950m sufficient for 50 FPS on Ultra?

[Awbee]

Hey everyone,

I gotta buy a new laptop (mine's literally falling apart), and I have to make a choice between the Nvidia Geforce GTX 950m and 960m. Processor's likely gonna be an i7, RAM's gonna be 8 GB, and I hope I can at least get an SSD cache.

Unfortunately, the 960m is quite a big costlier than the 950m (about 250€ if all other things, like SSD, are equal). So, is the difference worth it?
My goal is being able to play WoW smoothly, which for me is pretty much everything above 40 FPS (since I'm used to 15-20), but the higher, the better of course. I usually don't play on Full HD because I don't like how small everything gets, but I like Anti-Aliasing, character and texture detail and also water being on ultra. This should be possible during questing and dungeons. During high-stress situations like PVP or LFR I would certainly be fine with tuning the graphics down.


So, would the 950m with a good processor be sufficient for that, or should I dig deep into my pockets to get the 960m?

Thanks in advance!

[Artorius]

Put the game at the display's native resolution and then control UI elements sizes with the UI scaling control.

Resolution isn't a direct control for size of things, it used to be 20 years ago when everything was made with a single DPI in mind. Nowadays you have displays of different sizes and densities so things should render themselves at the same size with different densities when you switch resolutions. Putting the game at a lower resolution makes it upscale to fit the screen's pixels and this will cause blurring.

With that said, I have no idea how powerful a 950M is but I'm certainly sure that you'll have problems at heavy-load scenarios anyway regardless of it. You should be able to get your 60fps goal at leveling zones and such, with some toggles down if I had to guess.

Also, there are some mobile i7s that are dual-cores just like the i3s. And the difference is basically clocks and caches, which might not be that helpful for you but still increase the price of the product quite a bit.

[Denpepe]

Well it is said that mobile variants are about 30% slower then their desktop counterpart, like Artorius said it could be fine for for outdoor/leveling stuff, may need to use the raid tab for turning down visuals during raids etc... to keep things fluid.

[Afrospinach]

Unfortunately, the 960m is quite a big costlier than the 950m

The 960m is quite a lot more beefy than the 950m and if I am not mistaken it always comes with gddr5. You will find the 650m often with gddr3 and it is substantially slower in that variant(~10-15% behind the gddr5 version).

That being said I have a 950m(ddr3) paired with a 6500u. It even did ok with GTA5 on 1080p and reduced settings. Unfortunately I am not subbed right now otherwise I could tell you exactly how it is in WoW.

Here is a vid for the slow ddr3 version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn_jVglS_Vw

[Sorshen]

At 1080p, the 960m is like 45% better in Fallout 4, 30% better in Witcher 3, and ~20% higher in Firestrike standard. WoW likes CPU clock more, but it helps to put things into perspective.

[Awbee]

The 960m is quite a lot more beefy than the 950m and if I am not mistaken it always comes with gddr5. You will find the 650m often with gddr3 and it is substantially slower in that variant(~10-15% behind the gddr5 version).

That being said I have a 950m(ddr3) paired with a 6500u. It even did ok with GTA5 on 1080p and reduced settings. Unfortunately I am not subbed right now otherwise I could tell you exactly how it is in WoW.

Here is a vid for the slow ddr3 version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn_jVglS_Vw

Unfortunately, it seems that all of the laptops I've been looking at have the ddr3 version of the 950m -.- thanks for the info!

- - - Updated - - -

At 1080p, the 960m is like 45% better in Fallout 4, 30% better in Witcher 3, and ~20% higher in Firestrike standard. WoW likes CPU clock more, but it helps to put things into perspective.

Okay, that's quiiite the difference indeed. Thanks for the info!

[Stuneree]

To add to this, because I've used a 950m, 960m, and 980m, I will say that you might have troubles at ULTRA, but it is actually the processor that makes the bigger difference in WoW.
If you're playing at 720p, you'll be able to run decent settings. But remember that ultra in WoW kills even powerful gaming desktops in cities, again because of the processor.
I would personally say it WOULD be worth getting a 960m just because it would probably last a bit longer for you, and could probably be a constant 60 FPS outside of cities. But if you are really turned off of the extra couple hundred euros/dollars, the 950m won't be too much of a problem, maybe medium-high @ 720p for a 60fps play.

