Advantage of going Hardware over Software?

[entoptic]

I don't know who said this (I can't follow the quotes), and I'm not sure what this refers to, but I just want to say that if you run multiple WoW's on separate PC's and control them with software, the increase in traffic (compared to running them on the same PC) is microscopic. You get about 3/4 millisecond latency with each command but that's just the network speed, it's not because anything is burdened. The number of bytes sent by the key broadcaster is so uttterly tiny compared to the number of bytes sent by your computers in normal Internet use, it's hard for me to believe it has any effect on anything.

Actually it can be higher then you think as a router or switch will have to refire packets that it loses and then wait to fire off other packets.

Honestly the network imo is not the main issue, it's the hardware on the machines.

Come on guys, out dated hardware is outdated for a reason.

Anyone that says hardware is faster and is not using up to date hardware is full of it. End of story!

You can't tell me that your old hardware is better at computing X Y Z then a new computer running the same software even if it is 5 boxing on a quad core.

Simple break down for the non tech folks.

Hardware has many bottlenecks that slow systems down and usually everything else on the computer must be dumbed down to that speed or it will not work.

Example
Try putting 2 memory sticks in a PC. Lets say one is weaker then the other (older and just used) What do you think happens? The newer stick dumbs itself down to compensate for the older stick.

Example 2
your computer has a front bus speed of 400mhz. Your brand new memory that is top of the line at 800mzh will not work at the correct speed if the front bus can't keep up with it. The memory will dumb itself down again.

There are many many examples of this on computer, front bus, memory, cpu, north bridge, south bridge, how much juice your cpu can handle etc etc....

Now if there was a way to load balance wow over computers that would be sick but running 1 instance over multiple computers is not load balancing as wow was not designed to load balance.

Hardware is VERY limited to its current state as with software this is just not true. Software can be run on most anything as long as the correct drivers, dll files etc etc are there.

Wow will run faster on a newer computer period. You can argue all you want to about it but software is superior on many lvls then hardware.

Why do you think so many companies are going to virtual machines over having server farms? Price? Maintance? Speed? Reliability? Network downtime being cut in half? All those things are some of the many reasons companies all around the world are starting to use software over hardware.

There is one downside though to using 1 computer with a dope hardware setup. If it crashes then everything crashes, that is not good when you are neck deep in ally blood!