My computers performance.

[Deathtocome]

Question:
What would help my computer with running multiple boxes? As of now it is slow, laggy, and Incompentent. Give your two cents.

[Talos]

why dont you give your two cents first !!!

post your current system specs and we can judge and or help with improvements.


but as a simple guideline.
I as many others here run this basic setup:

Q6600 quadcore 2.4Ghz (i run mine @3Ghz)
4+ gig ram (8 gig preferred to load all 5 wow's into ram)
8800GTX 756mb video or better (i still run this)
fast dedicated harddrive withouth windows on it. a SSD preferred.

[Ualaa]

Warcraft is much more processor dependent then video dependent.
But that doesn't mean the video cannot be the bottleneck in the system.

I'd start with this list:
a) If you lack sufficient ram (1GB for the OS, plus 1GB per client), that's the largest performance hit and the cheapest upgrade.
b) If you don't have a 64-bit Operating System, you cannot use more then 4GB of ram (including system + video).
c) A low-end SSD, purely to host your gaming folder, 30GB is large enough... don't put your operating system on a crappy drive, but purely for read actions this will rock.
d) A stronger processor, generally you want a Quad Core, the newer i7's are very nice too, but hardly necessary.

You can also change your wow settings.
Disabling shadows is a huge impact.
Weather effects, spell effects etc are smaller impacts.
View distance reduction can help a ton, but I like to keep this to at least half.
Ensure your anti-alaising is set to 1x, 24-bit, and not 2x or 4x.
Disable V-Sync can sometimes help, as that forces your FPS to a 60 FPS (or halves/doubles starting at 60).

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Things we need from you before we can give you any reasonable ideas for upgrades (aside from the BUY A NEW SYSTEM NOOB LOL):

1. What is in your system now? (HDD, Graphics, RAM, CPU, motherboard)
2. How many copies of WoW are you trying to run?
3. What do you have your WoW's graphics settings at? (resolution, details/effects, etc.)

[methodical13]

What kind of setup would you need to run at max graphics settings for all 5?

I have a q6600, 4GB ram and a nvidia 280 and the best i can get is low and all my slaves and fair on my main.

[Gormand]

What kind of setup would you need to run at max graphics settings for all 5?

I have a q6600, 4GB ram and a nvidia 280 and the best i can get is low and all my slaves and fair on my main.

The answer is INSANE.

I accidentally ran my 5 in full graphic settings at the start and had 4 FPS in senjin village. I have. *goes to look up computer specs*
MB : Gigabyte P55-UD3R
CPU : Intel i7 860 @2.8ghz
RAM - 4 gigs of Corsair 1600mhz (About to upgrade to 8)
GPU : ATI Radeon HD 5850 2gigs mem
HDD : 3x Western Digital's Caviar Black HDD, I run 3 wow folders (1 on each drive)

I can run my main screen (1920x1080) in full res with everything turned all the way up (I turn the view distance down 1 notch as this can cause memory errors)
Then I run the other 4 on my other monitor with everything turned all the way down.

Dalaran pretty much sucks but questing in northrend I sit between 40 and 60 FPS. To get them all running at full graphics I would need to SLI my graphics card with another one, have at least the 8 gigs of RAM Im going for, and run WoW off 2-3 dedicated SSDs for when it needs to rip a large amount of textures off the drives.
Or have a second computer about as powerful as my current one, that would also be needed to be able to support enough monitors to make running them in full graphics worth it :P
Although... No you could pull it off on 1 computer, but you would need 2 giant monitors and 1 small one and the double graphics card.

[Ualaa]

I'm running:

i7 920 (stock speed)
12gb (Mushkin) DDR3 1600mhz
Nvidia GTX 275 (1GB) - Running one 30.5" monitor, at 2560x1600.
Patriot Torqx 64mb SSD (220mb seq.read, 1ms seek)

It is smooth everywhere, with view distance at 50% and most of the other options down.
I haven't really turned the options up much; that's basically the settings I used when I was using the Q6600, except instead of being choppy in places, it is smooth everywhere.

[alcattle]

What kind of setup would you need to run at max graphics settings for all 5?

I have a q6600, 4GB ram and a nvidia 280 and the best i can get is low and all my slaves and fair on my main.

Best upgrade would be RAM. Once I got 8 gigs, all the lag went away. I bet you see the lag worst in cities. My GPU is not nealy as good and I run 60 FPS now with my Q6600 and 8 gigs.

[kate]

I run 5 boxes on one machine with - compared to others in this thread - very modest hardware:

Core 2 duo E8200 @ 2.66
4GB ram (3.25 is usable)
GTX260
1920x1200 resolution

I can run my main window with maximum settings (and also a few tweaks to go past max settings - render distance is up, more ground cover, etc) and my 4 slaves on low without problems except when it comes to loading everyone to Dalaran (so I use Shat for my home base )

What I do is I throttle the FPS depending on whether the window is the active one - if the window is active, I cap it at 60 FPS, if it is inactive/in back, I cap it at 10 FPS using console commands. If I didn't do that, I'm sure I'd have a real issue with performance. Works like a charm!