back to boxing... insight into a decent build

[Seldum]

One thing is certain. Go for more than 4gb of ram. I have 12gb as Ualaa and my clients and computer in general eat a big chunk of this.

I run 30 fps in dalaran with almost zero lack.

[Sly]

thanks for everyones advice so far.. because i use a mac for programming i am leaning towards purchasing the i7 27" iMac with 6GB to start with.. i can always upgrade

I know from other posts people are 4-5 boxing with the same specs.. just a bit concerned about the graphics card..

I have recently found that the iMac display can also be used as an external display.. so if i could always buy a component here and there to build a comp simply to box on and use the iMac as the display.. then i get the sexy 2560 x 1440 resolution.

i wish i could test before i buy.. actually on that subject is anyone using an ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512MB or similar to box with?

EDIT: I moved away from this post for a while and found the following:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

considering my bros iMac with the Geforce 9400M (which ranked 500 with a score of 137) can 4 box then i'm pretty sure the radeon HD 4850 can (rank 43 score of 1073).

i also found this if anyone is interested : http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac-...27-Inch/1236/1

sly

[Sam DeathWalker]

You're still making little sense. And no, it's not just better to go with two computers if you decided to use two cards, mainly for the overall heat, power, space, and money concerns for a build with a set budget. With the motherboard the OP has chosen it's a simple matter of getting another graphics card and plugging it in. There's no reason to get another computer.

So, why are you telling us that he needs two graphics cards/computers to drive two 2 2560 x 1440 displays?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&a...i=&safe=images


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&t...i=&safe=images




Its not so simple given that WoW dosn't officially support SLI, thats not to say you can't make it work but its a can of worms that better avoided imho. Generally speaking, for the same money, two computers will give you more results then one super computer. But he is going i7 920/930, wisely, so maybe he can't currently afford two computers .... With $750 each you can cobble together two 920 x58 computers if you go basic. Actually he is spending $2250 max budget; buying wholesale he can EASY make two 930 x58 computers.

Also as those very very high resolutions its not clear that you won't saturate the PCI bus, although thats really hard to do on a X58 system two high res sli cards might do it - who knows. At any rate a lot of the high end single cards have two gpus and single cards dont suffer from the problems that sli has so a single card duel gpu driving 2 monitors is fine.


I would get a 1G ram card though.

[Sajuuk]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&a...i=&safe=images


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&t...i=&safe=images




Its not so simple given that WoW dosn't officially support SLI, thats not to say you can't make it work but its a can of worms that better avoided imho. Generally speaking, for the same money, two computers will give you more results then one super computer. But he is going i7 920/930, wisely, so maybe he can't currently afford two computers .... With $750 each you can cobble together two 920 x58 computers if you go basic. Actually he is spending $2250 max budget; buying wholesale he can EASY make two 930 x58 computers.

Also as those very very high resolutions its not clear that you won't saturate the PCI bus, although thats really hard to do on a X58 system two high res sli cards might do it - who knows. At any rate a lot of the high end single cards have two gpus and single cards dont suffer from the problems that sli has so a single card duel gpu driving 2 monitors is fine.


I would get a 1G ram card though.

Where in any of my posts did I mention SLI/Xfire? Right, I never did! What I meant by plugging in another card is to use it for MORE than two monitors, not SLI.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Ok if you are not doing SLI then I would think two video cards for multimonitors to be fine.