What is the lowest level GPU that can run WoW smoothly (60 fps) at 1440p on ultra?

[fr0stz0mbie]

What's up guys, long time reader, first time poster here. I played WoW from 2006-2011 so I've been on a nice little 5 year break and I'm thinking about getting back into it for Legion but my computer from 2011 isn't going to cut it. So I'm going to build a new one with a 1440p monitor and I can get a good deal on a GTX 980 from a friend. So I'd like to know if a GTX 980 can give me 60+ fps at 1440p on ultra settings? If something lower than that would work like a 970 or 960? Or if I have to go higher like 980 Ti, 1070, 1080? Any help from your all's knowledge and experience is appreciated.

[BicycleMafioso]

Depends on your CPU. Wow has, at least up until now, been mainly a CPU-limited game. The game will put more strain on the GPU in higher resolutions and in higher spell details (or details at all, which will be coming in Legion).
I think it will still be true.

[Lathais]

As Tetris said, it will also depend on CPU as if your CPU is not powerful enough you could SLI 1080s and still she shit FPS. As long as your CPU is up to snuff though, this benchmark should give you a pretty good idea of just how easy it is to get decent performance at 1440p. Keep in mind, this is likely not in a raid environment and with all the particle effects going on, FPS can tank, but that's mainly the CPUs fault, not the GPU.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/...X_1080/23.html

[fr0stz0mbie]

I'm leaning toward the i7 6700k right now, I wanted to try to get the best of the best when it came to the CPU so it would last for awhile. With an i7 6700k can a GTX 980 average 60+ fps at 1440p on ultra settings?

[Lathais]

I'm leaning toward the i7 6700k right now, I wanted to try to get the best of the best when it came to the CPU so it would last for awhile. With an i7 6700k can a GTX 980 average 60+ fps at 1440p on ultra settings?

That's what they used in the benchmarks I posted, but really, there will be no difference for WoW between the i7-6700K and the i5-6600K. Unless you do other tasks that actually make use of Hyperthreading, the i5 will be just as good and last just as long as the i7.

[mrgreenthump]

Depends totally how much the 980 will cost you, because anything over $200 and you would probably be better off waiting few weeks for the RX 480 or a bit longer for the GTX 1060.

[Deleted]

Depends totally how much the 980 will cost you, because anything over $200 and you would probably be better off waiting few weeks for the RX 480 or a bit longer for the GTX 1060.

99.99% of times i would say " yes" but till today i always say, hands down stay with nvidia for blizzard games

[mrgreenthump]

99.99% of times i would say " yes" but till day i always say, hands down stay with nvidia for blizzard games

He was asking for 60 fps on 1440p, which is not really a problem for any high performance card be it AMD or Nvidia. And as RX 480 is faster than an R9 390, it should be more than enough to achieve that.

[Ennvina]

If you don’t want be one of the players who “are not prepared” for Legion, you have to consider the latest additions of the expansion to come. New spell effects, new visibility distances, etc. will have a huge impact that we can’t benchmark yet since the devs are still tweaking the numbers. Not to mention there will be no more Ultra settings. They will replace the Low/High/etc. by a numerical scale from 1 to 10. So what is currently Ultra may be, say, 9 in Legion. So will you want to target the level 9 (granted it is equivalent to Ultra), or level 10?

Also if you want to upgrade your graphics card, please check your power supply can supply enough power (!) or upgrade your power supply as well, which is a pain btw.

[Soisoisoi]

I'm leaning toward the i7 6700k right now, I wanted to try to get the best of the best when it came to the CPU so it would last for awhile. With an i7 6700k can a GTX 980 average 60+ fps at 1440p on ultra settings?

Don't get anything from the 9 series any more, there's no point. Wait for a 1070 or 1080. You'll definitely be able to play WoW pretty smooth on Ultra with a 1070 and 6700k. With my i5-4670k (base @3.4GHz) and a 980 Ti, playing at 1080p with 4x SSAA on and getting well over 60 FPS. Simply turn that down or off for raiding and it should be pretty stable outside of the terribly optimised places (e.g. the Garrison).

[Deleted]

is never about how some amd are over killing for what WoW demands from a gpu, but is always about the drivers

[Ennvina]

Don't get anything from the 9 series any more, there's no point. Wait for a 1070 or 1080.

The 1080 is very expensive and unlikely to be any cheaper before Legion goes live. And the graphics card is probably overkill for WoW. We don’t have much information on the 1070 yet. We expect it to be a good deal but in the end you don’t know before the card is tested.

The 970 and 980 series are still very good graphics cards and are young enough to provide anything you need. Also their prices are probably going to be cut in the near future, if not done already. However, if you are gearing your computer towards Virtual Reality headsets, you may be interested in the 1070 and 1080 which provide interesting new features.

About the Intel i7-6700K, it is really overkill for WoW, chaud is very clear about that every time he updates the Build of the Month. Also this topic is about transition between 1080p and 1440p, and the CPU does not help with that. But, again, if you have other goals in mind, like streaming your own raids or video editing or other CPU-intensive tasks, it’s always good to have something higher than needed.

[Deleted]

As others have said grab an i5 6600k with a decent Z170 mobo. Anything above a gtx970 will be fine for wow @ 1440p since you will mostly be limited on the cpu side rather than gpu. But then again if you want to play other games @ 1440p that are far more gpu demanding the more money you throw at it the better it will be. So it all depends what other games you play, if any, and how much budget you got for the whole rig.

