Ok you've dangled the bait and now I'm hooked...

[rarr]

I've been reading quite alot over the past couple of days about multi-boxing and reckon I'm going to give it a shot. It's mostly quite old hardware but hopefully it'll cope.

I started setting up the computers last night and depending on how well it goes tonight depends on how far I take it

Anyway the setup so far consists of 3 computers:

On my main computer I've got 2 monitors and I thought I'd run 2 instances of WoW with the main toon full screen on one monitor and 4 on the second. It's a P4 3Ghz with an oldish GeForce FX 5900XT dual head graphics card and 1.5 gigs RAM.

Computer No 2 is again quite old, a dual CPU 1.8Ghz AMD (from the days when 'dual' meant 2 physical CPUs ). It's again got an old GeForce graphics card and maybe 2 gigs of ram, I can't quite remember. I figured I'd run 2 instances on this one as well.

Computer No 3 is older yet, ~1.6Ghz AMD no idea what graphics card is in it or RAM so it'll run just one instance.

I've probably got another computer or 2 knocking around I could set up if the main or computer No. 2 can't cope with running two instances.

All the computers are going to be running Ubuntu and I'm going to set up VNC on them or something so I can run them headless. However I might be able to dig up a spare monitor or two if needed.

As you can tell it's all a bit up in the air at the moment! I think I'm just going to have to have a play with it and see what works out best, I’m not totally sure the hardware will be able to cope. Running out of power outlets rapid as well!

Ah long post.... I'm gong to have a dig and look into various software options....

[ElectronDF]

I use 5 computers. 1 is a Mac. 2 were VERY old Sepron's. It worked. I upgraded them slowly over time. I use HotKeyNet (www.hotkeynet.com) for keyboard broadcasting.

[rarr]

Thanks I'll take a look.

Are you using 5 different monitors as well? I want to try and keep the units headless to save power

[keyclone]

Howdy Rarr and welcome to the forums!

i believe all solutions mentioned in the wiki provide for multiple machine access, with varying degrees of ease of configuration/usability and bannability

i started out boxing 3 machines normally (2 laptops and 1 desktop) on shadowbane running 10 characters at once.

these days i normally 5 box using just my desktop (an amd 3800+ 2.2GHz single core.. 3GB mem and an 8800GT OC) and i'll typically get 5/25 fps in an instance (5/5 in orgrimmar). maximizer across my dual monitors (in horizontal span) & pip swap just look nice (i run 1 x (2x2))

and i use keyclone to handle everything i need (of course)

if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop me a PM

[rarr]

Thanks

This place is starting to look like a computer graveyard 8|

Found plenty of motherboards, CPUs and hard drives but not enough RAM.

I've got 3 machines up and running now.

The dual 1.8Ghz with 512megs RAM with an old Matrox graphics card in, an AMD 3000+ with 700 megs RAM with an ATI graphics card (on par with my Geforce) abd my main which remains uncharged.

Fingers crossed they can cope...

Just got to copy my wow dir accross and get relevent software running.

[rarr]

Well just about everything is setup.

The AMD 3000+ system with the ATI Radeon 9600 can cope with 2 instances running no problems.
The Dual 1.8 with the Matrox G400 graphics card is going to be a problem. The frame rate is very low, probably too low. The graphics card is to blame, I don't have one to replace it and I sure can't afford another one at the moment.

Anyway I've got my accounts set up and i think I'm going for a Draenei Paladin as main tank, 3 human mages for DPS and a dwarf Priest.

Good selection? comments?

[keyclone]

G'morning rarr,

check out this link:
http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/inde...Graphic_Detail

it might help get more fps by dropping both wows to low detail

[rarr]

Nice, thanks, I tried turning the grpahics down from the options menu but the thing kept on crashing

I'll give it a bash tonight, although I might be able to get my hands on a newer card today for nowt.