How good computer for 10 toons

[Sam DeathWalker]

I just took out my SSD (OCZ PCI one) and went back to the raptor.

Im getting on the more system ram bandwagon now.

In theory the HDD access time is very important for loading new character textures but maybe Win7 is good enough at checking system ram first for data before going to the HDD. I don't know. Maybe I bought the wrong SSD or maybe its just not good for a system with 4G ram (I usually use my main computer to run just one client). Maybe over time it just has that trim proplem but overall its just not worth it. Better to get a 2G video board I thinks.

If you run from one area of Org to another and get a lot of stuttering lag then your HDD to video card ram is loading textures to slow. Standing in one spot won't stress that as much as fewer new people will come into your sight.

[Bollwerk]

Id would be interested in how long your system stays stable, cause at the bottom line you don't really save money if you while waiting from RMA's :P I am interested in how people still think that running multple concurrent clients is not CPU / system intensive operation. If you were talking about a singular FPS shooter or a regular, non-multiboxer wow player, yes you would be correct that an i5 is the way to go. I tend to believe that most people in the db community are aware that regular tests do not simply scale, but hey, been wrong before and happy to be wrong again, as long as the path is right.

What I and perhaps OP talk would like to hear is how someone with an i5 setup works with first 10 trial accounts, and then maybe with 10 fully lvl'ed accounts if possible.

So far, it has been rock solid. I'm completely in agreement about stability. I'm not interested in an unstable or unreliable system, no matter how fast.

I'm not sure where you get the impression that people here think that multi-boxing is not CPU intensive. All some of have said is that hyperthreading doesn't seem to offer any benefit when gaming (or multi-boxing), but that may have changed with newer processors. I'd like to see some concrete tests to compare.

[coglistings]

well, back on the system I am testing, i7 930, hyper threading does allow for smoother video as you fly around one of the busiest areas on a high population server, but with hyperthreading turned off, it becomes a slide show on both main accounts as well as slaves. I played around with some things this morning and corrected the follow breaking issue, but it still isn't as agile as when hyperthreading is turned on, as there appears to be a queuing of keypresses, meaning I can stop pressing buttons and my button presses are still going through for up to two - three spell casts.

returning to the OP question, 10 boxing on one machine, we have to take care when advising and quoting tests that are typical of no more than 5 boxing, as most of the community minus a handful, do not play more than five accounts. I can see that hyperthreading really doesn't offer to much of a difference at the five boxing lvl, but when we start to push 10 clients on the same machine, its an edge that is worth it even if its an "older" technology die process, especially if you can get it for or below the same price. so there is your evidence, though its not a screenshot with a numerical figure and bar graph on it :P On another note, more to the whole viability of trial accounts to test your end game machine setup, both setup handled flying around durator nicely, though again with hyperthreading enabled, it was still more fluid than with it disabled.

I must admit though that all I am doing is cycling between having hyperthreading on vs it not on with a stock clock/system. The i5 does have a faster clock speed than the i7 930 and there is a possibility that it may just be enough to push it to the performance of the slower clocked i7 with hyperthreading enabled. What is clear to me though, when 9 boxing, hyperthreading does help an i7 system as 9 boxing does approach the limits of the processor.

gl on your setup and please provide feedback on what you go with and what you find!

[MiRai]

Id would be interested in how long your system stays stable, cause at the bottom line you don't really save money if you while waiting from RMA's :P I am interested in how people still think that running multple concurrent clients is not CPU / system intensive operation. If you were talking about a singular FPS shooter or a regular, non-multiboxer wow player, yes you would be correct that an i5 is the way to go. I tend to believe that most people in the db community are aware that regular tests do not simply scale, but hey, been wrong before and happy to be wrong again, as long as the path is right.

What I and perhaps OP talk would like to hear is how someone with an i5 setup works with first 10 trial accounts, and then maybe with 10 fully lvl'ed accounts if possible.

My system is very stable at 4.5GHz. What's this talk about RMA's? And why do you keep saying i5 when I clearly own an i7
on the 1156 chipset.

no, you misread, or didn't fully read, you have to live by one to get the i5 for the same price, you can order as many i7 950's as you want online. Please, your quote of my post has that part in it :P

I read your post, you retaliated against my Newegg price comparison with a link to Micro Center's in-store price. You can't
order those 950's online from Micro Center... in-store pickup only. So... again, you have to live by one in order to take
advantage of that price.

On another note, I just reread the specs on Intel extreme processors and they are on the 1336 sockets and 1336 sockets are not compatable with 1155 or 1156 anyway you read it / force push processor into slot. 1366 and 1336 remain the enthusiast chipset while 1155 and 1156 are considered more entry level, hense no extremem processor for the 1155 nor 1156 socket.