[Soisoisoi]

The 1080 is very expensive and unlikely to be any cheaper before Legion goes live. And the graphics card is probably overkill for WoW. We don’t have much information on the 1070 yet. We expect it to be a good deal but in the end you don’t know before the card is tested.

The 970 and 980 series are still very good graphics cards and are young enough to provide anything you need. Also their prices are probably going to be cut in the near future, if not done already. However, if you are gearing your computer towards Virtual Reality headsets, you may be interested in the 1070 and 1080 which provide interesting new features.

About the Intel i7-6700K, it is really overkill for WoW, chaud is very clear about that every time he updates the Build of the Month. Also this topic is about transition between 1080p and 1440p, and the CPU does not help with that. But, again, if you have other goals in mind, like streaming your own raids or video editing or other CPU-intensive tasks, it’s always good to have something higher than needed.

The 970 is also overkill for WoW, so if we're going in roughly the same price bracket you might as well go for the 10x variants. If you're spending money you might as well get the latest stuff and make it last that bit longer.

[Ennvina]

The 970 is also overkill for WoW, so if we're going in roughly the same price bracket you might as well go for the 10x variants. If you're spending money you might as well get the latest stuff and make it last that bit longer.

I wouldn’t say the 970 is overkill for WoW, though it’s more than OK for WoD. I have this card and sometimes the game drops below the 60 fps mark with Ultra settings, even outside raids. I am wondering how it will perform with Legion.

I’m not sure why you compare the price bracket since the cheapest series (i.e. 1070) is going to be significantly more expensive than the 970. With current estimations there will be roughly a $150/150€ difference, i.e. approx. 40% more expensive. But keep in mind the 1070 prices are not final and the 970 price may be cut in the near future. Unless you were talking about other series like 1050 or 1060?

[Lathais]

I wouldn’t say the 970 is overkill for WoW, though it’s more than OK for WoD. I have this card and sometimes the game drops below the 60 fps mark with Ultra settings, even outside raids. I am wondering how it will perform with Legion.

I’m not sure why you compare the price bracket since the cheapest series (i.e. 1070) is going to be significantly more expensive than the 970. With current estimations there will be roughly a $150/150€ difference, i.e. approx. 40% more expensive. But keep in mind the 1070 prices are not final and the 970 price may be cut in the near future. Unless you were talking about other series like 1050 or 1060?

The 970 is overkill for WoW. The reason you sometimes have dips below 60 has nothing to do with your GPU and everything to do with your CPU. It happens to people with Titans, Furies, 980tis, everyone really. Certain parts of the game bog down the CPU and you have FPS drops because of it, no matter how powerful the system.

Also, no, the price of the 970 is not going to drop. Sorry, tech market simply does not work that way. Has not for quite some time. You can't find any anymore, as they are all sold out, but while you could still find some, GTX 770s cost more than 970s. Just a few weeks ago you could still find 700 series cards, though they are scarce now. However, when comparing 700 series pricing to 900 series pricing, 700 series was more expensive than 900 series. Why do you think 900 series to 1000 series will be any different? Hearing about these supposed price drops on 900 series cards is getting really really old at this point. It's just not gonna happen. The 900 series cost what the 900 series cost to produce and they have to sell it at the price they sell it or lose money. Businesses are not in business to lose money, so the prices will stay where they are at.

[fr0stz0mbie]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I think I'm just going to pony up the extra cash and get a GTX 1080. I understand that combined with an i7 6700k might be overkill but I just want to be set for a long time and the only game I plan on playing is WoW but at the same time I did dabble in a little raid recording for my guild when I used to play so it might help if I got back into that.

Here is where I'm currently at with my parts list:
MSI Z170A
i7 6700k
Nvidia GTX 1080
Corsair CX650M 650W
I might do liquid cooling but haven't made up my mind and the RAM will be 32gb, HDD 2tb, and SSD 250gb but haven't decided what brand I want on those yet either.

Based on where I'm at does anyone see any glaring issues or have recommendations?

[Ennvina]

When I watch a scenery at e.g. 50 fps, in the middle of Lost Islands (where there is almost no other player, which is ideal for benchmarking), I can see the fps is rising or dropping by tweaking settings that use exclusively the graphics card, such as Anti-Aliasing. That’s why I assume GPU is the only culprit here.

You are right there’s no guarantee the 9xx prices will drop. Considering AMD is late with the new generation, NVidia could as well keep their old prices unchanged. However we have no idea of how the 1070 will be priced, I mean the price of custom designs. I think NVidia already announced the official price of their own product.

[Mythbredor]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I think I'm just going to pony up the extra cash and get a GTX 1080. I understand that combined with an i7 6700k might be overkill but I just want to be set for a long time and the only game I plan on playing is WoW but at the same time I did dabble in a little raid recording for my guild when I used to play so it might help if I got back into that.

Here is where I'm currently at with my parts list:
MSI Z170A
i7 6700k
Nvidia GTX 1080
Corsair CX650M 650W
I might do liquid cooling but haven't made up my mind and the RAM will be 32gb, HDD 2tb, and SSD 250gb but haven't decided what brand I want on those yet either.

Based on where I'm at does anyone see any glaring issues or have recommendations?

I use a h100i works great.

[Deleted]

Yeah get a better psu Better if you tell us where you are locared and whats the budget we can list you full specs of what you can get, including monitor.