• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

GPU or CPU Limited?

S

slobo

n00b
Joined
Oct 1, 2007
Messages
36
Hi all,

I play WOW on a 24 inch @ 1920x1200. My stats are:

E8400 @ 3.6
EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800 GT 512MB.

I also have 2 gigs of ram.


At times, during large battles my FPS drops. Would buying a 9800 GTX help? I haven't really kept with new tech, is the 200 series that much better?

Any suggestions are appreciated. In terms of budget, I want to keep it under 200, but if there is significant improvement, I can do 300.

-Slobo
 
A 9800GTX is pretty similar to your 8800GT, probably not worth spending a money for a small improvement.

Another 2 gigs of ram probably wouldn't hurt, I heard WoW uses a lot. A video card upgrade will definitely help at 1920x1200 though. If you want to stay with nvidia I would start at the GTX 260.
 
How about this - benchmark wow, change your resolution and benchmark again. Report the results. Keep task manager open snap a shot of the cpu util as well. Separate cpu's in the view.
 
You could get a 260 for about $220 or you might even want to wait till the 55nm cards come out. But rumor has it that nvidia is working on their 40nm cards due out later this year Q2 2009.
 
Before you spend any more money, buy some more memory. It may not necessarily be bottlenecking you with gaming, but you are torturing your whole system with only 2GB.
 
First, your ram limited. I would add another 2 gigs.

I would also sugest lowering AA if it is set in game at 4x or higher.

I have a gtx 280 and it can choke in some circumstances (mostly teamed and heavy FX going on) with high AA settings on my 24" (1920*1200).

Would be nice to see a new review/write up of wow Vs the top 10 vid cards on the market in stressfull situations. If a 5 man team can choke it, I hate to see what ahppens when I get around to a 10 or 25 man run.
 
At the resolution your playing you are probably more GPU limited (your CPU is pretty strong - especially OC'd the way it is). One of those $199 MSI GTX 260 (192) cards would serve you well. And 2GB of RAM is fine if you are on XP.

Just a forwarning, WoW is an unoptimized mess now. It started with BC and has gotten worse with Wrath. I've seen people with very strong systems complain of big slowdowns around large groups of player characters. Thank increased view distance and shadow quality.
 
That's what one would expect, slowdowns when things like increased viewing distance and high detail shadows are implemented, it doesn't mean that the game is unoptimized...
 
Yes it is. They taken a formerly smooth running game and with a very small increase in graphical quality bogged it down for many with fairly high end cards (I have a GTX 260 OC'd and I get stutters and hitches if I have view distance and shadow quality on max). Used to stay pegged on 60 FPS everywhere on max settings. No more.
 
I run XP pro 32 Bit, which is why I do not want to get more RAM.

Thanks for the advice. I checked and my mother board (IGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX) should have no problem with the 260 or 280.


Thanks once again.

-Slobo
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top