Minimum System Reqs

[celia]

Hey all I am looking to start multi-boxing, probably 2 to start but maybe up to 5 in the future. My question is what are the real minimum reqs for a single system to be able to do 5 toons at the same time. I have a limited budget so I do not want to overspend but at the same time I want to be able to actually play the game. Is SSD still a huge difference or am I better served by spending the money on i7/i5 with extra RAM, etc. Please help me with some of your opinions so I can build this system, it will be used pretty much exclusively to play WoW if that is important.

[MageMe]

Hey all I am looking to start multi-boxing, probably 2 to start but maybe up to 5 in the future. My question is what are the real minimum reqs for a single system to be able to do 5 toons at the same time. I have a limited budget so I do not want to overspend but at the same time I want to be able to actually play the game. Is SSD still a huge difference or am I better served by spending the money on i7/i5 with extra RAM, etc. Please help me with some of your opinions so I can build this system, it will be used pretty much exclusively to play WoW if that is important.

ok well I run a 5 box shaman team on an imac..all games on one comp:

Model Identifier: iMac9,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.93 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
VRAM (Total): 256 MB

I have the main toon set to 40fps and clones to 20fps. It runs quite well in the field but when i hit a major city i get some pretty heavy lag. If I reboot the system (as the game seems to collect alot of garbage) Im good for the cities. I do plan on boosting the ram to 8 gig as wow kind of requires at least 1 gig per game. I do use smcFanControl to help with heat issues and it seems to work well, Hottest temp reaches 130f-145f on mostly the diode when all 5 accounts are logged in. This is an off the shelf imac with no upgrades and using OSX 10.5.8.

Pic below was taken 10 secs after logging out of wow

[burningforce]

hmm I never owned a SSD, but I do know that Wow(thats what you are playing now correct?) uses random read/writes, so SSD will improve that speed with loading and what not.

If I was building a system to 5-box, i would just save until I have enough for all the parts. This way you can get an amazing system that will not need to be upgraded for a couple of years.

But if you want us to post a nice system for you, we will need how much your budget is.
you can builda dual core system for cheap or a quad core for somewhat cheap, but you might be better off just building an i7 system for around the same price as a quad core system.

[celia]

I just checked out the i7 systems and I can swing an i7/i5 mobo/cpu and probably 8gb ram the question then becomes can I get by with say a GTS250 and no SSD or will that not work. The other question is I have a 22" monitor will I be able to have 5 wow via IS Boxer, because I dont see the wife letting me have 2 monitors on the desk lol. I guess I am pretty set on a one box solution and I just want to make sure it will work before I spend the cash my budget would probably be around 700-800 bucks for mobo/processor, ram, case/power supply, video card and HD or SSD.

[suicidesspyder]

Hey if u want monitors too just wait for black Friday oh yea man check the prices at walmart all under 100 dollars. Oh yea whats the best monitoring program for your computers temp. I just want to see what mine is hitting.

[swdomen]

I run 5 box teams with :

GA-MA770-UD3 rev1
AMD Phenom 8650 x3 Triple Core 2,3Ghz
Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 1GB GDDR3
4 x Corsair CM2X2048-6400 (tot 8gb)
22" Samsung Syncmaster 226BW

Win XP 64, ISboxer, Innerspace

System use 47% Ram and 80% Cpu power with 5 Wow and a couple of Firefox Windows Running.

[Ualaa]

I would say minimal you would want:

Quad Core processor.
6gb of ram (8gb on a ddr2 motherboard)
64-bit operating system.
Low end SSD, just for the wow folder.

If you're getting a new system.

Win7 Home, 64-bit
i7 920
6gb DDR3 ram (upgrade to 9/12 down the road)
same low-end SSD.

You certainly don't need an SSD, but a cheap (~ $100) model is a huge boost.



WoW runs like crap with not enough Ram.
And if you're lacking Ram, its the cheapest upgrade.
Generally you want 1GB for system plus 1GB per account running.

After Ram, processor makes the biggest deal.

A SSD is pretty huge for wow too.
Especially in heavily populated areas like Dalaran.

Video isn't a huge deal for wow.
And you can turn shadows, weather, etc down.

[celia]

Thanks for all the info, I was really worried about the video end so I think I will go lower there like a gs250 and then get the ssd thanks all.