Hi all,

So I noticed a drop in my fps yesterday, oddly it seemed to occur after I cut out a number of (seemingly) non-essential apps that were running at startup through msconfig. Those that could be stopped through their own settings were, but I used msconfig to stop the rest of them from starting automatically.

My fps were never great to begin with, being on an older system. In the near future, I'm hoping to build a complete new gaming rig, with some high end parts (liquid cooled, i7 4790k, gtx 970, 32GB DDR3, SSD for OS, SSD for primary games, and large HDD for other less-used stuff). That however is most likely a few months off.

In the meantime, I really want to multibox 5 accounts with reasonably good fps on the primary account (don't care about the settings/fps for the other 4 accounts)...probably around 30-45fps should be good enough. I haven't used ISBoxer yet, I want to save my 7 day trial until my system is set up to give it a fair test. I don't want to be playing around with it at 15fps, or I think it will (unfairly) skew my opinion of multiboxing.

My current rig has some cooling issues, so I just run it with one of the side-panels off, which fixes the issue. It's loud, but that doesn't bother me. If I don't, under load, it will BSOD. I think this has to do with the location of the PC and the room, but I don't have much flexibility on those aspects living in a 1 bedroom apartment.

Current setup:
AMD Phenom II X4 965BE
G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Gigabyte GA-970A-D3
Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB
Old 250GB HDD
XFX Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit
Corsair Enthusiast TX650M


I'm thinking about the following modifications to improve FPS and make 5 boxing manageable:

  • Additional 2 x 4GB RAM (do these additional sticks need to be identical? any benefits to identical sticks?)
  • Newer (possibly used to save $) GPU, considering AMD Radeon R7 260X or nVidia GTX 750 Ti, or just maybe the GTX 970 and then I take it to my new system if/when I get it)
  • 256GB SSD (put OS on my 90GB, and install WoW on the 256GB)
  • Complete reinstall of current Windows 7 (or Windows 8.1 if I can get it for free through school) because I wouldn't be surprised if some of the issues are caused by junk that I don't even use anymore.


How would you guys prioritize these upgrades, in terms of $ spent towards improving FPS? Are any unnecessary (will contribute minimally to FPS improvement)? Are there any other components or changes that I should consider that would improve my performance?