Best possible WoW system

[xian65]

Ok, I'm wanting to create a system that will utterly smash WotLK in the face and leave it bloody and sore.

I've been spending a bucket load of time trying to find some benchmarks for WoW in general and have come up trumps so I'm looking to some of you guys to give me your feedback on how your systems perform.

I currently have:

Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 4Ghz
Asus P5E3 Premium X48 mobo
4GB OCZ DDR3 1333 @ 1400Mhz 7-7-7-20-2T
Nvidia GTX 280

The changes i'm looking to make are going to:

Core i7 920 @ 4Ghz
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P Motherboard
6GB OCZ DDR3 @ ~1800Mhz (+whatever the best timings i can get out are)
Nvidia GTX 280 (Possibly SLI)

I currently run WoW @ 1680 x 1050 with 8x Multisampling and every effect turned onto it's maximum except shadows which are left on low.

My annoyance is that as soon as i walk outside of the Alliance side bank in Dalaran my FPS drop to about 20 or so. Now i'm looking to spend some cash before tax time and since WoW is about the only game I play, I want to make sure that buying $1k (AUD) worth of new processor, motherboard and RAM is actually gonna make a difference.

So, do any of you run similar graphical settings and run WoW on a quad core CPU or have any sort of SLI system (Not interested in Crossfire setups as the stuttering effect that occurs with ATI/AMD cards pisses me off) and if so what sort of FPS values do you get just outside the bank in Dalaran on a busy night (Approx 50 ppl outside the bank during peak time)?

I have no reservations when it comes to modifying any sort of configuration files / tweaking hardware to ensure WoW runs as fast as possible with every pretty feature enabled.

Hopefully someone has already done something like what I'm proposing and can tell me their results 😀

 

[Kral]

Hi there


You current system spec is way more than enough to destroy WoW

I got the following spec :

Core i7 920 stock (AFAIK , WoW doesn't benefit from Quad cores so the processors are nearly the same)
EX58-UD3R
Kingston 6gb DDR3
9800GTX+

Running everything on max @ 1440x900 with 60 fps (30-40 @ raids and Dalaran)

Your problem might be from drivers or something

Try installing new drivers

Thanks

 

[Rej]

I'm not sure I understand why you have such low FPS in dalaran with your setup...

I have an E8400 at 3.6g
nVidia GTX 275

and I run WoW at 1920x1200 with full settings (shadows down 1 notch), 4xAA, whatever max AF is in the settings if any, VSynch OFF, and I get between 35-40 FPS in Dalaran

- Make sure that if you have VSynch on, that Triple Buffering is Enabled. Mine is OFF since the tearing in WoW isn't has bad as in other games.

ALSO *very important*... disable the "Reduce Input Lag" Option found in the "resolution" tab. This made a HUGE difference in my performance, while having no impact on my input lag at all.

Starting to wonder if drivers aren't at cause here as well.. I'm still using the 182.50 here. Haven't tried the others since they screw up Aquamark3 by going from around 200,000 back down to 75,000 so something's wrong somewhere on the drivers that came after 182.50. (on my setup at least)

 

[jroussin]

Buy a solid state drive. The seek times on standard hard drives can really decrease performance.

 

[tarek0]

Hi to all im currently running this system:
-ASUS RAMPAGE II EXTREME.
-ASUS EN 9800GT ULTIMATE SLI (2).
-INTEL CORE I7 (940).
-CASE THERMALTAKE ARMOR+.
-6GB RAMS G.SKILL.
-CPU COOLER ANTEC.
-P.S.U 1000W.
-H.D 320GB SATA2.
-DVD RW SATA2 SAMSUNG.
-SCREEN LCD VIEW SONIC 19".
Playing all games on max graphic & texture 😀😀. ASUS ROCKSSSSSS 😛😛.

 

[Kraynor]

WoW isn't multi-core optimised, a quad core system will perform only marginally better than a dual or tri core system.

