CPU Bottleneck? WOW - SC2

olibb · 25 Mar 2012 at 09:27

So I brought a ASUS 570 and I am very happy with it!
BF3 is great and runs nice and smooth with GPU activity at 98%.

NOw in SC2 the usage is only < 20% and in WOW in low pop areas it is high usage but in raids and main cities it's less than 20 to 40!

Now my CPU is a AMD Phenom 640 x4 at 3.5 GHZ.

Is there anything anyone would recommend or have any suggestions to try.

olibb · 25 Mar 2012 at 09:53

My current motherboard will support a fail dozed 8120 3.1Ghz for relatively cheap. Other than that looks like 2500k i5 is everyone's choice. If the fail dozer will support the kind of CPU setup wow and sc2 wants - then that's fine.

Marine-RX179 · 25 Mar 2012 at 10:18

Unlike BF3 which would use up to 6 cores, WOW is pretty much a single core game, and SC2 is a pretty much a two core games, so your current CPU won't be fast enough to keep pace with your GTX570.

Upgrading to a Phenom II X4 and overclocking to close to 4.0GHz would somewhat improve the frame rate, but it won't be significantly. If you want the greatest improvement, you would probably have to upgrade to SandyBridge i5 2500K (or wait for IvyBridge to be out in couple months).

To give you an example, I play DC Online Universe (a mmo) and it is a two core game. At busy area on my old Q6600 at 3.6GHz the frame rate would drop to as low as 20~25fps and GPU usage would drop as well on my 5850, but now that I'm on i5 2500K at 4.5GHz, I pretty much remain constant 55-60fps at the same area and with much higher GPU usage on my 5850.

And don't bother with Bulldozer...as its single-threaded performance is actually slower clock for clock than the Phenom II.

olibb · 25 Mar 2012 at 13:40

Ahh i see. Looks like i5 it is then. How does the I5 work? Is it 4 core multi-threaded or? Sorry - im kinda new to Intel! (AMD Fan boy).

Sasahara · 25 Mar 2012 at 14:42

i5 is 4 core CPU with no Hyperthreading, which you don't need for gaming.

As a wow and SCII player it's the idea CPU. (I got an i7 as I do encoding and other HT processing as well)

Make sure you got for the k versions for overclocking.

olibb · 26 Mar 2012 at 09:36

Ahh i see. Whats the difference from an i5 quad and what i already have? I know the i5 can be overclocked to 4.0GHz+ rather than my 3.5 GHz.

Kaeo · 26 Mar 2012 at 09:45

The i5-2500k will sit happily at 4.5-4.6ghz on the stock cooler.

Marine-RX179 · 26 Mar 2012 at 10:09

olibb said:
Ahh i see. Whats the difference from an i5 quad and what i already have? I know the i5 can be overclocked to 4.0GHz+ rather than my 3.5 GHz.

CPU or GPU speed is not only depending on the "number" or "frequency" that they are at, but also about how much things it can get done at the said speed. People tend to refer it as "instruction per clock". So comparing only the clock speed doesn't show the full picture (as different CPU architecture works differently), and typically for gaming performance wise it is better to look at reviews and benchmarks that compare the CPUs and show what frame rate they are capable at delivering. To give you an example, a i3 2100 is only a dual-core at 3.10GHz, but gaming wise it can deliver higher frame rate than Core2Quad or Phenom II X4 at 3.6GHz (even when games use all 4 cores) due to its much higher IPC (instruction per clock).

As for the above comments that said i5 2500K can do 4.5-4.6GHz on stock cooler, I wouldn't recommend it...but up to 4.2GHz on the stock cooler should be fine.

mmj_uk · 26 Mar 2012 at 10:10

As Marine-RX179/Kaeo says a 2500K clocked at a comfortable 4ghz+ will eat those games for breakfast, don't bother with Bulldozer even the 8150 won't be much better than your current Phenom in those type of games that rely on powerful cores.

olibb · 26 Mar 2012 at 10:39

Thanks for the great comments. So do you guys have any recommendation on which i5 to get and which mobo? Apparently the i5 2500k is the one to get? So the i5 would have no problems with s2 and wow maxing the gtx570?

Marine-RX179 · 26 Mar 2012 at 10:53

olibb said:
Thanks for the great comments. So do you guys have any recommendation on which i5 to get and which mobo? Apparently the i5 2500k is the one to get? So the i5 would have no problems with s2 and wow maxing the gtx570?

