Building a machine for WoW

Zoroaster

Zoroaster

Zoroaster

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I'm hoping to ask for some advice toward building a new machine for Cataclysm. I've spent quite some time gathering information about the specific sensitivities of the game, but i'm still unsure how far to go when selecting certain components. I'm prepared to drop £1000-£1500 on the upgrades, but don't really want to spend money on gfx/cpu power that I wont ever use.

I've already got a 24"BenQ screen, SteelSeries7g keyb and Razr Deathadder. I'll be replacing the rest of my system. I also want an SSD for OS + WoW (+SC2).

My initial thought was to go for something like the Titan Onyx (i7 930 @ 4ghx) with the GTX 480.

But I've been advised that the GTX480 will probably give me no better performance than a GTX460 while under stress (raiding). It has also been suggested to me that I may not see a performance reduction if I chose an i5 750 @ 4ghz ... or even an i3 540 @ 4.2ghz. Some review websites have benchmarks in WoW, but mostly just using a flightpath, and are unlikely to be representative of AOEing 50 whelps on ONY25 with full spell effects (very CPU intensive).

There is obviously a massive price difference between an i7 + gtx 480, and in i3 + gtx 460.

What should I do troops? :confused:

I'm very computer literate, and capable of putting the system together myself if needed. Although the OCUK prebuilt systems seem great value for money, so I'm keen to look at getting one of those.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated ... thanks for your time.:)
 
do you really need to spend that much money on a WoW machine...

I run Q6600 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, ATI X1900 and i raided 4 nights a week for at least a year without any problems other than server side issues. whole rig with case etc cost me less than £500 and my own time to stick it all together.
been through all upto Lich King in WoTLK and never had any problems. Onyxia even with the Xamount of whelps achiev was a doddle.

have recently replaced my X1900 with a GTX460, but thats irrelevant because i don't play anymore ^^

don't forget WoW runs on anything! but.. if you wanna spend the money on an uber system, its always nice to future proof yourself :)
 
Indie said:
do you really need to spend that much money on a WoW machine...

I run Q6600 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, ATI X1900 and i raided 4 nights a week for at least a year without any problems other than server side issues. whole rig with case etc cost me less than £500 and my own time to stick it all together.
been through all upto Lich King in WoTLK and never had any problems. Onyxia even with the Xamount of whelps achiev was a doddle.

have recently replaced my X1900 with a GTX460, but thats irrelevant because i don't play anymore ^^

don't forget WoW runs on anything! but.. if you wanna spend the money on an uber system, its always nice to future proof yourself :)
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This tbh. You really do not need an uber-machine to play wow.
 
An i3 and a GTX 460 will make a brilliant gaming system.

If Wow and SC2 are going to be your primary games then a i7 and a 480 are not really needed but you will be future proof for other top graphical games.

If i was in your shoes and i was buying/building a PC for Wow and SC2 then i would defiantly get a i3 and a GTX 460 1GB

The 460 is a brilliant card and when overclocked to 800mhz + you are knocking on the door of the 5850 and GTX 470

I play Wow on a i3 with my laptop and it runs it fine

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-237-OK
 
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Camelpaw said:
£1500 for a PC that plays WoW...
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I said I'm prepared to spend up to that. That's why I'm asking for advice. The game is much more demanding that people give it credit for.

I raid a lot, and spend a lot of time playing the game. I'd like to enjoy it at full settings and still be running at 40+ fps in ICC25 HC. At the moment I run with everything on minimum settings @ about 20fps in icc25. Keep in mind Cata will bring texture updates and extra DX11 support.

I'm in a pretty good raiding team and also hope to be frapsing at max settings with excellent frame rate.
 
WoW is horribly optimised, so whilst you shouldn't need a great PC to run it, you actually do if you want to everything maxed. The 'new' shadows that were added are the worst culprit for performance issues. It should be okay on most systems with them toned down a lot, but if you want the shadows on full, then I don't know really what you'll need.
 
kmufc77 said:
An i3 and a GTX 460 will make a brilliant gaming system.

If Wow and SC2 are going to be your primary games then a i7 and a 480 are not really needed but you will be future proof for other top graphical games.

If i was in your shoes and i was buying/building a PC for Wow and SC2 then i would defiantly get a i3 and a GTX 460 1GB

The 460 is a brilliant card and when overclocked to 800mhz + you are knocking on the door of the 5850 and GTX 470

I play Wow on a i3 with my laptop and it runs it fine

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-237-OK
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Thanks for your reply.

