Specs needed to 3box and 5 box?

[thepackerfan]

Hey, i was wondering if i can 5 box on this comp, but if i cant 5 box, can i 3 box? and what else would i need to make it 5boxable?
computer

[Drizzit]

hmmm... The memory looks slow and they only give you 2g (if you want to 5 box then you at least need 4g). Video Card looks good. The HD is a little slow, I would get 2 WD raptor HD and stripe them.

The HD you can probably get away with but not the memory i think the memory is too slow. You might be able to upgrade to faster memory IF the motherboard allows it.

[thepackerfan]

wait, so there isnt just MORE memory, theres also FASTER memory? omgz whats a good speed then for 5boxing
and can that comp 3box as is?

[-silencer-]

hmmm... The memory looks slow and they only give you 2g (if you want to 5 box then you at least need 4g). Video Card looks good. The HD is a little slow, I would get 2 WD raptor HD and stripe them.

The HD you can probably get away with but not the memory i think the memory is too slow. You might be able to upgrade to faster memory IF the motherboard allows it.

Are you on crack? Or are you not looking at the same link I am?

DDR2-800 is not "slow" for 5-boxing. I 5-box fine on DDR2-675, although it is 4GB. The amount is far more important than the speed when multiboxing a game like WoW. In fact, RAM speed doesn't have at all as much of an improvement in performance as CPU & videocard processing ability - there's a reason many new high-end machines still come with DDR2, and it's not because of a major price difference to DDR3 anymore. The performance gain in memory speed is usually not worth much extra cash, especially if you break 1:1 FSB:RAM ratio.

Also, you say the videocard looks good, when I think the videocard is the *worst* component of the entire system for gaming. A 7200rpm drive isn't slow, but 8MB cache will hold it back. Also, you're better off running separate raptors than striping them in RAID0 - one for the OS, the other for WoW installs with symlinks to data folder.

Please don't post bad information on hardware. Nearly everything you said is wrong.

The CPU is fine for 3-boxing, but may be questionable for 5-boxing performance. The 2GB limit on RAM *should* be enough to 3-box, but probably won't handle 5 very well. The 8400GS is way underpowered, and I wouldn't even attempt to run more than one small monitor off it. The hard drive will handle 5-boxing, although adding a 150GB Raptor to install WoW to would improve high-texture areas like cities a bit.

[-silencer-]

wait, so there isnt just MORE memory, theres also FASTER memory? omgz whats a good speed then for 5boxing
and can that comp 3box as is?

Don't listen to much of what he said - he proved he knows little about hardware.

Yes, there's memory size and speed. Size is *far* more important in most cases when it comes to loading up multiple instances of a game. The major bottleneck on that system for even 3-boxing is the videocard, but that also depends on what resolution monitor you'll be using.

For 3-boxing, here's my order of concern for bottlenecks using one small monitor:
RAM size, videocard, CPU, hard drive. Notice RAM speed isn't even on the list. I know of two 5-boxers on DDR2-533 speed memory (default 1:1 FSB:RAM for Conroe Core2), although they have 4GB with E6700 and 8GB with Q6600.

[Drizzit]

i don't know about 3 boxing. It might be ok for that. The memory that i use are the 1066mhz. I wouldn't go below 1000mhz (that is just me). I find that when i get next to a crowded area my memory is maxed out. I hate shatt city, it takes me forever to move in that place..

[-silencer-]

i don't know about 3 boxing. It might be ok for that. The memory that i use are the 1066mhz. I wouldn't go below 1000mhz (that is just me). I find that when i get next to a crowded area my memory is maxed out. I hate shatt city, it takes me forever to move in that place..

Your hard drive(s) is the bottleneck here, not your memory speed. If your memory is "maxed out," you need MORE of it, not higher speed memory. What CPU do you run? If it's Intel, there's not much of a performance gain (1-5%) for going higher than the default speed (DDR2-533 for 1066MHz 65nm Core2's, DDR2-667 for 45nm Core2's.) There are *very* few people who can notice an at-most 5% gain when playing. That's a difference of 50fps to 52.5fps - so small that no one will be able to notice. Memory bandwidth is rarely the limitation in gaming - it's usually graphics bandwidth or CPU usage.

[Drizzit]

Don't listen to much of what he said - he proved he knows little about hardware.

Ah ok... there is also a much nicer way that you could have said that.

Yes, there's memory size and speed. Size is *far* more important in most cases when it comes to loading up multiple instances of a game. The major bottleneck on that system for even 3-boxing is the videocard, but that also depends on what resolution monitor you'll be using.

It depends on what operating system is he going to use. If he is going to use anything that is not 64 to would be better to go for speed then size. Only windows 64 can see (edit) memory that is 3.5g or more. Faster speed means faster access. Having more memory then speed is the equivalent of trying to obtain water from a large bucket through a tiny pin-hole!

DDR2-800 is not "slow" for 5-boxing. I 5-box fine on DDR2-675, although it is 4GB. The amount is far more important than the speed when multiboxing a game like WoW. In fact, RAM speed doesn't have at all as much of an improvement in performance as CPU & videocard processing ability - there's a reason many new high-end machines still come with DDR2, and it's not because of a major price difference to DDR3 anymore.

Did i ever say anything about DDR3. No i did not. You know that there are faster memory in the DDR2. I did not say DDR3, nor would i have said you should go DDR3. DRR3 is new and it is not cheap, not only is the memory not cheap the motherboard is not cheap. I would never say get DDR3 unless you have the money that you would like to waste on that.

