Best upgrade for playing mmos

[lqDDD]

My curent build is:

proc: E8400 3.6GHz
MB: abit IP35 PRO
Video: AMD HD4850
HDD:Samsung 250gb nothing special 7200rpm
RAM: 2GB ddr2 A-data 800+ 4-4-4-12

I game at 1680x1050, i curently play Aion and i have 70-100fps at med-max settings, in crowded places drops to 25-40fps.
I want to play TERA when it comes out, my question is what is the best upgrade without change of MB.

I was thinking to buy ssd OCZ vertex 2 60GB and another 2gb of ddr2.
I don t think i need better video card, and i want to w8 untill sandy bridge, bulldozer comes out for MB change.
Any better ideas?

 

[Axon]

SSD for sure. Because of the constant packet movement MMOs require, its easily the best upgrade for your system. Then more RAM.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

SSD would improve your overall computing experience, not just with games. Which OS are you using? If you're using Windows 7 I'd get the RAM to 4gb first, though.

 

[DominionSeraph]

OP, I'd say go with a SSD because you can transfer that over to a new rig. It's not gonna help your framerates, though. It would just improve boot/app load/general system snappiness.
The Corsair Force 60GB is $105 AR.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233124

I don't see the point in adding dead DDR2 to a dead socket. 2GB is likely sufficient. (When TERA drops check Task Manager while it's running to see if your RAM usage is maxed. If it is, you can buy the 2GB. If it's not, you just saved yourself from wasting $30.)

TERA seems to have heightened video requirements, so if it's gonna drop soon then you might want to consider the 5870. It's an excellent price at $220 AR but the promo ends today.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102883
Promo Code: EMCZNZV76

But again, you might want to make due with your 4850 if you're going to be upgrading to a new socket so as to keep your CF/SLI options open when you do upgrade CPU/mobo/GPU. (With 1GB GTX 460's dipping down into the $135 range, if TERA has good scaling and can take advantage of the video horsepower, it would be hard to argue with GTX 580 performance for $270. And 5870's may continue to drop.)

SSD for sure. Because of the constant packet movement MMOs require, its easily the best upgrade for your system.

wat

 

[mfenn]

My curent build is:

proc: E8400 3.6GHz
MB: abit IP35 PRO
Video: AMD HD4850
HDD:Samsung 250gb nothing special 7200rpm
RAM: 2GB ddr2 A-data 800+ 4-4-4-12

I game at 1680x1050, i curently play Aion and i have 70-100fps at med-max settings, in crowded places drops to 25-40fps.
I want to play TERA when it comes out, my question is what is the best upgrade without change of MB.

I was thinking to buy ssd OCZ vertex 2 60GB and another 2gb of ddr2.
I don t think i need better video card, and i want to w8 untill sandy bridge, bulldozer comes out for MB change.
Any better ideas?

If you lower your graphics settings to all low, do your framerates improve in crowded areas? If so, you need a GPU upgrade. If not, you need a CPU/memory upgrade. And no, there are not going to be any worthwhile CPU upgrade options on your same platform.

 

[lqDDD]

When i lower the graphic options to min i have same fps,so its cpu/ram. Ill w8 till january to see what the new year brings.

 

[Axon]

wat

How do MMOs work?

 

[DominionSeraph]

How do MMOs work?

How do torrents work? How hard is it to saturate a 7200RPM hard drive with a typical broadband connection even when you're uncapped and saving 100% of the contents to disk?

Does he need a SSD to play Starcraft over dial-up because, "packets"?

 

[Axon]

How do torrents work? How hard is it to saturate a 7200RPM hard drive with a typical broadband connection even when you're uncapped and saving 100% of the contents to disk?

Does he need a SSD to play Starcraft over dial-up because, "packets"?

It's clear you don't play MMOs.

MMOs are client-server much like many online games. But more specifically, many, many clients making demands on the single server (or server cluster) involved. Those requests are made by uploading data via the game client. So better read/write speeds improves your instancing and load times, which is critical, because that is constantly happening in an MMO. The game world loads faster, as do other players in crowded areas. Because popular areas are typically crowded, this significantly improves the experience.

