WoW: Cataclysm Benchmarks!

[RussianSensation]

The 750 costs... $200. So I guess you're saying there are no processors worth buying between $100-$200. Interesting.

You can still buy an i5 760 for $169.99 at Microcenter. Otherwise, no I don't think there are any processors worth buying between $100-200 on the Intel or AMD side if you are building a new system from scratch to last you 2 years or so and pairing it with a $300+ GPU. In the grand scheme that would mean a system of $700 vs. $800 for example, which is only a 14% price difference. However, a Core i5 760 @ 4.0ghz would be faster by a lot more than 14% compared to an Athlon II X4 @ 4.0ghz.

The gaming results for WoW just highlight why pairing a top of the line GPU with an AMD processor is like gambling. Current AMD CPUs are great for 80% of popular games, but in the 20% of other games they perform very poorly. Mind you I think Athlon XP+ and A64 were both superior to Intel; so this is another reason I have been frustrated with AMD's offerings since 2006 🙁

The Phenom II X6 @ 3.7ghz is stuck at 60 fps while when paired with an i7 @ 3.7ghz, they get 94.42 (+57% increase).
The Athlon II X4 @ 3.0ghz is stuck at 44 fps (so that's a 115% deficit!)

 

[SmCaudata]

I was building a computer for someone and was able to get the following

AMD CPU $99
AMD MOBO $87 (this has features that are found on $200 intel motherboards)
6870 $215

If I would have gone Intel on the same budget it would have been
i5 760 $160
Motherboard $120
Video Card $125


I think the system I built is MUCH better for gaming and will last longer as 6 months down the road I can drop in a 6core part for cheap to buy a few more years. Also note that the AMD board above has USB3 and SATA6 and Crossfire.


I think we all agree that Intel has the more powerful parts right now. But if you are on a limited budget you are MUCH better off dumping the money into the vid card. Heck, If I would have had $50 more I still would have gone AMD as the $150 AMD cpu would make that system better than the Intel system with the $175 vid card.

Overall WoW (and any MMORPGs) are really the exception. They tend to be much more CPU limited than most games. If you are playing MMORPGS then you may be better off with the Intel setup and a cheaper vid card. Also, the CPU limited games would often be 60fps vs 90fps with the more powerful processor. If you have a strong vid card I cannot think of any new games where the extra $100 for an Intel setup means the difference between unplayable and playable.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

I heard chicks that play WoW ONLY date guys with the highest FPS. Well that and the ones that go outside.

 

[Wreckage]

I heard chicks that play WoW ONLY date guys with the highest FPS. Well that and the ones that go outside.

Not true. These days it's all about the gear score. :awe:





EDIT: For those who don't play the game
http://www.wowwiki.com/Gear_score

 

[vshin]

it's character models are in a need of an update though, they are kind of blocky.

This is intentional. In fact they actually reduced the poly count on the models a while back for performance reasons. When 300 people are fighting each other in huge battles, it can bring a $1k Gulftown to its knees.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

The gaming results for WoW just highlight why pairing a top of the line GPU with an AMD processor is like gambling. Current AMD CPUs are great for 80% of popular games, but in the 20% of other games they perform very poorly.

I believe you mean poorly in relation to Intel's quad cores. If I'm looking at the WoW scores, a Phenom II still gets 60 fps. That doesn't seem like poor performance for the end user.

I also question the methodology of that article. It seems like they use a different test for the core scaling. The Intel six-core processor isn't even listed on their Crushbow test, and if you look at the AMD tests their X6 at 3.7 GHz in Crushbow reports lower frames than the Phenom II X6 at 3.3 Ghz in the core scaling test.

It doesn't seem very thorough, and they leave out a legitimate Phenom II X4 as well. A Phenom II X2 and X3 would have been nice, and have the chart show both AMD and Intel processors. Also testing at higher resolutions and with different video cards would be the ultimate way, as in the Alienbabel link you will see there are some instances where CPU performance rankings change depending on the resolution and type of video card being used.

 

[Seero]

How is this relevant? WoW's graphics are ****.

"It" really depends on your "level of playing" and "what" do you "play".

The Craft of War: BLIND

 

[96Firebird]

A 250$ vs a 400$ card... again naturally the 480 wins. (150$ for ~15 more fps)
480 - 89.48
5870 - 73.82

the 470 is a bit more expensive than a 6870, so natural its abit ahead.
470 - 73.58
6870 - 68.88

Same price range right? both get almost full 60fps avg. rates. 6850 might be a tad bit cheaper.
460 - 59.92
6850 - 58.63

Why do you choose to quote sale prices (after MIR) for some cards, but not others? As it stands today, cheapest cards on Newegg...

