Looking for a new CPU mostly for MMOs

[hooflung]

The reason why you are having heat issues is the Freezer. I have a 940BE and I ran it at first on a Freezer Pro 64, which is the same thing.

You need to get a 120mm cooler, not a 90/92mm one. At the very least you need to sand the Freezer down to a mirror shine with 400 and 600 grit sandpaper with a bit of water on top of a piece of glass. You tube heat sink lapping.

I recommend the Corsair H50/H60 for the Phenom II's personally. Not only is it what I use now but I use them all all 3 of my Phenom II's even a X6.

Also, you shouldn't have any problem running any MMO with that setup. I have played Aion on my rig at max settings with a GTX 260 216 and it screems. My roommate played it on his C2D wolfdale 3.0 with the same card and he didn't have any issues either. You shouldn't be having them.

The biggest problem with MMOs is usually related to Network cards. If you are using a Codec based nic then you could probably get a drop in lag by going to a dedicated NIC like an Intel 100/1000 and if you really, really want to drop some cash you could do a bigfoot ( which won't really help over an intel if you are on Windows 7 or Vista ).

You might want to check out how your packets are being routed in your house network. Make sure QoS of your router is treating the type of packets your MMO games are pushing as a top priority. You can always go get a Sandy Bridge but I don't think you will think the end result was truly worth the upgrade.

 

[Betatest]

If I may ask, what FPS were you getting in a dungeon with 6 peoepl and a big fight going on?

 

[GaiaHunter]

Are you using third party tools (not sure if Aion allows it/people use them), Betatest?

If you are, does disabling them make any difference?

 

[Denithor]

When you talk about your fps slowing down in dungeon with 6-7 people, are you talking it's still moderately smooth with an occasional jerk in the motion or full blown slideshow effect?

Also, do you hear your hard drive chugging in there heavily when this happens?

 

[Betatest]

Addons are not allowed and I think there are not any anyway. I have pretty high FPS being alone/seeing one person, but as soon as I jump in to a party and we do a dungeon and people start casting, hitting my fps drops to something like 30-40. Being alone 65 (as I mention earlier, the game is capped there, it is not cause by vxync).

Edit: I do not hear my HDD at all.

 

[soulsavior]

In my experience, MMOs tend to scale horribly in the performance to visual gain aspect when you crank the settings. Despite the notion most people have of MMOs not requiring much (given you can usually get them running just fine on most anything), they can actually have obscene requirements to get them to run smoothly in a busy town or raid with the settings cranked.

I'd try fiddling with every single setting you can find. You might find you have one or two settings that are stupidly demanding (or just plain bugged) that are killing your FPS. While you're probably CPU limited somewhat, your FPS seem far too low for a standard group setting. A buggy setting or maybe driver seems likely. When I played Aion I got more than playable group FPS with an 8800GTS and a Core 2 Duo. It would choke in cities for sure, but I could group just fine.

 

[Betatest]

When you guys are talking about "just fine in groups" what fps are you actually talking about (if you remember).

I will probably change my settings a little bit, usually "Bloom" is taking a lot of fps, but when I disabled it, my fps did not even move.

 

[sm625]

Hey again, sorry for bothering you guys, but I found out that I have Freezer 7 (it used to be on really really old C2D), should I install it on the cpu or should I get a better one, is the Freezer 7 enough for 3.4GHZ overclock?

Edit: Yeah, I forgot that it can not be installed on anything different then 775.

The reason why you are having heat issues is the Freezer. I have a 940BE and I ran it at first on a Freezer Pro 64, which is the same thing.

Your post not only contradicts the OP, it also conflicts with newegg's 4 star 4700+ reviews. It is true that the 212 is 5 stars, but the Freezer 7 has over 3300 5 star ratings!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...scrollFullInfo

By the way, if you read the reviews of the Freezer 7, there are countless people talking about how great this thing is for their Phenom II X4. Are you sure you cannot use it?

 

[Betatest]

I got the old one (revision one I think), it is not useable on the Phenoms.

 

[sm625]

If you have access to some basic metalworking tools :biggrin:, this link is for you http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-253966.html

 

[cebalrai]

Seriously guys, I ran WoW with a lowly Sempron 2.6 ghz (or was it 2.8?) with a HD 5770 and almost never dropped below 60 fps. And when dips did happen it was to about 45 fps. A Phenom II X4 can run Aion or any other MMO extremely well. Saying that this CPU limits fps in any of these games is pretty ignorant.