It also doesn't gain much from an SLi or Crossfire setup. Remember, it's built on a very old graphics engine (over 4 years old), and the recent graphical updates were tacked on rather poorly. Overall, it's not a very well optimised system so regardless of your system there will be times where you get stutter. Also, turn down your multisampling a bit, it doesn't make that huge of a difference because of WoW's art style. x2 or x4 would do just fine, and you won't notice the difference after a short time.

Now... onto analysing your build:

CPU: i7 920 is awesome. Overkill for WoW because it won't take full advantage of all 8 threads, but hey, it'll be faster than your current one clock-for-clock.
GFX: Not worth going SLi for WoW, it won't help much, if at all. Definetly not worth it for 1680x1050, you'll more than likely lose a small amount of performance because your current card's memory isn't getting taxed at those resolutions.
RAM: Tom's showed in a recent article that really expensive RAM doesn't help all that much on an i7 platform. Here's the link: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/memory-scaling-i7,review-31600.html

A Solid State Drive would help with initial loading when many textures are getting pulled when you're loading different characters, it's not that big a slowdown after the first couple of seconds, and wouldn't be worth the cash.


Final note: You have to keep in mind that WoW's an online game, when you're loading dozens of people, all the info about that character has to be downloaded to your PC, including their appearance, what equipment they're wearing, any graphic effects from buffs/debuffs, etc. Plus, when there's a ton of people moving, there's more network latency to take into account.

No PC can utterly smash WoW and keep it at a constant 60+ fps, the graphics engine is just too sloppy when you increase the amount of people in the area. Just look at Wintergrasp.

 

[dtq]

A Solid State Drive would help with initial loading when many textures are getting pulled when you're loading different characters, it's not that big a slowdown after the first couple of seconds, and wouldn't be worth the cash.[\quotemsg]

With an mmorpg in busy areas characters are constantly moving in and out of viewing distance and hence textures being loaded, a single 6 man group moving into range can cause an instant 1 second pure seek time stutter, its not just an initial loading thing at all it makes a huge difference to moving smoothly around busy areas during constant game play, even after hours of continous play its still providing a smoother experience in busy areas. Having ran it side by side with an otherwise identical rig with a traditional raid 0 drive it makes for a far smoother experience overall.

In Lotro when the Mines of Moria expansion was released the main quest hubs of Moria were PACKED my wifes rig was stuttering around constantly loading new data whilst I was running around freely. It was a night and day experience. The only difference between our rigs is the hard disk setup...

I went for SSD after reading a report from the devs of an mmorpg (SWG) where they were looking at the causes of lag and stuttering at the client end, the biggest cause they found was disk access, processor load was fine, ram use wasnt an issue bandwidth wasnt causing any issues, Modern GPU's had no problems running the game maxed out and the much blamed server load was barely having any impact, they found the biggest slow downs and stutters were related to heavy disk activity.

I had before that time already realised that most of the time when experiencing poor performance in mmorpg's that the hard disk was "going mad" and so had already considered SSD before that, but once I saw that dev post I made up my mind. SSD Really isnt unaffordable these days. A low capacity SSD is around £90 these days, not a huge amount of money compared to other components, you dont even need to install your OS on it, just the mmorpg's. Although of course if you have a bit extra money to splash around its worth running windows on one as well 😀

 

[SimonSplat]

For sure I agree with most things mentioned above.

Get a fast dual core CPU as WoW is only really written to use 2 cores.

The other thing as well to consider is TURN DOWN THE MULTISAMPLING! You're running at a decent resolution so multisampling will, at best, have a small marginal improvement on visuals.

The SSD would make a massive difference. I went OTT and got 4 Samsung 64GB SLC drives in raid 0 and I can get from Login screen to in world with ALL textures loaded (including my Add ons etc...) in around 6-8 seconds. Texture loading makes no skipping in game.

I am running on a quad core QX9650 at 3.6Ghz, 4GB PC6400 RAM, Nvidia GTX280 (overclocked a bit) and on my 30" screen I can run at 2650x1900 with much better FPS than you are reporting. Check for the latest drivers, even have a look at the beta ones if you fancy squeezing the last drops from your GFX card.

