WOW, Graphics card or processor bottleneck

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Ok I am a WOW addict I admit it

Been playing 4+ years now and I rarely ever have time to run other games as I raid 4x weekly.

I currently run a E6750 at just over 3ghz on an Abit P35 mobo
880Gtx
Memory is 3GB due to still being on Vista 32bit
hard disk is currently a 1TB Samsung but may go back to my Raptor 74GB as I swear load times were better (so guessing WOW files are not well built to take benefit from the denser platters and the faster raptor seek time is of more benefit)
Monitor is a Dell 24" widescreen, with a second monitor 19" for web browsing, showing boss strats, guild rotas etc whilst playing

Ok so thats the playing field.

Now I keep looking at the lovely i7 920s and thinking i neeeeed one of them, but do i really?

I read reports that WOW doesnt use multi processor well and indeed looking at a monitor I tend to see one processor at nigh on 100% and the other running 30-50% most of the time, probably picking up all the other tasks and maybe some limited WOW tasks? So certainly it looks like if I buy a quad two will be redundant anyway.

So question 1 is am I likely to see any real world benefit in WOW from a move to a 920?

Second question. The www seems to indicate that wow is processor bound and that its not making very good use of a fancy graphics card, so based on the fact that even at 1920x1280 res I am usually at 60fps its doubtful upgrading the gpu is going to make much diff, e.g to a 260. Anyone gone from a similar specced machine to a better graphics card and seen any improvement?

Last question (for now) If i make the assumption that graphics isnt an issue and a quad isnt needed, should I try to clock the hell out of the E6750 or buy a better dual core, prob a E8xxx and seek better performance that way.

Oh just one more question. I really want to go to decent dual monitors. I want to move a lot of screen clutter to a second monitor and using something like CT viewport have the addons, groups, mini map etc all on a seperate screen. This would require running something like a software tweak that forced wow to see both monitirs as one, and hence using viewport to move all the "play area" of the game screen back to one monitor.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Well few things.
Yes server can always be an issue, but once raiding its less often server to be honest.
There are more graphics effects than ever and Patch 3.1 will bring high def graphics available for some models.

I read somewhere that WOW was actually doing a lot of the graphics load via the CPU and hence throwing a better graphics card would make limited diff, and that a faster raw GHz proc is likely to be best.

I needed to go from 2Gb to 3GB of RAM, as how I run my machine it seems to want to use just over 2GB in busy areas, but never even goes close to 2.5 so can see any benefit from 64 bit yet. Waiting in win7 and then will go 64bit though.

Overclocking was kind of where i was looking, got a tuniq tower and an antec 900 case so hopefully there is some overhead there. Geil Pc6400 so fingers crosses can do some more. I tried to go higher OC before and it didnt like it but maybe I need to just tweak a smidge extra voltage and get to 400FSB which runs the ram smack bang on spec.

Thing is E6750 not being really current means data seems a bit hard to drag back up.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Upgrading solely for Wow is a waste of money.

Sorry disagree

When playing the hard mode encounter in WOLK every little helps, when one small mistake can mean a full raid wipe on a 15 min encounter I want to avoid me being the one who due to low FPS or whatever makes a mistake.

Also if CPU is limiting it allows more mods with less impact.

Thanks for your comment but I disagree.

You need to upgrade hardware to maintain wow performance they are adding new stuff all the time which impacts the game. Until WOLK you never needed more that 2GB, post WOLK now there can be real load issues at busy time with 2GB, probably the raw amount of textures etc that are getting swapped.

Sometimes during raiding the amount of effects is amazing with 25 people causing them, I want them at maxed details and use a /consoleui command to extend my draw distance a lot which increases the amount needing to be processed a lot.

All I am trying to do is assess whats the potential bottleneck currently in my system.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I didnt say there was an issue did I lol

I just got an itchy "Buy Button" finger so looking for the best bang for my buck

40fps, yuk, I always want 60FPS. Sarph is also a quite low impact area as well we find, its a small instance and therfore suffers less with cranked up details etc

Just intrigued what people consider about WOW if anyone knows what the limitations are etc. I must admit I would tend to agree that there is likelyhood that being an old code game wow will be doing stuff via the CPU that a more modern game would do via a GPU.

Anyways thought bugger it so went home and cranked to 3.2Ghz and it seems stable so far, so will try a bit more later.

Guess the itchy buy finger will have to wait

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

by the way the linky for the one who asked

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Doomhammer&n=Akolen

check the lich king raid achievements on heroic to see just 3/29 missing and check the dungeons achievements to see how often I visit dungeons rofl 1/12 and 0/51

Now need to stop our melee dps dying to get the immortal lol.
Should have the other two malygos achievements within a couple of weeks they are the next ones we plan to get.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

"there is no bottleneck".QUOTE]

There is always a bottleneck.

Question is where is it currently, its hardly ridiculous to try to understand where the bottleneck is currently.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

You a new CPU, new mobo, at least 8gb of DDR3 memory, and a new GFX card. Go!

Sir yes sir!

Ooo look I even have a OC 920 already in my basket on my work pc lol

Think I am going to hang on till Win7 ships and just do a complete new build then.

Still want to understand whats likely to be currently limiting, guess I should try to run proc at non overclocked and overclocked and see what that shows

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Ran it at 3.2ghz all night last night, although wednesdays arent raid days.
Going to Naxx for a speed clear tonight so should get the opportunity to ensure that whilst raiding I am fully stable at 3.2

Funny it wouldnt play at about 3.1 when i was trying 12 months ago so I had decided that I had a bad clocker (well 2.66 to 3.0x isnt exactly bad). I must have found the legendary FSb hole on my mobo, as last night going straight to 3.2 caused no issues.

Any difference, I would be lying if I said yes absolutely, but possibly, just possibly its a little smoother.

Now something interesting is I noticed, I stuck CPU-Z onto my off screen so with wow on the main I could see CPUz as well. Everytime I went to a loading screen it dropped to 2.4GZh as he multi dropped to 6. As soon as the load screen disappeared I was back to 3.2 as multi back to 8.
I am not sure if this is good or bad, I assume people say to stop the speedstep as it can make stability a lot worse when overclocked?

I did look for what most people say to look for in the BIOS and couldnt see any sign of it, by any chance does anyone know what an Abit IP35 lists it as. I cant remember the exact model of mobo, it was the the best Abit IP35 at the time. Think it was called a dark raider or something like that. Could just be I cannot get to that option in the BIOS, I seem to remember from years ago there is software that will often be able to mess with settings the BIOS wont show you directly?