$2200.00 Budget..what should I do?

[wyofiddler]

Fenril has mentioned several times that Crossfire/SLI is a poor choice for multiboxing, and I really appreciate hearing that because I was wondering about that myself.

From all I've read here on this thread and others, it sounds like it is not possible to force, say 3 clients onto one graphics card, and the other 2 clients onto the other graphics card, but rather all five clients try to use both cards (or not, if WoW doesn't support SLI at all) at the same time.

If you go two computers instead of one, how does the system play? Do you have one mouse that scrolls seemlessly across multiple screens like the single computer with dual monitors I run now, with IS boxer pip-swapping windows in and out or is it more like running two comps, with two monitors, two mice, two keyboards etc? I really like the performance side of this option, but I started boxing one toon on my desktop with another running on the laptop next to me and moved away from that as soon as I could; I don't really want to go back to what for me is a less intuitive setup.


TL/DR: boxing on more than one computer - can it be seemless or will it always be clunky using two machines?

[MiRai]

Fenril has mentioned several times that Crossfire/SLI is a poor choice for multiboxing, and I really appreciate hearing that because I was wondering about that myself.

The only reason I keep touting this is because there has yet to be a group of people who actually claim, and
can prove, that they truly see any significant increase in performance while using SLI/CF. In helping people
troubleshoot multiboxing issues throughout the years, I have run into numerous people who have had SLI/CF
enabled, and disabling it has always fixed any issues they've had. This is just in my experience and could of
course be different for others yet many agree with not using SLI/CF.

From all I've read here on this thread and others, it sounds like it is not possible to force, say 3 clients onto one graphics card, and the other 2 clients onto the other graphics card, but rather all five clients try to use both cards (or not, if WoW doesn't support SLI at all) at the same time.

I have yet to actually figure this out 100%. While WoW natively supports using different monitors (prior to that
it could be accomplished through Inner Space), in my quick test with two GTX 570's I was unable to get WoW
to actually use any of the second GPU's VRAM. I will be honest that I did not test this as thorough as I possibly
could have before I just opted to get a much stronger GPU instead.

Do you have one mouse that scrolls seemlessly across multiple screens like the single computer with dual monitors I run now, with IS boxer pip-swapping windows in and out or is it more like running two comps, with two monitors, two mice, two keyboards etc? I really like the performance side of this option, but I started boxing one toon on my desktop with another running on the laptop next to me and moved away from that as soon as I could; I don't really want to go back to what for me is a less intuitive setup.

People use software KM's (KVM w/o the V) to accomplish using a single mouse/keyboard between multiple
machines at the same time. Input Director would be my recommendation if you're able to use Windows on
both machines. If you're running different OS's on these machines then your next choice would probably be
Synergy although many have reported that Synergy can act up at times while multiboxing.

[wyofiddler]

I have yet to actually figure this out 100%. While WoW natively supports using different monitors (prior to that
it could be accomplished through Inner Space), in my quick test with two GTX 570's I was unable to get WoW
to actually use any of the second GPU's VRAM. I will be honest that I did not test this as thorough as I possibly
could have before I just opted to get a much stronger GPU instead.

Do you know if the computer was using all the processing power of the two cards, just not utilizing the VRAM, or if it was only using/recognizing the presence of one card? You said it was a quick test so I totally understand if you didn't pry that closely, but the way you said VRAM made me wonder....

Totally brainstorming here without having done much (any) research, but I would be really curious if a system could have two graphics cards, maybe even NOT SLI'd together, and software could split the 5 wow client (or Rift client) graphics load onto different cards much like ISBoxer does with picking which core to run the client threads on. As I understand ISBoxer, it's not locked strictly and exclusively to the chosen core alone, it's simply a priority system for distribution of the load across the CPU, but the idea is interesting to me. Of course, it would be even better if I could afford a system like that, but hey, it's fun to think about

[MiRai]

Do you know if the computer was using all the processing power of the two cards, just not utilizing the VRAM, or if it was only using/recognizing the presence of one card? You said it was a quick test so I totally understand if you didn't pry that closely, but the way you said VRAM made me wonder....

From what I remember it seemed to be using some (very little) of the second GPU's actual power. The second
GPU was definitely not idle, but was nowhere near being fully utilized despite having 3 game Windows
supposedly attached to it.

Totally brainstorming here without having done much (any) research, but I would be really curious if a system could have two graphics cards, maybe even NOT SLI'd together, and software could split the 5 wow client (or Rift client) graphics load onto different cards much like ISBoxer does with picking which core to run the client threads on. As I understand ISBoxer, it's not locked strictly and exclusively to the chosen core alone, it's simply a priority system for distribution of the load across the CPU, but the idea is interesting to me. Of course, it would be even better if I could afford a system like that, but hey, it's fun to think about

That is what I was actually talking about was not having the GTX 570's in SLI. During my test they were
separate and I was unable to split the game textures into the two different VRAMs (whatever you want to call
it). This is killing me at this point and I am tempted to just buy another damn card and do further SLI and split
load testing.

IN THE NAME OF MULTIBOXING SCIENCE!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

TL/DR: boxing on more than one computer - can it be seemless or will it always be clunky using two machines?

Well, the answer is, "It Depends(tm)."

For folks who use multiple PCs to 5-box/6-box/single-group-box, we usually run one or two clients on the main (while being able to watch movies on it and do other things at the same time, in addition to having the main's graphics set to gorgeous settings without a performance hit) and the rest of the alts on 1 or more PCs. With FTL setups (in particular, the semi-automatic ones like ISBoxer), you will be able to instantly switch leaders just by moving your mouse to that window with something like Input Director. It's effectively like having more monitors on the same PC with some caveats noted below.

Using ISBoxer as an example, things you will not be able to do with multi-PC setups:

* Swap an alt window from alt PC to main PC.
* Video FX/Video feeds/etc.
* Reliable, painless mouselook/camera-panning broadcasting (until this bug is fixed).

I haven't found any other missing features with multi-PC use so far.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I use 6 machines, I am hardware from key/mouse to each computer then software (Isboxer) between the clients on the same computer so its kinda hybride.

I play full sceen so I don't load my gpu's much and I alt/tab so I have instant switching. But I can only see one client per computer at a time.

Nothing clunky at all if you more then 5 box multiple computers are better I thinks.


Im not saying how I connect 6 computers to one mouse/key but I am working on a "usb splitter" (no easy task I might add), Ill be selling them if it works properly.