This also works in SC2 (or most any other game), but has no appreciable effect on your gameplay because the demands of other users aren't as widespread or intensive. Instead, it just speeds up your load time of the particular instanced game. So in SC2, you'll just have your little ready bar loaded faster, provided battle.net isn't shitting the bed that day.

Take a WoW character into Ogrimmar with a standard HDD, and then an SSD, then come and be condescending.

 

[DominionSeraph]

It's clear you don't play MMOs.

MMOs are client-server much like many online games. But more specifically, many, many clients making demands on the single server (or server cluster) involved. Those requests are made by uploading data via the game client. So better read/write speeds improves your instancing and load times, which is critical, because that is constantly happening in an MMO. The game world loads faster, as do other players in crowded areas. Because popular areas are typically crowded, this significantly improves the experience.

You apparently have no clue as to what is client side and what is server side. A SSD will improve load times because areas are stored locally. It has nothing to do with packets. It will not magically make packets move faster over the internet, increase your network bandwidth, or give your packets super-special priority to the game server.
And load times != FPS. Also, they're taken into account. Does BG start with the gate open? No. Do instances start with you pulling aggro? No.

 

[Davidh373]

You apparently have no clue as to what is client side and what is server side. A SSD will improve load times because areas are stored locally. It has nothing to do with packets. It will not magically make packets move faster over the internet, increase your network bandwidth, or give your packets super-special priority to the game server.
And load times != FPS. Also, they're taken into account. Does BG start with the gate open? No. Do instances start with you pulling aggro? No.

Axon, you are correct about load times, but most of what happens in game is view scale, which is more the graphics card than the HD, or in your case SSD. I would say the biggest upgrade he could make is in chipset. A nice new processor will rock his world, while any other upgrade will likely be chump change. So what I'm recommending to the OP is to change his mind about swaping his Mobo and if he doesn't have the money to be patient.

 

[mfenn]

You apparently have no clue as to what is client side and what is server side. A SSD will improve load times because areas are stored locally. It has nothing to do with packets. It will not magically make packets move faster over the internet, increase your network bandwidth, or give your packets super-special priority to the game server.
And load times != FPS. Also, they're taken into account. Does BG start with the gate open? No. Do instances start with you pulling aggro? No.

:thumbsup:

 

[mfenn]

When i lower the graphic options to min i have same fps,so its cpu/ram. Ill w8 till january to see what the new year brings.

Not a bad plan. We should see some stuff on January 9th.

 

[Axon]

You apparently have no clue as to what is client side and what is server side. A SSD will improve load times because areas are stored locally. It has nothing to do with packets. It will not magically make packets move faster over the internet, increase your network bandwidth, or give your packets super-special priority to the game server.
And load times != FPS. Also, they're taken into account. Does BG start with the gate open? No. Do instances start with you pulling aggro? No.

Who said anything about FPS? I'll never make the assertion that SSDs improve FPS because it isn't true. Of course a more potent GPU would help the most in that area.

Otherwise, an SSD runs faster when you're loading a lot of players in addition to load times. So eating up those hundreds of small files, textures, etc...how is that not doing exactly what I said? Is it not getting data constantly off the hard drive?

I'll concede the points about network bandwidth, etc, because clearly SSD does not give a priority gateway to blizzard's servers. Though...that would be kind of awesome.

 

[Davidh373]

Otherwise, an SSD runs faster when you're loading a lot of players in addition to load times. So eating up those hundreds of small files, textures, etc...how is that not doing exactly what I said? Is it not getting data constantly off the hard drive?

all the assets for a given area load before you enter an area, at least, normally in games that's how it is.

 

[TuxDave]

all the assets for a given area load before you enter an area, at least, normally in games that's how it is.

I believe that's true for EQ2 since I'd hit a loading screen for a while as it loads up all the textures in the zone. However once in the game, I can quickly run to a complex area of the zone and slowly watch objects appear.

In LOTRO oh god, enter the 21st Hall and you're wondering where the heck are all the merchancts, then you slowly start seeing the stream of players and objects start appearing on the screen. Then I finally see the stable merchant I'm looking for.

I'm not quite sure if HDD is the bottleneck or not but I end up twiddling my thumbs waiting for everything to finish appearing.