5 lower end pcs, or 1 super pc, or any variation.

[Liquefied]

What to you guys would think the BEST way based on $ is to multi box effectively.

Now that I have the money, I'm looking to 5 box, if I was to buy either 1 comp, 5 comps, or 1 good comp 2 slaves, w/e.

What type of comp would you use, would you use software or hardware, etc.

[OzPhoenix]

Personally I use one "super".

Specs are:

Quad core x9300 3.0ghz
Dual nvida 880gt cards
4 gigs ram
1tb drive (used for a lot of other things of course).

Runs very very well. It's currently at the shop for the moment, so my backup is:

Dual core 3.6ghz
Single nvidia card.
2 gigs ram.

Runs ok except when I'm in capital cities where it struggles and I dead with fps of 15-20.

[Liquefied]

That's basically what I want to know, is buy 4 200$ pcs, or fork out 1400$ for the higher end.

15/20 fps I can handle.

What do you use to run all? How many screens?

[Zinnin]

right now im running 4 boxes on a 8800gtS , meaning that you don't even need a 'omgzwtfbbq pwnage' system, also if you go with the one nice one, its good for other games.

[OzPhoenix]

That's basically what I want to know, is buy 4 200$ pcs, or fork out 1400$ for the higher end.

15/20 fps I can handle.

What do you use to run all? How many screens?

Dual 22" LCD's. Main on one, 4 followers on the other, each taking a quarter of the screen.

Current box is ok for now, but the lag in Capital cities is really bad, and while you say you can handle 15/20 FPS I personally find it to be very unfun. I want my new box back now..... /cry.

[opt]

5 lower end pc's if you have the power to run them all. I have 1 super machine that i run 4 clients on with seperate monitors and im not as happy i wish i was.
But it was easier to convince my misses 1 new pc was better than 4 new shitter pc's

[Crucial]

Running 5 on 1 super computer, but like others I'm not satisfied with the performance - I really like the convience of it all on one machine but I'm starting to think separate machines would be the best way to go.

[zarocks]

I started 5-boxing on some older computers (circa 2002) and everything went fine. Except for the overheating on my main (tank) system which caused it to reboot often. And one didn't power up all the time. And one had a really loud fan. And one that had flaky USB ports which finally "broke". I broke down and got some decent laptops (~$600 w/decent graphics cards) and I'm very thankful I did.

Moral of the story: piecing together old computers/speccing them to be good enough for WoW/having everything work right ALL the time was an exercise in futility for me. Maybe it's just me, but 5-boxing is a lot more fun when half your time isn't spent fiddling around with outdated/unstable hardware. (I do this sorta thing as a job, so I want to get as far away from it as I can when I get home!)

[BobGnarly]

Most people that I know that are not happy with the performance of a single machine are running multiple monitors. It is a known issue that multi-monitor support doesn't work very well. It's said to work better in vista, but even that could be less than stellar.

If you run them all on one monitor, you can get excellent results on a single machine. I run 5 clients on a core2 duo, 4G RAM, 8800gtx (hardly over the top), and by limiting the frame rate and detail options on the "clones" get a pretty constant 60fps on the main window every where but big cities. This is with my main window at 2560x1000 resolution, probably higher than most people will want to go. When I've tried more than 1 monitor, my performance went into the toilet.

Also consider that a single machine has some advantages, most notably the PiP type features that keyclone support. You lose that with multiple machines.

I'm actually not trying to dissuade you from multiple machines if that's what you want, there are definitely advantages - I just don't think "performance" is one of them if your one machine is reasonably powerful.