4850X2, 2nd PC or new LCD

[EvoX]

Hi all. I've been wanting to take the leap from 3 boxing to 5 boxing WoW. Currently I run Keyclone/Maximizer with my main on a 19" 4:3 LCD and the 2 alts on a 20" widescreen thats rotated 90°(standing on its side with the windows split top & bottom). I tried squeezing 4 toons onto the 20" (not rotated) but the screens are just too small for me to manage. In order to have main + 4 alt screens large enough for me to see, I think I have these options:

1) play my main on the 20" and buy a 25"+ for the alts

2) resurrect my XP rig and use it for the main - run the 4 alts on my Vista64 machine - I know this would require purchasing another copy of Keyclone for the XP rig and adding Multiplicity if the 2 programs do in fact play well together (anyone used them together??)

3) upgrade from my current 4850 512MB to a 4850X2, disable Crossfire and borrow the 20" widescreen from my XP rig (if this in fact works....can anyone confirm that it does allow 3 monitors at once, and if so how is the performance affected vs 2 monitors)

Which method would yield the best performance for 5 boxing, and am I missing any other options besides building an i7 rig? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

[mikekim]

i would go with option 2 and pickup another screen so you are running 2 screens (rotated) on the vista machine. i have a similar setup running with no problems link to my setup. i use KaVoom for the broadcasting between PC's and have now swapped to Hotkeynet for my multiboxing needs as it works better for Mouse Broadcasting my spells and quest pickups/turnins (if you want to go the hotkeynet route, i can let you have a copy of my config, that will save you quite a bit of setup time)

[Portal]

...adding Multiplicity if the 2 programs do in fact play well together (anyone used them together??)

I can confirm that Multiplicity and Keyclone work well together. I use this method myself.

[EvoX]

Thanks so much for the information guys. I'd searched through forum posts for countless hours over the past couple weeks looking for anything definitive and applicable to the current demands of WoW and my upgrade options. Mikekim, your setup is practically idential to how I've envisioned mine to become, with the exception that it will probably take some time for me to jump on the learning curve of Hotkeynet. Im about to roll 4 new accounts, so I'd like to stick with a familiar config at least for the duration of their RAF time. Thanks again, and if anyone can elaborate on whether Option #3 is viable, please chime in. Even though my decision has been made I'm still curious about that one.

[mikekim]

NP.. pm me anytime you need help with the config. as for the Keyclone issue.. I found it worked well for normal use (easy to setup etc) the only stumbling block was when I levelled 5x druids and 5x mages and wanted to perform multiple AOE. keyclone allows you to do this but you have to click on the main screen 5 times rather than once and the focus kept changing in the toons windows. I did all my RAF levelling with keyclone.

as for option #3 i think it will slow your system down as runing two cards (essentially what the 4850x2 is when unlinked) in one machine over multiple screens causes an issue with direct x and slows down the rendering on the second card (some wierd fix involves changing the second card to the primary display before starting the slave instances of wow and the swapping back to the original primary before starting the main)