Moving from 1 computer to 2 (3 boxing to 5) - Any suggestions?

[Owltoid]

Currently I'm on www.buyxg.com and looking for a system for $1000 or less. I don't want to do anything else with this computer except run 4 WoW accounts. Anyone want to have fun and play with the config?

I'm guessing for smooth performance I'll need 8 gig of RAM and 2 video cards (this is really wild guessing on my part). I have even less of a clue about the type of hard drive, data hard drive (don't know what the difference is), etc.

[cairnz]

You could also look into options to 5-box on one computer.

You should get a quadcore with 8gb ram and an ati 4850/4870 or nvidia equivalent as minimum. get a cheapass display for slaves and use big screen for main.

looking at dell they'll charge you around 1100 for such a setup, including warranties and stuff. if you have a tech-savvy friend, have'em help you build and then save a bit on that. The essentials here is a Core 2 Quad, a decent-ish motherboard and decent-ish memory, it doesn't have to be the newest chipset, nor the fastest-spec ram.

at newegg you'll land a good quad-core righ with 4870 and above specs to around 950 (antec p182 case as well with 850w psu)

[Owltoid]

Thanks a ton for the info! Would it be worth it to get the solid state drives? If so, then would one be enough or do I need two? I'm worried about the bottleneck areas though I don't truly understand what I'm asking for.

[cairnz]

You'll experience shorter loading times iwth the SSDs - but they are still a major expense, and you can always start off with a regular HD and then just expand and move the wow stuff to a SSD later on.

i run wow off a 750gb or 1tb samsung spinpoint, i don't remember which is which :P

[Owltoid]

Would Intel's i7 chip be as good for multiboxing as a quad core is?

[Freddie]

i7's are all quad cores. Intel's previous (last year's) generation of chips come in both dual core and quad core. Last year's quads are called Yorkfields. i7 systems are somewhat faster than Yorkfield systems but much more expensive. At today's prices, I don't think the speed difference is worth the price premium so if I were buying now, I'd get a Yorkfield system. (When I say system I mean CPU, motherboard, and RAM. )

To be more exact I'd get either a Q9400 or Q9550 CPU, a P45 motherboard (Gigabyte makes good ones), 8 GB of DDR2 ram, a 1-TB mechanical hard drive, and 64-bit Vista. The video card depends on how big a monitor you want. You can build the whole thing for less than $1000 and it will run 5 WoW's fine.

[Owltoid]

i7's are all quad cores. Intel's previous (last year's) generation of chips come in both dual core and quad core. Last year's quads are called Yorkfields. i7 systems are somewhat faster than Yorkfield systems but much more expensive. At today's prices, I don't think the speed difference is worth the price premium so if I were buying now, I'd get a Yorkfield system. (When I say system I mean CPU, motherboard, and RAM. )

To be more exact I'd get either a Q9400 or Q9550 CPU, a P45 motherboard (Gigabyte makes good ones), 8 GB of DDR2 ram, a 1-TB mechanical hard drive, and 64-bit Vista. The video card depends on how big a monitor you want. You can build the whole thing for less than $1000 and it will run 5 WoW's fine.

Thanks Freddie! I'm going to try to kill this thread since I believe I started one with more specific questions. I'm going to copy your reply there as I think it's very helpful information. I will definitely price out a system with the components you mentioned and hopefully I can get the price tag down from 1600!

[Jafula]

I'm guessing for smooth performance I'll need 8 gig of RAM and 2 video cards (this is really wild guessing on my part).

You DON'T want two video cards. WoW only renders to the primary display (first video card)*; by adding a second video card you are actually slowing your experience down as the system has to pump data across the bus to the other video card. My FPS dropped by around 20FPS by adding a second video card. I haven't had much experience with WoW and SLI'd video cards, but it might work.

My suggestion is to buy the fattest single GFX card you can afford. My Nvidia 8800GT 512MB runs 4 clones just fine, but I would buy a Nvidia 200 series now.

Also (IMHO) I prefer Nvidia over ATI video cards just because I perceive the driver support to be better. And I cannot see any reason for you not to go Vista 64bit.



*So I have read (and experienced); I have also heard that InnerSpace can force WOW to render on the second display, hence working around this issue; but not seen anyone post about it actually working.