i5 vs kuma

[songokussm]

So i just finished my new system:
Intel i5 750
ddr3 1333 cas 7 2x2gb
2x 4850s in crossfire (i double checked, crossfire is enabled)

old system:
amd kuma x2 7750
pc 8500 2x2gb ddr2
4870

the only game i play is world of warcraft. i get very, very similar performance between the 2 systems. in fact, i cant tell them apart. 60-90 fps over all and 15-30 fps in dal. General web surfing, movies, burning, and gaming, there is no differnce.

what did i do wrong?

PS thinking of sending this system back and getting the gateway laptop with the 9800gts. at least then i could watch tv and farm.

 

[machineheadg2rr]

Warcraft gives subpar performance no matter what system you play it on. FPS is dalaran is more about how many people are in that particular section. Most people cant distinguish an increase in fps over a certain number, its the higher minimum frame rates that increase playability. I just upgraded from an amd 3000+ to a propus quad. FPS didnt skyrocket, but the game runs butter smooth now, and insta loads anything but dalaran. I can also multitask and not ping my cpu at 100%. I was actually going to get the i5 originally, but then amd gave me propus and I couldnt justify an exta 200$ on the i5 setup when i play mostly wow.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Yep - WoW is just coded horribly (as far as any of us can tell). Even with horribly outdated graphics it can still bring a cutting-edge machine down to 10 FPS at times. While CPU, GPU, and memory upgrades do help, the biggest factor is simply how many things are going on in one area at a time.

Generally speaking, a new GPU will increase your maximum FPS in the game. A new CPU or memory will increase your minimum FPS. Your average will still be somewhere around 30-40ish in populated areas. It's just par for the course.

 

[ShawnD1]

For starters, World of Warcraft only uses 1 CPU core. They say it can use up to 8 cores but that's just wishful thinking. This alone means 75% of your i5 is not being used. The other part is that the game is limited to 60fps due to vsync and a Kuma is more than capable of getting a solid 60fps in most areas, so you won't notice a difference there. Dalaran should be a bit faster on the i5 but it's hard to estimate something like that.
Try a game like Arma 2 or GTA 4. Those games will definitely show a clear difference between the Kuma and the i5.

The other stuff you listed is not CPU limited at all. Web surfing works great on my laptop and it's a single core 1600mhz Celeron, so obviously that doesn't require an i5. Movies have a very specific frame rate - they either work or they don't. If it works on the Kuma, it will also work on the i5. Burning discs is pretty much 100% limited to the drive speed, so that won't change at all. Even most games are not CPU limited right now, so it's not always easy to tell the difference between a Kuma and an i5. If you check back a year from now, you'll see the Kuma struggling to play 2010 or 2011 games while the i5 plows through them.

For the most part, top end processors like the i7, i5, C2Q, or Phenom II X4 are purchased under the assumption that they will last longer. Today, there's not much difference between a $100 dual core and a $300 i7 quad core, but the i7 will work for at least 3 years whereas a slower processor like a Kuma X2 will start to suck after a year or two.

FPS didnt skyrocket, but the game runs butter smooth now, and insta loads anything but dalaran. I can also multitask and not ping my cpu at 100%

Why would you care what cpu% is used? I have Folding@Home running on both cores so my CPU is 100% all the time but it still gets a solid 60fps in every area of the game except Dalaran. As long as my priority task is running at the desired speed, I don't know why anyone would care how much stuff is running in the background or how much CPU it's taking up.

 

[LoneNinja]

Well I can't speak up about Wow, but tasks like surfing the web are dependant on your ISP rather than your computer, most systems will surf at the same speed. Movies even a single core Sempron/Celeron can handle smoothly with decent integrated graphics. Burning? I assume you mean burning data to a disk in which case the disk drive it self is the primary bottleneck. To put it simply, most tasks on a computer are no longer bottlenecked by the processor. I've got an Athlon X2 7750/Phenom 9850/Phenom II 940 each overclocked to 3.0Ghz or higher, but in all honesty 90% of the time any of my systems is on I have the processors downclocked to 2.0Ghz or lower because I can't see a visable difference in performance.

 

[songokussm]

thanks a lot for the info. it makes my heart, as i just built a killer machine and don't have enough time or interest to play other games.

for those of you who are wondering i just ran 3Dmark vantage with ultra settings and my cpu score is 9066 and my gpu score is 12683. my over all impressions are that the only upgrade i should have bought was the x25-m. windows loads im under 10s. and i do not see load screens in wow or simcity.

now im going to put this beast on craigslist and buy or trade for a gaming laptop.

 

[alyarb]

i can't believe you upgraded for wow. not only that, you went from a 4870 to 2 4850s. why don't you post stuff on the forums before you do crazy things, instead of after?

also i hope you realize that 9800gts will be a good deal slower than a single 4850.

 

[bfdd]

Originally posted by: alyarb
i can't believe you upgraded for wow. not only that, you went from a 4870 to 2 4850s. why don't you post stuff on the forums before you do crazy things, instead of after?

also i hope you realize that 9800gts will be a good deal slower than a single 4850.

I know people who recently(within the last year) have spent over 2000 building a gaming rig to play WoW, CS 1.6(not source), Warcraft 3, and Starcraft. People do some crazy stuff.

 

[Denithor]

Go read this thread for a nifty trick that may help your fps significantly in WoW now that you've got a quad.

Please report your results (either there or here) so the rest of us know how it turns out.

 

[lopri]

Farm?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Before you throw in the towel on your i5, try overclocking it and pay attention to the thread Denithor linked. An i5 should offer you a lot more OC headroom than a Kuma.

WoW can be very CPU-intensive so upgrading your CPU like that should have helped a good deal in Dalaran.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Denithor
Go read this thread for a nifty trick that may help your fps significantly in WoW now that you've got a quad.

