Best Way to Increase WoW Performance?

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dentaku

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 27, 2004
Messages
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Im looking to get a little bit more performance when playing wow. I think ive got a fairly solid system (listed in sig.) but 40 mans with lots of addons and spell graphics, it can still slowdown quite a bit. I run at 1600x1000 2xAA 8xAF with all other setting turned up. I would like to go back up to 1900x1200 with possibly 4xAA, but a more solid framerate is more important. What is the best part of the machine to upgrade? Possibilities I have considered are:

1) New CPU. most likely a 4600 X2 (I would try a new conroe proc, but then I would need new motherboard and ram aswell)
2) New Vid Card. 7900 gt or simmilar ATI offering
3) Another gig of memory (or ditch my 512x2 for 1Gx2)
4) New HDD. probably a 160g Raptor with 16m cache

I had read previously that for gaming single cores offer better performance, but I tpyically run WoW, teamspeak, winamp, and usually a web browser so I think i would benefit from the extra core. Anyone have any ideas?
 
id say vid card and ram you have an XP-90 on your 3200+ have you tryed OCing it

WoW doenst make much use of dual core soo thats not going to net you as big a gain as more clock speed


soo
1. get a fast vid card 7900GT or X1900XT
2. ram for sure 2x 1GB
3. you have a good HSF OC your 3200+ and see what you can get out of it this also go with the ram might as well get some nice stuff that will OC for you
 
Well.....i would say vid card if you want more performance right away, but it won't really do much good for the rest of the comp. First, i would get a new processor, an x2 3800 (or x2 4400 if you want moer cache) would be what i would get, that will help a lot with other everyday tasks, and you could dedicate one core to WoW and the other core for apps. Then go for either a new vid card or RAM, your choice, then upgrade the other when you have the funds. A new hard drive really wont give you all that much of a performance increase, just more space to store things and *maybe* a tad faster loading time, but not much aside from that! I wish you luck upgrading!
 
Andrew_Carr said:
I'd go with 2GB of RAM and a new CPU.
btw, why not use vent? :)
Click to expand...

I do prefer vent, but the guild decided on TS.

Elios said:
id say vid card and ram you have an XP-90 on your 3200+ have you tryed OCing it

WoW doenst make much use of dual core soo thats not going to net you as big a gain as more clock speed


soo
1. get a fast vid card 7900GT or X1900XT
2. ram for sure 2x 1GB
3. you have a good HSF OC your 3200+ and see what you can get out of it this also go with the ram might as well get some nice stuff that will OC for you
Click to expand...
I have OCed it, it tops out at about 2.4 (Its the older winchester core)
 
i dunno, i play at 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF and the game looks great. i mean does 1600 or 1900 make a difference you can even make out?
 
well I would have to play at 1280x800 because of the widescreen, and anything on the monitor at that low of a rez looks pretty bad. I would probably run it at 2048x1280 if I had the power to get decent FPS at that level
 
Man my system is almost the same and it runs flawlessly.... I'd say another stick of ram would probably help the most.
 
dentaku said:
I do prefer vent, but the guild decided on TS.


I have OCed it, it tops out at about 2.4 (Its the older winchester core)
Click to expand...

ok if its stable at 2.4 id run it there thats not bad imo i run my X2 at 2.5 so you would be close in single threaded stuff like WoW

so yea go with a ram and vid card of your choice
the 2 i would look are the 7900GT and X1900XT
 
To improve WoW performance?

I'd recommend going door to door to each of the developer's houses, knocking, say hello, kick them in the balls, and tell them to optimize their damn code.
 
NulloModo said:
To improve WoW performance?

I'd recommend going door to door to each of the developer's houses, knocking, say hello, kick them in the balls, and tell them to optimize their damn code.
Click to expand...
lol! QFT!!!
 
WoW likes CPU (and GPU). I benched around 10% performance improvement with a X2 3800 compared to running it with a single core enabled, and found it to be CPU/system limited with a 6800 GT OC running at 1600x1200 with 2 GB RAM but without high image quality, AA, etc.

If I was still playing WoW, I'd probably break up the upgrade into 2 parts. (1) Upgrade to the most sensible dual core platform at the time. (2) Upgrade to the most sensible high-end video platform subsequently; living with lower resolutions in the meanwhile.

(1) Might be Conroe if you look at the big picture and some time down the road, including the fact that the OP already intends to buy some ram. Just get 1 GB RAM if needed in the short term. Might also consider waiting a bit to do this, as Conroe isn't quite fully released and debugged (esp. for MB's and chipsets).

The alternative, to do an incremental least-cost upgrade to a 939 dual core is also viable. It depends on how far down the road you look and how much CPU power you want.

(2) DX10, etc., are going to come out not too long from now -- that would be a good time to either pick up a new architecture video card, or perhaps a used currently high-end video card. A 7900 GT is a fair bit above a 6800 GT OC, but the OP is very video-performance and resolution hungry; a step or two above that wouldn't be wasted.
 
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