This is how to maximize your system:

You dont need raid.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3471&p=9

Get the gigabyte (extreme version) then.

http://cgi.ebay.com/GIGABYTE-GA-EX58...QQcmdZViewItem

Get a Veloraptor (1). Put 24G on the board. 920 should be suffieicent cpu (assuming just for 5 boxing wow if you doing ray tracing or seit or other stuffs then get better).

Get 280 or whatever high end video card you like (1), NOT TWO. If you want to burn money just get a better single card, not two.

SPend yur monies on FIRST QUALITY 24G of ram.

64 bit OS and yur done dont waste on raid, SSD or anything else. Put the whole wow folder (everything) in ram before you start (make yur ram a ram drive for like 10G of it, after to shut down you have to read the whole ram drive back to the raptor so that if any writes were made they will stay). Wham you will get the best frame rates possible, and not waste monies where not needed.

You will get unreal framerates cause of the 28GB/s that the i7 can move data at. TWENTY EIGHT GIG A SECOND thats how fast you will be moveing data from your ram to your cpu. I mean lol ... you will never access the hard drive during play, because the entire wow folder is in your ram drive.

SSD drive is 3G/S IF THAT AT BEST, raptor is slower.

Your Ram 28G/S

This tells it all:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/824/4/

My best system is 11G/sec. My others are like 8G/sec and there is a big difference between the systems (my 11G/sec system closes out 5 wows FASTER then a quadcore 4G/sec closes out ONE wow). I can't imigane have a 28G/sec is going to be. You can hit exit and hit the desktop almost instantly I bet.

You win.

Read thread: Nvidia GTX 295 - good gawd!

the 285 would be my choice but high end ati is good also. Silencer comments in the thread are my belief also.

Also you cannot use FPS that is more then your monitor refreash rate. If you have a FPS of 100, and your monitor is 75HZ then your video card just throw away the 25 extra frames it had to calculate that second. Get a 120HZ monitor if you have money to burn, THEN set your max FPS at 120 and you will see full effect of your video card. 120 FPS on a 60HZ monitor is you video card doing 2X more work then is sent to your eyes ....


The I7 and having the whole wow folder in ram is what is going to make yur fps go way up.

I have 1600X1200 on main and 1280X960 on the 5 other computers (Im the 26 boxer guy), my monitor can do the 1920 X 1200 but I need 4:3 so I can copy UI's to all.

I guess a flight is as good as anything else.

You won't see much difference between the high end video cards. The Memory bandwidth is what makes or breaks you.

Ya Im 60fps on main and limit of 30inforground 5back on the other 5. I run all in fullsceen and no tiles.