[Awbee]

To add to this, because I've used a 950m, 960m, and 980m, I will say that you might have troubles at ULTRA, but it is actually the processor that makes the bigger difference in WoW.
If you're playing at 720p, you'll be able to run decent settings. But remember that ultra in WoW kills even powerful gaming desktops in cities, again because of the processor.
I would personally say it WOULD be worth getting a 960m just because it would probably last a bit longer for you, and could probably be a constant 60 FPS outside of cities. But if you are really turned off of the extra couple hundred euros/dollars, the 950m won't be too much of a problem, maybe medium-high @ 720p for a 60fps play.

Wow, how many laptops have you had? well thanks for the info! The thing is, it gets super expensive if you want a 960m along with at least a 24 GB cache SSD, let alone a 128 GB SSD. But I think an SSD is very useful for my laptop in general. In WoW as well, because I haaate if we wipe in a dungeon or raid and my loading screen takes longer than everybody else's an SSD, if WoW is installed on it, should help with that, correct?

[Artorius]

You can also buy a not elegant big sized laptop and simply swap its hard drive for a cheap 250gb SSD if you're really worried about loading times.

[Awbee]

You can also buy a not elegant big sized laptop and simply swap its hard drive for a cheap 250gb SSD if you're really worried about loading times.

Problem is, I also need a big HDD for all my stuff. An SSD could only be additional, not a replacement :/

[Gaidax]

There is a big difference between 950m and 960m, if you want to game let alone on ultra, I really suggest to suck it up and get 960m.

[Master Guns]

I think the 960m is better bang for your buck.

[Awbee]

Thanks, so I guess I'll get the 960m then is there a big difference between the 2GB and 4GB memory version?

[Artorius]

Thanks, so I guess I'll get the 960m then is there a big difference between the 2GB and 4GB memory version?

Nope really. You won't ever be able to run anything that requires more than 2 at satisfactory performance anyway.
You can go with the 4gb version if you're scared of games that are badly coded though, but don't expect better performance at what the card is aimed at.

[Awbee]

Nope really. You won't ever be able to run anything that requires more than 2 at satisfactory performance anyway.
You can go with the 4gb version if you're scared of games that are badly coded though, but don't expect better performance at what the card is aimed at.

Thanks, that's good

It seems like I won't be able to get anything more than a 24 GB SSD (considering I want the 960m). Is that useful at all, especially in the context of maybe having faster loading screens in the games I play the most? Or is that not even enough to fit Windows on it and I might as well not have an SSD at all?


Or is it better to get a lame 950m but with 128 GB of SSD?

[Artorius]

For games the SSD doesn't really matter. If your HD is a decent 7200RPM HD then I can't really see how you'd have loading time issues at WoW. It'll take longer than a SSD but not longer than... 3~5s?

I don't really remember how low it used to take here, but I know that I always had WoW at a HD and I was always the first to get back to the boss room.
Burst of speed OP

[Lathais]

For games the SSD doesn't really matter. If your HD is a decent 7200RPM HD then I can't really see how you'd have loading time issues at WoW. It'll take longer than a SSD but not longer than... 3~5s?

I don't really remember how low it used to take here, but I know that I always had WoW at a HD and I was always the first to get back to the boss room.
Burst of speed OP

It's quite a bit longer than 3-5s. More like 30+ Seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUgadfbyiGo

I see this on plenty of other games too as I have an SSD in my system but my wife does not. There are some games, FFXIV for one, that make no difference at all. Other games, GTAV, Fallout 4 to name a couple, that there is a very noticeable 20+ second difference.

I addition to that, some testing I have done shows an FPS difference in WoW in crowded areas. It's not really a noticeable difference, but running around in Org from SSD FPS would remain above 90. Doing the same thing from HDD and there were dips down to 82 or so. Again, nothing to get upset about, still above 60, but the difference is there. It really only happens in crowded areas though, because there is far too much player data to pre-cache and it has to get those models from storage. In raids and open world, the amount it has to gather is far less and far more predictable so it's able to pre-cache.

[Artorius]

It's quite a bit longer than 3-5s. More like 30+ Seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUgadfbyiGo

Raid respawn points load way faster than cities and first logins. That's important.

Of course it'll take long to load the first time, but after it you can logout and log-in back and it'll be faster. And you don't have to load a nearly as much information when you respawn from a raid encounter since raids aren't really inside crowded cities.

