Intel Core i7 Quads!!!!!!!!!!!

[Freddie]

But, you'll soon find a point of diminishing returns and the Core i7 won't be the silver bullet that you are looking for. I know, I'm staring at a few Core i7 cpus/mobos at work and a shiny new Falcon Northwest machine. Great for video rendering, but guess what folks still laggy in Shatt because of ... you got it ... a hard drive.

Good chip, yup. But multiboxing WoW isn't CPU limited, especially with regular quad-core. You may get a few frames per second increase. If this justifies spending the thousands of bucks on a new machine, then more power to you.

Good advice. People pay too much attention to the adjectives when they read reviews (blinding speed! blistering improvement!) and not enough to the test details. The result is that they end up spending 100% extra for 15% more actual, visible performance on the applications that they use. It makes no sense.

I think it's better to buy stuff at the sweet spot. Spend maybe $1000-1500 for a system. Then you can afford to upgrade three times as often as the guy who spends three or four thou. I'm looking forward to owning an i7 but I'm probably going to build a Wolfdale next month. The price premium for i7 just isn't worth it at today's prices. It doesn't buy enough extra performance.

[weeep]

this[/url] says it's a really bad idea. Enlighten me please!

One more proof that MVP is a synonym for "retard". You can safely turn off pagefile with 8Gb RAM, you'll never ever see any message that you dont have enough memory. I've been using my system without pagefile for at least 5 years and it never caused any inconveniences.

[Nairi]

The current crop of Core i7 are 4 physical cores with hyperthreading to make it look like 8 logical cores.

And previous posters are correct in that multiboxing is not cpu limited. Your current quad-core LGA775 Core 2's are more than adequate for the job. If you're experiencing slow downs, it's your graphics card and i/o.

Heh, you really don't know where I work do you?

You want to spend serious bucks on the newest gear... I understand that. I've gone down that road before.

But, you'll soon find a point of diminishing returns and the Core i7 won't be the silver bullet that you are looking for. I know, I'm staring at a few Core i7 cpus/mobos at work and a shiny new Falcon Northwest machine. Great for video rendering, but guess what folks still laggy in Shatt because of ... you got it ... a hard drive.

Good chip, yup. But multiboxing WoW isn't CPU limited, especially with regular quad-core. You may get a few frames per second increase. If this justifies spending the thousands of bucks on a new machine, then more power to you.

Hard drive i/o or the whole cpu/mobo i/o?

i7 increases i/o proformance with built in memory controller, this allows for more head room for GPUS and devices...
Lets not forget the tripple channel DDR3.

instead of going back and forth with this 'its not the cpu its the gpu' lets see some benchmarks people.

btw hard drive i/o can easily be avoided get some ultra fast ssd with crazy i/o or multiple harddrives per sessions.

[not5150]

The current crop of Core i7 are 4 physical cores with hyperthreading to make it look like 8 logical cores.

And previous posters are correct in that multiboxing is not cpu limited. Your current quad-core LGA775 Core 2's are more than adequate for the job. If you're experiencing slow downs, it's your graphics card and i/o.

Heh, you really don't know where I work do you?

You want to spend serious bucks on the newest gear... I understand that. I've gone down that road before.

But, you'll soon find a point of diminishing returns and the Core i7 won't be the silver bullet that you are looking for. I know, I'm staring at a few Core i7 cpus/mobos at work and a shiny new Falcon Northwest machine. Great for video rendering, but guess what folks still laggy in Shatt because of ... you got it ... a hard drive.

Good chip, yup. But multiboxing WoW isn't CPU limited, especially with regular quad-core. You may get a few frames per second increase. If this justifies spending the thousands of bucks on a new machine, then more power to you.

Hard drive i/o or the whole cpu/mobo i/o?

i7 increases i/o proformance with built in memory controller, this allows for more head room for GPUS and devices...
Lets not forget the tripple channel DDR3.

instead of going back and forth with this 'its not the cpu its the gpu' lets see some benchmarks people.

btw hard drive i/o can easily be avoided get some ultra fast ssd with crazy i/o or multiple harddrives per sessions.

Hard drive i/o. I know the i7 has a built-in memory controller.

As the previous poster said, go for the sweet spot. Buy the gear that will get you the most overall performance increase for your buck.

Spending $2500 to $3000 on a new Core i7 system for maybe 10% to 30% frame rate increase doesn't make sense to me when I can buy a $600 SSD to get the same effective performance increase. Your system is only as fast as the slowest component and don't let any shiny marketing exec tell you otherwise.

The rules change if you have unlimited money. When you're in that situation, then go buy the i7 AND an SSD and rock on.