Likewise, overclocking is not necessary at all. And bumping cpu speed up a mere 200 mhz will make no difference. It's no solution at all. And the stock cooler is not an issue either unless it's broken. Which it could be, though it's unlikely.

The problem is likely that your CPU is overheating when pushed, and throttling back to 1/3 speed. It's also possible that even when it's not throttling the heat causes it to partially malfunction. And you have folks here convincing you to overclock, which just makes your CPU hotter and reach its throttling temp even faster. It's like you took your car to a mechanic because your engine was overheating and stalling out - and your mechanic said "that's okay, the problem is that you're not driving fast enough!".

Try the following:

1) BIOS corruptions can screw up heat and fan management. I repair PCs and find this to be the culprit for an overheating PC now and again. I'd recommend reinstalling the BIOS. In case you're using an old BIOS the problem could be simply that: it doesn't handle a modern GPU like the 460 well and it screws up something with cooling somewhere.

2) Pull off your heat sink and clean it and the cpu with alcohol. Reapply thermal paste and try again.

3) If these things don't work then try a new cooler.


Good luck!

 

[Betatest]

It is true that I have not updated my BIOS like ever. Could it really make a difference?

 

[cebalrai]

It is true that I have not updated my BIOS like ever. Could it really make a difference?

A huge difference. That could be your problem entirely. Some anecdotes:

- I just fixed a Vaio that was overheating by simply re-writing the BIOS that was already on it. It had gotten corrupted and wasn't ramping up fan speed appropriately.

- When I recently updated my BIOS version on my Dell 1730M laptop my temps dropped by 5 degrees because the new version kicks fan speed up to the next highest level starting at a lower temperature.


Also old BIOSes can be confused by modern GPUs, causing all kinds of problems.

 

[Piano Man]

A big old quad Phenom II can run any MMO ever made at very high settings. You far exceed the recommended specs for Aion with both your CPU and GPU. Also, not sure where you're getting the notion that MMOs need a "beastly" CPU from. They're typically designed for the broadest user base possible, meaning they run well on middling mobile CPUs and even single-core processors. You can easily run WoW at 60 fps on a $28 Sempron @ 2.6 ghz.

If you're getting low fps on that rig it's because you've got malware screwing with your system or some sort of configuration problem.

By the way, what kind of fps are you getting? And is it consistently low or high with lots of dips?

I'd love to see a FPS screenshot of Orgrimmar on your Phenom @ 1080p with all settings on ultra. Right in between the AH and the bank in front would be great. If you get 60 fps, I'll eat my hat.

 

[soccerballtux]

Seriously guys, I ran WoW with a lowly Sempron 2.6 ghz (or was it 2.8?) with a HD 5770 and almost never dropped below 60 fps. And when dips did happen it was to about 45 fps. A Phenom II X4 can run Aion or any other MMO extremely well. Saying that this CPU limits fps in any of these games is pretty ignorant.

Likewise, overclocking is not necessary at all. And bumping cpu speed up a mere 200 mhz will make no difference. It's no solution at all. And the stock cooler is not an issue either unless it's broken. Which it could be, though it's unlikely.

The problem is likely that your CPU is overheating when pushed, and throttling back to 1/3 speed. It's also possible that even when it's not throttling the heat causes it to partially malfunction. And you have folks here convincing you to overclock, which just makes your CPU hotter and reach its throttling temp even faster. It's like you took your car to a mechanic because your engine was overheating and stalling out - and your mechanic said "that's okay, the problem is that you're not driving fast enough!".

Try the following:

1) BIOS corruptions can screw up heat and fan management. I repair PCs and find this to be the culprit for an overheating PC now and again. I'd recommend reinstalling the BIOS. In case you're using an old BIOS the problem could be simply that: it doesn't handle a modern GPU like the 460 well and it screws up something with cooling somewhere.

2) Pull off your heat sink and clean it and the cpu with alcohol. Reapply thermal paste and try again.

3) If these things don't work then try a new cooler.


Good luck!

they completely bloated the WoW engine.

 

[soccerballtux]

I'd love to see a FPS screenshot of Orgrimmar on your Phenom @ 1080p with all settings on ultra. Right in between the AH and the bank in front would be great. If you get 60 fps, I'll eat my hat.

yeah I'll agree with that. I usually got like 20. Don't know if that was CPU or GPU limit.

 

[cebalrai]

I'd love to see a FPS screenshot of Orgrimmar on your Phenom @ 1080p with all settings on ultra. Right in between the AH and the bank in front would be great. If you get 60 fps, I'll eat my hat.

