Thread: PC Upgrade

  1. #1

    PC Upgrade

    Hi guys,

    I'm looking to upgrade my PC in the near future in order to have a much more satisfactory experience in 25 man raids. I like to run graphics on the highest possible settings at the native resolution of my monitor (2560x1440) which is obviously going to be a push on the WoW engine, especially as I probably don't have a particularly efficient UI :P

    I'm currently getting around 30fps in 25 man raids which can drop down to 15 minimum under extreme activity/spells.

    My spec is listed below:

    Intel i7 920 D0 @ 3.6GHz
    Asus P6T Motherboard
    12Gb Corsair DDR3 Vengeance
    Gigabyte nVidia Geforce GTX670 (Windforce OC - overclocked quite substantially, cant remember the exact overclock at the moment)
    Asus Xonar D2X PCI-E sound card
    OCZ Agility 3 128Gb SSD + Various other SATA drives
    27" Dell U2711 + 24" Dell 2405FWP (old 2nd monitor!)

    I'm thinking the only realistic upgrade I can do is the CPU/Motherboard/Memory combo since they are quite old now (4 years I think!) and probably limiting but looking around forums shows that it wouldn't actually bring much performance...

    Anybody got experience with going from an i7 920 to an i7 3770k or similar?

    I'm sure the graphics card is not going to be the limiting factor here...

    Any ideas?

    Do you think Haswell is going to be worth waiting for also?

    Thanks in advance for any responses!

    Edit: Another strange thing I find is that sometimes WoW will feel very "smooth" while other times it doesn't...even when displaying the same frame rate in game...odd!

  2. #2
    Field Marshal Scrotie's Avatar
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    I have a i5 2500k (stock clock) on an Asus p8z68-v pro running the Sapphire 6950 2gb on ultra and in 25 mans im getting around 45 fps. Though my res is 1920x1080 I feel like if you upgraded your processor and mobo you will see a favorable increase in fps.

    Sorry its not directed towards your i7 question but its food for thought I guess.

  3. #3
    Moderator chazus's Avatar
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    I would get the 3570K, unless you need the i7 for a specific reason that wasn't noted. It may be worth waiting for haswell (a few months) to see how benchmarks look. The 920 certainly isn't a bad CPU, however it is a bit of an issue considering it's a slightly lower CPU, and you have a higher than normal resolution.
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  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by chazus View Post
    I would get the 3570K, unless you need the i7 for a specific reason that wasn't noted. It may be worth waiting for haswell (a few months) to see how benchmarks look. The 920 certainly isn't a bad CPU, however it is a bit of an issue considering it's a slightly lower CPU, and you have a higher than normal resolution.
    This^

    Just upgrade to a 1155 board with an i5, half the price of an i7 and slightly better for gaming, unless you're doing streaming/video rendering a lot

  5. #5
    I am not experienced in running at those resolutions but it is possible if you only have the 2GB version of that GPU it could possibly be your limiting factor.

    Hhow much VRAM does your GPU have?
    What happen to your FPS if you lower your resolution to 1080p?
    Do you have an OC on your CPU?

  6. #6
    I prefer the i7's just to have that bit extra processing power when needed. I run VM's from time to time for work purposes and I do like to record / render videos of boss kills etc.

    The price isn't that important to me (within reason :P) so I've always looked towards the i7's really.

    I guess I just want some clarification that doing such an upgrade would actually help and not be a waste of money (as I'm honestly happy with the PC's performance on everything except wow!)

  7. #7
    Then yes, just upgrade to the i7 3770k (? been a while since ive recommended i7s) and that should OC to enough to bring your bottleneck into another component

  8. #8
    @Lathais

    How much VRAM does your GPU have? - 2Gb
    What happen to your FPS if you lower your resolution to 1080p? - I haven't tried this because it looks terrible on my monitor
    Do you have an OC on your CPU? - Yep it's OC'd from 2.66Ghz to 3.6Ghz (roughly)

    Can I tell somewhere how much VRAM is being used at any time?

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Grondath View Post
    @Lathais

    How much VRAM does your GPU have? - 2Gb
    What happen to your FPS if you lower your resolution to 1080p? - I haven't tried this because it looks terrible on my monitor
    Do you have an OC on your CPU? - Yep it's OC'd from 2.66Ghz to 3.6Ghz (roughly)

    Can I tell somewhere how much VRAM is being used at any time?
    Well, it may look terrible but give it a shot and see what happens. If your FPS is good with it at 1080p then you have found the problem and it can be easily solved by either upgrading to the 4GB version or going SLI with it.

    Also, I believe I have read about people pushing that chip up to 4.2 or so, not sure what type of cooler you have or if you've tried to go higher than what you have before or not, but that could also possibly help. Do not take my word on this though and please get the opinion of someone who actually OCs before trying this. I don't want you to try it then blame me so I am trying to make it clear I am not really sure how far that chip can go.

  10. #10
    Moderator chazus's Avatar
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    Doesn't running 1920x1080 on a 2560x1440 make it look awful? I've always been under the impression that you simply shouldn't play games at non-native res if you can help it.
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  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by chazus View Post
    Doesn't running 1920x1080 on a 2560x1440 make it look awful? I've always been under the impression that you simply shouldn't play games at non-native res if you can help it.
    It's just a test to see if perhaps it is the running at 1080p gets better FPS. If it does, then we can deduce that running at 2560x1440 is capping out the VRAM and causing the slow down. Unless there is a program I do not know about to monitor VRAM usage, I have never had a need to so do not know of anything so came up with a "poorboy" test. Perhaps he could try it on his older second monitor, just as a test, not a permanent solution.

  12. #12
    Changing resolution (even down to 1280x720) made zero difference to FPS.

    I had a play around with some settings in the BIOS and managed to get my CPU overclocked to 4ghz stable and I'm now running at 60fps constant! What a difference! Guess I can save some money on an upgrade for now then!

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