Specs on a Single PC that can 10 Box

[Choguun]

Actually disregard the question about the Sandy Bridges. I cant find a MOBO anywhere and it is going to be a few months before new ones come out. Not sure i want to wait a solid month once i get home to roll.

[Tim]

You definitely want to go the 2600k route, the unlocked CPU for overclocking is worth it.

I'm not saying its hard to run 10x on a single PC, its actually easy. When I say my 980x can run 10, what I really mean to say is it can run 20+.

One of my single multibox'ed small window WoWs consumes about 700M of ram right now in busy Orgrimmar, full Cataclysm with XPerl, Recount, Auctioneer (SUPER pig) and a big one is 900M.

700M*9 = 6.3G + 900M = 7.2G of RAM

Windows and misc crap right now is using up 1.1G, so a total of 8.3G of RAM out of 12 available.

CPU on my 980X is about 65%, so I would expect a 2600k non-overclocked to be 70%, and an overclocked 2600k to be 50%. CORRECTION! I was streaming when I said 68%, its really 35%.

Disk IO is negligable, it only really matters when loading zones/explosions vs standing still in town.

My GPUs are combined 48% total (24 on each)

So my thought is a 2600k with 12G of RAM could probably run 15x, and with more ram, 20x.

I haven't speced it out, but overall cost a 2600k system like this I'm guessing is ~2k.

[Sliceback55]

Hi,

right now I`m thinking about building a 10box-capable machine aswell.

So far I understand and agree with Tims suggestions, however I`m also questioning myself if it is really necessary to have 2 graphic cards?

At the moment I`m running 5 WoWs on a Core i5 750 @2.66Ghz, 9800GT 1GB, 4GB RAM and a Samsung 500GB F3 HDD. The 5 client windows are distributed on a single ASUS 25.5 inch display.

Altough the harddisk is a huge bottleneck and the hardware isn`t top notch either, I rarely have any problems (except when I go into a city with lots of people in it, that can cause short freezes).

If a 9800GT can handle 5 WoWs, shouldn`t it be possible for a stronger card with 2 GB Vram to handle 10 WoWs if you cramp everything on two screens?

Would appreciate your toughts on this.

Cheers!

[Ualaa]

Two graphics cards get you more places to plug monitors in.

Warcraft (or just about any game that runs in windowed mode or windowed mode - fullscreen, and not straight plain full screen), runs better on a single more powerful card than on several cards in SLI/Crossfire.
A lot of games take advantage of SLI/Crossfire much more so, and if you play these it is a benefit to have SLI/Crossfire.
You can now disable/enable either of these, very easily via software alone.
An Eyefiniti card will support up to 6 monitors if you want that many.

Looking at video cards...
The bit of the card 256 vs 128 vs 64, is the single largest factor on card power for wow.
Any 256 will be better than any 128.
A 1GB (or by extention a 2GB) card has plenty of memory for 10 boxing warcraft.
A better card is more eye candy, essentially.
Shadows, Water Reflection, Spell Effects, Weather... are pretty much graphics dependent, while Ground Density, Character Model Quality and especially View Distance are more CPU dependent, and your processor will be strong for 5/10 boxing.
A GTX485 or a Radeon 5870 will easily support 10-boxing, if they have enough plugs for monitors on the card.

[Tim]

Also remember, you can't use ATI to dual-GPU a non-fullscreened game correctly. Nvidia you can.

My record is mid 70's for the # of WoWs I can run on this:

i7 980 Extreme @ 5.2ghz
12G RAM
2x GTX 480 OC
900MB/sec+ RAID
2x 30" 1920x1080 monitors

Yup, 70+ WoWs. I believe it was 76 before the core of DirectX started to throw errors.

Take this system:

i7 2600K
12G RAM
2x SSD in RAID10 for WoW installs. Do 1x WoW for your "main" and 1x WoW for all the rest of your guys.
1x normal HD for OS
1x GTX 580

That system is probably <$1500 and would easily run 10x WoWs very fast.

[Sliceback55]

Two graphics cards get you more places to plug monitors in.

An Eyefiniti card will support up to 6 monitors if you want that many.

Eyefinity came to my mind aswell, 4 monitors should be fine, so why not go with a single GPU solution? May save a lot of money (cost for second card, additional costs for energy and eventually a stronger PSU) and I don`t imagine low resolution slave WoW clients with lowest graphic settings to use that much GPU power at all.

Take this system:

i7 2600K
12G RAM
2x SSD in RAID10 for WoW installs. Do 1x WoW for your "main" and 1x WoW for all the rest of your guys.
1x normal HD for OS
1x GTX 580

Swap the GTX 580 with an ATI Eyefinity? Your opinion on that Tim?

PS: Raid10 with 2 SSDs? I tought Raid10 needs at least 4 drives to work, or am I wrong?

Cheers!

[Ualaa]

Nvidia vs ATI, is like Chevy vs Ford.

For the most part it is opinion or personal preference.
In the last couple of years, ATI has had much stronger products from a per dollar spent point of view... specifically compare a 5870 1GB, to Nvidia equivalents or more expensive products.
I believe Nvidia has the strongest current card on the market, but they play leap frog constantly.