GTX 480 - $370 w/$30 MIR
HD5870 - $260 w/$30 MIR

GTX 470 - $230 w/$20 MIR
HD6870 - $225 w/$25 MIR

GTX 460 1GB - $160 w/$20 MIR
HD6850 - $180 w/$15 MIR

So, you should probably either quote sale prices for all cards or no cards.

 

[Arkadrel]

96firebird where did you find a 460 1gb for 160$? SE version?

*edit:
just saw the zotac one non se version, yeah 180$ -20$ MIR, that is a crazy good offer for it.


gigantic pic insert:

at 20$ differnce, the 460 is a better buy than the 6850.
3-4% performance on avg isnt worth 20$ price differnce.

 

[grimpr]

Wow, some shady coding going on by Blizzard. A dual core i3 beats AMD's 6-core 1100T?

Also, what's with the CPU scaling w/ respect to cores on the AMDs? Going from 3->4 cores and 4->5 cores nets you no performance improvement, but adding a 6th core you magically get more performance? There also aren't any graphs showing CPU utilization during the benchmark. I recall back in my WoW days I was CPU limited but they were only running at ~40% load.

I'm not impressed with their "optimizations", this reeks of them pandering to Intel. Kinda like the Blue Moderators on the forums saying things like "and if you have an Intel CPU you get a bonus called "turbo mode" which makes some cores on the CPU go faster!" All the while quad core CPUs were sitting unutilized.

We need Conroe/Penryn cpu scores on this game. Something tells me that Blizzard forgot to use the optimal codepath on Core 2... 😀

The gap will only get wider from those companies using Intels tools.

http://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/va-magazine/issue-06/articles/starcraft-blizzard/

 

[borisvodofsky]

Guys,, OMG,, it's freaking WOW,, it's never ever "looked" good,, only when you're 3 weeks wow deprived, and lonely, and popping pills.

Who cares what fps it runs at.. it's still butt ugly compared to today's Eye-candy standards.

 

[Seero]

Guys,, OMG,, it's freaking WOW,, it's never ever "looked" good,, only when you're 3 weeks wow deprived, and lonely, and popping pills.

Who cares what fps it runs at.. it's still butt ugly compared to today's Eye-candy standards.

Lol, really? What MMOs do you play?

 

[Arkadrel]

What would the best looking MMOs be?
AoC? Aion? FFXIV?

 

[sao123]

wish they would have included a Q9550 Quad core as a reference in the benchmark, but looks like its time to go from a gtx260c216 to a gtx570/470

 

[Piano Man]

Keep in mind that this benchmark is just a flying sequence and not an actual raid environment and/or capital city during peak hours. While there are some zones in cata that are pretty intensive on both cpu/gpu, they just don't compare with big battles and capital cities.

With that said, nV has always had the advantage in WoW. During Vanilla and TBC, there were all sorts of performance issues with ATI, and that's simply because they didn't test with ATI cards, and I even remember them admitting to that at one point before they started doing ATI testing.. Now things are pretty close in the $/fps category, but if you want 60 FPS for everything that this game will throws at you with max settings, you are going to need a monster card and a highly OC'd i7 chip.

Even my 5850 overclocked dips to the 30s during crazy sequences, and thats with an i7 at 4.2 GHz.

 

[Throckmorton]

Earlier this year I rebought Everquest on Steam and noticed something... the Luclin graphics from 2001 are better than WoW. I remember having a GeForce 2 at the time, and then upgrading to a GeForce 4 to be able to run it at decent FPS.

It's really bizarre when you think about it... graphics cards have gotten so much more powerful in the past 9 years, but graphics haven't really gotten much better technically. Resolutions have skyrocketed though. But where is all the power really going? Shader effects with extremely diminishing returns?

 

[RussianSensation]

I think we all agree that Intel has the more powerful parts right now. But if you are on a limited budget you are MUCH better off dumping the money into the vid card.

