Looking for a new CPU mostly for MMOs

[Piano Man]

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.

Resolution helps it, but shadow quality is the main killer. Trust me, I've tested WoW with different setups over its 7 year span. I know what it needs to run at max settings no matter what you do. You can't throw old or cheap hardware at it and expect to run it smoothly at maxed settings.

 

[soccerballtux]

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.



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

shitty engine, and supposedly the character movement animations are somewhat computationally intensive

 

[cebalrai]

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

What? No, a beefed-up 3.8 ghz quad Phenom II is not CPU limiting you in WoW. Even with the new expansion. You should probably show some evidence of this before making statements like this.

And if you're getting a putrid 30-40 fps with that rig you have even worse problems than the OP. Here's a bench at Tom's Hardware showing a 2.9 Ghz Llano with lowly HD 6570 pushing out 42.3 fps in WoW in a modern area.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-a8-3850-llano,2975-14.html

Seriously, you can get an adequate experience with a Pentium 4 and Nvidia 8400. And with a 3.8 ghz Phenom + 5850 you should be playing at ultra with small dips under 60 fps.

 

[ed29a]

What? No, a beefed-up 3.8 ghz quad Phenom II is not CPU limiting you in WoW. Even with the new expansion. You should probably show some evidence of this before making statements like this.

And if you're getting a putrid 30-40 fps with that rig you have even worse problems than the OP.

Seriously, you can get an adequate experience with a Pentium 4 and Nvidia 8400. And with a 3.8 ghz Phenom + 5850 you should be playing at ultra with small dips under 60 fps.

My good sir, my 3.0 ghz Phenom II, 8 GB of RAM, Twin Frozr II GTX 560 Ti gets around 30-32 fps in Orgrimmar. So his 30-40 fps makes sense since his CPU is 800 MHZ beefier. So yes, a beefed up quad Phenom II is limiting him, me and others.

 

[Skiprudder]

One of the things that jumped out in my eyes was the mention of framerate drops in large fights. MMOs have to load and manage everybody else's characters so they are particularly sensitive to both amounts of ram and hdd/ssd speeds. I'm running an SSD currently and my partner has yet to install his--Otherwise we have identical systems. There are areas and fights in WoW where he'll be chunking and having fps issues and I'll be just fine. I would consider both more ram (after all it's so cheap now) and perhaps an SSD first.

Oh if you're curious I'm running a C2Q 6700 CPU, Radeon 4850 1GB, OCZ Vertex 2 SSD, and 6GB DDR2, so hardly cutting edge. I won't say I'm always at 60fps (I keep vsync on) but I usually am.

 

[cebalrai]

My good sir, my 3.0 ghz Phenom II, 8 GB of RAM, Twin Frozr II GTX 560 Ti gets around 30-32 fps in Orgrimmar. So his 30-40 fps makes sense since his CPU is 800 MHZ beefier. So yes, a beefed up quad Phenom II is limiting him, me and others.

How do you know you're not GPU limited more than CPU limited?

Regardless, the OP's fps woes are not confined to Orgrimmar at all. It's kind of silly to say that his problem is that a Phenom II X4 3.0 is just too slow to play an Aion or WoW battle without losing half of his frames. (not that you're saying that necessarily).

What we know is that his CPU is too hot. I think that's key. Also he's running 8X Anti-aliasing which is an incredibly tall order. When effects start going off the engine has to throw mass resources to make all those halos and polygons smoothed-out. And that puts a ton of pressure on the GPU. (psst, dude, drop it back to 4x or 2x!)

 

[Betatest]

I tried to disable the AA x8 and it made no difference at all

 

[cebalrai]

I tried to disable the AA x8 and it made no difference at all

Ok try this. Watch your heat and cpu frequency when you're in a big battle that gives your computer problems. Look for your frequency to throttle down when your heat gets too high. Report back with your findings.

I built (stock cooling) Athlon II X3 (Rana) 3.0 ghz last year and overclocked it to 3.65 ghz for gaming. When heat levels got around 62-63, the CPU frequency would throttle back to about 900 mhz and drop the voltage for a bit until temperatures dropped. It killed my performance. The solution was to drop it it back to 3.46 where it would peak at about 60 degrees and never throttle, even when all cores were 100% during Prime 95.

