whats the best upgrade for mmorpg games?

adamknox

adamknox

adamknox

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11 Jun 2009
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Bridgwater, Somerset, UK
My spec at mo is

955 oc'ed to 3.82Ghz +h50 (temps sit around 55 when gaming on the hottest day of this year)
4GB ddr3 OCZ ram
5870 Sapphire card (not overclocked as even with ATI auto overclocker it gets errors on stress tests)
1920x1200 8Ms 1080P HD (very happy with this monitor :D)
1TB WD 7200RPM Hard drive
Razer copperfeild + zfang keypad + G11 Logitech keyboard
5.1 Speakers + creative x-fi faitality gaming soundcard
windows 7 64bit

this is my question..

Playing games online games like LOTRO, AOC, Champions online, aion etc the FPS sits around 60Fps (with vsync on) but in some built up areas it drops to 35-45. ON High settings .. What would i need to upgrade to get very high settings? Im a graphics whore lol I did at one point think the processor would be the best (going to i7) but from what ive seen it wouldnt do that much for FPS (maybe 5-6 in rare cases) then i thought about getting a second 5870 and running in crossfire but ive read/heard on here that you NEED i7 to get the best out of crossfire and AMD 955 wouldnt be strong enough and youd get badly bottlenecked. -_-

Other options i was thinking about is getting three 320GB hard drives and running in raid 0 (i wouldnt get ssd's at the current price)

ANy one got any good advice?? :)

p.s would getting the AM3 6 core make much diffrence to gaming?
 
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p.s would getting the AM3 6 core make much diffrence to gaming?
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Not really.

Other options i was thinking about is getting three 320GB hard drives and running in raid 0 (i wouldnt get ssd's at the current price)
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Raid 0 wont help much, this would be my last choice.
going to i7
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If you had a lower processor maybe, but the 955 means it ll be too small a step up for the cost of ram, mobo, cpu and also am3 <might> leave you an upgrade path into a bulldozer core a year from now.

SSD to put your OS top games on would be my choice, its not hard to learn how to use the space well, and they fly.

Or crossfire the 5870, that would give the best fps increase.
you NEED i7 to get the best out of crossfire
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Nah.

However your graphics overclocking makes me wonder, is your psu a quality one? If not then that perhaps- I've never heard of a 5870 that wont overclock.
 
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I think i MAY have buggerd it my self.. i overclocked it a bit high once lol Ever sicne then it wont overclock without errors... (i think anyway) I never checked for errors untill that manual overclock! It will overclock but it gets errors in furmark :(
My psu is a OCZ stealthxstream 700w It should be more than enough tbh :D I think ill go with the 2nd graphic card then lol
 
el Kuarlos said:
Not really.



Raid 0 wont help much, this would be my last choice.


If you had a lower processor maybe, but the 955 means it ll be too small a step up for the cost of ram, mobo, cpu and also am3 <might> leave you an upgrade path into a bulldozer core a year from now.

SSD to put your OS top games on would be my choice, its not hard to learn how to use the space well, and they fly.

Or crossfire the 5870, that would give the best fps increase.


Nah.

However your graphics overclocking makes me wonder, is your psu a quality one? If not then that perhaps- I've never heard of a 5870 that wont overclock.
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This pretty much sums it up :p
 
Troezar said:
Interesting question, I would be very interested in maximising mmo performance. Could some of it just be server side?
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tbh most of it is server problems spesh when it comes to WoW lol drops to 50 fps in some places >< other small problems are programing problems like in WOW shadows RAPE fps or in AOC direct x 10 version is REALLY clunky with no added improvments.

P.s to the guy above. The max temp i can run this CPU at is around 62c. If i up the voltrage (which is at 1.5 allready) will shoot the temps through the roof lol and my cpu is never fully used when gaming :( Ive heard having hard drives in RAID0 can boost FPS in open worlds like fallout 3 and some MMO's. I guess just going for a 2nd graphic card is the best idea :D... and a new psu with an extra 2 pci-e connecters.
 
You system should cope with MMOs very well already
Going i7 might help, but i wouldn't have though much at all.

One thing I don't know if you know about, LOTR, and possibly other MMOs being database based, you can defrag the DB, not the HD itself, but the actual game DB.
Doing this for LOTRo can improve performance dramatically on loading and other high volume areas of the game.
SO get to the LOTRo forums and get the BD defrag tool and see if WOW and chums have a similar tool.
 
I can't comment on the other games but from personal experience and hanging around Aionsource.com that setup is way overkill for Aion which is CPU intensive. I can't understand why you're not hitting 100fps alone or around 80 in towns.
 
Look at SSd helped me with load times in dala etc as with games like this all graphics are on pc so server is just telling pc what to display and load
 
adamknox said:
p.s would getting the AM3 6 core make much diffrence to gaming?
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Almost all mmorpgs are either single or dual threaded. What this means is having 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th cores ain't gonna help in boosting frame rate in anyway. What you need is CPU that will be fast in running single and dual threaded operations. The CPU that's fastest for that is either i5 750 or i7 920 overclocked to 4.0~4.2GHz, next is the i3 530 overclocked to 4.0~4.2GHz, and then AMD CPUs follows.

Because architecture wise the AMD K10 architecture older and slower than the i3/i5/i7, on the same frequency/clock speed they will deliver lower frame rate, particular in the minimum frame rate as CPU speed has huge impact on it. A Phenom II X4 955BE overclocked from 3.2GHz to 4.0GHz (25% overclock) is only comparable to a i5 750/i7 920 overlocked from 2.66GHz to 3.33GHz (25% overclock) at most.
 
Shadows murder the FPS in WOW, I just have them turned off as I don't like them anyway but I guess this isn't an option for you :P

My setup is:

Q9650 CPU (WoW only uses 3 cores though)
4gb of DDR2-800mhz in duel channel
512mb HD4870
U320 15k 73gb SCSI drive (connected via a U160 PCI controller)

I get no lag whatsoever with everything maxed out except shadows, but in Dalaran at peak times it does drop, this is mainly due to having so many characters in such a small place, it murders the CPU and each one having a detailed shadow is gonna amplify the problem for you, the same thing used to happen by the bank/AH in Ironforge, lets just hope our city in Cataclysm is big like Shattrath was :)
 
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