GTX 260 and World of Warcraft

[ozzeran]

Hello all, I only play WoW as far as PC games go and decided to pick up a GTX260 as my frame rates were dropping decently in raids. My card prior to the 260 was an HD4670 1gb card. I am just not seeing much of a difference in frame rates going to this card. I am running at 1680x1050 with 4x AA. My in game settings are set at Ultra but with shadow's turned off. I just feel that going from that 4670 to this 260 would be a damn big difference. Please let me know if I'm crazy or this is to be expected with this game. My rig is as follows:

Core2Duo E4500 at stock speeds

6gb DDR2-800 ram

ASUS P5k Motherboard

750 watt power supply

just a sata hd and sata optical

The card is a BFG GTX260 that is supposedly overclocked from the factory.

 

[nforce4max]

Wow is a pain in the rear sometimes when it comes to upgrades so try overclocking the cpu since it is very cpu heavy. I am a player my self and like to multybox (running more than one account at once).

 

[ozzeran]

Well I tried OC'ing to 2.9ghz which is my stable speed and not much of a diff. I can try again though to look at it closer. I might be expecting too much as well, dunno. I do know this is a bottom line processor even when I bought it 2 year's ago but has held up really good, that's why I haven't replaced it yet. If it comes down to it I will build a budget AM3 system or get an E8500 so I can keep my Motherboard.

 

[lothdk]

According to this article, you should be seeing almost double the FPS with the GTX 260, so yes, if you did a complete and clean uninstall of the ATI drivers, there is mostly only the CPU left that would cause this.

Do note that the 4670 in the article is the 512 MB version, and it is noted that onboard RAM makes a LOT of difference when it comes to FPS in WOW, which is evident by the 4870 doing 55 FPS with 512 MB and 67 FPS with 1 GB.

If you have not tried this, do an uninstall of the drivers, download Drive Sweeper, boot to Safe Mode, and use it to uninstall any leftover drivers for your video card(s), reboot and install the newest NVIDIA drivers.

 

[jennyh]

WoW is just too old and unoptimised, so much so that better cards don't necessarily get the benefits you might expect.

I was never really happy with any graphics performance in WoW, not even with my 5850, although that was mainly because the fps dropped from 60 to 20 just by adding full shadows.

The 260 will be performing better than your 4670, it's just WoW won't show it obviously.

 

[jeffredo]

At your resolution you should see a massive difference in FPS if your CPU weren't bogging you down. Its quite weak, overclocked or not. In CPU intensive areas like Raids the better GPU isn't going to make itself known since your CPU is bottlenecking it so much.

 

[ozzeran]

I just used drive sweeper which is nice btw and thank you.

It's too early to tell if that made much of a difference though. I am curious what you guy's would suggest now based on my slow CPU. I have the LGA775 socket of course, I thought about a C2Quad or a E8500, though Tom's like's the AM3 chips that I can get for $75 which is I think it was 2.9ghz dual core while the E8500 is expensive.

 

[lothdk]

Either of the Intel processors should make a big improvement combined with the new GTX 260 over your old setup.

The $75 CPU you are mentioning I guess is the Athlon II X3 435, would be almost as good as a Q8400 when it comes to WOW.

Whether an update in CPU is the best option, or a new motherboard, CPU and RAM (if going with the AMD (AM3)) would be up to you.

 

[ozzeran]

That is a nice comparison site.

Ok if I decide to go with a Q9550 or even an E8400 which of course are both LGA775's and I keep my same motherboard, would my current DDR2-800 memory be just fine or would I need a higher DDR2 memory speed to take full advantage of the higher FSB speeds of both processors?

 

[lothdk]

That is a nice comparison site.

Ok if I decide to go with a Q9550 or even an E8400 which of course are both LGA775's and I keep my same motherboard, would my current DDR2-800 memory be just fine or would I need a higher DDR2 memory speed to take full advantage of the higher FSB speeds of both processors?

Your RAM would still be fine, just make sure to check the site of your motherboards manufacturer, and make sure that it supports whatever CPU you decide upon, at worst it will not support it, at best your are good to go, maybe you need a BIOS update to support the new CPU.

 

[ozzeran]

Ok thank you all for the reply's. I'll probably end up going for a C2Quad instead of replacing stuff I really don't need.