.

The only time SSD would benefit you in WoW is for the loading screens. That is it. How many loading screens do you usually see while playing WoW that bother you? For me: None.

WoW is not disk intensive by any means, and the standard 7200 rpm drives on today's markets are more than enough.

There are tons of files the OS is accessing at any given time in it's various folders (a major one being system32, or syswow64). The OS will benefit from the zero latency of SSD's, not to mention boot way faster and patch much faster.

But what do I know? Go ahead and do the SSD, it's your computer and money :)

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Originally Posted by Fenril

I'm just going to take a big educated guess but I can see your system drive being written to on a constant basis, essentially burning out your SSD quicker than if you were just play WoW off of it.

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Your computer will be completely obsolete, WoW will probably not be in service, and you might even be toally sick of video games by the time your SSD "burns out" from the OS being installed on it. There are several places that install disk intensive SQL databases (i.e. Sharepoint) on full SSD raid setups. Do you think their SSDs are "burning out" in months or something?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

The only time SSD would benefit you in WoW is for the loading screens. That is it. How many loading screens do you usually see while playing WoW that bother you? For me: None.

WoW is not disk intensive by any means, and the standard 7200 rpm drives on today's markets are more than enough.

There are tons of files the OS is accessing at any given time in it's various folders (a major one being system32, or syswow64). The OS will benefit from the zero latency of SSD's, not to mention boot way faster and patch much faster.

But what do I know? Go ahead and do the SSD, it's your computer and money :)

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I'd say hard drive access is the most discussed topic on the dual-boxing hardware forum. More than RAM, processor type, MB, and video card. You have many people claiming that the SSD has helped both their load screen times (from 30+ seconds with 5 toons in Dalaran to 2 seconds) as well as general game play (new textures, especially in highly populated areas, are being read in all the time while you move and other things move towards you). Between discussions of RAID0, SSDs in RAID, hard drive access, etc, I think you are definitely in the minority on thinking harddrive access time has little to do with multiboxing. After having enough RAM, many would say an SSD is the best upgrade your system can make.

How often do you boot your machine in comparison to how often do you see a load screen for WoW? I use my computer to primarily play video games so that question is very easy for me - I'd much rather wait an extra 15 seconds for my computer to boot using the 7200 drive and have my WoW loading screen be near instant. WoW is somewhat intensive on accessing the harddrive, but nothing big. A single player wouldn't really need an SSD. However, a 5 boxer will see a huge performance increase from moving from a single 7200 drive to even a slow SSD.

I'm in a similar situation, I have a q6600 (mine is overclocked) 8GB of ram and an SSD, and I am currently CPU bound. When i 5 box (all alts are set to lowest possible, and the main is set only slightly higher) and all 4 cores are working at or near to 100%. I am planning on upgrading to a core i7 930 with 12GB of ram. (I'd go 9GB if they made 3GB sticks that were affordable)

I disagree that SSD for wow is pointless. EVERYTHING loads faster. I recently logged in a buddys computer, and in dalaran it took forever for the other characters to show up, where on my system its near instant. SSDs are very affordable now, you just cant fit an OS, games and media files on em just yet without breaking the bank.

I used to run 2 computers, but the added complication of the extra mouse and keyboard (for other non multiboxed tasks) and lack of windowswapping with isboxer made it not worth it for me. Only thing I missed is that if my main computer crashed, my other characters on the other PC were still able to play, and I could communicate this to my teammates.

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Originally Posted by Owltoid

However, a 5 boxer will see a huge performance increase from moving from a single 7200 drive to even a slow SSD.

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+1
yes you right

so we can explain again ...

if you havent enought memory ( ram and video ram ), your computer will play in the jam. swapp file will use all the time etc ....
except if you play in min ... 800X600 all low details with 1 screen.
So if you wish 3 big screens in 1920X1200 full details you ll need big memory too.

During the game, the only file to read is the wow data. it s small textures,cloths, etc ....
When you walk in dalaran, each new people connect will ask a short reading of this file .... so .... faster you can read this small wow data and faster your ips will be small ....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Owltoid

I'd say hard drive access is the most discussed topic on the dual-boxing hardware forum. More than RAM, processor type, MB, and video card. You have many people claiming that the SSD has helped both their load screen times (from 30+ seconds with 5 toons in Dalaran to 2 seconds) as well as general game play (new textures, especially in highly populated areas, are being read in all the time while you move and other things move towards you). Between discussions of RAID0, SSDs in RAID, hard drive access, etc, I think you are definitely in the minority on thinking harddrive access time has little to do with multiboxing. After having enough RAM, many would say an SSD is the best upgrade your system can make.

How often do you boot your machine in comparison to how often do you see a load screen for WoW? I use my computer to primarily play video games so that question is very easy for me - I'd much rather wait an extra 15 seconds for my computer to boot using the 7200 drive and have my WoW loading screen be near instant. WoW is somewhat intensive on accessing the harddrive, but nothing big. A single player wouldn't really need an SSD. However, a 5 boxer will see a huge performance increase from moving from a single 7200 drive to even a slow SSD.

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30+ seconds to 2 seconds? Of course there would be in increase there. Those people took the WoW folders and put them on a newly formatted non-defragmented space. Same exact improvement would have happened if they had just reformatted the drive it was on.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I 5 (used to 10) box on 7200 rpms drives and Dalaran loaded perfectly fine (30 seconds would be insanely long even for a 7200 rpm drive).

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

30+ seconds to 2 seconds? Of course there would be in increase there. Those people took the WoW folders and put them on a newly formatted non-defragmented space. Same exact improvement would have happened if they had just reformatted the drive it was on.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I 5 (used to 10) box on 7200 rpms drives and Dalaran loaded perfectly fine (30 seconds would be insanely long even for a 7200 rpm drive).

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There's the key, driveS with SSD you dont need more than one. It also depends on the population size on your server, on a very active server, dalaran takes an extremely long time to load due to the sheer number of characters that stand around.

All 10 of the WoW folders were on the one 7200 RPM drive, they then had symbolic links to a normal WoW folder on the same drive. It is also an 8mb cache drive, so I didn't even have them on my newer 1tb 16mb cache drive.