for those Multiboxing entire groups .... question ?

[Zub]

I run two PCs with my main on one and the 4 slaves on the other (WoW)
I mainly do it because my processing power is limited, so i have to spread on 2 machines.

What i like about it.
- If for whatever reason i have a lockup due to too many toons or whatever, i can still use my main.
- i can run my main in full settings, with no detriment to the slaves

What i don't like about it
- swapping keyboards whenever i need to do something that can't be boxed well (picking a herb or whatever)
- loading, updating, setting mods or whatever on 2 machines


If i had t a bit of cash i'd get a beefier machine and just play all on 1 with 2 screens (main Fulls screen and 4 shared on the other)

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I run two machines with my 4 alts on PC 2. My boxing software does software-KVM mouse/kb control so I don't have to switch hardware, I just mouse over to PC2 and click/type whatever I need. Primarily, I like 2 PCs so I can run my main + GameCam/Fraps/whatever and don't have to worry about performance issues. My boxing software also allows precise mouse-click broadcasting without having to run alts at the same size as my main, which greatly improves performance on the alts.

I'm about 99.91% PVE, but if I did I would still run 2 PCs due to the lag/performance issues in larger PVP engagements.

I also like having two PCs because I can do IM/mail/web/movies on my second monitor on PC1 and still do everything else.

Really, it just depends on how much disposable income you have for hardware (though you could spend about the same on two or three 80% PCs as you did on one beast of a PC) and what functionality is critical to your playstyle.

[HPAVC]

I 5box and 10box on the same computer, previously it was a chore 10boxing and I could only ten box after zoning into a raid or starting at the stone and having the other 5 man group take a summons until I got an upgrade. Mixing two computers addressed the 10box issue easily, but the upgrade made it trivial to do on one computer.

I use camtasia and it works fine and I didn't even notice it (except when working with the application itself) even when 10boxing. Though I was only grabbing one slave's view 10boxing.

I have a separate server that I send prefmon, combatlog, chatlog, and multiplexer logging to.

I have recently gone to a three monitor setup. The traditional master + slaves, with half of a monitor is dedicated to spying on the performance & logging alerts (splunk!), vent, web use wowhead. The other half is a chunk of viewport from the master's session (all the unappealing combat, quest, chat, graph crap).

[Trushot]

If i had t a bit of cash i'd get a beefier machine and just play all on 1 with 2 screens (main Fulls screen and 4 shared on the other)

so if you have the cash go with one pc and 2 monitors?

i play lotro ( which is more intensive than wow on a machine ) so will have to run 6 instances of lotro on one machine

if i go this route ill prolly get the follwing:

either a asus 58 or rampage 3 MB

980 extreme with 6 cores ( so i can assign one core to each instance of lotro )

24 gigs of matched ram

an ati 5970 maybe 2 in crossfire

6 x 3gb/s 64 gig SSD drives for one instance each of Lotro

1 x 6GB/s 64 gig SSD for OS

so with that said i think the machine will be plenty beefy enough to run two monitors while i play one for main and other for slaves

im just trying to decide if its worth it for any reason to build one machine stand alone for main and one machine pretty much like above except one less SSD for 5 slaves ...

are their any advantages to two machines ( one for main one for slaves ) im missing or disadvantages ?

Taking beefy machine out of equation are there advantages to all being on one machine ( or disadvantages ) im missing before i decide

*** im a former hardware boxer but do not wish to do the 6 machine route anymore takes up too much room even though with a vetra mega switch prolly easier than software boxing except your stuck with PS/2 keyboard and mice ----- so im going software this time