I addition to that, some testing I have done shows an FPS difference in WoW in crowded areas. It's not really a noticeable difference, but running around in Org from SSD FPS would remain above 90. Doing the same thing from HDD and there were dips down to 82 or so. Again, nothing to get upset about, still above 60, but the difference is there. It really only happens in crowded areas though, because there is far too much player data to pre-cache and it has to get those models from storage. In raids and open world, the amount it has to gather is far less and far more predictable so it's able to pre-cache.

The engine shouldn't be tying to show you what's not loaded. It should remain invisible until it's loaded from the disk and ready at the VRAM to be loaded by your card and shown at the screen. Unless your storage device is making your CPU load increase when seeking, which it shouldn't, there's no reason for it to cause any performance difference. I understand that you did a test and got different numbers, but keep in mind that WoW doesn't have a proper benchmarking mode and there are far too many uncontrollable external factors that could've caused performance differences.

Windows might have tried to search for new updates for example, there're just way too many things that can randomly happen making your results inconsistent.

[Lathais]

Raid respawn points load way faster than cities and first logins. That's important.

Of course it'll take long to load the first time, but after it you can logout and log-in back and it'll be faster. And you don't have to load a nearly as much information when you respawn from a raid encounter since raids aren't really inside crowded cities.

The engine shouldn't be tying to show you what's not loaded. It should remain invisible until it's loaded from the disk and ready at the VRAM to be loaded by your card and shown at the screen. Unless your storage device is making your CPU load increase when seeking, which it shouldn't, there's no reason for it to cause any performance difference. I understand that you did a test and got different numbers, but keep in mind that WoW doesn't have a proper benchmarking mode and there are far too many uncontrollable external factors that could've caused performance differences.

Windows might have tried to search for new updates for example, there're just way too many things that can randomly happen making your results inconsistent.

I tested it multiple times at different times of the day and the results were always nearly identical. When running from SSD in Org it -never- dropped below 90 FPS. When running from HDD, the max FPS was the same, but there were frequently dips down to 83. This is spending more than 20 minutes at each test running around Org in the same path each time. I know, it's crazy and it defies what I've "known" for a long long time, but there it is. On SSD I never went below 90 and on HDD I did. You would think that if it just remains invisible, but it does not, it waits for that data from the HDD and processes it, lowering your FPS. I had my friend test it as well and in Org he saw the same results. Since his account is active, he was also able to test this on his main, on a flying mount, way up high where the distance you can see is much larger than what can be pre-cached and he saw the same exact thing there as well. I know it doesn't make sense, but test for yourself and see. The difference is there, in numbers only as it's not a noticeable difference. Perhaps Blizz knows this and knowing that it does not really make any noticeable difference, just does not care to bother to change it. It's something you'll only see if you are looking for it and I even found a few posts back when I tested this on a couple different sites of other people reporting the same phenomenon.

Again, I find it pretty hard to swallow myself, but the numbers just don't lie. Were talking about an ~8% difference in FPS in crowded areas on SSD/HDD.

[Evildeffy]

Actually these things make perfect sense.

You forget that WoW works with large files and those files are nothing more than a form of light compression coupled with .CAB style properties.
Whenever a previously unloaded graphic has to be loaded it goes into the large files and retrieves 1 specific file set to then start loading on the screen.
It doesn't show on the screen until loading is done 100% but that doesn't mean the files required for it aren't being retrieved, processed and loaded.

SSDs have this very effect on any and all large world games in general where it smoothes the loading process to a point that you don't notice it.
Whether you have a 5.400RPM or even 10.000RPM HDD this event will always remain present, especially in large mythic battles or cities/areas.
(Remember Ultraxxion event where the entire zone was loaded?)

Until it's loaded it will have a stuttering impact on such games, after loading and it being in active/cached memory it will be smoother.

If you want to try this theory .. when you're doing nothing at all in Windows (and provided you have AHCI enabled) you can pull out the SATA cable from the mobo and Windows will continue to function for a short while until it tries accessing something on the operating drive.
If you try this same thing on WoW it will lock-up and crash because of the aforementioned point.

At any point your operating system commands your device to search for something CPU cycles will be used.
Remember that it goes from Game -> Operating System -> Device -> Operating System -> Game so this phenomenon is anything but weird, it's 100% normal.