i7 or C2Q for Warhammer Online

[TantrumusMaximus]

I've been playing Warhammer Online since release and now that I'm in the current end-game battles I'm really concerned about performance.

If anyone's played this game it appears VERY CPU limited. I've seen my buddy with his DDR3/Q9400/ GTX 280 still get a slugfest in large battles.

I managed to get a good playability in large battles hovering around 30FPS at 19x12 res on the 24" with my Sig rig but even then it will seem as if the cards just aren't getting enough attention from the CPU and when there is a large congestion battle it will dip down in the teens. A perfect example of this theory is even knocking down the res seems to offer no gains... even down to 1024x768.

Is this a case where the i7 will shine?

I know that the general report is that you won't see good "gaming" gains over a current Core2 processor however will you get considerable gains in a game that tends to be CPU Limited?

For example I'm building my every 2 year gaming upgrade system in Feb... and I'm seriously considering 2 EVGA GTX 260 FTW SLI and i7 X58 platform.


(P.S. If you play War with SLI and have had little luck seeing a boost because it doesn't natively support it send me a PM and I'll send you the settings. I got major boost with SLI after many hours of tweaking the nvidia profile. I was avg. around 30FPS in non-RvR areas and after tweaks was pegged at 60 and SLI indicator was working hard. I was using FRAPS to monitor FPS.)

 

[ArchAngel777]

Seems a waste to get an i7 unless you specifically need it. Even your current system has plenty of power. Maybe just drop a used Q6600 in there or something when you need it. I seem to remember the 680i not supporting yorkfields, so it looks like kentsfield will do the trick when you actually need the power. As for the graphics cards, you already have SLI, so just replace those two cards with the 260E's.

Core i7 is great if you have a 'need' for it. But if you simply just want to game, it seems an unwise purchase from my perspective. I would be happy with what you currently have...

 

[taltamir]

actually the i7 was built for SERVER DATABASES!
In most games it will offer NO performance benefits, in others it will offer a very nice performance benefit, it depends on the game. But gaming was not the intended market with the i7.
So you need to look up benchmarks SEPECIFIC to it.

Google helped me find a few:
http://www.regularsexpressions...r-onlines-performance/
http://www.pcgameshardware.com...e_of_Reckoning_part_1/

They are saying a single core is not enough, a dual core is needed... nobody even went into the quad core realm or overclocking... Ofcourse it could be that you are more sensitive to micro stutter, like me, and a high mhz quad core IS necessary for your enjoyment.

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

Yes I do own a Q6600 and it was indeed my chip in this 680i board however this board has an issue overclocking quad cores and I couldn't get more than 2.7ghz out of it. EVGA recognizes this issue and offered a swap but it's really not a big enough deal at the moment for me to take downtime so I've been using the E6600 below.

The point in my OP is the fact this game appears CPU limited and all the reading I've done over at Warhammeralliance.com forums is that CPU really drives this game. I've seen it in my own testing. However my main concern here is even so, is the i7 vs. the Core2 going to be a big difference in this area.

I'll look over the links above.

EDIT:
OK, I've looked over, http://www.regularsexpressions...r-onlines-performance/ thank you for posting that. I've become an expert at these tweeks over the last couple months. I do appreciate the link... I haven't seen it all on one page like that, that is handy. They are WAY wrong about the lighting however, it's the number one souce of the stutter issue people have. The number one solution is to choose "fastest framerate" and then manually bump up your settings afterwards, most people including me saw a major perf improvement.

It's heavy battle encounters where I'm hoping there may be a gain with i7. I've also heard a lot of mention of i7 really being a good SLI platform.

 

[Elstumpo]

I read a Dev post about Warhammer Online stating that it only uses cores 3 and 4 for character animation and that they recommend a higher clockspeed over more cores. I think if you can overclock i7 heavily it would be good in WAR I bet it would run nice at over 4Ghz.

 

[krnmastersgt]

I would think a decent quad core with a decent overclock, somewhere in the 3.4-3.6 range, would be more than adequate for the majority of cpu intensive games out there. As taltamir stated, i7 wasn't aimed at the gaming market, just happens to be there for the ride. If you're lagging with an OCed quad core, I doubt an i7 platform would be too much better, but I guess even 10% can make a difference between playable and annoyingly laggy. Costs a ton though, my 2 cents.

 

[Sentry2]

If you are talking about ditching your first rev 680i then and buying a new board then hell yes pick up a decent x58 board and a i7 920. Other than that I would have taken Jacob or Mike up on that offer to swap out that 680i with the newer rev(A1 I believe) and stuck that Q6600 in it. Even with a B3 Q6600 I was able to do around 3.2GHz on that board. A G0 got me up to ~3.6GHz.

If you're an enthusiast the only thing that should be holding you back from buying an i7 (price wise) is the damn DDR3 prices. Other than that it's a no brainer.

Do you still have your Q6600?

If so I would call EVGA and try to trade it out for a newer rev. Much better board IMO.

If you're building a new system in Feb I'd just grab an i7 and an x58.

I doubt you're cpu limited very much. This has been over rated IMO. That annoying drop in frame rate you're experiencing is probably SLI shitting itself or the GTX's(best damn card ever) starting to show their age...or...it could be an issue with the game and the network since it is still a fairly new game and an MMO at that.

I'm still not sure why everybody is hounding on i7 being expensive...? i7 920 @ $299 a few days after launch...NO...a high-end x58 board @ ~$300...NOPE...still not seeing anything out of the ordinary...oh wait there's DDR3 $$...OK...well actually it only looks expensive because DDR2 prices are rockin' these days.

I'm gonna sit this one out until Octo-Core 32nm chips show up. :beer:

PS: My wife may not love FP shooters but she'll put up with me playing them..

