Running three instances of wow on one PC.

[Tech249]

I've been reading alot of the forums and trying to decide what to do. I'm going to start with running three WoW instances. I plan on playing two locks and a priest. In the beginning I will obviously be doing PvE. I plan on testing this setup with pvp when I hit lvl 19 but was curious if anyone here runs three accounts and what there CPU specs are? Do you do any PvP?

I will be using AutoHotkeys and two monitors on one PC.

I think in the end I will go with the dedicated hardware setup, but this will get me started since I already have the three accounts.

[Xzin]

Don't bother PvPing at 19. Casters are useless and are 2 shotted.

2 Wows is pushing it - really depends on the video card and if you have a second x8 or x16 pci-e slot. Also what you consider to be playable. For PvP, 10 fps and load time lag is going to get you killed.

3..... is not really going to be playable.

If you bought a quad core, 4 gigs of memory and 2x x16 1x x8 mobo (most do not do this - thats a $300 mobo) with 3x mid to high end video cards.... and 3 monitors then maybe. But thats a 4-5k box, vs $500 per box for 3.

Personally, I would buy 3 boxes. Try it with some trials but I think you will be disappointed.

[proxymatic]

Don't bother PvPing at 19. Casters are useless and are 2 shotted.

2 Wows is pushing it - really depends on the video card and if you have a second x8 or x16 pci-e slot. Also what you consider to be playable. For PvP, 10 fps and load time lag is going to get you killed.

3..... is not really going to be playable.

If you bought a quad core, 4 gigs of memory and 2x x16 1x x8 mobo (most do not do this - thats a $300 mobo) with 3x mid to high end video cards.... and 3 monitors then maybe. But thats a 4-5k box, vs $500 per box for 3.

Personally, I would buy 3 boxes. Try it with some trials but I think you will be disappointed.

Right now I run two instances on my single core computer with 1.5 gigs of ram. Little to no lag, the fps gets a little low on one of them at at times, but for the most part its pretty smooth. I just have all the settings cranked down, but the game still looks surprisingly nice.

EDIT: The reason I do that is because I don't have the money to get a second or third computer. If I had the money to get the computer, I would.

[Xzin]

Ok - so try three. If that works (it most likely will not) then I can't really help you any further. If you can play with 3 then go for it. I just don't think even with minimum settings that its going to be workable with the hardware you currently have.

[Tech249]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll mess with running three while starting to level my little crew. In time I will order and put together the other PC's.

Xzin, have you used Autokeys at all? If so, how much of a difference did you notice in latency for keys on the other characters? I'm going the hardware route, I'm just curious.

[Xzin]

I have never used AHK. I thought about it - would make things a lot simpler but to me it would still be cutting corners for several reasons. I hear good things about it though but I still always prefer the hardware approach given the current state of software / hardware at the moment.

[proxymatic]

Ok - so try three. If that works (it most likely will not) then I can't really help you any further. If you can play with 3 then go for it. I just don't think even with minimum settings that its going to be workable with the hardware you currently have.

Yeah I know lol. I'm not gonna try for three, right now I'm just trying to find a decent class combination for now.

[Tech249]

I just ran two and it was ok. I tried to run three but one always crashes. I'm now making a seperate copy of WoW and running two from that. I plan to dumb down the graphics on these other two as well to save some resources.

I just want to start three-boxin before I dump 2k into equipment.

[Tech249]

I run one instance of wow from my first install, two other instances from the second install. I can play for 2-3 hours before the entire CPU restarts.

I'm now making a third install and going to try running a wow from each install.

I'm having a blast configuring AHK and playing the three characters though. So much better then solo.

[chase]

ok im running 2 instances of wow with up to 60FPS on both running them dual screen with full graphics settings and full AA and AP filtering on

never had a problem computer handles it fine,

pc specs are

Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4 ghz)

2 gig ram

XP home edition

Geforce 8800GTS 640mb

i think your graphics card is the main factor here you need something powerful to handle 2 3D applications at once

i regularly do boring grinding on wow on my secondary monitor and wathc a film on my main monitor without any hiccups or lag.