Confused on Upgrading

THE_SITUATION · 21 Oct 2011 at 16:24

to cut a long story short im not sure what i could upgrade to gain a performance increase in games i do however know a new monitor is needed as mines a 22" lg lcd with huge blurring issues in mmorpg's.

my setup

crosshair V forumla
amd 1100t 3.3ghz / cosair a50 cooler
8gb gskill 1333mhz
corsair 850w hs psu
sapphire hd 6870 1gb
seagate 1tb sata3

so first off ive done research and with mmorpg's as loading more players on the screen its said an SSD would help?

monitor im looking for a 24" doesnt have to include speakers as i use in ear headphones but good response time would be nice.

ram, now ive had a look on the forums and (upgrading to 1600mhz wouldnt give a significant performance increase?) however tighter timings such as gskill blue edition would perform better correct me if im wrong ?
bare in mind as im running an amd board the height of the ram is an issue so corsair vengeance is out of the question unless it was low profile.

seriously any help is welcome as im struggling on what could help me in gaining a performance increase

barneystuta · 21 Oct 2011 at 16:35

If it is an MMO, have you factored in your internet connection?

- Are you connecting by Ethernet or Wireless?
- Who is your ISP?

The rest of your rig looks OK, I don't think upgrading a CPU/Mobo is worth it. Not sure you will notice a massive difference by increasing the RAM frequency. The GPU should be OK for MMO's (which ones in particular?)

What resolution are you playing at?

The most logical upgrade for me would be an SSD, and if affordable, a GPU upgrade (or crossfire with another 6870). Will you notice a difference in MMO's though? I am not an expert on them to be honest

THE_SITUATION · 21 Oct 2011 at 16:40

I am connected through ethernet and it all seems fine on that point as i get average 30-50ms on the server, the ISP is o2.

world of warcraft is the mmo that im currently playing but with poor performance it is very hard to stick around on it as that game seems to hate amd.

resolution wise im running 1680x1050 as previously said its quite an old monitor

crossfiring isnt supported im afraid

i did do some tests and i believe the problem could be the monitor, when im running around or turning everything seems very blurry and sharp making it seems like poor performance but i do have 20-30 fps on a crowded server in a very populated area. could a bad monitor really be the problem ?

barneystuta · 21 Oct 2011 at 16:53

If you are getting a drop in FPS, then have you tried adjusting the graphics settings?

Maybe worth asking here - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18214293&page=109

I am not overly familiar with WOW, but they aren't graphics intensive games (not hugely when compared with something like BF3 or DX11 Crysis 2/Metro etc) so I am not sure a GPU upgrade will help massively here.

Have you tried overclocking your CPU?

Clav · 21 Oct 2011 at 16:56

Well you have yourself said the monitor is crappy and needs replacing. seems like a logical place to start to me.

I don't play wow any more but when I did it wouldn't even fit on my 60Gb SSD after windows 7 and apps were installed. It was ~20Gb if I recall, so if you do go for ssd be very sure your wow install will fit on it.

Also, i'm not sure if it is standard or not yet but there was some sort of directx 11 switch which improved performance on dx11 cards significantly. I'm not sure if I can link to it directly but tomshardware did an article about it.