PC Spec Question

[StabbyJoe]

Hi all, long time lurker here, finally signed up to the forums.

I have dual-boxed in the past but am buying a new PC soon, and since I have retired from raiding recently I will finally have the time to start up a 5 boxing team.

Since I have not ordered the PC yet (plan to to this at the weekend, I though it would be a good idea to run the PC spec past people here to check it out. I plan on running with 2 screens, 1 with my main character (tankadin ftw ) on at 1920x1200 and the other with 4 windowed dps/healer characters tiled in a 2x2 configuration at 1920x1080 (960x540 per client).

I would obviously like to run the main character in full detail settings, and continue to do so after Catacysm's graphical updates have been applied to the game (assuming an increase in complexity similar to the previous 2 expansions).

New PC spec currently planned:

Core i7 930 -overclocked to 4GHz
6GB DDR3 memory
1 TB 7200rpm HD (32MB cache)
GeForce 470GTX graphics
Windows 7 professional 64 bit

One thing I was thinking of was an SSD, but they are still very small and expensive compared to conventional HDs. Do I really need one?
Will this be up to the job now and for the foreseeable future?
If not which bits would people consider changing?

[alcattle]

I myself. do not overclock. Not needed in WoW but it is up to you and your skill level.
I don't know much about the new Nvidia GX cards, but that should be plenty to run 5 toons.
SSD will just cause things to load faster. Up to you to justify the added cost.
Looks like a good build, my first upgrade would be get 12 gigs RAM but 6 will 5 toons

[Ualaa]

Your system will be fine for 5-boxing.

The single largest upgrade will be an SSD drive.
One of the cheaper drives, purely for the gaming folder would be ideal.

After that, the ram would be the next upgrade.
Or, if you're doing a lot of multitasking or video recording of your play, possibly the ram first.

I'm using a GTX 275 video card, and wow does not push this card.
I also play with view distance at half, and shadows disabled.

My processor is an i7 920, at stock speed.
And again, warcraft does not push it at all.

[StabbyJoe]

My system finally arrived yesterday and I got things set up using ISBoxer with 5 characters, but I'm not getting the performance I expected out of it by any means.

If I have low detail on the slave characters and high details on the main, I get 30 fps (limited in ISBoxer settings I think) on the slaves but only 20-40 fps on the main, lower in major towns and cities. I was at one point as low as 13fps in Exodar!

I can get it up to nearly 60 fps if I disable shadows on the main screen but only outside towns as soon as I enter a busier area it drops back down. Changing the affinity settings to 0 & 1 for main screen and 2-7 for the slaves seemed to help marginally too.

Could resolution be an issue? With my current ISBoxer setup I think it is running all 5 clients at 1920*1200, which is 11.5 million pixels to render. I don't really want to change this though I like being able to swap the slave views into the main screen at full resolution.

What other settings changes and config tweaks can I do to improve performance?

I was expecting not to drop below 60fps at all on the main screen (Dalaran & other Major cities excepted) with PC of this spec, maybe with 5 clients running this is an unrealistic expectation?

[Mergra]

i currently run
Intel 920
12gb ram 1600mhz
xfx 5970
and a 7200 hdd
windows 7 64 bit

Multiboxing on it
cpu usage 23-29%
ram Usage about 40-45%

everything runs smooth no hicups
so yours should be fine