I didn't say I was playing on 1080p

Besides, you'll get fps dips with a Sandy Bridge in those places since the focus isn't on the CPU in the first place.

yeah I'll agree with that. I usually got like 20. Don't know if that was CPU or GPU limit.

A zillion moving polygons rendered? What do you think it is?

 

[Betatest]

I heard BIOS can now be safly updated through windows, is it true, if so, what should I do, I have Gigabite MA770-UD3.

 

[Piano Man]

The point is with my i7 at 4.2GHz and my 5850 OC'd, I do get 45-50fps at those peak Orgimmar times, and I bet if I had a better vid card, it'd be close to 60. So if you want constant 60 fps, you go big or go home.

 

[Betatest]

I seriously can live with 30-40 fps with one million people around me, so thats not really bothering me.

 

[nanaki333]

I heard BIOS can now be safly updated through windows, is it true, if so, what should I do, I have Gigabite MA770-UD3.

go to gigabyte's website and punch in your board and go to the downloads section. there should be a windows based flash tool. it's perfectly fine to flash from windows. i can't remember the last time i did without windows (excluding supermicro).

 

[peonyu]

I don't think the CPU is an issue here as the Phenom II is quite capable of handling any MMO out there and when it comes to games, the general rule to achieve higher FPS is to get a better GPU.

I don't know about MMOs but from what I've heard there are games like APB which needs 4GB of RAM to be playable. The change from DDR2 to DDR3 would hardly make any difference to your FPS so getting more RAM could solve the problem. Another problem could be caused by high latency due to whatever problems your internet has.

MMO's are the exception to the rule, they eat up CPU cycles more than anything once you have a decent GPU. I know in Everquest 2, Age of Conan and WoW, a old Radeon 4850 was overkill and the CPU was the bottleneck.


If the OP only plays mmo's a cpu upgrade would definitely benefit him. In EQ2 when I used to play that, going from a 3.2ghz C2D to a [overclocked] 4.5ghz C2D showed close to a 50% improvement [and that game runs like a dog so the speed gain was needed].

 

[peonyu]

The point is with my i7 at 4.2GHz and my 5850 OC'd, I do get 45-50fps at those peak Orgimmar times, and I bet if I had a better vid card, it'd be close to 60. So if you want constant 60 fps, you go big or go home.

Lower your resolution to the lowest it can go and check your framerate, I bet it wont budge your framerate at all. You would be surprised to see how cpu limited that game is.

All of the other players running around casting random spells for no reason, mounting up, chatting etc is what lowers [cpu] fps at peak time in the cities.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Seriously guys, I ran WoW with a lowly Sempron 2.6 ghz (or was it 2.8?) with a HD 5770 and almost never dropped below 60 fps. And when dips did happen it was to about 45 fps. A Phenom II X4 can run Aion or any other MMO extremely well. Saying that this CPU limits fps in any of these games is pretty ignorant.

Likewise, overclocking is not necessary at all. And bumping cpu speed up a mere 200 mhz will make no difference. It's no solution at all. And the stock cooler is not an issue either unless it's broken. Which it could be, though it's unlikely.

The problem is likely that your CPU is overheating when pushed, and throttling back to 1/3 speed. It's also possible that even when it's not throttling the heat causes it to partially malfunction. And you have folks here convincing you to overclock, which just makes your CPU hotter and reach its throttling temp even faster. It's like you took your car to a mechanic because your engine was overheating and stalling out - and your mechanic said "that's okay, the problem is that you're not driving fast enough!".

Try the following:

1) BIOS corruptions can screw up heat and fan management. I repair PCs and find this to be the culprit for an overheating PC now and again. I'd recommend reinstalling the BIOS. In case you're using an old BIOS the problem could be simply that: it doesn't handle a modern GPU like the 460 well and it screws up something with cooling somewhere.

2) Pull off your heat sink and clean it and the cpu with alcohol. Reapply thermal paste and try again.

3) If these things don't work then try a new cooler.


Good luck!

I dont think you realize how many resources the new expansions made wow use.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Lower your resolution to the lowest it can go and check your framerate, I bet it wont budge your framerate at all. You would be surprised to see how cpu limited that game is.

All of the other players running around casting random spells for no reason, mounting up, chatting etc is what lowers [cpu] fps at peak time in the cities.

This. I have the 5850 and a PII X4 955 @ 3.8Ghz and I get 30-40. The CPU is definetly holding me back.