Article quote (Chris A.) about World of Warcraft performance:
When it comes time to turn on anti-aliasing, though, the Radeon HD 6990s take the smallest performance hit. Even still, you can run Cataclysm at 2560x1600 with 8x MSAA on a Radeon HD 6950 and still average more than 60 frames per second. There’s really no reason to buy such a high-end card for this fairly mid-range title.
Shame on you. You report average frame rates and make a statement like that? You know better. There are other reasons too, and you can think of them, I'm sure. Can you say 120Hz? People are beginning to figure out why people like me are saying 60Hz isn't good enough and using it even if they aren't running 3D, and others are using it for 3D. What about multi-monitor setups? I doubt those single-GPU cards could maintain that on my 1920x1200@85Hz CRT even if I switched from i7 to Sandy Bridge. I doubt the dual GPU 6990 could.
Quit telling people they don't need things that they could possible use. Of course they need to match their hardware, there's no sense spending gobs of money for a monitor that runs at 1024x768, but there are plenty of possibilities for those who can use more power in WoW.
It's up to those who know better to give the people who don't enough information that they can choose correctly for their wants, not tell them what they should buy. It's also up to those who know better to provide information that's as accurate as possible and not fuel arguments between ignorant people on both "sides" of an issue. Your comprehensive WoW hardware article was that kind of article, but a statement like this is not, and could very well lead to someone telling a person his or her video card purchase was pointless when it wasn't.
I also question your conclusion that the Gulftown didn't allow the video cards the breathing room Sandy Bridge does. The fact is, none of the video cards you tested in your 560 Ti article approached the power of these cards, and the frame rate averages were all lower in those charts. I don't know what the deal is in the world, but there are plenty of benchmarks published across the internet that demonstrate the "architectural improvements" of Sandy Bridge, aside from the added GPU power, aren't much, and that the Gulftown can still more than hold it's own. Intel is right to keep it as it's flagship, and a peruse of Passmark's CPU benchmark results will show that is the case. (I'm not saying it's priced right; I think it should be half the cost it is, at least, but then they might not be screened to the standards that have allowed higher overclocks.)
If the video cards are being limited by the CPUs in WoW, or the CPU is still the limit for other reasons, of course then more graphics power won't help. However, that's not what your comprehensive WoW article showed. The most powerful CPUs available may not be enough for GTX 580s and beyond in WoW, based on your results in that article, but we know they are are otherwise powerful enough to differentiate cards and I suggest Gulftown still is, otherwise we would not have seen any differentiation between the top end cards here in this article, and we did.
Of course, as to this specific card, I'll pass, for WoW. Nvidia is clearly the way to go, and SLI if they don't come out with a dual-GPU card and you want the extra bang. There are of course other reasons to go AMD graphics, outside of WoW considerations.
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