Using 1 Gaming Computer For 2 People?

True Vox writes "My fiance and I have recently taken interest in City of Heroes (she's currently got a character on my account). She's got a cute little netbook, but nothing nearly powerful enough for a 5-year-old MMORPG, let alone if we take interest in Champions Online! I am reticent to buy a new gaming computer simply for what amounts to a passing phase. Has anyone had any experience using one computer to control two monitors with two sets of input devices (e.g. two keyboards and two mice, or one keyboard, one mouse, and a 360 gamepad, perhaps)? I have seen one solution that might work, but not much information from users that I can find. In short, does anyone have any experience with setups like this?"

Comments

Computers are cheap - just get another box.

[Phizzle]

Check out some of the refurbished systems available online and from places like Frys. You can get some raging deals on a solid mid-range box. Thin Client is absolutely abysmal as a gaming solution. This way you two can share a hobby and not drive each other nuts.

Re:Computers are cheap - just get another box.

[Anonymous Coward]

Craigslist any 2+ ghz P4 1gb system for ~$100 and you should be able to play City of Heroes

2Ghz 1GB is in no way useful... it's my own desktop's specs. (Well, 1.9Ghz to be exact.)

There used to be a time when playing CoH with a Geforce FX5200 was pretty smooth, back in 2005. When expansions like City of Villains came out, the engine changed a lot, and all the curvy landscapes bogged the PC down even if I was alone on the nearby map, using the superspeed power. The result was my needing to run 800x600 and 16 bit color, with 3D settings at like 50% detail.

Even without Heroes, day to day operations are slow on XP SP2 (even 2.0 versions of firefox run very slowly, let alone play running are very ). I'm not sure if it's just Dell's choice of architecture for my Dimension 2300. The fact that the machine has only one processor, makes things that I could do easily 5 years ago be a pain. I'm not in favor for upgrading and replacing old machines. The problem is that with Flash and Firefox forcing you to upgrade every 8 months, you end up with a world where even clean installs are too slow to handle the overhead of all the bloat out there.

At 2Ghz, even dual core, high-demand games such as any recent MMO will not be decently playable. Even if it plays OK today, the next set of patches can bring upgrades that kill your spiffy idle megahertz.

Re:Computers are cheap - just get another box.

[BikeHelmet]

...and if its a machine that will have a bunch of drives, I'd go with 800 to 1000 watts just in case.

I used to feel the same way about PSUs, but then I picked up a Kill-a-Watt off newegg, and checked how much power my computers were actually using. Now I realize I don't need nearly as much PSU as I thought.

Corsair HX620 (very efficient)
Athlon X2 @ 2.8ghz
Asus M3N78 Pro
2x1GB DDR2-800
Asus 8800GS
4x Seagate 320GB HDD
1x DVD

Samsung Syncmaster 940BW
2.0 Speakers

Power consumption when playing Left4Dead? 170 watts from the wall. If I shut my monitor off, it drops to ~136w. If I shut my speakers off, ~128w. If I get out of Left4Dead and leave it at the desktop, only ~90 watts. (though once I turn the Monitor/Speakers back on, it's back up to ~130w)

I think the efficiency on most cheap PSUs must really blow; if you go with a quality Corsair one, you really don't draw a lot of juice...

But then again, Athlon X2's and 8800GS's are relatively low power, and Asus makes very efficient boards.

Re:Computers are cheap - just get another box.

[DarthVain]

I second that. I get a kick out of what I hear these days about PSUs... Retarded. People going out and buying 700, 800, 900, even 1000 watt systems, is basically a waste.

If you could see what I used to run on my old Dell machine which had a measly 230 watt PSU, I am talking like 6 HD, dual proc, dual optical, and enough USB crap to sink a ship.

The difference is between quality and crap (no idea if Dell is any good these days, likely not).

My last build I did a LOT of research on PSU, and believe me there is NOT a lot out there. There are a handful of gurus out there that know what they are talking about, I mean like that I could find from scourging the whole internet. However what information they had was spot on.

