Please suggest the most useful system upgrade...

[shadewalker]

64 bit OS and RAM > Monitor > SSD I would take the monitor over the SSD just because i like to see what is going on with all my toons.

[Owltoid]

I wouldn't bother with a SSD for WoW. For your OS? Absolutely. SSD for WoW is utterly pointless.

I 100% believe the opposite. SSD is pointless for your OS and absolutely useful for WoW. Single boxers don't need an SSD, but multiboxers are constantly hitting their harddrive (unless you have it in a RAM disk) and an SSD is key.

[d0z3rr]

I 100% believe the opposite. SSD is pointless for your OS and absolutely useful for WoW. Single boxers don't need an SSD, but multiboxers are constantly hitting their harddrive (unless you have it in a RAM disk) and an SSD is key.

Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Nice.



Wait, you're not being sarcastic?

[Owltoid]

Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Nice.



Wait, you're not being sarcastic?

There are tons of threads on this site with peeps boasting how much an SSD helped their performance...

[Zub]

ok trying to understand the debate on SSD:

from what i understand, a solid state drive will allow you to load files from the disk into memory much quicker than a normal drive.
while playing wow:
- what needs to be loaded from the OS ? (hum, not sure. nothing? everything should already be in memory when you start playing),
- what needs to be loaded from WOW folders ? (textures, loading zones, pretty much everything when moving or when players come and go)

so from the above, i would tend to think that Owltoid is right, and that having WoW on SSD is more beneficial than having the OS on SSD. (at least , when playing wow)

does that make sense?

[MiRai]

ok trying to understand the debate on SSD:

from what i understand, a solid state drive will allow you to load files from the disk into memory much quicker than a normal drive.
while playing wow:
- what needs to be loaded from the OS ? (hum, not sure. nothing? everything should already be in memory when you start playing),
- what needs to be loaded from WOW folders ? (textures, loading zones, pretty much everything when moving or when players come and go)

so from the above, i would tend to think that Owltoid is right, and that having WoW on SSD is more beneficial than having the OS on SSD. (at least , when playing wow)

does that make sense?

Yes. In addition to that... SSD's have more of a limit to how many times they can be written to than platter drives do. I'm just going to take a big educated guess but I can see your system drive being written to on a constant basis, essentially burning out your SSD quicker than if you were just play WoW off of it.

[d0z3rr]

The only time SSD would benefit you in WoW is for the loading screens. That is it. How many loading screens do you usually see while playing WoW that bother you? For me: None.

WoW is not disk intensive by any means, and the standard 7200 rpm drives on today's markets are more than enough.

There are tons of files the OS is accessing at any given time in it's various folders (a major one being system32, or syswow64). The OS will benefit from the zero latency of SSD's, not to mention boot way faster and patch much faster.

But what do I know? Go ahead and do the SSD, it's your computer and money

[d0z3rr]

I'm just going to take a big educated guess but I can see your system drive being written to on a constant basis, essentially burning out your SSD quicker than if you were just play WoW off of it.

Your computer will be completely obsolete, WoW will probably not be in service, and you might even be toally sick of video games by the time your SSD "burns out" from the OS being installed on it. There are several places that install disk intensive SQL databases (i.e. Sharepoint) on full SSD raid setups. Do you think their SSDs are "burning out" in months or something?

[Owltoid]

The only time SSD would benefit you in WoW is for the loading screens. That is it. How many loading screens do you usually see while playing WoW that bother you? For me: None.

WoW is not disk intensive by any means, and the standard 7200 rpm drives on today's markets are more than enough.

There are tons of files the OS is accessing at any given time in it's various folders (a major one being system32, or syswow64). The OS will benefit from the zero latency of SSD's, not to mention boot way faster and patch much faster.

But what do I know? Go ahead and do the SSD, it's your computer and money

I'd say hard drive access is the most discussed topic on the dual-boxing hardware forum. More than RAM, processor type, MB, and video card. You have many people claiming that the SSD has helped both their load screen times (from 30+ seconds with 5 toons in Dalaran to 2 seconds) as well as general game play (new textures, especially in highly populated areas, are being read in all the time while you move and other things move towards you). Between discussions of RAID0, SSDs in RAID, hard drive access, etc, I think you are definitely in the minority on thinking harddrive access time has little to do with multiboxing. After having enough RAM, many would say an SSD is the best upgrade your system can make.

How often do you boot your machine in comparison to how often do you see a load screen for WoW? I use my computer to primarily play video games so that question is very easy for me - I'd much rather wait an extra 15 seconds for my computer to boot using the 7200 drive and have my WoW loading screen be near instant. WoW is somewhat intensive on accessing the harddrive, but nothing big. A single player wouldn't really need an SSD. However, a 5 boxer will see a huge performance increase from moving from a single 7200 drive to even a slow SSD.

[daviddoran]

I'm in a similar situation, I have a q6600 (mine is overclocked) 8GB of ram and an SSD, and I am currently CPU bound. When i 5 box (all alts are set to lowest possible, and the main is set only slightly higher) and all 4 cores are working at or near to 100%. I am planning on upgrading to a core i7 930 with 12GB of ram. (I'd go 9GB if they made 3GB sticks that were affordable)

I disagree that SSD for wow is pointless. EVERYTHING loads faster. I recently logged in a buddys computer, and in dalaran it took forever for the other characters to show up, where on my system its near instant. SSDs are very affordable now, you just cant fit an OS, games and media files on em just yet without breaking the bank.

I used to run 2 computers, but the added complication of the extra mouse and keyboard (for other non multiboxed tasks) and lack of windowswapping with isboxer made it not worth it for me. Only thing I missed is that if my main computer crashed, my other characters on the other PC were still able to play, and I could communicate this to my teammates.