Quote Originally Posted by weelilmatt
hmm.. ok, maybe ill just use two screens... 1 for main the other w/ a 4x4 display for the alts... eventually move up to 3 screens i guess
so one main comp + alt comp?

any advice harware wise? what MB? how much RAM? what processor? i want to run FULL GFX on the main comp and low on the alts... pref 20+fps on the alts
What's your budget? That should be the first question.
$2500 will go a long way toward a very nice setup capable of running 5 accounts on one machine smoothly - better than what I'm doing, and it's easily playable.
Here's a rough list of what I'd consider a minimum machine built from quality components for running 5 accounts, but good enough for future-proofing..
2x 22" Dell widescreen LCDs @ 1680x1050 each. $239 x 2 = $478 (main on one, 4x on the other)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 cpu $275
Gigabyte GA-X38-DS4 motherboard $200
4GB = 2x 1GBx2 Corsair XMS DDR2-800 Cas4 memory $109 x 2 = $218
2x eVGA 8800GTS 320MB videocards $220 x 2 = $440
A *good* power supply from the following brands of at least this wattage is one of the following:
SeaSonic M12 700W $200 (at an abosolute minimum - no overclocking)
Enermax Galaxy 850W $290 (or higher in Galaxy series)
OCZ 1000W $300
PC Power & Cooling 1000W+ $460+

As you can see.. prices add up.

The rest doesn't matter as much for performance.. although fast/striped hard drives will help with load times. You don't need an 8800GTX/Ultra for 1680x1050 even on highest settings. However, with an 8800GTS on each of your monitors, not in SLI mode, all 5 windows will play very smooth. You can save power (and power supply requirements) by going with one 8800GTX, but I'd much rather have dedicated cards per LCD, especially since the max resolution on one is only 1680x1050.

For comparison, here's my 5-account, 1-box setup:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.2GHz
Gigabyte P965-DS3
4GB Corsair XMS DDR2
eVGA 8800GTX
Corsair (SeaSonic) 620W PSU
2x 36GB WD Raptors in RAID 0, 2x 500GB WD in RAID 0
Dell 24" 1920x1200 main (1x 1680x1050 window - I like to easily get to Firefox behind it)
Dell 20" 1680x1050 4x followers (4x 800x600 windows)
Creative Labs X-Fi Elite Pro
Logitech Z5500
Logitech G15
Logitech MX518
Antec P182 case
Windows XP Pro.

Considering I still have my setup in dual-view mode instead of desktop span, my framerates are still fine on my main window. I've used '/console maxfps 15' on the other 4 windows to keep them from hogging resources. I built my computer nearly a year ago (with the hard drives being salvaged from an older machine), and if I had to do it today, I would definitely go quad core and two non-sli videocards with two same-size widescreen monitors.