In the business we have something called "Vendor Kool-Aid". PR and marketing dangle something shiny in your face and they want you to write a certain way. Critical thinking and skepticism goes a long in countering that.

[Nairi]

The current crop of Core i7 are 4 physical cores with hyperthreading to make it look like 8 logical cores.

And previous posters are correct in that multiboxing is not cpu limited. Your current quad-core LGA775 Core 2's are more than adequate for the job. If you're experiencing slow downs, it's your graphics card and i/o.

Heh, you really don't know where I work do you?

You want to spend serious bucks on the newest gear... I understand that. I've gone down that road before.

But, you'll soon find a point of diminishing returns and the Core i7 won't be the silver bullet that you are looking for. I know, I'm staring at a few Core i7 cpus/mobos at work and a shiny new Falcon Northwest machine. Great for video rendering, but guess what folks still laggy in Shatt because of ... you got it ... a hard drive.

Good chip, yup. But multiboxing WoW isn't CPU limited, especially with regular quad-core. You may get a few frames per second increase. If this justifies spending the thousands of bucks on a new machine, then more power to you.

Hard drive i/o or the whole cpu/mobo i/o?

i7 increases i/o proformance with built in memory controller, this allows for more head room for GPUS and devices...
Lets not forget the tripple channel DDR3.

instead of going back and forth with this 'its not the cpu its the gpu' lets see some benchmarks people.

btw hard drive i/o can easily be avoided get some ultra fast ssd with crazy i/o or multiple harddrives per sessions.

Hard drive i/o. I know the i7 has a built-in memory controller.

As the previous poster said, go for the sweet spot. Buy the gear that will get you the most overall performance increase for your buck.

Spending $2500 to $3000 on a new Core i7 system for maybe 10% to 30% frame rate increase doesn't make sense to me when I can buy a $600 SSD to get the same effective performance increase. Your system is only as fast as the slowest component and don't let any shiny marketing exec tell you otherwise.

The rules change if you have unlimited money. When you're in that situation, then go buy the i7 AND an SSD and rock on.

In the business we have something called "Vendor Kool-Aid". PR and marketing dangle something shiny in your face and they want you to write a certain way. Critical thinking and skepticism goes a long in countering that.

what are you spewing about? dont judge the chip till you try it. 8o

[algol]

what are you spewing about? dont judge the chip till you try it. 8o

Need I elaborate upon how bad that reasoning is? Finding examples is almost trivial.

[not5150]

what are you spewing about? dont judge the chip till you try it. 8o

/facepalm

We're going around in circles here, feel free to email me at humphrey (at) tomshardware.com. Also feel free to read our lovely reviews of the Core i7 on the same website.

[Nairi]

what are you spewing about? dont judge the chip till you try it. 8o

/facepalm

We're going around in circles here, feel free to email me at humphrey (at) tomshardware.com. Also feel free to read our lovely reviews of the Core i7 on the same website.

So thats where you work, benchmark some chips with multiboxing!

[weeep]

Multiboxed WoW is not CPU limited. I've never seen my Q9550@3.6GHz loaded higher than 80%, usually it is around 50-60%. I'm running 5 box with 2560x1600 res on main screen and 1280x1024 secondary screen, and the ONLY thing that raises my fps is lowering graphic settings. I have 4870 1Gb and even though my slaves are running at lowest possible res with lowest details (slightly lowered high settings for main), GPU load is always at 100%. I'd say that getting more GPU power is more important.

I've visited Dalaran and this place is a real test for your multibox hardware. I had to lower graphic settings to get decent fps, but CPU load still is around 80-90% with rare short 100% spikes. I tried to overclock cpu up to 4GHz, but havent seen any real performance upgrade. The only way to get higher FPS for me is to lower graphic settings, so I still dont think that WoW is CPU limited even in Dalaran.

[Nairi]

Multiboxed WoW is not CPU limited. I've never seen my Q9550@3.6GHz loaded higher than 80%, usually it is around 50-60%. I'm running 5 box with 2560x1600 res on main screen and 1280x1024 secondary screen, and the ONLY thing that raises my fps is lowering graphic settings. I have 4870 1Gb and even though my slaves are running at lowest possible res with lowest details (slightly lowered high settings for main), GPU load is always at 100%. I'd say that getting more GPU power is more important.

I've visited Dalaran and this place is a real test for your multibox hardware. I had to lower graphic settings to get decent fps, but CPU load still is around 80-90% with rare short 100% spikes. I tried to overclock cpu up to 4GHz, but havent seen any real performance upgrade. The only way to get higher FPS for me is to lower graphic settings, so I still dont think that WoW is CPU limited even in Dalaran.

specs would be nice