 

[cmdrdredd]

A buddy of mine plays that game and he typically gets low fps like you describe even with a 3.8Ghz Q9650 and a 1GB 4870 overclocked with 4GB of memory.

There's not much you can do to help it I'm afraid. Hate to sound like a bummer...I've never found an MMO that had a solid FPS all the time no matter what.

 

[Tempered81]

If you do get an i7 to game on, make sure you get two or three gt200 cards

 

[Sentry2]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
A buddy of mine plays that game and he typically gets low fps like you describe even with a 3.8Ghz Q9650 and a 1GB 4870 overclocked with 4GB of memory.

There's not much you can do to help it I'm afraid. Hate to sound like a bummer...I've never found an MMO that had a solid FPS all the time no matter what.

Exactly.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Sentry2

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
A buddy of mine plays that game and he typically gets low fps like you describe even with a 3.8Ghz Q9650 and a 1GB 4870 overclocked with 4GB of memory.

There's not much you can do to help it I'm afraid. Hate to sound like a bummer...I've never found an MMO that had a solid FPS all the time no matter what.

Exactly.

Get this... a game as old as Final Fantasy XI Online that I still play came out in 2003 (imagine the best system back then) still drops down to 15fps with the rig in my sig in the towns with HQ shadows on due to everything having to load up and calculate every step by each character and NPC. It comes down the network too slow I guess.

 

[tim924]

You are absolutely rigght on this one,for any multiple-player online game.it's much connection speed dependance rather than just your own device's power,but still having the better cpu/gpu will give you the best self-controlable performance.

 

[TantrumusMaximus]

I guess I was more spoiled in my WoW days than I knew. Alterac Valley (A 40 vs. 40 battlefield for those who don't know) was butter smooth on this system with ONE 8800GTX. I guess it comes down to design / balance on the developer's end. Cartoony really paid the bills for Blizzard.

Mythic went the more realistic graphics look with Warhammer and boy o boy does it look nice.

That said... what really puzzles me is the fact that dropping to an insanely low res by todays standards (1024x768 for example) doesn't really give any boost during these battles.

Meh... the game (MMO) is very young with a lot of changes I'm sure coming... hopefully for the better.

I'll most likely get an i7 920 and X58 as I only get to do a full sys build every 2 years or so and if I go for Core 2... I'll just end up being bummed I didn't buy the newest platform. Same thing I did with my 8800GTX, it cost an arm and a leg when it first was out... but it lasted me a good 2 years and adding the 2nd one in did pay off in the end the setup really does rock most games with all the bells/whistles.

The only thing that kills the performance issue so much in Warhammer is that the MEAT of the game are these large battles... and since I"m now in their end-game battle content... I am lucky to be in the 20+ FPS area. SIGH!!!

 

[Malladine]

Yeah, Warhammer runs well except when there are 40+ people nearby, then it can start to chug a bit. I'd be very curious if quad core helps out or not!

I think some of it is network, but most, imo, is simply the fact that the client system has so many models to render and update all the time. In fast paced PvP I can see this bringing even the fastest PCs down a notch.

 

[sadorc]

Hi i would like to take this time to get a quick poll on members. I'm not sure if i can post this here so if I'm violating the rules mods feel free to delete this post right away, however this is something that has been bugging me so i decided it was time to create an account here and post. Anyways the question at hand is do people think botting sites should be allowed. For example i did a quick search on the net and pulled up right away sites like http://www.mmoviper.com/warhammeronlinebots.php"]WAR Warhammer Online Bots and Radars[/URL] , http://www.tault.com/warhammer-online/"]WAR Warhammer Online Cheats Exploits and Hacks[/URL] , and http://www.taultunleashed.com/...rhammeronline/war.html"]WAR Warhammer Online Guides Secrets and Cheats[/URL] .these sites not only have bots but they have radars that can see players in game. This is something that is totally unfair and gives players far to great of an advantage on others. Well anyways personally i think they should not be allowed as it makes the legit players far underpowered to the overly powerful players. Here is even a screen shot of the radar working that they have on there site it needs to be stopped. [br/][br/]

 

[Elstumpo]

I don't think these cheats should be allowed but I think posting about them is bad too as you are publicising their existence. Just my 2p.

 

[SunnyD]

Nice thread mini-necro Elstumpo. Btw, sadorc, where's my free iPod?

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: Sentry2

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
A buddy of mine plays that game and he typically gets low fps like you describe even with a 3.8Ghz Q9650 and a 1GB 4870 overclocked with 4GB of memory.

There's not much you can do to help it I'm afraid. Hate to sound like a bummer...I've never found an MMO that had a solid FPS all the time no matter what.

Exactly.

Get this... a game as old as Final Fantasy XI Online that I still play came out in 2003 (imagine the best system back then) still drops down to 15fps with the rig in my sig in the towns with HQ shadows on due to everything having to load up and calculate every step by each character and NPC. It comes down the network too slow I guess.

This sounds like one of two things:
1. Buggy crappy engine - nothing to do
2. Network lag (well, the fact it affects you is a sign of a crappy engine though)... killer NIC CLAIMS to help with this, but I have NO IDEA if it will actually help you... worth looking into though

 

[Phew]

Just like you shouldn't upgrade your GPU just for Crysis, don't upgrade your CPU just for WAR. WAR's engine is just craptastically optimized, and no modern hardware makes the game run smoothly during large battles.

I have a quad at 4 GHz (as does the OP), and I still get unplayable framerates in big battles. The game is still very fun, because you can do nothing but nonstop PvP and get all the gear/gold you could ever want. In WoW, you have to spend 2 hrs grinding for gold/rep/mats for every hour spent PvPing just to keep up.