Any good benchmarks for WoW performance?

[crazylegs]

Hi all, I'm back on the WoWcrack in preparation of the Cataclysm expansion.

My system is in sig (E8400 @4.00GHz, HD4890, 4GB RAM, 'traditional' HD, game @ 1920x1200) still performs pretty well, but is getting slightly tired now.

Am considering a couple of upgrade options, most likely just the graphics card for now. Although i know WoW benefits from quad core CPUs think i'll wait till the next batch of Intel/AMD CPU options.

In the UK I can get a GTX460 1GB for £150.00, this is priced against the AMD 6850 - so seems like a no brainer? The 470 is equal in price to the 6870 @ £200 (a bit more than i want to spend)

Also i think i remember nVidia cards having a slight edge in WoW? But have struggled to find many benchmarks that compare different CPUs / GPUs in WoW...

Am also questioning a move to an SSD for my OS + WoW etc, but again am not sure what kind of benefits this would provide?

Thanks in advance for any advice

(ps. maybe not the best forum - but always see discussions about GPU vs CPU in gaming in here!)

 

[Axon]

I'm surprised to hear that the 4890 isn't cutting it in WoW anymore, given that my 4670 can still get me 60 FPS everywhere but Dalaran on high settings. I suppose if you must upgrade, however, either card would be a good deal, especially if you overclock them (which you should).

 

[maniac5999]

I'm another one in the "Why Bother?" camp. It looks like the last patch already improved the graphics for Cataclysm. (it defaulted all of my graphics settings back to 'medium' at least, and it seems to look better and be tougher on the graphics of my netbook now) I've been playing recently, getting the charachter I want to play to 80 in anticipation of the expansion, and I'd reccomend that you do the same to see if you really need to upgrade.

I've got a 4870 512mb, and I don't think I'm going to upgrade just yet. Our situations are actually pretty similar. I game at 1080p, and that means that I'm pushing about 11% less pixels than you, My 4870 is at 790mhz, which is 7.5% slower than the 850mhz stock speed of your card. Now, I'm okay with an occasional stutter if I start spinning in a circle as soon as I teleport in somewhere, and because of that I'm running with everything at Ultra except shadows which are on high, and 4X AA/AF, and I generally get 60fps running around Northrend.

Personally, I'd reccomend trying the settings that I use, and seeing if they work for you, both visually and FPS-wise. Also, have you tried OCing your 4890? From what I understand virtually all of tham can easily hit 900mhz, and a good number of them can hit 1ghz. 1ghz would be about a 17.5% improvement over stock, and would probably push you VERY close to a 460 768mb in terms of graphics power.

 

[crazylegs]

I probably need to run some tests myself.

Game plays pretty well tbh, just the occasional lag when LOTS is happened and i currently play with pretty high settings.

Will have to check but think my GPU is running @ around 900mhz, i also have an awesome ghetto cooler that consists of 2x120mm case fans zip tied to the original heat sink (Y)

Guess its just one of those upgrade itches that i should probably resist for a little while longer!

 

[bryanW1995]

if you want a good WOW gaming experience, you need a quad core cpu with at least amd hd 4200 (tm) graphics. anything else is gravy.


LOL at the ghetto cooler! that's awesome.

 

[smackababy]

No true benchmarks are done on WoW because benchmarkers don't raid. I have an i7 860 @ 3.6 and xFire 5870s and I would hit frame rate drops in the 15-25 range on some fights.

 

[crazylegs]

if you want a good WOW gaming experience, you need a quad core cpu with at least amd hd 4200 (tm) graphics. anything else is gravy.


LOL at the ghetto cooler! that's awesome.

I have a 'good experience' just want moarr lol! Also i should have probably mentioned that i do other stuff while playing wow i.e. inet browsing, TS, msn etc.

Really dont want to drop in a s775 quad. So will wait a little longer until the next gen of CPUs are here.

I should have posted pics of the cooler here - was a nice little DIY mod. I ahve an ASUS version of the HD4890, that came with a pretty nice custon heatsink - but the fan was too small and FAR too loud. The 2x120mm fans worked a treat

@ smakababy - yeah thats what i'm trying to cut out, the dips during raids. As a rule i will only be doing 10mans, but Blizz seem to have upped the spell effects considerably recently.

 

[Arkadrel]

Since this a MMO, you might want to check your HDD and how much Memory you have. Heck even the CPU... before the GPU.

that said...

E8400 @4.00GHz
HD4890 that you OCed
4GB RAM


Probably should run WoW perfectly fine... Im not sure youd really need to upg anything for it with your current system.

You could get a SSD and have windows partition + games of WoW run on that and use your older HDD for just storage. People forget that physical system ram and the speed at which a HD loads things can effect stuff too.

Finally.... theres lag, which Im not sure how much you can do about, unless its caused on your end. Sometimes you find yourself on the othersides of the world compaired to the gameing server you playon, and your ping is just higher than others that live closer by.

 

[smackababy]

I had WoW on my SSD and I didn't notice any significant increase in FPS, just faster loading times. Also, memory management from add-ons is a big performance factor.

 

[Seero]

Hi all, I'm back on the WoWcrack in preparation of the Cataclysm expansion.

My system is in sig (E8400 @4.00GHz, HD4890, 4GB RAM, 'traditional' HD, game @ 1920x1200) still performs pretty well, but is getting slightly tired now.

Am considering a couple of upgrade options, most likely just the graphics card for now. Although i know WoW benefits from quad core CPUs think i'll wait till the next batch of Intel/AMD CPU options.