While I can't guarantee it will be able to max the GPU usage on the GTX570 at all time, but if you got a i5 2500K and overclocked it to 4.5~4.6GHz, you minimum frame rate is likely to increase by 100% if not more (like my example of minium frame rate of 20-25fps got increased to 55-60fps on the same 5850 on DCUO).

If as I also mentioned earlier, IvyBridge (successor to the already very fast SandyBridge) is gonna be out soon (expecting to be release in May~June), or if you can wait it might worth waiting a bit longer for the IvyBrudge i5 instead of going SandyBridge i5 2500K now.

Sasahara · 26 Mar 2012 at 12:41

olibb said:
Thanks for the great comments. So do you guys have any recommendation on which i5 to get and which mobo? Apparently the i5 2500k is the one to get? So the i5 would have no problems with s2 and wow maxing the gtx570?

The i5 2500k is pretty much the best CPU for gaming atm, it's a complete no brainer. If it's in budget practically everyone here will recommend it. (bar the Q6600 fan club

)

There are a few CPUs that are a tiny bit faster for gaming, but cost considerably more and only worth getting if you do heavy encoding or similar multi-core intensive applications.

Gashman · 26 Mar 2012 at 13:03

2500K is the way to go for most current gaming needs if building from scratch.

its not that Bulldozer is a bad architecture, its just not really focused toward gaming, not unless gaming becomes more threaded which isn't going to happen since the people (Intel) who control the vast, vast, vast portion of the market, their next generation Ivy Bridge chips are still essentially quad-core chips, Intel don't progress, the market doesn't budge. give a Bulldozer a game that uses tons of threads and it should quite nicely beat out the 2500K (which is its competitor in the market).

also SC II just loves Intel architectures, K10.5 does terrible in SC II, as does Bulldozer, one of those few games that isn't graphically bottlenecked either.

SC II for me personally isn't too bad, played in maximum settings at 1080P get pretty solid frame-rates but that is because I have overdrive profile that ramps two modules up-to 4.9GHz (puts the other two into a lower power state, didn't know that worked but it does) when the application is started.

and final part is SC II only uses around three threads, so anything about three - four cores is essentially wasted on it and won't give any real performance increase so the 2500K is perfect in that respect. not sure what Blizzard are doing mind, making such a poorly threaded game in this day and age.

Zeed · 27 Mar 2012 at 12:46

in wow in 3d i get massive fps drops in raids.
1 core at 100% 1 on 75 one around 50 onther 3 around 33%.
Wows engine just sucks specialy that in 3d i have to run in dx9 and 32 bit...... That does not help at all.
Still wow in 3d looks and plays gr8.

olibb · 27 Mar 2012 at 13:56

Id like to see wow in 3d! I take it you need a 3d monitor to use 3d vision?

OCP · 27 Mar 2012 at 15:40

upgrading won't make your GPU usage higher trust me. I have a 2500K @ 5.0 and 6950 @ 70, GTX 680 and a 7970. they all have this GPU usage issue.

Marine-RX179 · 27 Mar 2012 at 16:24

OCP said:
upgrading won't make your GPU usage higher trust me. I have a 2500K @ 5.0 and 6950 @ 70, GTX 680 and a 7970. they all have this GPU usage issue.

Clearly you don't know what you are talking about. For hugely CPU demanding games such as WOW that's pretty much single-threaded, even a overclocked i5 2500K would not be able to keep up with the the high-end graphic card, since the game pretty much only uses 1 core only. The point here is getting the best performance with what's currently available on the market. In fact, the higher the graphic card you got, the lesser GPU usage you gonna get if the CPU and its speed was the same. If you playing a certain game which your 6950 unlocked to 6970 itself is not hitting close to max GPU usage, upgrading to faster graphic card wouldn't help increasing the performance since the limitation lies with the CPU, not the graphic card. It would still be many years before CPU would get to the point of being able to deliver minimum 60fps on CPU demanding titles (such as WOW and SC2) with only 1 or 2 cores.

olibb · 28 Mar 2012 at 07:22

Well thanks for all the comments. Think I am going to wait for new Ivy to come out and get the i5 then!

Marine-RX179 · 28 Mar 2012 at 09:04

olibb said:
Well thanks for all the comments. Think I am going to wait for new Ivy to come out and get the i5 then!

I would say that would be a good move, as the IvyBridge is said to be at least 15% faster than SandyBridge...so for single core performance, that would probably directly translate to at least 15% speed increase on the same clock speed...and not to mention that it would most likely can overclock higher as well since it is moved from 32nm to 22nm process.