Best solution for multi-tasking video games?

[Whipsmack]

I get a thrill out of playing multiple clients in online rpg's. You never have to find a group because you ARE the group and it makes things more exciting. I'm thinking though if I should get 2 video cards if that'll help lessen the load on the machine, or would 1 really good video card essentially be the same thing or better?

Guess theres no dual-core processors for video cards yet eh

Thanks!

 

[Sycraft]

You can do it on just about any machine, provided you turn the rez and detail down. If you want to do it well you need four things:

1) A Dual core processor, so that each copy of the game can get it's own time.

2) Lots of RAM. MMORPGs like RAM. World of Warcraft like 1GB, and if you are running two copies you should have that for each so 2GB.

3) A large monitor. You'll want enough to display both screens at a reasonable rez without much overlap. I'd say something at least 1920x1200 is in order (that will get you 2 1024x768 screens with only a minimal overlap). Dual displays might be an option but you'll want to check how good your accelerator's multi-monitor support it.

4) A nice, fast, GPU. For World of Warcraft a 7900GT should do nicely, of course more will work better.

I've run two copies of WoW on my system, which meets what I describe, and it works great technically. Both copies are fast and responsive. As a practical matter, it's really hard to control two clients at once and it is usually just useful for something like logging on a friend's character and transferring some stuff.

You also could do two monitors, two GPUs if you liked. The "dual core" equivalent for GPUs is just to have more of them. There's no technical advantage to making a separate core on the same silicon since GPUs are already extremely parallel and highly scalable. Lower end GPUs are generally the exact same architecture as higher end ones, just with less pipelines and a lower clock.

However you need good ones, so you are talking a motherboard that has 2 PCIe 16x slots. Personally I'd recommend just one fast card.

 

[Whipsmack]

well I do have 2 screens so i'm really not sure how the dual-diplay works with video cards