First the number they sick on the side of the box (900WATT!!!) is pretty much useless. Also brand names mean next to nothing. So good luck! lol. Basically there are only a few manufactures in China that build them ALL. They are then re-branded to whatever the buyer wants. Some manufactures make better PSU that others, some use higher end components, however it can be difficult to figure out which is which.

Efficiency is about twice as important as actually stated wattage (which is usually a lie anyway), and stability is about twice as important as efficiency. What this means is that when you computer goes from no load, to heavy load, and the PSU starts sucking power and shunting it to your components, how much does it fluctuate? You might be surprised to see how badly some of these oscillate up and down, and those dips can cause system failure and even damage components in severe cases.

Anyway thats as far as I want to go into it as it is a pretty complex thing, but there is a community out there though hard to find. I know I was pretty blown away by the truth about PSUs. Most of the companies mislead, and outright lie on their specifications it is pretty absurd.

Huh?

[DavidChristopher]

Sounds like you're complicating things a bit.

What you're not saying here is if you want to run multiple instances of the game at the same time. What kind of PC are you using now? It had better have a LOT of horsepower. 9/10 times, the simpler solution (a second gaming PC) is the smarter answer.

Keep in mind, Windows was not designed as a 'time sharing' system - at least not in the way you're thinking.

Hmmm

[scubamage]

Honestly, a 5 year old game could most likely run on the cheapest of cheap systems at best buy. Go spend the 2-300$ (yes, they have them that cheap) and fish around your local recycling center/craigslist for a monitor. When you're done with the phase, sell it on craigslist for a hundred bucks as a set, or keep it as a media pc. You're on a geek website bro, there's always a use for another PC. Always.

Multiseat

[Thalaric]

It's called multiseat. It's a feature that's targetted for the next version of Fedora Linux . I'm not sure if there's any way to do it under windows but vmware or virtualbox might help when Fedora 12 comes out.

Re:RDP

[AnEducatedNegro]

Or just use a modified termsrv.dll

Now run along kiddo, this is grown folks business.
aEN

Multiseat is your solution

[Jeremy Visser]

It can't be done with Windows (at least not to my knowledge), but multiseat on Linux these days is a cinch. Google has tons of resources on the topic -- basically it involves a bit of xorg.conf hacking, and then Bob's your uncle.

I myself have done it before on an amd64 dual-core 2.2GHz system with two video cards, a GeForce 7600GT on PCI-e, and a GeForce 6200 on plain PCI. Worked beautifully. I could multiplayer FlightGear by running one instance on each seat. Each user can log on and off independently with their own keyboard and mouse.

This is a (blurry and fuzzy) picture of my setup (1280x1024 JPG). You can see glxgears running on each screen -- handled by the same computer. Cool thing about using two video cards is that each user gets his own GPU -- running two FPSes simultaneously (I tested Nexuiz) had absolutely zero slowdown.

Hardware probably isnt the real problem.

[TiggertheMad]

It had better have a LOT of horsepower.

Meh, it isn't that difficult. I had a friend get into 5 boxing on WoW. He got a beefy system a couple of years ago, and could run 4 or 5 instances of WoW simultaneously without any real problem.

Two things to think about:

Does the game you want to play with her allow multiple instances to be run on a single computer? WoW does, but you have to have multiple WoW directories. It is possible to program a game to force full screen mode or to terminate if an existing instance is already running. Do some research on the software before buying the hardware. Find out about any tricks you need to use to get it to work.

Find out about the game controls and UI. Chances are, while it might be possible to play multiple instances on one box, it might be a PITA because of the complexity of the game to share a mouse/keyboard. Multi-boxing works in WoW because one person drives multiple characters. Two people using a single keyboard and mouse would not work very well for that game. Other games might be different.

Search google for 'Multi-boxing' + '(your game name)'. Chances are someone has already tried what you are wanting to do.