Am I bottlenecking my system?

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Since I am only getting around well 30fps or 40 or 60 well its all over the place at times on World of warcraft on the highest settings with a Radeon HD 6870 1gb overclocked am thinking am I bottlenecking my system?

I have an AMD Phenom II X2 555 overclocked to 3.4ghz
8gb DDR3 ram (will only run at 1333mhz even though its 1600mhz have tried everything)
M5A97 Pro motherboard
Gelid cooler for CPU
Corsair TX750 v2 power supply

I bought the parts only around a month ago but I have tried unlocking the cores on the CPU but the pc locks up, I tried only 3 cores but again locks up so I am thinking its only built for 2 cores and the other 2 are bad :(

So what do you guys think? Is my spec ok or did I pick the wrong cpu?
 
u should defo be getting more fps i have i5 2500k 3.30 and a hd 5770 and i get well over 200 fps on highest settings, i have over clocked it to 4.3 ghz though but even on stock i get really high fps in wow
 
Damn well I have the settings on highest and resolution on 1440x900 naitive, its all set to program control AA is set to application settings filter: standard.

GPU is overclocked to 930mhz and Memory 1070mhz.

So this now bothers me a lot that you are getting over 200fps and I am getting such low fps in comparison :-(
 
when you tried unlocking the CPU, did you give it any more voltages?
try unlocking it again with a slightly higher voltage.
oh and what CPU cooler are you using?
 
Ok well I overclocked the CPU and its now running at 3.8ghz I have a Gelid cooler and its around 35degrees celcius on normal.

I cannot unlock the cores if I do it says its a quad however my pc freezes and locks up I tried only 3 cores and still the same issue I think the 2 cores are bad so its only a dual core.

Also I tried something, in WOW I put the graphics all to LOW and am getting around 60fps and stays on that. However when I put the graphics all on HIGHEST in WOW it says around 38-56fps in Stormwind when I was in a raid the other day it hit around 61fps.

So I am very confused here, why does the card say 60fps on low settings yet on highest its saying changing all sorts from 36-60.

Do you guys reckon my graphics card is at fault? The API I have put WoW on is DX11, even if I lower the multisampling or antrosphonic (spelling?) settings to lower it makes no difference nor does changing the resolution.
 
WOW is biased towards intel and nvidia.

You can't compare your cpu to an i5. The i5 dominates the quadcore phenoms let alone the dual cores!

What jony was refering to is raising the vcore of the cpu slightly. Sometimes the de-activated cores need a lil more juice to become stable. If you google phenom core unlocking you will find this suggested a lot. There is a limit though which i cant remember off hand.......you dont want to fry the CPU!!
 
When I had my phenom X4 955, even with my 6950 I was running happily on fairly high graphics and averaged about 60 fps.

Now however, with an overclocked i5, I have maxed out graphics including 8X AA and I've never seen my average fps go below 150 - Mostly being 200+. As said, WoW is a very CPU intensive game. You could have the best graphics card on the market and it would only make a slight difference.

Even unlocked and overclocked, your cpu won't match the performance, or even come close to the performance of an i5 or i7 system.
 
they're intel, enough said ;)

maybe get a 2nd 6870 as its only £120 plus free deus ex code which you can sell if its not your kind of game.

Well personally I dont like Intel they dont offer good value for money and the only thing I can think of is that WoW must be Intel optimised.

Also I got a Gigabyte overclocked (the one with 3 fans) 6870 1gb for £109...Anyways since others have been saying its the cpu and not the graphics card no point in even trying to stick another 6870 in my system.

Ill just wait for them new AMD cpu's at least I have a 900series motherboard that can take it.
 
It is biased towards intel ziddy like I said before.

Your link is good but incorrect. He has the phenom 555BE not the athlon CPU. I'll repost the link showing his cpu versus a similar spec intel CPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/120?vs=54

Having looked at the OPs mobo it seems it doesnt crossfire properly anyway. 1 PCI lane is X16 the other is X4. So adding a second card is pretty pointless. It is an AM3+ mobo so he can drop in a Bulldozer CPU when they are released.
 
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Well personally I dont like Intel they dont offer good value for money and the only thing I can think of is that WoW must be Intel optimised.

Also I got a Gigabyte overclocked (the one with 3 fans) 6870 1gb for £109...Anyways since others have been saying its the cpu and not the graphics card no point in even trying to stick another 6870 in my system.

Ill just wait for them new AMD cpu's at least I have a 900series motherboard that can take it.
your right with one thing, a second graphics card wont help much atall, however your wrong in saying AMD offer better value for money. about six months ago when i got my PC the phenom was better value for money, but its all changed now:

if it wasnt for the this week only deal, the i3 2100 and the phenom II X4 955BE would cost exactly the same as each other. however, look at the comparisons between the two:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=289
you can see the i3 2100 wipes the floor with the phenom

now look at the similarly priced i5 2400 and Phenom II X6 1100T:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/203?vs=363
another walkover by intel

hopefully bulldozer will sort this out though :)
 
Yes obviously the i5 is newer, faster and more expensive.
How is that helping the OP? I love the "just buy a 2500k" mob, they're in most threads and yet never helpful.

Q: "How can I get a little better performance from my Mondeo?"
A: "Buy a Ferrari like mine"

See how helpful that is?

I also think unlocking his other cores with a little more voltage may pay dividends.
 
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Add some more voltages to try unlock the extra cores. Make sure you set the CPU to stock speeds first before doing this. If all else fails then go for a small upgrade to the 955 and you should be able to clock that to 4ghz. The 6870 you have should be more than enough for WoW.

Another thing to factor in is also the latency between you and the server, as this can also affect FPS, as more busier areas will have less FPS.
 
Yes obviously the i5 is newer, faster and more expensive.
How is that helping the OP? I love the "just buy a 2500k" mob, they're in most threads and yet never helpful.

Q: "How can I get a little better performance from my Mondeo?"
A: "Buy a Ferrari like mine"

See how helpful that is?

I also think unlocking his other cores with a little more voltage may pay dividends.
+1
They are taking over :p
 
Well I used the auto tune feature that Asus offers and I believe it sorts out the voltages itself? It tried hitting 3.9ghz but crashed and chose 3.8ghz as the most stable overclock on extreme mode. However I just booted the pc up today and it said 'bad overclock' but i restarted and all is fine.

In all the years of building pc's and configuring them I have never had any luck with overclocking and it seems yet again this is the case.

Someone on here a little while ago said that the 900series boards are not good at unlocking all cores on the cpu? Also I noticed that my ram has now gone down to around 1100mhz from the 1333mhz it was on originally. Another problem with this board is that it will not allow me to choose the default 1600mhz ram that I have it gives blue screens and freezes.

So having tried everything to get the ram to run at 1600mhz it defaults to 1333mhz and now is only around 1100mhz because I overclocked the cpu why does this happen??

The Vcore is on 1.5v is that the CPU voltage? If so what voltage should I put it up to? Also once increased should I then proceed to unlock the cores again?
 
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