A 7200rpm drive isn't slow, but 8MB cache will hold it back. Also, you're better off running separate raptors than striping them in RAID0 - one for the OS, the other for WoW installs with symlinks to data folder.

It is not faster to have just 2 separate HD. Raid0 is much faster then 2 separate HD. You tell me that i do not know anything, but here you are saying that 2 HD is faster then Raid0. Maybe you need to look at what you are typing.


There was no need to attack me the way that you are. If i am wrong then you can explain why i am wrong, and if it makes sense then i will admit that i was wrong and i will take away some new knowledge, but attacking me like this. there was no need for it.

[-silencer-]

Ah ok... there is also a much nicer way that you could have said that.

QFT. Fine.. I'll explain in small words. Sorry for the attack, but people are spending a lot of money on advice here for a fast system and I'm tired of seeing post after post of info that is simply WRONG.

It depends on what operating system is he going to use. If he is going to use anything that is not 64 to would be better to go for speed then size. Only 64 can speed memory that is 3.5g or more. Faster speed means faster access. Having more memory then speed is the equivalent of trying to obtain water from a large bucket through a tiny pin-hole!

I never said anything about 32 vs 64-bit since only 2GB of memory was listed. I was talking about more than 2GB of memory, which means boosting to 4GB. 4GB is *much* better than 2GB even if you can't squeeze out the last bit of the 4GB in 32-bit Windows. Also, faster speed does NOT mean faster access. Faster speed allows higher memory bandwidth, but that's rarely EVER the bottleneck in a computer and doesn't have much of a performance increase at all. Your water analogy is a bit miscalculated. A better analogy would be, we have two liters of water to pour with 2 instances of WoW. We have a pipe with 5 feet diameter and a pipe with 7 feet diameter. They're both HUGE pipes and won't affect the speed of such small amount of water worth noticing. Again, memory bandwidth isn't the issue. The ironic thing here, another case that proves you shouldn't be giving hardware advice, is that faster memory actually has SLOWER "access" times. Look at how latency (delay) increases as memory gets faster. My DDR2-675 is running at 4-4-4-12 timings. There aren't very many bang-for-the-buck DDR2-1066 sticks running at those low timings. Most DDR2-1066 is 5-5-5-15 or 5-5-5-18.

Did i ever say anything about DDR3. No i did not. You know that there are faster memory in the DDR2. I did not say DDR3, nor would i have said you should go DDR3. DRR3 is new and it is not cheap, not only is the memory not cheap the motherboard is not cheap. I would never say get DDR3 unless you have the money that you would like to waste on that.

By your logic of "wasting" money by going to DDR3-1333 or DDR3-1600 memory, why should he waste money going from DDR2-800 to DDR2-1066 for a 1-3% performance increase? Again, the memory bandwidth isn't the bottleneck. The money spent is better used in about 5 other places than memory speed.

It is not faster to have just 2 separate HD. Raid0 is much faster then 2 separate HD. You tell me that i do not know anything, but here you are saying that 2 HD is faster then Raid0. Maybe you need to look at what you are typing.

You're way over your head here. You seem to think speed is a single measurement. We're talking about multiboxing WoW, not transferring very large media files. Here's your lesson on RAID0 striping vs access times on hard drives:
There are two primary measurements of hard drive speed: access time (the delay it takes to locate the beginning of a file on a hard drive) and transfer rate (the amount of MB/s the drive can read).
In WoW, we are not dealing with large data files, but rather thousands of very small files (actually file locations within large data files). This means that access time for each of those files is far more important than how long it takes to transfer one large file.
RAID0 increases *transfer rate* (faster) which means that large files can be moved at higher bandwidth (not 2x, but more like 1.3-1.5x). This is very good for large data files that are not fragmented - like MP3s, Videos, a game terrain map, etc.
RAID0 slightly increases *access time* (slower) since we have to find the beginning of the file shared across both drives.

Now, back to the discussion. Your OS and background tasks will access the swap file on your hard drive during gameplay. You do NOT want this swap file on the same drive (or RAID array) you're trying to access thousands of little files. The map load times will be improved with a RAID0 setup, but the lag in cities is caused by WoW having to fetch hundreds (or thousands) of object/texture files. Most of this "lag" is caused by the delay in having to locate every file on the drive, not from the actual transfer rate of each file. Having the OS and swap space on the same disk while all this is going on is just causing more "lag." I was using two 36GB raptors in a RAID0 array for a long time, then tried them as separate drives - one for OS/swap, and one for 5 WoW installs with symlinks to the data directory on the first WoW install. The separate drive setup was much better for reducing lag in cities, at the cost of slightly slower map load times. That's a sacrifice that's well worth making for WoW, which is why I'm now using two 150GB Raptors independently. In the future, I'm going to add a couple 300GB Velociraptors in RAID0 and put WoW on those, but I'll then configure my two 150GB Raptors in RAID0 for the OS/swap space. I didn't say RAID0 is bad. I was stating that if you only have two hard drives, it's better to make sure the OS/swap space is on a different drive than your WoW install to prevent HDD head thrashing.

[thepackerfan]

in my current machine i have a nvidia geforce 8500 GT. is that better then the GFX in the comp that i linked? if so, how much better? Thanks for your help so far, no matter how conflicting it is XD.

PS i like ur analogy with the 5ft pipe and the 7ft pipe. I just used it in a yo mama joke that i shouldnt need to explain :P