Upgrade/Add Parts or New Rig?

[lans83]

I'm new to the multi-boxing ring. I'm trying it out on my pc I built almost 4 years ago with 3 accounts, but I want to be able to run 4, possibly 5 without any issues. Right now 4 is good for me, cause I have a friend I run with alot that can fill the 5th slot in the group. Right now I have to bring the settings on all accounts down to bare minimum, but am able to keep the veiwing range just under the midway point and my resolution at 1280x range for my widescreen monitor. What I'm looking for is to be able to run my main account at full specs and my alts at minimum to keep the strain down. I'm on a very low budget, but will pay for what would be WotLK proof.

My currents PC specs are:

OS: Windows XP Media Center

CPU: Intel P4 3.0GHz 478 w/Hyperthreading

Mobo: ABIT IC7-G MAXII 478 Intel 875P ATX

Ram: CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) x4 of these up to 2g

Video Card: ATI All-In-Wonder X800 XT 100-714200 Radeon X800XT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X (set at 8x)

Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Gamer Edition

HDD: Maxtor 120gb 7200rpm 1.5Gb/s Sata

PSU: Thermaltake Silent Purepower 480w

Any advice would be great. I buy all my stuff from newegg.com and would like some pointers on new hardware to start adding to my basket. The monitor I'm using now is just a single 19" WS LCD. I have plenty of spare 17" CRTs in my room I can use as a secondary. Gonna get a 24" Dell WS eventually or posibly the 30" and run all accounts on that one. As far as the HDDs go, should I get another one and run my main from 1 drive and the slaves from a seconday drive? There's a nice 1Tb there for less than $300 I'm thinkin about getting anyway. Would that be good enough to run all accounts on and what about 1 directory vs multiple directories? How exactly would I go about setting that up? I know, most of these answers are posted here already, but 1: I'm lazy and hate reading and 2: I don't really get alot of free time to surf for the answers. Anyway, ty for helping a noob out and I look forward to your answers.

[Boylston]

2GB RAM, A Dual Core Processor (speed almost doesn't matter), and a 7900+ Series nVidia board will quad-box with not too many issues.

for a better setup for quad boxing, you'd want 4GB of RAM, a Q6600 quad core, and an 8800 series board. That same setup can handle 5 accounts as well with little problem (you'll have 2 clients on one core, same as you do for quad-boxing on a dual core).

Everything is budget dependent, of course, but RAM is now cheap, the Q6600 is an incredible multibox value, and 8800 GT cards can be found relatively inexpensively as well. Put together that system and you'll be 4x/5x boxing quite capably. Second monitor, even an old CRT, is highly recommended...

[lans83]

Thanks for the info so far, but one thing. My mob only supports 478 socket cpus and pci/vga cards. Any suggestions on a reliable board to put these one? I did a quick search on newegg and found the listed items. Tell me what you think:

 
Video card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127329 

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115017

What motherboard would be a good buy for these as well as the sticks of ram. I know that 4 gigs of ram is a given, but which ones would you suggest?

[Bollwerk]

A Dual Core Processor (speed almost doesn't matter),

Can you elaborate on this please? I am totally fuzzy on the whole Ghz thing on dual core processors. Clock speed used to be king - now it seems pointless? Why?

Clock speed only makes sense when you compare the same architecture, i.e. the same chip family. For example, Intel's current chip is the Core 2 Duo (or Quad). So of course a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo is faster than a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo. All you really need to know is that the latest Intel and AMD procs have 2+ cores, with Intel having the edge in raw speed, while AMD has the edge in price. Both will work fine for most anything you do. Having more than 2 cores is only useful if you are running more than 2 WoW clients, or you do a lot of things at the same time. Games are working toward utilizing more than 2 cores, but most games aren't there yet.

[Deltis]

for a better setup for quad boxing, you'd want 4GB of RAM, a Q6600 quad core, and an 8800 series board. That same setup can handle 5 accounts as well with little problem (you'll have 2 clients on one core, same as you do for quad-boxing on a dual core).

I see a lot of posts on this board about the Q6600. I 4 box via 2 systems each using older P4 HT 3.0 Ghz (3 Alts on one, main on separate system). I do see a lot of lag in cities and have been think about building a quad box, but why the Q6600? Is it the L2 Cache layout being 2 x 4MB?