Looking at your current Specs versus what you are proposing I dont think you would get much more out of the new system compared to your old. Not in WoW anyway. I dont think it would be worth the money.

Settings/Drivers I think are your enemy and friend in this scenario.

Good luck!

 

[SimonSplat]

p.s. I have all the details turned up to max, I even have activated the macro to turn on the extra detail (grass, flowers, flies, all the visuals that are hidden away). This sucks power but its still smooth. And damn it looks good...

UnGoro looks amazing this these hidden options turned on, as does the Swamp of Sorrows... the floor is covered with red flowers etc. Do a google search and I expect you will come up with the macro code for it.

 

[tarek0]

well maybe it did cost me some money but for sure i got the performance Gaming Rig in the market as tom did shows on the 5.000$ built Gaming P.C 😀😀 the same board and same RAMS 😀 anyway what i wanted to say these products are made for us the users to bring them on and put them into the test so i did about my I7 (940) well its a gift what can i say same as the Case and the 2nd Graphic Card 😉 all i did buy is the EXTREME Mobo 😀 last not least this board holds the world record @ 5510.09MHZ with 3way SLI under Duck hands everything is worth and soon im thinking to get the ATI 4870X2 😉.

 

[Kral]

well maybe it did cost me some money but for sure i got the performance Gaming Rig in the market as tom did shows on the 5.000$ built Gaming P.C 😀😀 the same board and same RAMS 😀 anyway what i wanted to say these products are made for us the users to bring them on and put them into the test so i did about my I7 (940) well its a gift what can i say same as the Case and the 2nd Graphic Card 😉 all i did buy is the EXTREME Mobo 😀 last not least this board holds the world record @ 5510.09MHZ with 3way SLI under Duck hands everything is worth and soon im thinking to get the ATI 4870X2 😉.

And the point is? Other than showing off?

 

[tarek0]

well theres no showing mate believe but some guys talked a lot when theres no point thats it u can go back to the first few topics there was lots of systems from gigabyte why wasn't that a show offf????? anyway sorry if it was t.c all bye.

 

[imnotageek]

Hi,

I have played WoW since launched. Although some may comment that it is an 'old engine', well, maybe for the old world it is still as what it is. The subsequent expansions get more demanding as the graphics getting more complex. I know because I have two machines at home and one is an old one that can see the difference.

Having said all that, I don't think we need a top end machine to run WoW. I do think latency plays a big part in the lag. I think there are network cards out there like Killer (?!) that helps MMORPG. Has anyone given that a try?

 

[SimonSplat]

The killer cards may give you a **small** improvement as far as I know. And for the price? Wow... its an expensive gain!

I installed a tool called cfos speed (costs about £12 after the 30 day trial period) that does some pretty cool stuff with packet shaping and using QoS etc to make sure that certain types of network traffic get handled quicker. You can even set it to put certain data from certain applications higher up the priority list. This includes in built settings for WoW...

I noticed an improvement for sure!

What it also does its lets you browse, torrent etc without getting frustrated cos your torrents are blocking out your bandwidth.

A great tool - I bought it and thats saying something!!

 

[Guest]

So what is a great pc to buy to play this game on medium graphics

 

[JofaMang]

So what is a great pc to buy to play this game on medium graphics

Athlon II 435 x3, 785g mobo, 4gb ram, ATI 5750.

Would perform GREAT on medium settings.

 

[ahslan]

damn...I would think all the systems that you guys have mentioned would be completely kill in WoW....I find the SSD part interesting....now you guys got me considering purchasing one...

 

[megabyteme6662002]

I played wow since it came out as well, and quit this year.. I had a laptop that played it decent up until the wotlk, then it got laggy kinda.. my desktop is 4 years old and doesn't lag really.. Sounds like some good advice here about why WoW is choppy and stuff..

However, don't let the fact that ***WoW*** doesn't use quad cores to sway you from buying one.. I doubt you are going to play wow for the next 4+ years... hey you might who knows, but most games are being optimized for quads... Somebody said something about lag in wintergrasp... Im 99% sure that has nothing to do with your graphics card, and all about the server lag..