Project Lore

I mentioned in yesterday's post about Bejeweled that I had more to say on the topic of dual-gaming. First let me define the term. Dual-gaming is simply playing two games at the same time. Be it via an addon like WoW Bejeweled, spinning to the TV behind you or having a Nintendo DS by your keyboard. I have actually been doing this for year's, mostly the spinning to the TV or having a handheld nearby variety of dual gaming. But this past weekend I entered into a new age of dual-gaming, dual-gaming on a single computer. I am sure many of you have heard of multi-boxing. That is the art of running multiple instances of World of Warcraft (or other MMOGs) across multiple computers. The users would then control all of the toons via various scripts and third party programs (remoting into the other computers and such). Blizzard Entertainment has even said that they see nothing wrong with multi-boxing. But that method is different than what I strive for. Instead of running it across multiple computers I decided to try multiple games on a single machine. Why the hell would I do this?

• Most of all, I wanted to be able to play multiple MMOGs at the same time. While queuing for an AV, trying to find a 5-man group for heroics or waiting for the raid, I could spend that downtime grinding in Warhammer Online or blasting away the aliens in Tabula Rasa. Vice versa, while playing WAR or TR, I could be scanning the auction house looking for deals or simply socializing as I get through the tedious parts in those games.
• I like challenges, specially when I think I can defeat them.
• My buddy (who helped me tweak and setup the box) wanted to see it done.
• I needed an upgrade anyways.
• And let us not forget, I am a huge nerd – and not the candy coated sugar kind.

As you can see in the screenshot above, things went pretty well. I decided to test it on WoW and WAR, since I play them the most. Both are running in windowed mode (the most taxing way to play but really the only way to do this), and you can see via my taskbar that I have a bunch of other crap running as well. WAR doesn't report its performance so I had to use FRAPS to get its FPS. With WAR as the active window, the machine was able to run both of them at a solid 20-30 FPS. Plenty good for gaming, although not the most ideal if I was raiding. I also tested the setup while playing The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and WoW. I had Auctioneer scanning the Auction House for deals as I ran around as the White Wolf slaying various beasts. The box ran without a hitch. Unlike the double MMOG test, The Witcher: EE was running in fullscreen while WoW was windowed on my other screen. For both tests, all the titles had their graphics settings to the highest level and highest resolution the screen could provide. Incoming nerdiness. For those who are wondering what hardware I am running:

• MSI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB 512-bit GPU– This is an overclocked X2 running at 780MHz and is currently the best and most expensive card on the market. The card is tested and OCed by the manufacturer which is awesome.
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Processor– Overclocked on air to 3.0GHz.
• Corsair 4x1GB DDR2 PC2 6400 RAM – Ram running at 4-4-4-12.
• Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10,000RPM SATA Harddrive – God, I love these drives.
• EVGA nForce 680i Ultra SLi Motherboard - An okay motherbord.

Now I should be able to review PC games twice as fast!

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