I notice in your sig that you have an i7+480, as well as your i3 laptop. What sort of performance difference do you notice between the two?

Would I be able to run an i3 overclocked with gtx460, and have max settings in ICC25, at top frame rates?
 
Zoroaster said:
Thanks for your reply.

I notice in your sig that you have an i7+480, as well as your i3 laptop. What sort of performance difference do you notice between the two?

Would I be able to run an i3 overclocked with gtx460, and have max settings in ICC25, at top frame rates?
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A desktop i3 is better than a laptop i3

The desktop i3 is faster and has more cache and will be overclocked to the max.

you cant compare i3 (laptop) and a ATI 5470 512mb video card (laptop to:

Desktop i7 [email protected] and a GTX 480 1536MB mb

As for running WOW at top frames with a Desktop i3 oveclocked @4ghz and a GTX 460 1gb,you will get very very good frames and you should notice no stuttering in performance.

As already mentioned the shadows in WOW are the main culprit for performance,even with them turned down,i cant really notice any difference tbh.

If you have a half decent screen with a res of 1920 by 1080 and AA at 2-4X,shadows in WOW dont really make the game look any worse or better imo,but they certainly effect perfomance even on high end machines.

This: http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-035-OP will be brilliant for WOW also with a GTX 460 1GB,WOW is very CPU intensive and a 6 core CPU will be very beneficial

Edit: im not sure if a 6 core machine is worth while yet as from benchmarks it appears that 6 cores are not being fully used yet when gaming.

Buy when you compare the prices from the 2 systems ive linked i would say its more worthwhile buying a AMD 6 core rather than a i3

The AMD six core system is cheaper than the i3 system and is better
 
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I have some experience in this, i was a endgame 40/25 man raider for pretty much 5 years.

Until last september i played on a P4 with a x1800xt graphics card. It lasted that long raiding on minimum settings until doing ulduar. 2 of the bosses were unplayable the electric guy and the ice rain type guy (thorim and someone i forgot). This is what prompted me to upgrade. I built a i5 based machine and a ati 5850 This allowed me to play everything on full including the 25man hardmode raids at a very solid fps.

CPU power is incredibly important. I beleive the game still only uses 2 cores but i think this is due to be addressed for cataclysm. I am using my i5 750 at stock 2.6ghz. So any multicore cpu at a higher rate should suffice. Any quad in the 4ghz area should tear through the intense raid environment calculations.

I am under the impression the cpu is more important that the gpu, my 5850 is overkill so would a 460 be as long as you have a decent cpu. Having said that i think i read they are making the water effects in cataclysm dx11 so if this extra eyecandy is important make sure you have a dx11 card.

I will stress this game is only really demanding on 25man encounters (especially hardmodes as more is thrown around) and maybe on occasion in the 40man battlegrounds (rarily though).

My system cost 800 quid a year a go, 700 or so would be plenty if spent wisely.

PLEASE NOTE, i only ran it in 1680*1050 due to monitor which is not a very demanding res.
 
Oh i should best say about core usage. Last i checked the game used 2 by default but you could change a config file or something to make it use more cores for a decent performance boost even though blizzard had not coded the game specifically to use said cores it does still give a decent boost.
 
It can be demanding on CPU, you have yours clocked at a good rate so should fly through the game. At stock 2.6Ghz on my i5 i can drop to 30fps on the most intense 25man encounters). CPU clock rate is key.
 
kmufc77 said:
whats funny its very demanding on the CPU?

The better/faster CPU wow runs a lot better
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of course it will run better on a faster CPU , but saying you need to spend £1000 to play wow is laughable that's just my opinion :D
 
Often you will find those joking about how wow will work on a pocket calculator have not actually played wow since about 3 years ago.

With the expansions the requirements to actually run full detail have steadily climbed. Cpu power however is the most important factor right now, and any gfx card above a 8800gt will be fine.

Lower gfx cards will run it fine right now but with cata its hard to say what will happen.

I would say that a dual core cpu such as the E8500 or higher will run it just fine, combined with 4gb ram and a 64bit OS.

By running fine i mean max settings with 2xAA and raiding 25man instances and frame rate not dropping below 30.

My old system was an E8500, 4gb ram, 8800GT and vista 64 and thats what i was able to run at with a rez of 1920x1080
 
Go for the Xenomorph with a GTX460 1024MB, fantastic pc for the price with that card especially and the 4.2ghz clock should be extremely nice for WoW.(if you ever decided to play more better games :p then you can also upgrade to an i5 quad core cpu eventually although that wouldn't be needed for a good while as it would handle every game very good.)
 
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