What duel boxing method/solution do you use?

[aetherg]

I've heard a lot of people say they can get 120+ FPS with their four clients on one machine, but I've honestly never been able to see that; maybe I'm just screwing something up?

I play (main account) with all options turned up to full, 1920x1200 4xAA, and it's quite smooth. That's how I want to play the game; I don't want to have to turn options down. If I run even one other instance of WoW on there, it makes a noticeable difference on framerate.

Edit: And my four other machines are Dells that I got for less than $350 including shipping. Maybe I would have been better off with a quad-core monstrosity with double-SLI and 4 gigs of RAM, but I think this way is a little smoother, and ends up at least a little bit cheaper overall.

How fast/expensive is your machine, that you can play multiple instances of WoW, with at least one on full graphics at 1920x1200? And is that 50FPS in combat with lots of mobs, or just standing still away from people?

[Contents]

I think part of the reason people did hardware boxing is because that was the only way before. They didn't have the programs that we have available now, and at the time the easiest way to replicate was thru the single wireless keyboard with multiple receivers.

But then again I may me slightly mistaken. Xzin has a whole write-up about the how and why of his hardware boxing.

[thyrm]

2 accounts, 2 computers, 2 mice, 2 keyboards, 2 monitors...old school I guess.

[raylion]

I use 5 PC's too for the same reason as Fursphere, if there's no software involved then I know I'm 100% safe from bans. Having said that, I would be happy using Keyclone but less so using AHK due to the scripting abilities AHK has available to it. As I had the PC's available to me when I started boxing then the hardware route suited me better.

To answer the main question in full, I use Multiplicity to create a virtual desktop and a wireless keyboard to control my characters.

[aetherg]

By the way, I don't mean to sound confrontational. My main comp is a couple of years old now, but still decent: AMD X2 2.2 ghz, 3GB RAM, 7800GTX (FOC), SB X-Fi and a SATA 10K WD Raptor. Latest BIOS and drivers of course. If I run a second copy of WoW, I can easily notice the difference in action packed areas (of course standing still in some tunnel in IF, it will still always cap at 60). That's why I decided to get 5 machines.

I just couldn't see it being possible to run five on one (without reducing settings on the main), when I can notice the difference with just two. Is my machine just malfunctioning? :P

[Saph]

How fast/expensive is your machine, that you can play multiple instances of WoW, with at least one on full graphics at 1920x1200? And is that 50FPS in combat with lots of mobs, or just standing still away from people?

Its not very up to date anymore actually, let me dig up the specs;

Gfx: ASUS X850 PRO PCI-E 256M GDDR3 VIVO
CPU: MD ATHLON 64 4000+ S939 BOX SAN DIEGO
Motherboard: MSI S939 NF4 ULTRA SLI PCIE GLAN SATA2 R
memory: 4 x KINGSTON KVR400X64C3AK2/1G

On this I run my wow instances like the following:
2 top windows = 840x420
1 bottom window = 1680x630

Here's an old screenshot before I tweaked the resolutions to what I have today. I looks the same, but the aspects have been fixed so minimap is round in the top windows etc.


All I care about is results, therefore I have turned every imaginable graphics setting down to the lowest possible and disabled sound on the two top ones. For me, this works fine. Other propably cringe just by thinking about playing like that. This is propably why I get resonable okay fps on such an old machine. But you are right, once I engage in combat fps drops to around 20 fps. I still think that is okay though to be honest, as long as I can move around as I want etc. My point is, If I can run 3 instances in playable fps, some of you guys should be able to run 4 maybe even 5 pretty smooth?
- Saph

[Vos]

How fast/expensive is your machine, that you can play multiple instances of WoW, with at least one on full graphics at 1920x1200? And is that 50FPS in combat with lots of mobs, or just standing still away from people?

I have a similar computer to you, with one exception. I've got a 8800gtx. I believe that 768mb of ram on the gfx card helps a ton with multiboxing on one pc since you are basically rendering a game at 3840x1200 res. (the additional speed of the gtx helps too i'm sure) Quadcore and 4gb of ram rocks, but dualcore and 2gb of ram seems to get the job done with a good enough gfx card.

I get 45-60 fps in the AH in stormwind and the other 5 are pegged at 20fps

[cepheus]

I'm using mostly hardware + the multibox software for broadcasting keystroked insted of a multiplexer, and for the mouseshare system.

This involves
5 computers
4x 17" lcd(slaves)
1x 30" lcd(main screen)
1x 20" lcd(for browsing/misc)
1x 4port kvm switch (If I need access to the slaves in case multibox disconnects)
1x x-keys (Used for all ingame actions. A must-have for me now that I've getting used to it.)
1x x-keys pedals (I'm not using this one very active, but it can be nice to have for healing when your fingers are otherwise busy

Main reason I use 5 computers is that I dont want to overuse any programs. In the beginning I was purly hardware boxing with 5 mouses and wireless keyboard broadcast. However It was a bit less messy when I started using multibox-software instead. I also think this software is the safest of them all too, since it only purpose is to broadcast keystrokes/mouse (works allmost as any normal remote tool)

One nice side effect also is that I can broadcast mouse to click on a npc,quest item,etc with all my slaves at once. I dont think this can be done easly with software boxing.

[aetherg]

That's a good point; the video memory probably does make a big difference; I imagine the main uses up a fair part of the 256 if settings are high.

[Remote]

Yeah, I run all five on one machine as well. Atm I am at 6 gig of RAM, quad core 2.4ghz, Geforce 8800.

Runs fine with video settings turned up on main. In shat during peak hours it is choppy. Not so much the framerate...but the other four tend to lag behind. Oh well, it's not a big deal for me.