In the UK I can get a GTX460 1GB for £150.00, this is priced against the AMD 6850 - so seems like a no brainer? The 470 is equal in price to the 6870 @ £200 (a bit more than i want to spend)

Also i think i remember nVidia cards having a slight edge in WoW? But have struggled to find many benchmarks that compare different CPUs / GPUs in WoW...

Am also questioning a move to an SSD for my OS + WoW etc, but again am not sure what kind of benefits this would provide?

Thanks in advance for any advice

(ps. maybe not the best forum - but always see discussions about GPU vs CPU in gaming in here!)

This is my opinion:

First, WoW is CPU dependent most of the time, not GPU. If you must pick one to upgrade, you should go for cpu. Unfortunately, that also means RAM+mobo.

Second, Cata uses Dx11 codepath. Yeah, that is right, a game coded under Dx9 now featuring Dx11 code path. On top of that, you can actually enable it on a Dx10 video card to benefit from Dx10 since it is backward compatible.

Third OS, if you are on XP, you will miss the benefit from above. Some claimed there Dx10 card actually performs better when Dx11 is enabled.

Fourth SSD, it helps in many ways. It doesn't increase FPS, but reduce loading time and shuttering caused by I/O, i.e. flying around or at the beginning of a big battle(25 man raidboss).

2 pc, side by side. One with I7-920 stock + 8800GTS stock, one with Q6600@3.2Ghz + 285GTX, guess with one gives better FPS? the 285 does give higher FPS, but...I7 is by far smoother eventhough its FPS is around 40.

When you stand in IF or SW, 285 tops 120FPS, but in raid, before any action, FPS drops to 30-40 FPS. With 8800, almost 40-60 wherever you go exception the most busiest town, which is 20-30FPS. Note that 30FPS on I7 is much smoother than 30FPS on Q6600. Clearly, video card is not a bottleneck, or I should say, the effect of a CPU bottleneck is far worst than the effect of a GPU bottleneck.

If you must upgrade before cata, I guess I5-750 or I7-950, followed by SSD+OS, followed by video cards. Otherwise, wait a bit for the newest and greatest gun from Intel and AMD. If you are going to upgrade SSD+OS too, you can do this first for the time being.

Oh about that Nvidia's card is better in WoW... don't believe it. WoW doesn't support PhysX. However, if you are interested in 3D, then it is a completely different story. A single 6870 can handle a single monitor with everything max out. Some even go tri-monitors@1080p.

One more thing, WoW still does not benefit from SLI or crossfire.

 

[Leyawiin]

You're system is, as others have said, more than capable for Cata. Another vote for checking your addons - some of them will reduce your FPS to a slide show after the last big patch. That slow down in raids and other very busy situations affects almost everyone, regardless of hardware. I can't set all graphics settings to Ultra with my hardware at 1680x1050. If I want to set all settings to Ultra I have to turn Shadow Quality down to low to keep a decent frame rate. If I want to balance everything out and keep things at 60 FPS (most of the time) I have to set things like Ground Clutter, Shadows and Water Quality to "good" or "high".

 

[kami]

I see very little benefit to upgrading only the video card just for WoW. Once you hit a certain level of GPU power (which i am fairly sure you're past) the only benefit is CPU upgrades.

However for me the biggest upgrade for WoW was an SSD drive. Not only loading is faster but there is no longer any stutters or pop-ins when it has to read new data from the hard drive. Even from a good 7200rpm hard drive the difference was significant for me and made the whole game just a smoother experience. SSDs are amazing for MMOs but have a diminished effect in other games besides load screen times.

 

[maniac5999]

I see very little benefit to upgrading only the video card just for WoW. Once you hit a certain level of GPU power (which i am fairly sure you're past) the only benefit is CPU upgrades.

While I generally agree that WoW is pretty CPU limited, I'd be very suprised if a 4ghz C2D won't be able to run WoW very well. While WoW can now take advantage of 4 threads, as of WOTLK it still couldn't do it very well. I was doing some load monitoring about a year ago, and with my 3ghz processor, and less efficient architecture, WoW had managed to peg 1 core with a consistent 98%+ useage, while only using the other about 67%. Maybe this has changed, maybe not. I'd test before making any changes there, especially since single threaded performance hasn't increased a whole lot between the e8400 and Nethalem.

 

[Zap]

However for me the biggest upgrade for WoW was an SSD drive. Not only loading is faster but there is no longer any stutters or pop-ins when it has to read new data from the hard drive. Even from a good 7200rpm hard drive the difference was significant for me and made the whole game just a smoother experience.

My wife plays WoW a lot and she also found it to be better with an SSD, for the same reasons. She came off a VelociRaptor.

 

[Seero]

My wife plays WoW a lot and she also found it to be better with an SSD, for the same reasons. She came off a VelociRaptor.

So is me and my wife. I came off from 3xvelociraptor@raid0.

 

[peonyu]

If there is one thing I will give Blizzard major compliments on - Its their game engine for WoW, it just runs great unlike alot of other MMOS [hello EQ2, which looks worse than WoW yet runs at 1/10th the fps].

For WoW, A 4ghz duel core CPU is overkill for it and your video card is also Overkill.

 

[Lightflash]

I would have to say that an SSD is probably the single best upgrade for WoW (assuming the other components of the system are at least relevant tech). It was like night and day going from a 7200 RPM HDD to my Vertex 2 SSD.

Might have to lower shades or some of the other effects to have it still run well, but as long as you get a consistent 60 FPS or close to it then it is perfectly fine.