What to upgrade? Reason: Play WoW WoD on Ultra Settings.

[gdreher]

Team,

Looking to upgrade my PC to run World of Warcraft WoD (and hopefully next expansion coming soon) on Ultra Settings.
Budget: from $200 to $500

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/CpnK99

Thanks in advance!

 

[ak47jar3d]

The gpu and ram need changing. Switch you ram to 8 gb and buy a gtx 970 and your problem will be solved.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-930 2.8GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R ATX LGA1366 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($42.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($37.80 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card ($309.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Corsair Enthusiast 650W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM (64-bit) ($129.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $520.77
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-02 18:59 EDT-0400

 

[gdreher]

Thank you for replying!

1) Do you think it would be better a triple channel set up as my mother board supports it? Maybe a 3x2 RAM set up?
2) What about GTX 960. Would it do the trick?
3) Having a SSD would make any difference?

Regards!!!

 

[ak47jar3d]

1) Do you think it would be better a triple channel set up as my mother board supports it?

You can if you want to, but you won't see any real gains over dual channel in gaming performance.

Maybe a 3x2 RAM set up?

You can get away with 6 gb of ram. I have seen COD AW and Witcher 3 use about 6 gb so I would expect demanding games to start requiring 8 gb sometime next year. 8 gb of ram is so cheap there should not be a reason to resist getting it.

2) What about GTX 960. Would it do the trick?

Yes, Gtx 960 is a great 1080p card. The reason I suggested a 970 was because the performance gap so big between them. I would also take a look at the 280x it should be between those two cards in terms of performance.

Having a SSD would make any difference?

SSD will make a difference in how quickly the game loads and how responsive windows is. It won't actually improve your frame rate. If you can afford, an ssd is a great way to speed up your system.

 

[lpsell]

1) Yes, 3x2GB is a good idea. Do keep the triple channel enhancement at all times if you are not changing motherboard.

2) GTX 960 gives great performance for the price.

3) Particularly for WoW you have to consider how many random reads occur for your style of gameplay. Your style of gameplay will determine that. When you first load the game, enter a new zone, walk into a portal, major city, battleground, raid or anything else that will make the game load new textures a lot of random reads will occur. This is due to the game’s file structure. For example, if you have seen your character (or other people) on underwear while the game loads their armor’s textures (for seconds or minutes), this is one of the main reasons why it happens; your storage cannot keep up with the gameplay’s demand. There’s a difference for someone that is constantly on the same place running daily quests (ergo using the same textures) vs someone that is doing raids or battlegrounds. If you do raids and battlegrounds then you want an SSD. Think of all the textures and effects that are loaded on a raid. If someone casts a spell who’s texture wasn’t previously loaded, a seek and load will happen, you have to see the visual animation, hear it and watch it’s the desired effect occur. Multiply this by the number of characters, how fast it all happens in the game and how big textures are.

… plus the overall bootup and performance gain for Windows and every other software you run.

 

[gdreher]

Here is how it is looking like:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/8x6g7P

4gig video card as it is only $20-$30 more.
SSD for the game only. Maybe I can put Windows within it I think.

so far looking good.

Here a WoW reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHD5sgi9fMY

As well, a little outdated but gives a very good idea comparison list:
http://www.logicalincrements.com/games/wow/

Hope this is useful for someone.

Adding more info as it comes available

 

[gdreher]

The gpu and ram need changing. Switch you ram to 8 gb and buy a gtx 970 and your problem will be solved.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-930 2.8GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R ATX LGA1366 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($42.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($37.80 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card ($309.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Corsair Enthusiast 650W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM (64-bit) ($129.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $520.77
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-02 18:59 EDT-0400

So this is how it ended as:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2x9g7P
I'm still missing the extra RAM, but trying to look for the same brand/speed for me X58.
Now, need a monitor. 144hz. Looking for a good price/deal. Ideas?

 

[gdreher]

NVM, I will bring the question up on the right forum: Displays

Thanks for you help so far