Rig question

[Jurimaxelf]

Hi all,

today my Boxing machine found it time to pass away. A neverending story of small problems finally came to an end.
As I was already planning on changing the machine in the beginning of January, I'll just grab a new one earlier (hopefully in time before Cata).

So my question was, for 5 boxing on 1 machine, would this setup be good enough?

Intel Core I7 950 3,06Ghz - 8MB
Gigabyte X58A-UD5
Intel 80GB SSD + 1TB Samsung
6GB DDR3 1600Mhz Corsair
GTX470 1280MB GDDR5
DVD-RW
Thermaltake Armor JR
Coolermaster Realpower 530Watt
Microsoft Windows 7 HP 64BIT
Arctic CPU Cooling + Arctic 120mm Fan Blue LED

or

Intel Core I7 950 3,06Ghz - 8MB 
Asus P6T 
Intel 160GB SSD 
Western Digital 2TB 64MB SATAII 7200Rpm 
12GB DDR3 1333Mhz Kingston 
2x MSI R5870 Crossfire 
Blu-Ray / Card Reader 
Antec P183 Black 
Corsair 950Watt 
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64BIT 

The machine would mainly be used for the 5 Wows and some browsing (other stuff happens on the machine I'm surfing from now).

In case some adjustments need to be made to one of the setups, could you also elaborate why. (perhaps some issue that I overlooked, ...)

Cheers J

[Ualaa]

Either system will 5-box without issues.

I'd personally like more then 6GB of ram, and would get a 12GB system.
You won't need more then 6GB for warcraft, but 12GB gets you some overhead.

I'd probably go with an i7 920, and overclock it if you wanted more performance.
Don't think the faster processors are really worth the cost, but that's up to you.

What will you be putting on the SSD?
80GB should be plenty for your OS and Warcraft.
Do you need the extra 80GB for something?
Is the 160GB faster than the 80GB?

Will you be exclusively warcrafting on the system?
Or will you use it for other games too?
Warcraft generally doesn't like SLI/Crossfire, but you can probably disable that for wow and enable it for other games.

Just some thoughts.

[Jurimaxelf]

For the SSD, doesn't each account need a separate Wow dir (for better performance) so 80 GB wouldn't really cut it.

As to the CPU, the bigger price i7 950 is all in all fair (around 260 €).

Most of the time it would be for Wow (but occasionally another game may be played).

As to the RAM, my own preference was also 12 GB.

Thanks for the quick reply and for giving me some food for thought ;-)

Cheers J

[Ualaa]

If your software supports virtualization of the config.wtf file, then you only want/need the one install.

If it doesn't, then you'd use symbolic links for the Cache, Data and Interface folders, meaning a single install at full size, and one copy of 10-50MB (the size of your addon folder basically) per different level of settings you'd like; probably 1x Everything on (solo boxing), 1x Half Settings (the master), 1x Low Settings (all the slaves).

[Sajuuk]

For the SSD, doesn't each account need a separate Wow dir (for better performance) so 80 GB wouldn't really cut it.

As to the CPU, the bigger price i7 950 is all in all fair (around 260 €).

Most of the time it would be for Wow (but occasionally another game may be played).

As to the RAM, my own preference was also 12 GB.

Thanks for the quick reply and for giving me some food for thought ;-)

Cheers J

Get the 920/930, it's cheaper and a sinch to overclock.

If your software supports virtualization of the config.wtf file, then you only want/need the one install.

If it doesn't, then you'd use symbolic links for the Cache, Data and Interface folders, meaning a single install at full size, and one copy of 10-50MB (the size of your addon folder basically) per different level of settings you'd like; probably 1x Everything on (solo boxing), 1x Half Settings (the master), 1x Low Settings (all the slaves).




Warcraft generally doesn't like SLI/Crossfire, but you can probably disable that for wow and enable it for other games.

BAM, although if you use isboxer then you can disable SLI/crossfire and offload some of the rendering work for...half your toons to the other GPU and get amazing/better performance.

[MiRai]

Get the 920/930, it's cheaper and a sinch to overclock.

The 930 replaced the 920 [Deactivated], the 950 replaces the 930 [Deactivated].

[Sajuuk]

The 930 replaced the 920 [Deactivated], the 950 replaces the 930 [Deactivated].

I have one thing to say.


DERP.
(thanks for the clarification)

[Owltoid]

To rephrase some of what Ualaa said:

use ISBoxer. You will only need one install. 80GB is plenty for the SSD.

I would strongly suggest checking out www.buyxg.com and putting together a custom computer there. I'd be surprised if you didn't save significant money

[Buetzel]

i'd like to join in on the i7-920/930 is enough crowd.

also 12gb ram definitely.

even if you don't use isboxer, you can manually symlink the data folder of wow (here is the most data) so you only need that once. so i think you wouldn't need a 160gb ssd.
although i have to note i'm angry at myself for choosing too small a ssd (30gb). i think 80gb would be enough.
BUT i would install the operating system to another drive. so perhaps - 2x 80gb ssd or even os on a hdd (i'm not up to date about ssd's and os'es - wasn't there a reasoning to use a fast hdd like a velociraptor for os instead?).
if you don't play any other games or at least not often, i'd go with a single radeon 6870. i read some good stuff about it. perhaps you could invest some time to inform yourself better about this (nvidia 470 / amd 5870... so... last month? ^^).
also: why windows 7 ultimate? afair ultimate brings only some stoff mostly used in large companies which you wouldn't need and instead disable to get more gaming performance. so - stay with home premium (64 bit is of course necessary).

personally i run something like this. i7-920, 12gb ddr3, ssd for wow only, os from a hdd, still my old (t)rusty geforce 8800 gts 512.
only things i would upgrade would be a bigger ssd, so wow wouldn't bug me about too little space for a patch, and of course the graphics card for more details on all 5 instances and a little more dx11-eyecandy.
i'd go with nvidia 460 2gb or amd 6870 at the moment.
nvidia 460 2g is ... well. worth a discussion. i'm not really convinced 2g vram wouldn't be a bigger performance gain than the higher performance of a better gpu like 6870 for a similar price. but this is something for another thread (which already exists btw...).

[Buetzel]

thanks, fenril.
guess i'm not up to date, when not actively searching for hardware to buy ...