Optimum Multiboxing Performance - Thoughts on two systems

[Chumbucket]

Thanks for the info Invisahealz!!! It's great to hear from you. I like to read what you guys are up to from time to time. I'm sad you moved to Darkspear but completely understand. I hear you even took down Prepared!!

I've been very casually boxing Rift over the last year and have run most of the content and was looking into WoW again. I'm still miffed about the bg /follow thing as it makes me worry that I might sink some money into it again only to find I can't play. But Mirai's dungeon videos, interesting improvements to ISboxer and various contributions to this site make boxing WoW seem like it might be fun again.

I'm not sure how many accounts I will end up with but I have 10 I can resub with 98 level 85s, and I need a new computer because mine has pretty much died.

Thanks for the specs as I'm looking to buy a system very soon.

[MiRai]

I may be wrong but it's sounding like higher end machines tend to max out at around 10 accounts. As I could run 10 on a relatively old Mac Pro it seems that for multiboxing, hardware technology advances have not produced significant game changers.

I honestly believe it's possible to run more than 10 clients efficiently on a single machine, but because I don't personally run more than 5, I can't debunk the statements that others are making.

I currently run some ridiculous video settings (Ultra+ / DX11) on 5 clients at 1920x720 and, from what I've tested so far, can hold a steady 30/30 fore/background FPS when there's a bunch of other players around. It would be easy for me to drop my slave clients to 20 or even 15 FPS and free up, theoretically, 40-60 FPS worth of CPU/GPU power in order to feed more juice to my main client. I would have trouble trying to 5+ box with these settings, but I would already know that ahead of time and would be willing to turn my settings if I chose to move to a larger team.

When I did some 20/30-box testing on my old machine, I ran into an issue that you might describe as "thread lag" -- Where the system itself tends to just become very laggy when trying to do basic things such as open up the Start Menu. It didn't actually seem to affect me playing the game, but I did want to re-test this stuff now that I have a much more powerful machine.

As for the cost, I may have been looking in the wrong spot. I was comparing a slightly customized Digital Storm Aventum II H2O Level 3 Performance PC to the new Mac Pro as customized above. I'm guessing now that there is a ton of markup.

Uh... yeah. Now I see how those two machines were similar in price.

As I'm a bit nervous about building my own machine I'm looking for a solid performer that I can use for years without too much trouble. Maybe building is the best way to go. Now I guess I'm looking for 2-3 of them. Do you guys have any suggestions? Thanks again : )

Most people who've built their own machine will tell you that it's easy to do because everything only fits into its own 'slot' and you can't mess anything up. However, when something does go wrong you had better be ready to troubleshoot it by scouring the internet for answers by hoping you put the right keywords into Google search.

You may even have to randomly guess which component is bad, and unless you have another one lying around to test it, you're just going to have to RMA it and hope that you were right. I think if that would have happened to me back in the day when I started building computers I may have stopped trying to build my own, or at least have stopped for a bit.

If you're looking to build some ultra top-end machine with water cooling and all of that, then I wouldn't recommend you try doing that for your first system; but if you were going to put together a few machines, then it would be easier to troubleshoot things because you'd have identical hardware in the other machines that you could troubleshoot with if any issues arise. I guess if you were willing to try piecing together your own, you might try searching on YouTube for recent videos of people putting together their own stuff. The only thing I'd watch out for is people giving information or advice that's blatantly wrong or generally frowned upon. I guess the only way for you to know that the information from a random YouTuber might be wrong, would be to watch a lot of build videos and then try to filter out the stuff that just doesn't seem to be consistent.

I've been very casually boxing Rift over the last year and have run most of the content and was looking into WoW again. I'm still miffed about the bg /follow thing as it makes me worry that I might sink some money into it again only to find I can't play. But Mirai's dungeon videos, interesting improvements to ISboxer and various contributions to this site make boxing WoW seem like it might be fun again.

Oddly enough, most of those "interesting improvements" have been present in ISBoxer for quite some time and most people don't even know them -- Except Menus, which I was using as glorified Click Bar buttons and are relatively new. I started that series (which isn't dead and is just on hold, by the way ) with the intention that I would show how someone who multiboxes can look to make improvements to their profile and how it can evolve over the course of time, as well as, just show some general multiboxing with an attempt at semi-interesting, but not all that exciting, narrative.

