Building a 5 Box CPU Question

[Twyman]

Ok i am reading to take the plung into building my CPU. I have built a handful of computers in the past. I am looking to build a computer that can handle 5 WoW accounts open at the same time, vent, keyclones, and maybe a couple websites. All of that without lagging at all in a Raid, Dalaran or PvP (espesally Wintersgrasp).

Here is what i have so far:

I have a tower already: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811156173

I have the monitors already (6 of them): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824021019



Ok on to the new parts i am probably going to get:

The mother board: http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec...&SKU=600000074

The CPU (getting 2 of them): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115202

The Video Cards (getting 3 of them): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150386

The RAM (gettting 3 sets/18gb total): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220378

I have not looked into what power supply i should get yet.

I am going to get a some SSDs but i am unsure if i should set them up in raid 0 or not. If i put the OS on its own drive and each WoW client on its own Drive would that be better then just putting them all on one Raid 0 setup and running all the WoW accounts and OS on off this the one Raid 0 setup (with 6 SSDs)?

The therory is, if you run in raid 0 the read/write time gets added together for each drive. 1 Drive is 200 read speed, 2 would be 400 speed and soo on.... But if you are running 5 accounts off the same file in on your raid 0 drives. You will be reading the same parts of the Drive when you accessing the WoW file with 5 accounts. Is that a pro or a con??? Maybe put it in raid 0 and install WoW in a couple of diffrent places on the OS???

Thank you for any thoughts you might have.

Twyman

[jag989]

That is quite overkill in all honestly. One of those processors would be more than enough regardless of where you are/what you're doing. Additionally, running multiple video cards won't improve your performance as WoW does not utilize SLI or Crossfire. As far as RAM goes, 12gb would be my recommendation - running 5 copies of WoW in Northrend and the usual vent, web browsers, and IM takes about 5-7 gigs on Vista.

With an SSD, access time is no longer an issue as it is with traditional disks. I run two copies of the game on mine simply for the convenience with addon configurations but it isn't necessary.

Bottom line though, if you're looking to spend that much cash, I would recommend going for the EE i7 chip (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115200) and just one,**maybe** two, video cards. 'Bottomer' line though, you don't need to

[Momo]

Nice rig design you have there.

But for five boxing, sorry but there is no other way to put it, its overkill.

For five boxing, a single, higher end graphics card like a GTX275, 285 or the ATI 4870,4890 or 4870x2, with six to eight gig of memory, will eat 5 x wow for breakfast.

An i7 would be fine, yet so would an E8500 or E8600. The latter offer rediculous bang for your buck and overclock ability.

Seriously, you could twenty box on the rig you have designed there lol.

I have what I consider a "decent" system.
Q9550
8gig GOOD ddr2 1600
HD4890 GPU.
SSD & raid array drives.

I can five box on that rig very easily. 30+ frames in Dalaran, 80+ on main screen out and about with the drone screens limited to 30fps.

A rig similar or even slightly higher that that is all you need for five boxing imo.

But that is just my opinion :P Best of luck with what you end up going with.

[gitcho]

I can five box on that rig very easily. 30+ frames in Dalaran, 80+ on main screen out and about with the drone screens limited to 30fps.

i'd love to know how you get 30fps in dalaran ... I 5box on a core i7 with 12gb fast RAM, 30GB SSD (only for wow - os on another drive), Asus 4850 512mb video card and I get 7-10 fps in dalaran.

[Drecan]

he is probably looking using the video cards for connection to the monitors, not to have a better running wow on 5 accounts. i wish wow didn't run just on one GPU cause my 2nd on my 4870x2 is feeling lonely unless i'm playing crysis

[Multibocks]

I can five box on that rig very easily. 30+ frames in Dalaran, 80+ on main screen out and about with the drone screens limited to 30fps.

i'd love to know how you get 30fps in dalaran ... I 5box on a core i7 with 12gb fast RAM, 30GB SSD (only for wow - os on another drive), Asus 4850 512mb video card and I get 7-10 fps in dalaran.

7-10?? Wow something is wrong. I get around 25-30 with the same setup... at least I remember it being that way.

[jag989]

I can five box on that rig very easily. 30+ frames in Dalaran, 80+ on main screen out and about with the drone screens limited to 30fps.

i'd love to know how you get 30fps in dalaran ... I 5box on a core i7 with 12gb fast RAM, 30GB SSD (only for wow - os on another drive), Asus 4850 512mb video card and I get 7-10 fps in dalaran.

Your video card may be holding you back a tad, but not that much : / Do you have your core affinities set up either through WoW's config or your multiboxing software?

[Multibocks]

doh I just noticed the vid card, ya I run 2x 4870x2s. My bad!

[Momo]

I can five box on that rig very easily. 30+ frames in Dalaran, 80+ on main screen out and about with the drone screens limited to 30fps.

i'd love to know how you get 30fps in dalaran ... I 5box on a core i7 with 12gb fast RAM, 30GB SSD (only for wow - os on another drive), Asus 4850 512mb video card and I get 7-10 fps in dalaran.

Your video card may be holding you back a tad, but not that much : / Do you have your core affinities set up either through WoW's config or your multiboxing software?

Thats what I do. All four cores are used on each instance of wow....30fps+ in dalaran is most definately accurate and achievable.

[Frappuccino]

Definately an overkill IMHO.

I have a single 920 i7, 6gb ram, 2 vid cards (gtx280) and it all runs more or less flawlessly.
Slaves are all limited to 20fps and in dalaran only does it get strained. Wintergrasp can become pretty rough too but the servers lag out and make it unplayable anyway so *shrug* :P

The thing with WoW too, is performance doesn't really improve if you assign more than one physical CPU core to it. So two checks in the task manager probably is the same as 4 (two phsyical cores) since the game isnt designed to run over multiple cpus. This is assuming no other processes are assigned to those cores.
My core allocation is core 2-3 for main, 4-5 for two slave sessions, 6-7 for other two slave sessions.

Also keep in mind you'll need to change the primary monitor to one of the monitors on each physical card when you open up a new session. If you have 3 cards it's gonna get messy!



Edit - Would recommend 2vid cards and wide screens instead, makes the PC more usable for multimedia stuff / other games etc when you dont have to look at bezel lines everywhere, seeing as you're using keyclone n all.