X3 440 Rana and World of Warcraft

[thejesus1]

I have an x3 440 rana chip that I overclocked to 3.6 ghx and a 5770 video card. When I play World of warcraft, the cpu meter in windows 7 never goes above 60% usage. I know that Wow is a CPU intensive game, but it doesnt seem like I am maxing out my cpu. Playing at 1920x1080 resoultion I get 20-25 fps with everything on ultra minus shadows. My question is...would it be better to upgrade the cpu or the video card and if I upgrade the video card, do you think that the cpu will bottleneck the system? ALso which video card would be a good choice.....tend to favor radeon cards over Nvidia. Thank you for all your help in advance and happy holidays!

 

[bedenbeast]

i think your best choice is to upgrade the GPU. if it is not maxing out your cpu, then the CPU is not the problem. unless you get an extremely fast GPU to upgrade to, i would not worry about bottlenecking the CPU.

 

[popatim]

Wow defaults to using two cores if i remember right soa gpu upgrade is in order.
The next step up would be like a 6870 then up again to a 7850...

Whats your budget like?

 

[thejesus1]

Would like to try and stay under $200.....$250 max

 

[lazyboy947]

Umm my 6770 plays wow on ultra with a 6 core lol and since wow is dual core optimized and a 5770 is slightly worse than a 6770 i dont see a gpu upgrade for WoW
But best cheap upgrade would be a 7770 or a 650 GTX or GTX Ti, if not a Phenom II x4 965 which goes for under $100. I play at 1080p and im pretty sure my old Phenom I X4 9650 and 9800gt played wow on ultra with at least 25fps in SW

 

[melikepie]

Should run fine!

 

[lazyboy947]

Exactly should run fine, my only option since u monitored the cpu use, do the same to the gpu use. Maybe a RAM issue or too many background programs running, bad internet connection, when it comes to wow since its basically made so almost any pc can play its usually not a hardware issue, and really with ur specs

 

[thejesus1]

Ok...on ultra settings at 1920 x 1080....the cpu never goes above 70% usage, the memory goes to 80% and the gpu (5770) hits 97-100% according to the amd vision control center. That being said my fps are at least 25 and max out around 35.

 

[lazyboy947]

how much RAM do u use, OS, and background programs running. I mean i dont see my gpu getting near 100% use on ultra for wow and its basically the same thing as urs

 

[thejesus1]

Windows 7 64 bit home OS....4 gb ddr2 800 ram and not too many programs running in the background (fraps and a few hardware monitoring programs such as cpuid and amd vision control center.

Saw these two on newegg...wondering what the difference would be between the 1gb and 2 gb model:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202004 or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102999

 

[thejesus1]

Here is the specs of my motherboard.....maybe the pci e slot is slowing it down?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128342

 

[lazyboy947]

more vram a video card has the better it'll perform in higher resolutions over 1080p basically

Motherboard model? as it may be the use of ddr2 with an am3 cpu on a am2/am2+/am3 motherboard, not to sure but maybe a $60 motherboard upgrade to an ASUS am3+ and some ddr3 may help over a cpu, gpu upgrade

 

[lazyboy947]

Here is the specs of my motherboard.....maybe the pci e slot is slowing it down?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128342

PCI-E not slowing it down as its a x16 lane should be no issue there

 

[thejesus1]

Best answer selected by thejesus1.