E6600 vs. 4400+ (WoW)

[harpoon84]

OcHungry, any rational person will see that you have an obvious AMD bias and thus cannot be trusted on any objective matters regarding Intel vs AMD.

You still have not been able to prove me wrong on this matter at all.

'Oh, the review is biased towards Intel, blah blah blah'. Anything that doesn't support your pro AMD view is 'biased' according to you?

If you claim WoW is GPU limited, then why does the X2 5000+ machine often drop down to ~45fps whereas the E6600 doesn't? 'Turn on AA/AF then, the game will be GPU limited then' so you say. Matter of fact is, during CPU intensive scenes with lots of interaction with other characters, it is NOT the GPU that determines what the minimum framerates will be, but the CPU.

 

[sanitydc]

Originally posted by: harpoon84
Nobody here actually answered your question with something that would back up their statements: benchmarks. Everybody just 'assumes' that the 4400+, being a relatively fast processor, would be enough for WoW. Well, it certainly *is* enough to be very playable most of the time, but an E6600 *would* provide a noticeable performance boost, which, I believe, was your main query in starting this thread.

This link should prove useful to you:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1996945,00.asp

They are comparing WoW performance between an X2 5000+ and E6600 system.

Look carefully at the graphs and compare how often the framerate dips on the X2 5000+ compared to the E6600. Clearly the E6600 provides a more 'stable' and 'consistent' framerate. This is not to say the X2 5000+ performs poorly, I'm sure the game is still totally playable, but it certainly has more framerate dips (or stutters as you call them) than on the E6600.

Considering your X2 4400+ is ~10% slower than an X2 5000+, I can see why you mentioned there are occasional stutters in WoW.

So to answer your question: Yes, an E6600 would improve your WoW experience by eliminating the majority of the framerate dips or stutters.

But I have my own question for you - Is it worth the expense to change your entire platform just for one game?

I personally don't think it's worth the $$$ or hassle reinstalling everything, when you can easily overclock your current CPU to FX-62 levels of performance and have it perform almost as well as a stock E6600. Yes, I'm aware the E6600 can be overlclocked as well, but if it's already 'fast enough' at stock speeds to run WoW smoothly, then overclocking it to 3GHz+ won't make many noticeable improvements to performance. It's the law of diminishing returns kicking in.

PS. To everybody saying games are all totally GPU dependant nowadays - you are wrong.

WoW is a prime example of this.

As a general rule, MMORPG, online FPS games like BF2 and CS:S, RTS and flight sim based games are all heavily CPU dependant. This is not to say they don't require a decent GPU - of course they do. But the above mentioned genre games *do* scale with faster CPUs at a noticeable rate.

agreed. I can vouch for cs:s, friend has a x2 5000+ with a x1900xtx and I out FPS him tremendously even at higher res's. I only have a 19" monitor so I can only vouch for up to 12x10 on that tho, I have a cheaper video card then him btw. sig for my specs.

 

[sanitydc]

Originally posted by: renozi
WoW is locked at 60fps max anyways. Plus the graphics were meant to be playable to almost all computers out there. And of course not all computers are monster gaming machines like yours. So with that being said upgrading to an E6600 won't make a difference, nor will upgrading to a faster gfx card. Best to save money!!!

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LvL 61 Human Warrior!! Woot!

64

 

[sanitydc]

core 2 quad vs k8l shall be a tehe indeed.

 

[NYslipstream]

Thanks for the input everyone, it's much appreciated. Gramboh and Harpoon really made some compelling arguments, and thanks for those links you showed me Harpoon. Some great information there. I think that I'm going to piece these out to my Dad, and go ahead with the new Conroe line. He needs a new computer pretty bad, so I'd like to help him and help myself at the same time. Since I'm selling him my parts, the transition won't be overly costly to me. Plus, it helps that I have some money socked away for a rainy day.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a debate, I was just looking for other people's opinions.


Thanks again everyone,

Slipstream