This setup good for 5-boxing?

[Freddie]

Right now it's hard to choose. Each choice has advantages and disadvantages. 64 bit Vista is the future. 32 bit XP is the past. If you want to optimize the box for five copies of WoW, the past probably still works slightly better (WoW is a 32 bit program so it probably runs very slightly faster on a 32 bit operating system). But the pc can't use more than approximately 3.5 gigs of ram with a 32 bit operating system and within the lifetime of the pc, you'll almost certainly want to add more. So if you don't get 64 bit Vista now, you'll probably switch over to it in a couple of years.

[Coke]

Isn't there a 64 bit XP?

[Freddie]

Yep. You've got four choices.

[Coke]

Hmm..I heard Vista is a RAM hog..any way to make it stop..erm..hogging?

[Freddie]

For the most part, this is a misunderstanding based on the fact that XP loads programs into memory and if there is memory left over, that memory isn't used for anything. It just goes to waste. This wasted memory shows up in Task Manager as "free memory."

Vista is smarter. Instead of letting memory go to waste, Vista uses it, but as soon as a program needs to use that extra memory, Vista turns it over to the program, just like XP. One of the things that Vista does with this memory is called SuperFetch. You can disable SuperFetch if you want. Since I don't play WoW, I can't tell you whether five WoWs would run faster on XP or on Vista with SuperFecth enabled or disabled. The only way to know is to test. There are probably people in this forum who have done that.

The 64 bit versions of both operating sytems use slightly more memory than the 32 bit versions because operating systems frequently store addresses in memory, and 64 bit addresses are twice the size of 32 bit ones. But this is outweighed by the fact that 32 bit operating systems can only use about 3.5 gigs of ram when a 512 MB video card is installed, and 64 bit operating systems can use much more than that.

[Motaghi]

I just set up my toons in Org today at prime time to test out lag 'n stuff, and here're the results: http://motaghi.dk/haigais.jpg

The main window has all graphic settings maxed + some extra macro commands to make WoW look even better. All the smaller windows have minimum settings and are locked at 10 fps. My FPS in Org never went below 25, and that was when I asked people around me to spam spells. I am always on 60 fps when I am running around in the world.

My PC:

E8400 (I set it to normal speed when I was testing this setup, but I usually run it at 4,6 Ghz)
2x2 GB RAM
8800 GT
And I am running it from 2 different folders of WoW, both on the same 7200RPM 16MB cache HDD, with no RAID whatsoever. I haven't experienced any lag spikes yet, and my WoW instances usually use just over 3GB of my RAM (I am running it on Vista x64 so I can use all my RAM), and have never used 100% of my RAM yet.

Since the system you've built is superior to mine, I see no reason as to why you shouldn't run it smoothly.

Edit: I forgot to mention that my main WoW instance uses both my CPU cores, while the other 4 are only affiliated with the 2nd core.

[Freddie]

Edit: I forgot to mention that my main WoW instance uses both my CPU cores, while the other 4 are only affiliated with the 2nd core.

Did you ever test this against all WoW's allowed to run on both cores?

[Motaghi]

Edit: I forgot to mention that my main WoW instance uses both my CPU cores, while the other 4 are only affiliated with the 2nd core.

Did you ever test this against all WoW's allowed to run on both cores?

Yes. My main WoW instance would get an occasional lag spike if I was under heavy load (eg. a lot of people casting spells).

[Freddie]

Interesting, thanks.

[Coke]

I think I'll get Vista because XP is the past.
And it'll have 8gigs, so there's room to waste
Total is like $1,700 with shipping ;(
I'll have to make people pay up ^^