Each cpu is a little different though. Here's something from a Phenom II X4 940 BE saying maximum temperature is 62 degrees: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/phenomii940/

Poking around forums shows folks saying these things throttle at 65 degrees. If you're running at 67+ degrees I'd say that's your problem.

 

[Betatest]

I was never above 62, only when I overclocked it to 3.2, on 3.0 I am usually at 60-62 tops.

 

[Bryf50]

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?

That's not true. WoW as it is today would run like shit on a single-core 2.6ghz Sempron. Maybe it would be acceptable for solo questing but step into a city or 25 man raid and prepare for your fps to plummet. My upgrade from a q6600@3ghz to the rig in my sig made a big difference. Going from 20-30 fps in major cities to 40-50 fps.

 

[cebalrai]

That's not true. WoW as it is today would run like shit on a single-core 2.6ghz Sempron. Maybe it would be acceptable for solo questing but step into a city or 25 man raid and prepare for your fps to plummet. My upgrade from a q6600@3ghz to the rig in my sig made a big difference. Going from 20-30 fps in major cities to 40-50 fps.

Semprons, P4s, etc all run WoW perfectly fine still when paired with a middling GPU. I fix computers on a military base in Japan where half of what I see is gaming computers used by young military guys. I'm telling you, they're playing WoW pretty well on the same machines they were playing WoW on in 2006. They might not have all the effects turned up but they don't feel the need to upgrade from their P4 and GeForce 8700.

A Phenom II X4 BE is certainly not going to be a problem.

I was never above 62, only when I overclocked it to 3.2, on 3.0 I am usually at 60-62 tops.

Did you update your BIOS yet? Looks like your board has had four different updates. It's worth a shot.

 

[Betatest]

What kind of revison should I download, I am kinda confused here, on the box and on the MB it says revision 2.0, but there are not any bios updated for that.

 

[cebalrai]

What kind of revison should I download, I am kinda confused here, on the box and on the MB it says revision 2.0, but there are not any bios updated for that.

Oops you have rev 2.0. In that case there are a whopping EIGHT bios updates. And also your Phenom isn't supported until the sixth one. I'd say there's a very real chance your motherboard doesn't know how to handle your cpu right now.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3097#

Make sure you click Download type: BIOS and not driver.

 

[dawp]

betatest, did you say what your room temperatures are?

 

[cebalrai]

betatest, did you say what your room temperatures are?

He can't answer because he just bricked his board.

I think he said around 62.

 

[ed29a]

How do you know you're not GPU limited more than CPU limited?

Because a lot of people ran tests. WoW is very CPU pegged, like every other MMO. Go read this. My good sir, you don't have to take my word for it. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your blathering about how the Phenom II is God's gift to WoW players.

Regardless, the OP's fps woes are not confined to Orgrimmar at all.

I can't talk for him, for me, when the number of people goes up in a relatively small area (BGs, Raids, capital cities), my FPS takes a nosedive. I know, I know ... it must be some other thing like the color of the PCB of my motherboard or some planetary alignment that causes the lag.

It's kind of silly to say that his problem is that a Phenom II X4 3.0 is just too slow to play an Aion or WoW battle without losing half of his frames. (not that you're saying that necessarily).

Too slow to play? No, too slow with maximum settings? In some cases yes.

Your rabid fanboism makes us AMD fans look like idiots. The only difference between you and Nemesis1 is that I can actually understand your posts.

 

[Betatest]

Right now, around 20 celsia, but since it is summer it is usually way hotter, so I would say around 27 celsia if it really really hot.

And yeah, I used to play WoW for the last 5 years and with the Phenom I was pretty satasfied, I do not really care what kind of fps I have in Orgrimmar, I really do not since I do not spend much time here anyway, but in 10 man raids my FPS was always above 50, dungeons were about the same, can not remember exactly.

To sum it up, I need a new cpu.

 

[sm625]

Tens of thousands of people do raids with significantly less hardware than a Phenom II X4. Hell I bet there are 20000 who raid with a Pentium 4. There has to be some sort of reasonable compromise you can make on the settings. Either that or "buy a 2600k" lol.

 

[Herald85]

I may have missed this in between the "lol WoW needs CPU" "lol no it doesn't!"... BUT Betatest have you tried running OCCT CPU test and checking the logs?

