e6850 worth it for WOW?

[lamboman]

I'm not saying this in anyones defense, but even for a modern game you won't noitice much difference between a E4x and E6x CPU. Nowadays it is pretty much ALL the graphics. What will make a difference is really in the future where a quad core will be useful for physics and whatnot.

 

[RoBo]

I'm not saying this in anyones defense, but even for a modern game you won't noitice much difference between a E4x and E6x CPU. Nowadays it is pretty much ALL the graphics. What will make a difference is really in the future where a quad core will be useful for physics and whatnot.

Except at lower resoloutions.

 

[Kett]

WoW still doesn't take much to run at a minumum of 60fps with a nice res like 1280x1024, and all the eye candy turned up in game.

I used to play WoW (including BC, raids, etc) on an athlon XP oc'd to 2.4ghz with 1gb of pc3200 ddr1 and an FX 5800 Ultra on an A7N8X-D. I played the game at 1280x960 with all the in game settings at high, ran around most of the time at 50-60 and never went below 30. Even in the middle of crowded cities or raids. (Hit 27.5ish on saturdays by the bank/AH in org, nowhere else.)

I don't play the game anymore so I cant say i've run it on my new system here, but I did build a new PC for a guy that played the game a while back. It consisted of athlon X2 4400 (Weaker than most C2Ds, especially once you OC your C2D) 1gb of ddr2 @ 800, and a 7950gt. He ran the game on a flat panel 1280x1024 @ 70hz. We turned everything up in game, and even cranked his AA and AF (Which will arbitrarily load any system, regardless of game) to 8x and 8x. He never goes below 70, regardless of situation, and that is not a very impressive system.

You can run WoW very effectively on a relatively low end PC, especially if you DONT make use of massive AA/AF filtering, which is not really needed to make the game look nice and is a horribly innefficient method of using your computing power. I would rather turn my resolution up. But regardless, that e6850 you got was overkill for WoW. Though that 7900gs you have could stand an upgrade since they were a budget oriented card in the first place. For the best bang-for-the-buck WoW experience, I think I would have stuck with the cheap C2D and upgraded my graphics to a 7950gt 512mb or better.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Don't get me wrong, what you just said is correct and I can't argue with it. But... in Outlands that setup you just described would have trouble even outputting 20fps, and would be single digits in the main city and many areas.

Lets just say that you can pretty much run WoW on any system out there. Absoltely true. It will run, but it won't be an amazing experience, due to sluggish performance. Sadly, most people think this sluggish performance is normal and don't even notice it after a while. If you want to load up WoW and have a "omg I just sqirted in my pants a little" experience, because it's so smooth and fluid, then you need a fast system.

If all you play is WoW, (like me 95% of the time) you owe it to yourself to make it the most enjoyable it can be. THERE IS NO COMPARISON to running WoW on a C2D at 3GHz or higher, an 8800gts/gtx and 2+ GB of RAM, especially at 1600x1200 res or more.

My girlfriend, who doesn't know a thing about computer hardware, has become so spoiled by my computers, that even she notices when the fps drops below 60 on my spare computer. (it's running a 7950gx2) She's never been to Outlands yet, so I expect her to start noticing it even more when she does... I'm just saying, that unless you've experienced all sides of the spectrum (like I have) you don't know just how great WoW runs on a fast system.

Once you max out all settings, crank up the AA and AF, and can get your FPS to never drop below 60 (very important to the experience), anything less will be annoying to you. Does that make me spoiled? Yes, but it took 3 years to get there and I ain't ever going back! If it makes something you do all the time that much more enjoyable, I'd say you owe it to yourself to spend the extra money on a fast CPU and video card or buy the 4300 like I did and overclock it.

This is one of the two accurate replies in this thread, along with this one:

The cpu and graphics card makes a HUGE difference in wow. I went from a opteron 165 to a 4400+ and then to a q6600. All while having the same x1800xt(pe) and also jumping from xp to vista to vista 64 to support more ram.

While I didn't have issues playing it maxed settings on lower resolutions, the frame rates tended to drop in LARGE instances where lots of AOE were going on. Also large cities where it is heavily populate screw you over too.

WoW is "playable" on my t60 that I have from work. It's playable on my server machine. Hell it was even playable on my powerbook g4..