I finished this reply in a rush because I was pressed for time, but if anything I said doesn't make sense, just ask and I'll try to explain it better.

[Invisahealz]

Thanks for the info Invisahealz!!! It's great to hear from you. I like to read what you guys are up to from time to time. I'm sad you moved to Darkspear but completely understand.

Yea we left last week, the world pvp is crazy there on Darkspear, there are a ton of boxers on both sides. We crashed the server twice the first night when we had massive pvp events with the other boxers. Ruinous also transfered to play along with Prepared. It took them 4-5 full raid groups for them to kill us in their shrine.

Anyways its good to see ya Chum. We may be creating more teams back on KJ just because the horde pop is so high it does give us plenty of targets. I left a few teams on that server as well but if you ever plan on makin new teams consider joinin up with us like the good ol days
Good luck pickin out a system, there are lots of good options out there and i agree with Mirai, its definitely possible to box 15+ accounts on a single computer as long as you get a good rig and have everything set up correctly.

[Sam DeathWalker]

I run 6 accounts each on two machines (2011 intel socket asus sabertooth x79) and 4 accounts each on 4 old 2 core amd machines.

I have 6 1920 X 1200 monitors. I don't tile but can see 6 out of my 28 accounts in 1920 X 1200.

Others will advise different but I would always go with 1compter/1monitor/1videocard and scale up.

I very sure that 2 $1000 computers will out perform 1 $2000 computer.

[Chumbucket]

I currently run some ridiculous video settings (Ultra+ / DX11) on 5 clients at 1920x720 and, from what I've tested so far, can hold a steady 30/30 fore/background FPS when there's a bunch of other players around.

When I did some 20/30-box testing on my old machine, I ran into an issue that you might describe as "thread lag" . . . It didn't actually seem to affect me playing the game, but I did want to re-test this stuff now that I have a much more powerful machine.

I watched your system upgrade video. Really nice work all around. Mmmmm cherry peppers....
Just curious, do you build systems professionally?

Also, it would be interesting to see how your upgrades boosted performance visa vie more accounts.

If you're looking to build some ultra top-end machine with water cooling and all of that, then I wouldn't recommend you try doing that for your first system; but if you were going to put together a few machines, then it would be easier to troubleshoot things because you'd have identical hardware in the other machines that you could troubleshoot with if any issues arise. I guess if you were willing to try piecing together your own, you might try searching on YouTube for recent videos of people putting together their own stuff.

I'm thinking I may expand my gaming hobby into building 2 simple systems. Time is a factor, but after watching a number of videos it seems to have a charm of its own.

Oddly enough, most of those "interesting improvements" have been present in ISBoxer for quite some time and most people don't even know them -- Except Menus, which I was using as glorified Click Bar buttons and are relatively new.

I started that series (which isn't dead and is just on hold, by the way ) with the intention that I would show how someone who multiboxes can look to make improvements to their profile and how it can evolve over the course of time, as well as, just show some general multiboxing with an attempt at semi-interesting, but not all that exciting, narrative.

I wasn't even aware of the Pro config until fairly recently. It's impressive. The videos really help. <3 the Video FX AOE heal!! I really appreciate the time and quality you put into them. Especially helpful are the tips and the .5 episodes.

Yea we left last week, the world pvp is crazy there on Darkspear, there are a ton of boxers on both sides. We crashed the server twice the first night when we had massive pvp events with the other boxers. Ruinous also transfered to play along with Prepared. It took them 4-5 full raid groups for them to kill us in their shrine.

Sounds fun!! Hope to see you in game in the next several weeks.

I run 6 accounts each on two machines (2011 intel socket asus sabertooth x79) and 4 accounts each on 4 old 2 core amd machines. I have 6 1920 X 1200 monitors. I don't tile but can see 6 out of my 28 accounts in 1920 X 1200.

Thanks for sharing your setup Sam. How many fps are you pulling and at what settings?

[Sam DeathWalker]

Well my main computer has 6 clients, the main is ultra and the rest are low cept view distance is good. My main is easy 30fps and the others 15fps and they don't break follow. I am sure I could do better but the game is playable at 15fps actually

My main computer has 64g ram with wow in ram, and a 670 4G video card. I am at 1920 X 1200.