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GFX upgrade time

joedeath332

joedeath332

joedeath332

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Joined
24 Jun 2003
Posts
1,647
With the upcomming release of World of warcraft Cataclysm i think its about time i upgraded my current gfx which is an ATI radeon HD 4870 to make the most of the new game.
i have not looked at gfx cards since i last purchased this so am well out of touch with what is best bang for buck atm.
my gfx runs 2 monitors one 24" @ 1920x1200 and one 19" ws @ 1440x900
 
For £150-200 you should take a look at the GTX460 1gb or if you can stretch your budget a bit more then GTX470 or ATI 5850.

Don't play WOW myself but it's not generally regarded as a graphically intensive game so I'm not sure if you will see any improvements by getting a new gpu to be honest.
 
In a similar situation, in that I have an aged 8800GT and run WoW at 1920x1200 :) I also play no games except WoW, which helps the longevity xD

While Nyoron above is right that WoW tends to strain the CPU more than GPU, I have noticed that Cataclysm beta is a lot more visually intensive - more ground clutter, fancy water effects, better lighting, higher polygon count on screen, and yes my FPS is lower than in the previous versions of the game, but only to the tune of drops to about 22-5 in busy scenes.

However... the 4870 is still a very good card and I'm not sure you'll see a huge jump in performance without shelling some serious cash. You're significantly faster than my 8800GT (source) and on a par with the 5770 line which I'm eyeing up for my Cataclysm upgrade! You might well find your performance is quite adequate with what you have.

Are you actually running WoW on both monitors? If not, then I'd be very inclined to suggest holding onto your money until you've given the game a try :)
 
Bumhug said:
Which suggests a 5770 would be a major upgrade for wow over a 4870 though the 460 looks an amazing card for wow
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Technically true.

But the 4870 pumps out 62.8 fps in that benchmark at 1920x1200. That's not a requires-upgrade scenario, imho :)

Curious that the 9800GT scores higher... my 8800GT does not give me that at all and I thought they were mostly the same card :S

*edit* Oh yeah, bear in mind AMD/ATI are due to launch the 6xxx series of cards in the next month or two. Unless you're feeling very convinced that you want a 460, would be well worth waiting for that I think :)
 
Thanks for the fast replies guys
Eddiew i run two different instances of the game 1 on each monitor ( the 2nd smaller screen just beeing like a banker )
My main toon plays on the 24" @ 1920 x 1200 and i play full screen (windowed mode ) so i can alt tab easy.
I know wow is an old game ,, but it is getting totally revamped in cataclysm with totally new textures etc,, that is why i think my current set up might struggle
 
joedeath332 said:
I know wow is an old game ,, but it is getting totally revamped in cataclysm with totally new textures etc,, that is why i think my current set up might struggle
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One thing to consider is it would be better to upgrade when your 4870 actually struggle than upgrading for the sake of uncertainty. It's should take no more than 3 days from day placing the order for the card and for it to get to your door.

To be honest, the bare minimum I would consider as an worthwhile upgrade from the 4870 is at least a GTX460 1GB (or whatever HD6000 cards that's gonna offer similar performance).
 
Ok, first of all WoW is a CPU/HDD limited game not GFX so above a certain point all cards perform equal, i.e right now in WOTLK you should be able to run the game on your 4870 with everything maxed out except maybe shadows (depending no your CPU). Ive just downgraded from a GTX260 to a 7900GTO while I wait for my new card to arrive and the difference is noticeable when I stop and gaze into the difference because the texture filtering is set lower but during a raid/instance its impossible to tell the difference during the action. Because I never keep a system for over 6 months ive run WoW on a lot of hardware and the biggest upgrade I ever saw was going from a 6800 GT to a 8800GTX, going from the 8800GTX to the GTX260 made no difference except I could max out the shadows, and that was only noticeable when stood still.

Now your probably thinking "wtf I asked about cataclysm" so ill address that, the are some improvements coming but nothing massive. The water is going from DX8.1 to DX9 and storm wind is getting higher res floor textures, the is more to it than that but nothing that warrants a Crysis style upgradefest.

My advice is to do nothing, wait until cata is released, all the new GFX features are not compulsory and can be turned down/off in settings to make it run like WOTLK if the new stuff causes trouble so you can get the game then see how much trouble it will cause and know exactly what kind of upgrade is required and upgrade accordingly.

IMO your CPU/ram are fine for cata no question I have the same ram and a Q9650 which your probably beating at your OC, combined with a GTX260 and a 15k SCSI drive the beta ran fine for me at 1920x1080 with everything maxed out but I believe that a lesser card would have done the job fine too.

Oh one last thing, WoW favours Nvidia, not as much as HAWX but its there
 
Nice answer ubersonic - now you've got me wondering if there's any point going up from even my 8800GT... Having been playing the beta the last couple of days, it really is just the new water effects that give me a slowdown. Can I ask what CPU you were pairing your 8800GTX with when you upped it to a 260?

Just for irony, I prefer to play with shadows on low - stuff hides in them when they're turned up high xD
 
It was a E8400 iirc, on another note going from the E8400 to the Q9650 was hardly noticeable in game despite it supporting "up to three CPU cores", however performance with the game minimized improved so it was a worthwhile investment to quickly get info from wowhead and run media player in the background, nothing says badass warrior like nuking the lich king while listening to toto ^^
 
ubersonic said:
nothing says badass warrior like nuking the lich king while listening to toto ^^
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Lol!

Never really noticed it struggling with my old E4300, tbh. I do like my quad in general, but it's hard to say whether it increased fps at all... I have a horrible feeling that this rig is now "balanced" for WoW and I'll have to upgrade everything to improve it any :(

Not that turning down the water detail is going to be a major downer... Have to see what the raid content is like, that's usually the crucial test.
 
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