 

[peonyu]

Resolution helps it, but shadow quality is the main killer. Trust me, I've tested WoW with different setups over its 7 year span. I know what it needs to run at max settings no matter what you do. You can't throw old or cheap hardware at it and expect to run it smoothly at maxed settings.

Your not the only one who has played it since release, I had a few different setups at times aswell and the CPU is almost always the bottleneck with a few exceptions.

-boss fights, if your camera is facing the boss and you have a weak gpu then it will bog down from all the spells hitting him.
-having a hundred or so people casting spells all in view
-shadows hit the fps a tad, but most people turn it off regardless since its not really worth it [for me atleast]

Besides those instances your cpu is the limit almost all the time. Its most obvious in cities since even at a auctioneer the fps will be low at peak times, and the gpu isn't rendering much staring at a wall, its the cpu slowing it down by processing all of the people running around in the area.

 

[Betatest]

OCCT CPU test, what should I look for there, at the temperatures or what exactly?

And again, I did not have any real problems with WoW, I do understand that my CPU is not good enough to have 60 fps constant in 25 raids, when I used to play WoW which was like 5 months ago (I used to have GTS 250 512mb), I used to have 50-60 in 10 raids looking at all the effects, I did have shadows off.

 

[pkilway01]

You rig is fine, but I can tell you from experience that having your shadows turned on is a HUGE resource hog. That is what's causing your low frame rates. I bet if you turn them off, you'll never drop below 50fps no matter where you go or how many toons are there.

Not sure if having shadows turned on is worth needing to buy a new system....

 

[mike204]

I made a thread about overclocking too and i just want to say, i have a 955 BE and i set the multiplier to x18 without changing the voltage and it worked fine. Here are a guys tests that helped me decide what to do.
http://forums.amd.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=319&threadid=148884

Youd want an aftermarket cooler though

i have gigabyte mobo so the BIOS might be a little different, not sure what you have.

 

[cebalrai]

Because a lot of people ran tests. WoW is very CPU pegged, like every other MMO. Go read this. My good sir, you don't have to take my word for it. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your blathering about how the Phenom II is God's gift to WoW players.

Rather than taking my opinion and exaggerating it into something not even I would agree with, why not say something rational?

I can't talk for him...

Nope. Wait, you realize the OP is talking mostly about Aion, right? And says he doesn't have problems with WoW? He also has some fishy problems like never dropping below 60 fps when soloing...

Too slow to play? No, too slow with maximum settings? In some cases yes.

That Tom's article (which I read the day it came out and have bookmarked), says that a big issue with most AMD processors is that in WoW, they don't allow high-end GPUs (ie the GeForce 480) to "stretch their legs". The OP has a lesser GPU, therefore it matters less. If you're willing to turn off things such as shadows it matters even less.

Incidntally, their testing showed a Phenom II X6 3.3 with two cores turned off pushing out 58 fps on ultra at 1680 x 1050. While that's iX performance, it's close enough to 60 fps.

Your rabid fanboism makes us AMD fans look like idiots. The only difference between you and Nemesis1 is that I can actually understand your posts.

Now I'm a "rabid fanboi"? Shh! Don't tell my gaming rig... Or the community I haunt here (http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...al-dell-xps-m1730-owners-lounge-part-4-a.html) where we discuss our beloved Beasties (C2 Extremes).

 

[ed29a]

bla bla bla.

My good sir, I know reading comprehension is very hard. I was directly referring to this stellar post of yours that was a direct comment about WoW. With great gems like " And with a 3.8 ghz Phenom + 5850 you should be playing at ultra with small dips under 60 fps.". I and a few others have called you out on your silly claims, and backed it up with facts. You on the other hand, claim some benchmark with a Llano CPU, details set to 'Good' and AA, to 1. Hardly 'Ultra' and even that had only reached 42 FPS. Now crank details up to 'Ultra' and come back with a straight face and tell us again that the FPS won't dip below 60 on a quad Phenom II. Ironically, your benchmarks prove our points. As someone else said, get a Phenom II quad, max out details, get in front of the AH and if you reach 60 FPS, I'll eat my own Phenom. Just for shits and giggles, I was staring at a wall, no graphic movement at all, my viewpoints was straight looking at a wall and my FPS was still 40ish.