Best way of getting Max FPS in WoW:MOP with old AMD Athlon/Phenom...

[Lyfer]

So I have two friends who I play WoW:MOP with and they both are running older systems (gateway's). Basic specs listed below:

System A:
Athlon II x4 2.9ghz
8GB ddr1066
1tb HD
gpu: HD 4850 512mb

System B:
Phenom II x4 2.6ghz
8gb ddr1066
1tb HD
gpu: HD 5750 1gb

Now in non RAID environments, both systems can run high detail at 1080p, but during raid's and some 40 man's, they dip down to as low as 5fps. Will slapping in a budget 7850 2gb card in each system with a new PSU (I confirmed they don't use a proprietary PSU) be able to fix this?

I know a new expansion will be announced next month at Blizzcon and want to be able enjoy raids at good FPS without having them upgrade to completely new systems (thus I WOULD be the person putting the new rigs together).

Thanks in advance!

 

[KingFatty]

The issue comes down to whether the slowdown is caused by the CPU being too slow. You can check whether the CPU is causing the limitation, or the GPU, by running a utility that shows how much load is carried by the CPU or GPU.

To see your CPU load, press CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up the task manager, and select the performance tab. To see your GPU load, download a utility such as Afterburner.

Play the game, get to the part where the slowdown occurs, and see if your CPU is maxed out at 99% but your GPU is not maxed out. Then you'll know the CPU is holding back the GPU, and you will get no further performance by upgrading the GPU. Otherwise, if the CPU is not maxed out but the GPU is, then you can unlock more performance by getting a faster GPU.

Another strategy is to try overclocking the CPUs, if they turn out to be the limit, but I don't think you'll overcome the problem here.

 

[frozentundra123456]

What KingFatty said is the way to test, but my feeling is that you are cpu limited, especially since you have the problem in raids with a lot of players on the screen. Those are decent cpus, but WoW notoriously favors intel.

As the previous poster said, check cpu usage with task manager and gpu usage with something like MSI Afterburner. Could also be a slowdown due to slow internet also I would think.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Another way to see it is to reduce the resolution or the detail level (although things like reflections and shadows can cause be CPU associated).

If you do that and your frame rate doesn't increase, you clearly have a CPU bottleneck and getting more GPU power wont do you any good.

 

[SPBHM]

sounds like typical CPU bottleneck from mmos,

checking GPU usage should help (GPUZ, MSI afterburner), GPU usage going down significantly while the framerate goes down, normally means upgrading the VGA is a bad idea for that situation.

 

[rancherlee]

the Athlon is definitely limited, and the Phenom too at 2.6 ghz. My Phenom II @ 3.6ghz BARELY kept my 7850 fed and can't keep up with my 7950. since neither can be overclocked (unless the bios is flashed to a non OEM) there best bet/cheapest is to find a 965 to pick up frames. Otherwise its complete system overhaul time!

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Probably CPU bound. Quick easiest test is to have the user drop the resolution to lowest setting and see if FPS comes up. No increase = CPU bottleneck

Free fix = Overclock. Both systems could probably be pushed up, I've had alot of luck with Athlon's and Phenoms. Even the locked variety can benefit from a 220-240 fsb.

Cheap fix = 965be on ebay. Plenty of horsepower for those GPU's. One of these and a deal on a 2gb 7850 for around $110.- will get you alot of game for under $200.-

I'd only do the cheap fix if they cannot afford to rebuild. Otherwise it's $200.- towards a new build.

 

[24601]

Getting an Nvidia GPU would also help, since their drivers support the Multi-threaded rendering implemented in WoW.

AMD doesn't.

 

[Haserath]

GPU doesn't have to do much extra work to display 40 players vs 1.

The best experience would be an Intel Haswell quad i5 at the highest Ghz possible; a dualie should work better than what they have now too. You'd also be able to reuse the Ram if it's DDR3.

