2 Box on 1 Box?

[GinFan]

<p>I am considering getting a new rig and thought I would check with folks on what is working well for them.  In particular, if you run 2 accounts simultaneously on 1 system, please state your hardware and OS and your experience at different settings.</p><p>Currently I can 2-box at Extreme Performance, but it is VERY choppy using a home built system with an Athlon xp 3000 333, 2 gb of ddr 400 2.5 cas, Radeon 1950 pro 512 mb agp,  ata harddrive with 16 mb cache and a soundblaster Live card.</p><p>Unfortunately I'm hearing bad things about all the newest stuff... multiple procs, 8800 cards, SLI and Vista.  Not sure if it is exaggeration, old news or what.</p>

[jonathanc29]

I have had mixed results. My orginal system was a hp m7257c (<a href="http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00511110&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=1154492&lang=en" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...1154492&lang=en</a>) I had upgraded the memory to 2 gig and ran a 7800 GTX card in it. I was able to run 2 accounts on it very well with little problems. My new(er) system has the following in it: Manufacturer Intel (E6600) Family Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz Architecture 64-bit Internal Clock 2.8 GHz Internal Clock Maximum 2.8 GHz External Clock 306.0 MHz Socket Designation LGA 775 MultiCore 2 Processor Cores Description NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 (Waiting on Nvidia Quad support under Vista OS to install 2nd card) Manufacturer NVIDIA Total Local Video Memory 512 MB Total Local Texture Memory 512 MB AGP Aperture Size 750 MB ASUSTeK Computer INC. Model P5N32-SLI-SE-Deluxe Version Rev 1.xx BIOS Vendor American Megatrends Inc. BIOS Version 0704 BIOS Release Date 03/08/2007 Memory: 2046MB RAM Page File: 1108MB used, 9055MB available And running Vista 32 bit Home Premium On this system I try to run two accounts and I bog down so bad 99.9% of the time I need to do a hard reset of the system. I have 4 hard drives in this system and I get a bit better performance running the two accounts from 2 seperate hard drives, but it still gets very bad after about 10 min of game play.

[Tethias]

You can 2 box. Basically, under Windows XP my 8800 GTX drivers crash a lot when I try to run 2 EQ windows at once. But under Vista, I can run 2 accounts with ease, on High Quality without any issues. To wit though, the game starts to complain if you're on high quality and don't have at least 4 GB of system memory. I two box under Vista 64 bit ultimate, and when I want to raid with max quality settings, reboot to windows XP. (2-boxing, Win XP, and 8800 don't get along too well for some reason, but I know it's only the drivers). You'll also want at least dual core. I've even triple boxed once under Vista, but it gets a little choppy (will probably need at least quad-core to run smooth =) )

[GinFan]

<p>Thanks for the responses, I greatly appreciate it.  Tethius could you give me a few more details about your setup?  Obviously, compared to Orcinus, you have more memory and a higher grade video card, but would you attribute any of your increased success to running 64bit vista versus 32 bit?  My understanding is that 32 bit only addresses about 3.5 mb or memory, but other than that that I'd be curious what else it would do for you.</p><p>Orcinus, shucks, my current system shouldn't be that much behind your old HP.  Not sure what my current hold-up is.</p>

[Yenwen]

i run 2 accounts on my box on 2 screens at the same time. i have a Intel core 2 duo at 3ghz, 4 gigs memory and a 8800gtx. i am running widows xp and keep the settings at balanced with grass off and cloth simulation off. runs about 30-40+ fps just about everywhere. i have not had it crash to desktop or any problems so far. my res is 1680X1050 and 1600X1200.

[Tethias]

<cite>GinFan wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Thanks for the responses, I greatly appreciate it.  Tethius could you give me a few more details about your setup?  Obviously, compared to Orcinus, you have more memory and a higher grade video card, but would you attribute any of your increased success to running 64bit vista versus 32 bit?  My understanding is that 32 bit only addresses about 3.5 mb or memory, but other than that that I'd be curious what else it would do for you.</p><p>Orcinus, shucks, my current system shouldn't be that much behind your old HP.  Not sure what my current hold-up is.</p></blockquote> Under Windows XP, Windows only sees 2.5 GB of my memory. 32-bit windows can only use 2 GB of memory per application because of the limitation. Even though you would think Windows would be able to use all 4 GB of memory (2^32 bits), it can't, because the graphics memory (1.5 GB ~ 768MB from each GeForce 8800) is mapped to it, effectively rendering 1.5 GB of your system RAM unavailable for use. With 64-bit vista, I can run at a lot higher settings in the dual-box setup than I would be able to under 32-bit xp. This is because: 1) The drivers are optimized for having to run more than one 3d application at once at the same time. I suspect that the XP drivers crash on me because the designers never thought more than 1 3d card implementation would be on the screen at any one time. With Vista, because of Aero, they have no choice. So my Vista drivers are flawless where dual-boxing is concerned. With XP it would only work 30% of the time. The other 70% of the time, it would lock up one of the 2 accounts EQ clients. 2) With 64-bit vista, all 6 GB of my memory is available for use and none of it is hidden because of my graphics memory. Even though Everquest 2 is a 32-bit application, and not compiled with LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE (which allows a 32-bit application to expand from the 2GB limit -> 4 GB), it can consume up to 2 GB of memory when you have all the textures cranked up. With 32-bit XP, I had to make some compromises so I wasn't pushing anywhere close to the 2.5 GB limit that I had (on the miraculous occasions where it *didn't* crash). Just my observations and views based on my experience.

[GinFan]

<p>Thanks for the explanation tethius.  I didn't realize that video memory would count in the 32-bit limits.  </p><p> Thanks Yenwen for giving me another example to weigh during my purchase planning <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>