Please report your results (either there or here) so the rest of us know how it turns out.

I opened this thread specifically to see if that link needed to be posted. Denithor :thumbsup:

If it doesn't improve the OP's compute experience then I'd have to conclude they would have been better off sticking with their Kuma for price/performance reasons. (or at most spend just a skosh amount of money upgrading to a modern X2, X3, or X4 variant)

 

[v8envy]

I have to call BS on "web surfing" being ISP limited. Have you visited any flash (and flash ad) heavy sites recently? Like, for example, Disney HD (my kids love Phineas and Ferb) or evony? They struggle on a 2ghz amd64. Struggle and fail.

My wife's machine is on the same pipe to the net as me. She's kicked me off my new i7 several times to play evony and is threatening to steal it completely so the kids can watch their shows on the kitchen monitor. Luckily my old 3.2 ghz E2180 is enough for now. But fire up 4 evony windows and then tell me how your browsing experience is not affected by your CPU.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: v8envy
I have to call BS on "web surfing" being ISP limited. Have you visited any flash (and flash ad) heavy sites recently? Like, for example, Disney HD (my kids love Phineas and Ferb) or evony? They struggle on a 2ghz amd64. Struggle and fail.

My wife's machine is on the same pipe to the net as me. She's kicked me off my new i7 several times to play evony and is threatening to steal it completely so the kids can watch their shows on the kitchen monitor. Luckily my old 3.2 ghz E2180 is enough for now. But fire up 4 evony windows and then tell me how your browsing experience is not affected by your CPU.

I notice it too, not with evony but with browsing in general. I've got a desktop (Q6600) and a laptop (dual-core core2 something or other) that I use interchangeably throughout the day and the time delay for webpages to be displayed on the laptop is significantly longer than that of my desktop. Hooked up to the same modem, fed by the same ISP.

But web surfing is kind of like gaming at >80fps isn't it? I mean whether its 80fps or 100fps isn't it in general all "good enough"? So maybe from that standpoint if you are going to be truly limited in your websurfing speed, as in click...wait...wait...wait...ok here you go, now you can read...then it is probably your ISP or the server on the other end that is limiting your surf speed.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Flash is a pig. Watching my eldest daughter try to play some of her favorite Flash games on her grandmother's Netburst-era Celeron Dell machine is somewhat embarrassing. I never had issues with it on my OCed s754 Sempron (2.3 ghz), but that was only when I was single-tasking and doing nothing else.

I could definitely see wanting a dual-core or quad-core CPU for snappy browsing, preferably at high clock speeds.

 

[Leyawiin]

WoW past a certain point gets the "diminishing returns" thing going pretty fast. A good mid-range PC like your previous build isn't going to be that much slower than an over-the-top new machine (with the exception of those playing at 2560x1600). Do you still have the HD 4870? You might get better performance than with the crossfired HD 4850s (multi-GPUs really don't help in WoW). If you do replace your GPUs in the near future Nvidia is a little more WoW friendly at the moment.

 

[songokussm]

hehe, its quite funny i just came across the affinity forum post on the forums while trying to get my crossfire to work.

now i don't drop below 60fps with max settings doing av. which is a much bigger improvement. however i found out that my 3rd core on my chip is bad. i cant get it to pass a single stress test.

 

[machineheadg2rr]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

FPS didnt skyrocket, but the game runs butter smooth now, and insta loads anything but dalaran. I can also multitask and not ping my cpu at 100%

Why would you care what cpu% is used? I have Folding@Home running on both cores so my CPU is 100% all the time but it still gets a solid 60fps in every area of the game except Dalaran. As long as my priority task is running at the desired speed, I don't know why anyone would care how much stuff is running in the background or how much CPU it's taking up.

That was the problem. My priority task was not running at the desired speed, sometimes even when i was not multitasking.

Also, wow has been upgraded to take advantage of dual cores several patches ago:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com...U-benchmarks/Practice/

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: machineheadg2rr

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

FPS didnt skyrocket, but the game runs butter smooth now, and insta loads anything but dalaran. I can also multitask and not ping my cpu at 100%

Why would you care what cpu% is used? I have Folding@Home running on both cores so my CPU is 100% all the time but it still gets a solid 60fps in every area of the game except Dalaran. As long as my priority task is running at the desired speed, I don't know why anyone would care how much stuff is running in the background or how much CPU it's taking up.

That was the problem. My priority task was not running at the desired speed, sometimes even when i was not multitasking.

Also, wow has been upgraded to take advantage of dual cores several patches ago:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com...U-benchmarks/Practice/

keepin it real in Dalaran

Notice how it says CPU usage for wow.exe is only 50% of my dual core. I even gave it high priority so there was no chance of some background task making it slower than it should be.

 

[machineheadg2rr]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: machineheadg2rr

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

FPS didnt skyrocket, but the game runs butter smooth now, and insta loads anything but dalaran. I can also multitask and not ping my cpu at 100%

Why would you care what cpu% is used? I have Folding@Home running on both cores so my CPU is 100% all the time but it still gets a solid 60fps in every area of the game except Dalaran. As long as my priority task is running at the desired speed, I don't know why anyone would care how much stuff is running in the background or how much CPU it's taking up.

That was the problem. My priority task was not running at the desired speed, sometimes even when i was not multitasking.

Also, wow has been upgraded to take advantage of dual cores several patches ago:
http://www.pcgameshardware.com...U-benchmarks/Practice/

keepin it real in Dalaran

Notice how it says CPU usage for wow.exe is only 50% of my dual core. I even gave it high priority so there was no chance of some background task making it slower than it should be.

Yes, and by default, that 50% will be spread accross 2 cores.