A quick Google search:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7527743056

WoW is very cpu dependant, 25man raiding is surprisingly intensive in terms of cpu cycles, especially when someone uses addons like damage meters and certain boss mods.
The issue is that even though your cpu is already a bit old, it’s still pretty decent and in theory it should have enough processing power to handle a 25 man raid with all the bells and whistles on. But that’s just in theory because i7’s like most other processors nowadays, isn’t single core. Its processing power corresponds to the sum of the individual processing power of its various cores and that is a big problem because WoW, like most other games and applications, never uses the full capacity of those 4 cores.

 

[Concillian]

I used to play Wow before MOP AMD and later an intel. The issue is almost certainly CPU.

WoW utilizes only 2 cores heavily and as a result it HIGHLY favors Intel CPUs which have superior single core performance. A basic Ivy based ~3Ghz i3 will be at least a 2x improvement in CPU capability compared to a 2.x GHz stars core AMD, if not more.

In cata, I ran in the raid finder 40 man stuff with *no problems* at 1920x1200 with a 5770 on an i3-530 OCed to 4GHz, which is about equivalent to the 3.x GHz Ivy i3. The 4850 may be struggling some, but you can always turn down the settings to smooth that out, Wow scales graphics down to even OLD IGPs reasonably well if you lower res and settings. The the main issue here is CPU, especially raiding.

 

[DarkRipper]

I agree with most posters here; bumping to an i5 Haswell 4670 pushed me to Ultra settings, even in 25 man raids I'm pushing 70+ fps with my old 580GTX card.

It was 200ish for the processor and about 100 for the motherboard. The 580 was bought here on Anandtech for a little over a 100.

Compared to the 5 (or less) FPS I was getting raiding before, it's night and day.

 

[SiliconWars]

CPU just isn't up to it. I'm at my girlfriends playing WoW on a 3870K and the difference is unreal compared to my 2500K. FPS is about half.

 

[Lyfer]

So I convinced them to get haswell i5's with a basic Asus mobo. They will resue everythign else minus new cpu/mobo/psu/ and GPU. My only concern is that one of the rig's has ddr 1.65v ddr3, will that work with a haswell mobo? And finally, what is the best $150~ish gaming card for strictly Wow, SC2, and diablo 3? I was thinking MSI 7850 OC edition, but everyone says Nvidia is better for blizzard games, but I cant find any benchmarks to confirm.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[Stuka87]

WoW is only dual threaded like all Blizzard games.

So Even if you have a quad core, two cores sit there twiddling their thumbs. Which means, you need higher clocks. You can either over clock the chips you have, or find a faster chip. There are faster Phenom II's that will work in your system. You could find a 965BE and OC it (Mine has been rock solid at 4GHz for 2 years, just an aftermarket cooler).

Or you can just get a new mobo/CPU. In the case of Blizzard games, Intels have a big advantage with their better IPC and Turbo.

As far as GPU's go, Blizzard games are NOT demanding. You can max out most of their games with lower-mid range GPU's at 1080P. My 7950 hangs out at around 40% utilization in the Blizzard games that I have.

The 7850 that you mention would be fine. I have not seen anything that proves nVidia is better than AMD for Blizard games. The games just aren't demanding.

 

[styrafoam]

So I convinced them to get haswell i5's with a basic Asus mobo. They will resue everythign else minus new cpu/mobo/psu/ and GPU. My only concern is that one of the rig's has ddr 1.65v ddr3, will that work with a haswell mobo? And finally, what is the best $150~ish gaming card for strictly Wow, SC2, and diablo 3? I was thinking MSI 7850 OC edition, but everyone says Nvidia is better for blizzard games, but I cant find any benchmarks to confirm.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Nvidia cards do better in the wow benchmarks, Tom's includes WoW benches in most reviews. From what I remember the benchmarking method is pretty pointless though as it doesn't load the cpu. You probably won't beat the 7850, especially with how cheap they are going for lately.

 

[Haserath]

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_660_Gaming/23.html

7970 usually equals a 670, but WoW really likes Nvidia.