No one is talking about Extreme Edition Intel processors, only you. My $300 processor is on par with the $1000 980X... look
around the internet at benchmarks. At this point, if you dropped $1000 for a 6 core processor to 10 box World of Warcraft
you're an idiot when people are clearly 10 boxing on old school [and new school] i7's for much less money.

[coglistings]

My system is very stable at 4.5GHz. What's this talk about RMA's? And why do you keep saying i5 when I clearly own an i7
on the 1156 chipset.

I read your post, you retaliated against my Newegg price comparison with a link to Micro Center's in-store price. You can't
order those 950's online from Micro Center... in-store pickup only. So... again, you have to live by one in order to take
advantage of that price.

No one is talking about Extreme Edition Intel processors, only you. My $300 processor is on par with the $1000 980X... look
around the internet at benchmarks. At this point, if you dropped $1000 for a 6 core processor to 10 box World of Warcraft
you're an idiot when people are clearly 10 boxing on old school [and new school] i7's for much less money.

I was reffering to bollwerk, not you, You have no post in this thread discussing your stock / oc'in or what you run. unsure while you are in a bind about this but oh well. Bos already answer my quote on it as well and I think the two of us agree with eachother on stability being the an important concept when OC'in, besides, I think we both got a chuckle over the exchange. Sorry if you missed the ride on that :P I do tend to blaze from one posters comments to anothers commenter's idea presented without specifically mentioning the transition, so I can accept that I have some responsibility for the confussion, but only as long as we can ingame "hug" eachother.

As to the instore pickup on the i7 950, yes you are correct, I did infact misread the add I posted in the forum, but it still remains that the two are near evenly priced to each other, and also from my own tests, hyperthreading may play an important role in a 10 boxing situation where it has been dismissed previously.

On the i7 extreme processor, I only brought it up since it is a reason to stick with the enthusiast chipsets and not go with the 1156, 1155 chipsets. I don't know if you five, ten, twenty box or whatnot, not going to search your posts to find out either. But if an intel extreme processor with the extra 2 cores helps you sucessfully perform 10 boxing with greater creature comforts, like view distance, particle density, etc, and saves you from purchasing an entirely new system, the I would say that it is a smart purchase. I do 10 box, but I preffer to do it on two different computers cause I do not enjoy the ingame experience when it is on one pc with no OC'in involved with any of the three i7 processors I have on hand. I am interested in seeing how an intel extreme processor will handle the load and test, which is why I bring it up. If you are on the 1155 chipset, you can't just pop in an extreme processor, you have to get a different mb as well.

If you or anyone else have personal experience 10 boxing with an extreme processor that you have on hand, then we should get together and run ideas with eachother as I would be interested in your observations. However, if we are just going to go back and forth over speculations, then lets take it to PM's

[MiRai]

unsure while you are in a bind about this but oh well. However, if we are just going to go back and forth over speculations, then lets take it to PM's

No one's in a bind, brah! I'll see you on the battlefield...
now i have to get to level 85

[coglistings]

No one's in a bind, brah! I'll see you on the battlefield...
now i have to get to level 85

I will still hug you ingame, creating lvl 1 alt on your server right now! YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM MY HUGS BRAH!

oh wait, you are on Kiljaeden. Hmmm, though I hate LK, I think I can make an exception to make sure you get your hugs ingame

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well its always been my opinion that WoW is not CPU limited at all.

Of course if you start talking about 10 boxing on a single computer then might want a stonger processor.

I think money should be spent in the following order as follows as far as improving your fps and what not per $1 invested (just talking about wow if you use your computer for other things then priorites might be different) (i.e. a buck spent on more video ram will improve your fps a lot more then $1 spent on better monitor or cpu).

Video Ram
System Ram
Motherboard Chipset (DMA and Buss speeds) / HDD / SDD
Video GPU
CPU
NIC card if on board not good enough
Monitor

[fleaplus]

Sandy Bridge is the best choice for 10 boxing. Higher IPC, higher clock rates in general, as well as smaller die process that is more refined which can allow for higher overclocks if you do that.

I would suggest getting the 2600/2600k model and using hyperthreading. WOW, and games in general, are very monolithic single threaded applications, so the chance that a single thread might try and lock down resources are decently high. By using hyperthreading, it can allow another thread to continue to use remaining resources in a core rather than having it be completely locked down by one thread. For a single game running, this will never be a problem (and the overhead could actually reduce performance) but for five games running it can be very useful.

Oh, and WOW is definitely processor bound. It is basically a huge scripting engine that communicates via a network and draws objects to a screen. Most of the lag in the game is caused by the scripts either waiting for more data over the network, or being overwhelmed with the amount of data that is being recieved.