Agreed. For gaming, the faster videocard is still way more important than the CPU. In the 2 different builds you provided, the price differential would have been about $95 or so to go with the Intel build. If you keep the system for 2 years, that works out to about $3.96 / month. However, when reselling those more expensive Intel parts in 2 years, you'll also get more $$ back. For example, if I bought a $240 Intel CPU, I am probably going sell it for $120 in 2 years, but a $100 AMD CPU may only fetch $50 in resale value. So when I look at it that way, I would actually choose a $160 Intel i5 750 CPU over a $100 AMD II X4 CPU because my cost of ownership would be spread over the next 2 years and after considering resale values it becomes even less material (not to mention a faster CPU helps you in other daily tasks as well - not just for games). But if budget is a strict concern, then the AMD CPU + faster videocard of course makes a lot more sense.

I believe you mean poorly in relation to Intel's quad cores. If I'm looking at the WoW scores, a Phenom II still gets 60 fps. That doesn't seem like poor performance for the end user.

It's not poor performance, but if I just bought a $300 videocard and I could only get 60 fps instead of 90 fps because of my CPU, I would be questioning why I spent so much $ on the videocard. This is why budget AMD processors are best paired with mid-range graphics cards at best imo. I wouldn't pair a $100 Athlon X4 with a GTX570 for example.

 

[Bryf50]

Earlier this year I rebought Everquest on Steam and noticed something... the Luclin graphics from 2001 are better than WoW.

I really suggest you go see an eye doctor because you're in serious need of glasses.

 

[Silverforce11]

Ive recently built a 1055T rig with discounted 5870. OC to 4ghz on air, it really muscle flexes through everything.

The 1055T is about $30 cheaper where i'm at than i750.

Edit: At stock, its pretty bad though. But running at 4ghz its not bottlenecking games and blazes through encoding videos.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

It's not poor performance, but if I just bought a $300 videocard and I could only get 60 fps instead of 90 fps because of my CPU, I would be questioning why I spent so much $ on the videocard.

There are hypotheticals here. If you are particularly interested in WoW: Cat performance, then you are right. If you play other games, I don't think your reasoning holds up.

 

[toyota]

considering that the 750/760 i5 is faster clock for clock, has way more overclocking headroom and scales much better with higher end gpus I think it is a better choice if building from scratch. if you plan to keep it at least 2 years and use higher end gpus then that small amount of price difference is meaningless. I always laugh at the people that buy an X6 saying it will be better for future games that use more cores. the 2.66 i5 750 already matches and in most cases beats the 3.2 X6 in games that do use more than 4 cores. not to mention that games that need all the cpu power they can get such as GTA 4 do much better on an i5 quad.

 

[GotNoRice]

I wonder what went wrong with their setup when testing crossfire?

Crossfire definitely works. I've played on 4850 crossfire and I play it now on my 2x 4870x2 quad crossfire config and not only does it work, it works with all 4 GPUs.

Here is a review from another website that is only one month old, tested with the 4.0 patch and DirectX11 so we're talking about the same updated cataclysm graphics:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_580/20.html

Notice the 5970 besting the GTX580 quite easily at higher resolutions, meaning crossfire is obviously working.

 

[WelshBloke]

I really suggest you go see an eye doctor because you're in serious need of glasses.

I think its down to personal taste.

I've always hated the way WOW looks, to the extent that I found it hard to work out what's was going on on screen. I appreciate that the graphics look better now, but I still really, really dislike the way they look. I think it was the low poly look or the perspective always looked off.

Again I know this is very subjective, but I can see where he's coming from.

 

[Throckmorton]

I think its down to personal taste.

I've always hated the way WOW looks, to the extent that I found it hard to work out what's was going on on screen. I appreciate that the graphics look better now, but I still really, really dislike the way they look. I think it was the low poly look or the perspective always looked off.

Again I know this is very subjective, but I can see where he's coming from.

I'm not talking about the artistic style though, but the polygon counts and textures

 

[cusideabelincoln]

considering that the 750/760 i5 is faster clock for clock, has way more overclocking headroom and scales much better with higher end gpus I think it is a better choice if building from scratch. if you plan to keep it at least 2 years and use higher end gpus then that small amount of price difference is meaningless. I always laugh at the people that buy an X6 saying it will be better for future games that use more cores. the 2.66 i5 750 already matches and in most cases beats the 3.2 X6 in games that do use more than 4 cores. not to mention that games that need all the cpu power they can get such as GTA 4 do much better on an i5 quad.

Everything you said I agree with when matching those parameters. But that's not really what I'm arguing. The point being not everyone falls under those parameters. It's absurd to state there are no processors worth getting between $100-$200. It's more accurate to state, that for some users in some situations with certain goals, it would be absurd to buy a sub-$200 processor.