Looking for a new CPU mostly for MMOs

[Betatest]

I installed another fan that is directly blowing air to my CPU and ever since I never went above 57C. Even after that, I do not see any huge difference, I have not played Aion, but I played a lot of WoW and it is pretty much the same. I just think that I really expect way too much out of my old Phenom.

 

[Betatest]

Hey again, so I finally ordered Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus and I read somewhere that it is possible that you can add one more 120x120 fan to it, so can throw Thermaltake tt 1225 in it, if yeah, will it have any effect on the temps?

Thanks

 

[Blue Shift]

That cooler allows you to install a 120mm fan on each side. This is an advertised product feature. Arrange them in a push/pull configuration (both fans directed the same way, towards the exhaust fan on your case) to potentially increase airflow across the fins.

A good rule of thumb for fans: The branding sticker on the hub of a case fan is usually on the exhaust side.

There's conflicting information online as to how much this helps. You'll find out for yourself soon enough!

(Sorry, I was assuming zero knowledge. Use whatever information is actually relevant to you.)

 

[Betatest]

It wont be me installing it, I will give it to a guy I know, I will ask him if he can add one more fan to it.

 

[RussianSensation]

I think this can all be summed up by saying get a new CPU cooler. Its about 30$ to answer all your questions.

It boggles my mind how this excellent advice was ignored for 7 pages! It really puzzles me that people spend $200-300 on a CPU, $100-200 on a mobo, case + PSU, $150-250 on videocards and then save $20-30 on a good CPU cooler which actually allows you to extract another 30-40% of "free" CPU performance. Glad this is sorted out now.

=================================================
Anyway, the amount of misinformation in this thread is ridiculous (considering we are on a hardware forum).

1. To diagnose your problem all it takes is a CPU overclock + a GPU overclock on the GTX460 and lowering visual quality settings. GTX460 has a 35% overclocking headroom (900 should be easily doable). If none of these steps are even remotely affecting FPS, then it's probably server/internet lag or other issues not related to hardware (i.e., drivers/ OS, spamware, virus, etc.). Or, you aren't using scientific methods to measure your FPS and are simply measuring them by "eye" in which case that's not a reliable method.

2. I am having a hard time believing that 8AA is not affecting performance at all in some of the games you listed. In fact, you claiming that you turning off AA has no effect on performance is impossible since WOW still scales with GPUs even at 4AA, nevermind 8AA.

3. GPUs don't matter in MMOs? What a bunch of BS. Look at the performance difference between AMD and NV in WOW:

DX11 Performance in WOW
@ 1920x1200 4AA, you would need nothing less than a GTX560 Ti to get > 60 fps min. That's not even testing the worst case scenario. The GTX560 Ti is 31% faster at 8AA at this resolution on average than a GTX460. But even a GTX560 Ti won't get 60 fps minimum with 8AA in WoW. You'd need a GTX580. In other words, the chance of you getting 60 fps minimums at all times in WOW with 8AA, everything on high with a GTX460 is 0.

5. Let's take a look at Starcraft II's GPU dependence:

GTX460 can only manage 39 fps average and 29 fps min at 1920x1200 4AA. And people in this thread are shocked that this game dips into 20-30 fps range? It's going to take GTX470 in SLI, no less to maintain 60 fps in SC2 at 4AA, not 8AA in heavy battles, that is if the CPU can manage.

So what kind of a CPU would you need then? In SC2, even at 1920x1200 Ultra, Core i7 920 3.7ghz is 60% faster than Phenom II X4 3.8ghz. However, not even a Core i7 3.7ghz can give you the magical 60 fps minimum frame rate at all times. So again, SC2 dipping into 20-30 fps with OPs CPU and GPU is perfectly normal.

6. As a side note, I don't understand what the big deal of having dips to 30-40 fps in SC2 or WOW. Neither of these games is a FPS or a racing game. It's simply not necessary to have 60 fps for smooth gameplay in either of these games.

In conclusion, it probably pays attention to do some research before jumping to assertions that a $130 GTX460 is supposed to be able to run some of these games at 60 fps minimum with 8AA (In some cases not even an HD5970 can pull that off in these games). The situation is exacerbated by using a CPU that has a 50% instruction per clock deficit vs. a quad core Sandy Bridge system in game engines that don't utilize more than 2 threads.

My system with an i5 750 @ 3 Ghz and 5770 bounces around between 30 and 60 fps on Ultra with the same settings (1680x1050) (we both have VSYNC on)

Why would you have V-Sync on in an MMO, and yet expect a constant 60 fps? If you have this setting on, a single FPS fall from 60 is sending you straight down from 60 to 30 fps. This isn't Quake 3 Arena at 400 FPS where you get texture tearing where V-Sync helps. I see no reason for V-Sync in a strategy or an MMO game.

 

[Bryf50]

Why would you have V-Sync on in an MMO, and yet expect a constant 60 fps? If you have this setting on, a single FPS fall from 60 is sending you straight down from 60 to 30 fps. This isn't Quake 3 Arena at 400 FPS where you get texture tearing where V-Sync helps. I see no reason for V-Sync in a strategy or an MMO game.

I'm pretty sure this hasn't been a problem in a long time thanks to triple buffering.

 

[Cerb]

2. I am having a hard time believing that 8AA is not affecting performance at all in some of the games you listed. In fact, you claiming that you turning off AA has no effect on performance is impossible since WOW still scales with GPUs even at 4AA, nevermind 8AA.

AA is only free in low-res video card review benchmarks. The IQ improvement for the performance hit tends to be immense, but it's almost always measurable, and often enough of a difference to feel, as well.

5. Let's take a look at Starcraft II's GPU dependence:

That's not SCII's GPU dependence. That's ultra quality level's CPU and GPU dependence. There are more detail levels, and most people should not be using ultra.

Why would you have V-Sync on in an MMO, and yet expect a constant 60 fps? If you have this setting on, a single FPS fall from 60 is sending you straight down from 60 to 30 fps. This isn't Quake 3 Arena at 400 FPS where you get texture tearing where V-Sync helps. I see no reason for V-Sync in a strategy or an MMO game.

Vsync is necessary regardless of the framerate, and regardless of the type of game. Tearing will occur in any situation where the framerate does not both exactly match the refresh rate, and in which each frame is entirely written between one frame being displayed and the next. I personally don't get why vsync+triple-buffering is not a default.

 

[Betatest]

Also, I would like to ask if I wont run in to PSU problems when I OC the II 940 to something like 3.4GHZ, I have AC 550W (500W) Bulk.

 

[soccerballtux]

Also, I would like to ask if I wont run in to PSU problems when I OC the II 940 to something like 3.4GHZ, I have AC 550W (500W) Bulk.

no you'll be fine.

You should be able to get higher than 3.4ghz if you have the cooling to handle it.
Don't forget to overclock the CPU-NB frequency as well, this helps immensely with minimum framerates (in WoW to be specific, I reinstalled and benchmarked again because of this thread and found the framerate dips were almost nonexistent when running cpu-nb at 2.7ghz up from 2.0ghz stock where there was stuttering in the opening cinematic)

edit: your hyper 212 cooler should be plenty for taking the chip to the max. I believe you will be able to hit 3.7ghz, should give you about an extra 15-20% FPS in Ogrimar. I went from 34ish fps to ~40fps when going from 3.5ghz to 4.2ghz

 

[Betatest]

I have no idea what CPU-NB is, but I will do it, I should have the cooler installed tomorrow, so I will give it a shot, I will post here again once I get back home with the cooler installed.

 

[ieatdonuts]

Vsync and triple buffering should never be the default. It creates input lag. I'd take minor tearing any day over input lag.

No one in their right mind would play any Quake game with vsync on. You want the fps to go as high as it can - QL is capped at 125.

 

[RussianSensation]

That's not SCII's GPU dependence. That's ultra quality level's CPU and GPU dependence. There are more detail levels, and most people should not be using ultra.

My point was that the expectation of constant 60 fps with no drops to 20-30 fps in the games the OP plays with everything maxed is completely unrealistic with his hardware. He is both GPU and CPU bottlenecked if he wants such high performance.

Also, why shouldn't most people be maxing out SC2? It looks better in Ultra, as long as you have the hardware

 

[yottabit]

Why would you have V-Sync on in an MMO, and yet expect a constant 60 fps? If you have this setting on, a single FPS fall from 60 is sending you straight down from 60 to 30 fps. This isn't Quake 3 Arena at 400 FPS where you get texture tearing where V-Sync helps. I see no reason for V-Sync in a strategy or an MMO game.

Not me, I personally don't mind the uneven frame rates for the benefits of VSYNC. My friend is the one that expected a constant 60 FPS with VSYNC and we built his system to suit ( 2500k @ 4 Ghz, 5850 overclocked, etc) Even then we had to turn down shadow quality. For reference though I'm sure there are areas in WoW where my FPS would go into the several hundreds without VSYNC.

 

[yottabit]

My point was that the expectation of constant 60 fps with no drops to 20-30 fps in the games the OP plays with everything maxed is completely unrealistic with his hardware. He is both GPU and CPU bottlenecked if he wants such high performance.

Also, why shouldn't most people be maxing out SC2? It looks better in Ultra, as long as you have the hardware

This is exactly the point I am trying to make- there's a huge difference between playing a game acceptably and playing a game PERFECTLY, and even for a tame game like WoW if you really want to play it perfectly you need to pay the big bucks. Even moreso for SC2

Playing SC2 campaign on Ultra is fine for most people, but Ultra in 4v4s and big FFA games late game will cripple a lot of systems. Custom games with tons of units even worse

 

[Aikouka]

My point was that the expectation of constant 60 fps with no drops to 20-30 fps in the games the OP plays with everything maxed is completely unrealistic with his hardware. He is both GPU and CPU bottlenecked if he wants such high performance.

Also, why shouldn't most people be maxing out SC2? It looks better in Ultra, as long as you have the hardware

I've played WoW for a very long time, and I agree. MMOs can be very undemanding when you're doing very little and very little is happening around you. Once people start slinging their fireballs of doom and such is when you start getting into the nasty stuff like particle effects that really drag down a system.

A good example of this was back in Icecrown Citadel with Lord Marrowgar on normal versus heroic. His heroic encounter made his fire patches persist for... I think three times longer than normal. Because of this, you would have a lot more fire on the ground than you would in normal mode. My framerate was easily 10-15 FPS lower on that encounter just because of all the particle effects from the fire.

You should change your settings to meet your expectations in the most common worst case scenario. In other words, if you usually are with 5 people at once, make sure your settings are good for that. If once in a blue moon you're around 25 people and the performance isn't great, I wouldn't sweat it too much... it's rare. Unless you absolutely need to perform well in that scenario too.

EDIT:

When I played the Aion free trial, I actually had to turn my settings down with my system (i5-2500k, 8GB DDR3-1600, Radeon 6950 @ 1920x1200) as it would play between 20 and 30 FPS. I was playing in windowed mode though.

 

[Makaveli]

This is exactly the point I am trying to make- there's a huge difference between playing a game acceptably and playing a game PERFECTLY, and even for a tame game like WoW if you really want to play it perfectly you need to pay the big bucks. Even moreso for SC2

Playing SC2 campaign on Ultra is fine for most people, but Ultra in 4v4s and big FFA games late game will cripple a lot of systems. Custom games with tons of units even worse

I play 3vs3's and 4vs4 in ultra in multiplayer and it requires an I7+high performance videocard to keep the frame rate up.

On my current config I previously had a 4890 and that struggled in those custom multiplayer maps with a new unlocked 6950 its runs great.

 

[RussianSensation]

I play 3vs3's and 4vs4 in ultra in multiplayer and it requires an I7+high performance videocard to keep the frame rate up.

On my current config I previously had a 4890 and that struggled in those custom multiplayer maps with a new unlocked 6950 its runs great.

Ya, HD48xx series couldn't handle SC2 well at all, esp. with AA on.

I remember I was still using a 6600 non-GT, paired with an E6400 @ 3.4ghz, and was easily playing Warcraft 3 with everything on high (minus AA). Then around Feb 2007, I bought my 8800 GTS 320mb and later upgraded to a Q6600 @ 3.4ghz. I was thinking that I'll have no problems maxing out Starcraft 2 with AA when it comes out at 1080P. haha, boy was I wrong.

Since then I've upgraded to 4890 --> GTX470 --> HD6970 and ditched the Q6600 for an i7. And I bet I can still get way more performance out with 2500k @ 4.5ghz+ as Blizzard games love fast IPC processors like SB.

 

[soccerballtux]

I have no idea what CPU-NB is, but I will do it, I should have the cooler installed tomorrow, so I will give it a shot, I will post here again once I get back home with the cooler installed.

btw don't want to get your hopes up, I am simply referring to dips, IE if you're running 60 fps now and then for some reason it stutters down to 30fps due to rendering (but not due to the harddrive loading...that can't be helped), these stutters will be down to like 50fps instead.

 

[Betatest]

No worries, I am not expecting any super mega improvement, but anything small is good.

 

[soccerballtux]

cool. when will you be oc'ing? Keep us update!

 

[GaiaHunter]

Since then I've upgraded to 4890 --> GTX470 --> HD6970 and ditched the Q6600 for an i7. And I bet I can still get way more performance out with 2500k @ 4.5ghz+ as Blizzard games love fast IPC processors like SB.

What you mean is Blizzard games are heavily optimized for core i architecture, probably making use of all instructions available for core i that are absent from both Phenom II and Core 2 architectures.

If a game is CPU power starved raising the clocks by 22% and getting 8% increase doesn't show much CPU dependence.

And fast IPC simply means at similar speed, more instructions are processed, increasing performance.

If processor X has 1 IPC and processor Y has 1.5 IPC, but processor X is clocked @4GHz and processor Y is clocked @2GHz, processor x still offers higher performance, although requiring much higher clocks.

 

[Betatest]

Okay, got it finally installed, overclocked it right away to 3.4GHZ, idle 35-37C, full load in OCCT 50C. If I want to get up the North Bridge, do I have to increase voltage?

 

[sm625]

Wow looks like you have plenty of room to increase clocks. I think you should try for 3.8GHz before tweaking the northbridge. Passmark can help tell you how much difference it makes when you OC your northbridge. I think every 500MHz on the northbridge OC is roughly equal to about 100MHz on the cpu when it comes to passmark scores.

 

[Betatest]

Okay, if I want to go over 3.5GHZ I have to increas voltage right, is there any guide showing how much do I have to increase it or does anybody know or do I have to find out by myself?

 

[soccerballtux]

What you mean is Blizzard games are heavily optimized for core i architecture, probably making use of all instructions available for core i that are absent from both Phenom II and Core 2 architectures.

If a game is CPU power starved raising the clocks by 22% and getting 8% increase doesn't show much CPU dependence.

And fast IPC simply means at similar speed, more instructions are processed, increasing performance.

If processor X has 1 IPC and processor Y has 1.5 IPC, but processor X is clocked @4GHz and processor Y is clocked @2GHz, processor x still offers higher performance, although requiring much higher clocks.

Do you konw what instructions does Intel have that AMD doesn't?