X2 4200+ -> 2180 upgrade?

[SkuLLyRT]

My bro recently replaced his old 17" LCD with a 22" widescreen, and he's been noticing some pretty bad FPS while trying to game at the native 1680x1050 res. His current rig is a slightly upgraded S939 setup, X2 4200+ / 2GB DD1 / Asus A8N32SLI / EVGA 8800GT / Seasonic 600W.

His main game at the moment is WoW, which he says drops down to 20-25 FPS for most raid boss fights. While CoD4 and TF2 run fine, he says that Crysis (lol) and ET:QW could use a boost as well.

I'm pretty sure the 8800GT is not the problem here; instead I think it's time to ditch the old AMD stuff. We're leaning towards the Intel 2180 / GB DS3L / GSKILL 4GB DDR2 as a quick and cheap upgrade. My question here, however, is how big of an upgrade is this really? Chip willing, I'm hoping to OC this to 2.8+. Is there another CPU that I should be looking at instead? He's got maybe $50 more that he'd be willing to throw at this upgrade. All this guy does is game, browse, and download.

 

[0roo0roo]

why so cheap on the cpu?
the 2180 is probably faster though. but if you are going to spend anyways, a little more would be nice for a more significant jump.

 

[SkuLLyRT]

He wants to keep it in the ~$300 USD range, hence the cheap cheap CPU.

What CPU would you suggest stepping up to?

 

[0roo0roo]

no fancy ram
2gb is enough.
4gb is wasted on 32bit, a large chunk is lost. performance will not increase, and price for GSKILL 4GB DDR2 not cool at all. like buying a 100 dollar cooler for a budget cpu😛
spend the difference on cpu.
cheap ddr2 is what? 50 dollars for 2gb? check hotdeals forums.
no frys near you? that kinda cpu is like 80 dollars including mb😛

 

[chinaman1472]

WoW lags during boss fights due to multiple issues, unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about the server side lag. Getting a new CPU or 4GB DDR2 memory isn't going to improve a whole lot for WoW raids; at least, that's my initial thought.

 

[SkuLLyRT]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
stuff!

No Fry's out here in VA (or at least any that I'm aware of), just BestBuy and CC. The 4GB Gskill kit I was looking at is $76 on Newegg, the mobo $89, and the CPU is $62 from Buy.com. He's already in Vista64, so the extra 2GB wouldn't exactly be "wasted", though it wouldn't be getting used either I suppose lol. The total pricing from Newegg / Buy.com was ~$230. Like I said, he's willing to spend a little more, but I don't think a $200 Q6600 / E8400 is really in his budget right now (though I'll ask).

 

[SpeedEng66]

for gaming the more cache on the cpu the better 🙂

 

[DSF]

Microcenter might still have a good deal on the E4500. If it's $100, I'd take it. If he needs more CPU power it will easily overclock to 2.9 Ghz and blow the 4200 out of the water. As chinaman said though, the upgrade might not manifest itself depending on the game situation.

 

[chinaman1472]

During my WoW days, some of my guildies had top of the line CPUs and GPUs (including one having a 7950GT SLi) and would still lag during boss fights, down to 10fps on some. It'll help for other games, but WoW's code isn't exactly the best one written.

 

[0roo0roo]

ouch that bad?
i don't play wow so i dunno, i just remember blizzard used to make games that ran even on slow systems to maximize customer base.

 

[chinaman1472]

That's on 1680x1050 with all settings on low as well. The basis of the code hasn't changed; they've made minor improvements and changes to the game to reduce it (reducing number of players needed for instances, changing the way some things loads), but I doubt even pouring $1500 into a system on uncapped internet would help that much more compared to a low end gaming machine.

The game was released in 2004, and I don't think Blizzard anticipated it to be the most subscribed MMORPG.