Restarting - Upgrade PC or New?

[Sturmy]

Yeah, you wouldn't be able to hot-swap windows between computers. There might be some other things, but I'm unsure.

Mmm ok. Will have to take a look at this a bit closer. Any suggestions on minimum specs if I buy a new rig?

Thanks

[Ualaa]

Mmm ok. Will have to take a look at this a bit closer. Any suggestions on minimum specs if I buy a new rig?

Thanks

If you're doing a system from scratch...

I would go with an i7 2500k or i7 2600k.
Looking at benchmarks, Intel blows AMD away for performance in Warcraft.
Ram is fairly cheap, so I'd probably go with 12GB, but you'd box five toons on 6-8GB easily.
Video won't be a bottleneck, just about any card you can buy new would work.
A solid state drive is a huge boost, it doesn't even have to be that good of an SSD if you're using it purely for the gaming folder.

You could 5-box on an i7 920/930.
But the 2500/2600 systems aren't that much different in price.
And are a massive performance upgrade -- ahead of the i7 980 Extremes processors.

[Sturmy]

If you're doing a system from scratch...

I would go with an i7 2500k or i7 2600k.
Looking at benchmarks, Intel blows AMD away for performance in Warcraft.
Ram is fairly cheap, so I'd probably go with 12GB, but you'd box five toons on 6-8GB easily.
Video won't be a bottleneck, just about any card you can buy new would work.
A solid state drive is a huge boost, it doesn't even have to be that good of an SSD if you're using it purely for the gaming folder.

You could 5-box on an i7 920/930.
But the 2500/2600 systems aren't that much different in price.
And are a massive performance upgrade -- ahead of the i7 980 Extremes processors.

You'll have to excuse my component knowledge :P

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/252535 (Intel Core i7 2600k 3.4GHz Socket 1155 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor £237.04)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/225415 (OCZ 60GB Vertex 2E SSD 2.5" SATA-II Read = 285MB/s, Write = 275MB/s 50,000 IOPS £96.93) (Either 1 for WoW folder, or 2 for OS + Wow)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/183971 (Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 64MB Cache - OEM Caviar Green £64.59)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/255699 (MSI GTX 560 TWIN FROZR II 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card £189.99)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/248759 (Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz CL9 1.5V Non-ECC Unbuffered £164.99)

Not to sure on GPU, Never been one to understand them :P Thinking it's probably overkill for WoW!

Anything majorly stupid I missed, or shouldn't mix from those? (Besides case/power blahblah) Also I know it sounds stupid, but I swear my current monitor doesn't actually have DVI input. Is there any reason not to use VGA converter, or best just look for a screen that does have DVI? (Maybe I'm imagining it, but swear it doesnt :P)

Thanks again

[d0z3rr]

You'll have to excuse my component knowledge :P

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/252535 (Intel Core i7 2600k 3.4GHz Socket 1155 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor £237.04)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/225415 (OCZ 60GB Vertex 2E SSD 2.5" SATA-II Read = 285MB/s, Write = 275MB/s 50,000 IOPS £96.93) (Either 1 for WoW folder, or 2 for OS + Wow)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/183971 (Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 64MB Cache - OEM Caviar Green £64.59)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/255699 (MSI GTX 560 TWIN FROZR II 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card £189.99)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/248759 (Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz CL9 1.5V Non-ECC Unbuffered £164.99)

Not to sure on GPU, Never been one to understand them :P Thinking it's probably overkill for WoW!

Anything majorly stupid I missed, or shouldn't mix from those? (Besides case/power blahblah) Also I know it sounds stupid, but I swear my current monitor doesn't actually have DVI input. Is there any reason not to use VGA converter, or best just look for a screen that does have DVI? (Maybe I'm imagining it, but swear it doesnt :P)

Thanks again

Looks good. You could downgrade the proc to a lower speed and save some money. The i7's overclock very well on air cooling.

You'll definitely want to upgrade to a DVI/HDMI monitor. VGA is terrible.

[Sturmy]

Looks good. You could downgrade the proc to a lower speed and save some money. The i7's overclock very well on air cooling.

You'll definitely want to upgrade to a DVI/HDMI monitor. VGA is terrible.

The i5 2500k is about £100 less, but do you think there will be any noticeable difference?

Thanks

[MiRai]

The i5 2500k is about £100 less, but do you think there will be any noticeable difference?

Thanks

Probably not unless you're editing/encoding videos or 10+ boxing.

[coglistings]

The i5 2500k is about £100 less, but do you think there will be any noticeable difference?

Thanks

there was alot of going back and forth in another post between if hyperthreading used in i7's is an advantage over i5's. I think that 4 real cores vs 6 real cores doesn't really come into play at 5 boxing if video settings are limited on slave clients. when 9 boxing on a singular client, the older i7 930 system performed better with hyperthread, than it did with hyperthreading disabled from the bios. but you aren't 10 boxing, so it may be a wash.

personally, I preffer fewer systems on my desk than multiple systems. ISBoxer's experience will be nicer with all of your clients on the same computer just like it was nicer for me to have 5 on one system back in the day, so stay away from multiple computers or running old hardware becuase you cheap out and think you can save a few bucks.

if you personally can't tell the difference between video played over vga vs DVI, then I wouldn't worry about it as you are the person who will be staring at the screen. Though there are some really nice monitor deals out there using better technology if you current monitor only has vga
gl on your setup :P

[Sturmy]

Probably not unless you're editing/encoding videos or 10+ boxing.

Yeah doubt I'll be doing 10box for a long time, Need to get back into 5 first!

ditch your "green drive" they are only green becuase they opperate at lower speeds to get the lower power usage without doing a thing to bost read/write speed, platter density, etc.

Only reason for that was it was a cheapish 2TB drive, just for random data etc :P But yeah could look at a non-green one if it's much better r/w

there was alot of going back and forth in another post between if hyperthreading used in i7's is an advantage over i5's. I think that 4 real cores vs 6 real cores doesn't really come into play at 5 boxing if video settings are limited on slave clients. when 9 boxing on a singular client, the older i7 930 system performed better with hyperthread, than it did with hyperthreading disabled from the bios. but you aren't 10 boxing, so it may be a wash.

personally, I preffer fewer systems on my desk than multiple systems. ISBoxer's experience will be nicer with all of your clients on the same computer just like it was nicer for me to have 5 on one system back in the day, so stay away from multiple computers or running old hardware becuase you cheap out and think you can save a few bucks.

if you personally can't tell the difference between video played over vga vs DVI, then I wouldn't worry about it as you are the person who will be staring at the screen. Though there are some really nice monitor deals out there using better technology if you current monitor only has vga
gl on your setup :P

Yeah certainly think 1 "good" computer seems the way to go. Having multiple may seem logical but if it removes features from ISB seems a waste really.

In terms of VGA/DVI only reason I'm on VGA is I've had this monitor for a while, and for some reason LGs screens seem to miss DVI a lot on the older models. But seemed a waste replacing 22" just for DVI :P But obviously if new card doesn't have VGA makes a difference. No "real" reason for using VGA, just been cheap

Think I'll have to try knocking up a full system tonight on ebuyer and see what price it comes to, then decide between i7/i5

Thanks all!