Need help please, which pci-e card for Warcraft

[Defiant306]

Play wow in 25 man raids at a boss with everyone popping there abilities, addons and every setting turned to max at 1920x1200. Then come back to me and say its not demanding.
I can make my 3ghz Q6600 and 4870x2 grind down to about 10FPS

 

[Dark_Angel]

Something is wrong there then Defiant.

I was running at 1920x1200 with a couple of times AA + AF, + the macro to make it look better, on an 8800 GTS 320MB and no issues (25 man raids). (I admit, it wasn't always rock stead 60... but most of the time was).

I am running the same CPU +4GB of ram. Now on my 4850 + same setup, at max AA the game supports + everything still at full, I didn't see my FPS drop from 60 in Karazhan last night (was running a few people new to raiding through it for fun).

 

[Alexrose1uk]

-edit nm gone mad

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

Play wow in 25 man raids at a boss with everyone popping there abilities, addons and every setting turned to max at 1920x1200. Then come back to me and say its not demanding.
I can make my 3ghz Q6600 and 4870x2 grind down to about 10FPS

How much RAM have you got?

The reason I ask is that I sometimes find my WoW gets slowdown (see sig) whilst others are reporting no such thing (like Dark_Angel).

I'm wondering if it likes 3GB+ RAM...

 

[Dark_Angel]

I can tell you that when I CTRL+ALT+DEL wow (with several addons) is usually taking 700 - 800 MB of ram.

 

[glitch]

Alex; thank you for your detailed and informative reply. I'm extremely grateful for you putting the time and effort in.

Hi there, I used to have a system very similar to yours, and I found that WoW is surprisingly CPU limited. If you can get the cash together to go for a P35 board, and a second hand Intel Core2/Quad CPU and 3/4GB and clock the nuts off it. Im playing at 50-100fps (usually closer to 100fps) with my system in spec, with 8x AA and 1920x1200 Adjust the AA down, and you'd probably get away with something weaker, but WoW definately appreciated the CPU upgrade.

I had considered an upgrade to a C2Q to give my CS3 suite something to get its teeth into...

Would the 3/4GB RAM necessitate moving over to Vista?

If you could somehow afford 3GB DDR2, p45 4850 and a current Intel and clock the nuts off, I think you'd be really happy with the performance. If you look secondhand you could probably get that lot for £200-250 and it'd perform a whole lot nicer in other games too.

What are we talking here? Something like a Q6600? Sorry, but I'm completely out of the loop when it comes to hardware.

 

[Alexrose1uk]

3GB will run fine on Windows XP, whereas to get the full benefit of 4GB you need Vista 64, as XP will only use 3-3.5GB, and without tweaking cant fully allocate it all

Processor wise, then theres the Intel Quads, or the Core 2 Duo series, either of which clock reasonably well if you get the right parts, and theres a thriving second hand market, individual models dont matter too much as a lot of them will be a decent performance improvement, especially when overclocked, in comparison to your current Opteron (apart from the most basic budget models)

For example new, you can get a:
Gigabyte P35-DS3L mobo
4GB OcUK DDR2 PC6400 RAM
E5200 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo (base model but should overclock)
and a Gainward 3850

for about 220 brand new.

Second hand is usually going to knock about a third off of that, as long as your PSU and HD/DVD drives are current and the HDD is SATA that shouldnt cause you any issue

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

E5200 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo (base model but should overclock)

Understatement! It's 45nm and has a high multiplier! (My planned upgrade from E2180).

 

[Broken Hope]

For anyone saying WoW can't bring down a high end system because it isn't graphics demanding, max all settings, turn on 8x AAA and fly through Terokkar forest and watch as you get about 14 fps.

http://img353.imageshack.us/img353/4726/wowcv1.jpg

Note the fps display on my Titan Panel.

This picture was taken in the WotLK beta which has higher max settings than TBC though.

 

[Alpherah]

Does WOTLK Drop the FPS that much compared to BC ? oO

Just flew over the same area of TK forest with my system running all at stock (intel 8400, CF 4850's, 4gb PC6400) and my lowest FPS was 70 something.

 

[Broken Hope]

Does WOTLK Drop the FPS that much compared to BC ? oO

Just flew over the same area of TK forest with my system running all at stock (intel 8400, CF 4850's, 4gb PC6400) and my lowest FPS was 70 something.

You had 8x adaptive AA enabled? It only drops that low with adaptive AA.

 

[Amonlym]

as a follow up to OP:

im running xfire on the abit AX78 (16x and 4x) - no obvious issues whatsoever with the 2nd card running "only" 4x, performance feels right on line for other x2 6400ish/xire 3870 setups