Advice on upgrading

[maqz]

I've been tri-boxing on two computers for a month, and today I started two additional trial accounts to try five-boxing. I have my main on one computer, and the rest on another. The alts are on 800*600, no sound, all video settings on lowest possible.

The second pc is perfectly fine for two alts, but running four instances of WoW is a bit laggy. Or rather choppy video, and occasionally thrashing hard drive. I have only tried running around the starting area so far, and the lag didn't actually cause any problems, but I fear things will get worse when I get to more populated areas. I wonder if I can get by with an upgrade, or should I get a brand new computer? Or four new computers?

If upgrading, what parts should I focus on?

Mobo: ASUS A8N-E nForce4 Ultra
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 "venice" 3000+ (1800 MHz)
RAM: 2 Gb (4 * 512 Mb Corsair Value select)
Graphics: Club3D Nvidia GeForce 6600GT pci-express 128 Mb
Monitor settings: 1600*1200 pixels

[Wilbur]

Well, the good news is that you probably don't need to upgrade your monitor. :-D

The bad news is that you are not gonna be able to effectively run 3 or 4 characters on that machine.
Ideally you want to upgrade your Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Graphics Card.

For running 4 characters on that machinem you'll probably want a Quad core processor (Intel Core 2 Q6600) Around 4GB PC6400 RAM, 512MB 8800GT.

You''ll probably need to upgrade the power supply as well.

Its not cheap but it'll perform, which is whats important.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

CPU and RAM first as those are givens. You can get away with a Q6850 dual core CPU but will need 3-4GB of RAM. The video card I don't think will be a problem. WoW isn't a heavy graphics stressor, so you should be OK with that as long as you keep your settings detuned.

[maqz]

Thanks for the input. Maybe I should start with mobo, cpu and memory as soon as I can afford.

I have my old team of three characters at level ~55 and a new team of four at level ~10, so until they converge, I wont have to run more than three wows on this computer.

Two wows is actually quite pleasant. Everything loads instantly and never any lag. Maybe I should just find a similar second hand computer with a monitor. :thumbsup: