Quad vs Dual Wolfdale

[Meldryn]

Hey all, I'm looking at my next hardware refresh, and I am stuck on the Quad vs. Dual question.

All I use my rig for currently is high-end WoW raiding, which taxes my current rig heavily. What I'm looking for, which might be wishful thinking, is someone who has experience of dual vs quad performance in WoW raiding, whether its a significant improvment or just meh.

Before everyone jumps on this about how WoW is an old game and any old rig should run it smooth, my current rig runs 2g of ram with a 165 opty at stock with a X1900XTX, which was a very good rig of two years ago, two years after WoW's release.

With this current rig, I get down to 5 fps for boss fights, which really affects the playability.

Any insight is appreciated!

P.S. ~ I'm leaning toward an E8400 in an Abit IP35 Pro, with 2x2g of DDR2, running 400x9 for a 3.6g nice stable overclock.

 

[Jax Omen]

quads do nothing for WoW. Hell, duals do nothing for WoW - the game is singlethreaded. Which is probably why your old opty struggles, as it's a slower-clocked dualie and WoW was designed for a higher-clocked single core.



Yes, E8400 would offer you a huge improvement over your current CPU, P35 is a very good chipset, and 2x2GB DDR2 800 is currently the king of capacity/value. You've solved your own problem.

 

[Tempered81]

make sure you put a 8800gts 512 or two with your e8400/e7200/q6600/q9450, the 1900xtx is slowing you down as well.

 

[Jax Omen]

not for WoW it isn't.

My girlfriend's old 7600GS was able to run WoW at a solid 60FPS with every setting except AA turned up all the way. His 1900XTX is fine.

 

[Meldryn]

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
quads do nothing for WoW. Hell, duals do nothing for WoW - the game is singlethreaded. Which is probably why your old opty struggles, as it's a slower-clocked dualie and WoW was designed for a higher-clocked single core.

I suspected this was the case. The only posts I could find said that WoW only offloads the sound subsystem to another core in recent patches. Everything else runs on a single core.

Originally posted by: Jax Omen
Yes, E8400 would offer you a huge improvement over your current CPU, P35 is a very good chipset, and 2x2GB DDR2 800 is currently the king of capacity/value. You've solved your own problem.

:beer:

Originally posted by: jaredpace
make sure you put a 8800gts 512 or two with your e8400/e7200/q6600/q9450, the 1900xtx is slowing you down as well.

Two would take an SLI board right? If so, whats the best cost/performance SLI board/chipset out right now? What about 8800gt vs 8800gts?

Thanks for the quick and helpful replies!

 

[Tempered81]

two takes an sli board, yeap.

i'd take a p35 & 8800gt with an e8400 (because this is the exact system i used to own, and i loved it)

If you can afford it, 2x 8800gts 512 SLI on 750/790/680.

8800gt will do you just fine with a new cpu for WOW, as jax says...

 

[bryanW1995]

that x1900xtx should still be fine for WOW...

 

[Jax Omen]

SLI is completely overkill for WoW. Seriously, unless you have other games that need the graphics horsepower, your X1900XTX is completely fine, don't waste the money.

 

[Meldryn]

:thumbsup:Thanks for the input, everyone! Sounds like my original choices were solid. For now I'll stick with the processor and memory upgrade, then possibly make an incremental upgrade to an 8800(whatever) when the need arises!

 

[bryanW1995]

I strongly recommend the 8800wtf if/when you do upgrade.