Which should I upgrade first?

[wowizcool]

I currently have a AMD 955 Black edition 3.2ghz x4 processor and Ati 4890's in crossfire. I've got 8gb 1600 ram. My mother board is the M4A79T Deluxe. Which should I upgrade first my processor and mother board or my video cards, thanks in advanced.

[Deleted]

Most likely the video cards, I would suggest only getting a single card as opposed to SLI/Crossfire though unless you really need it (huge resolutions for example), you'll get much more for your money by putting it into one powerful card than 2 not so powerful cards.

[praze]

I tend to assume WoW is a person's main concern with performance on this forum unless they state otherwise, in which case I would have you upgrade to a current gen single Nvidia based card. WoW is optimized using Nvidia hardware and performs better across the board when played on Nvidia hardware.

WoW scales horribly with multi-GPU setups because they haven't ever done a full multi-threaded update to the graphics engine. When Cataclysm launched, WoW still performed barely faster with an SLI/Crossfire setup at best, and actually decreased in performance with some multi-card builds. In other words, your second card is completely wasted on the game. On the note of multi-threading, WoW's CPU performance almost entirely scales with frequency, not core count. AMD architecture is unfortunately quite noticeably inferior to Intel's, but in WoW these shortcomings don't translate to very dramatic numbers. The new Intel chips do so well with WoW simply because they can underclock the underused cores and overclock the ones taking a load. Single threaded performance sees a boost, but multi-threaded performance is available at any time.

So, if WoW is your main squeeze, grab a single GTX 570 or whatever you can afford. If you play other more modern titles (non-Blizzard) and/or want to be able to play whatever comes out with reasonable performance, the MoBo/CPU option should net you the biggest performance boost. I really wish AMD could recover and regain their competitive performance, but sadly they fall so far behind there really is no justification to buy their CPU's other than having a really small budget. A video card upgrade in this case wouldn't be too horrible an idea, as the varying titles you might play might make AMD's new Radeon HD 7000 series pretty attractive, but I would do some research on the titles you plan to play with the new rig before dropping any cash.

By all means, object to anything I've said or ask any questions you might have. I've been building/repairing computers for 13 years now and will be upgrading my rig here pretty soon after the new Nvidia generation hits the market so I can see who takes the performance crown. Talk at ya soon!

[wowizcool]

I tend to assume WoW is a person's main concern with performance on this forum unless they state otherwise, in which case I would have you upgrade to a current gen single Nvidia based card. WoW is optimized using Nvidia hardware and performs better across the board when played on Nvidia hardware.

WoW scales horribly with multi-GPU setups because they haven't ever done a full multi-threaded update to the graphics engine. When Cataclysm launched, WoW still performed barely faster with an SLI/Crossfire setup at best, and actually decreased in performance with some multi-card builds. In other words, your second card is completely wasted on the game. On the note of multi-threading, WoW's CPU performance almost entirely scales with frequency, not core count. AMD architecture is unfortunately quite noticeably inferior to Intel's, but in WoW these shortcomings don't translate to very dramatic numbers. The new Intel chips do so well with WoW simply because they can underclock the underused cores and overclock the ones taking a load. Single threaded performance sees a boost, but multi-threaded performance is available at any time.

So, if WoW is your main squeeze, grab a single GTX 570 or whatever you can afford. If you play other more modern titles (non-Blizzard) and/or want to be able to play whatever comes out with reasonable performance, the MoBo/CPU option should net you the biggest performance boost. I really wish AMD could recover and regain their competitive performance, but sadly they fall so far behind there really is no justification to buy their CPU's other than having a really small budget. A video card upgrade in this case wouldn't be too horrible an idea, as the varying titles you might play might make AMD's new Radeon HD 7000 series pretty attractive, but I would do some research on the titles you plan to play with the new rig before dropping any cash.

By all means, object to anything I've said or ask any questions you might have. I've been building/repairing computers for 13 years now and will be upgrading my rig here pretty soon after the new Nvidia generation hits the market so I can see who takes the performance crown. Talk at ya soon!

Will a Nvidia card work with my Mobo?

[praze]

Yep, it'll support it just as well as any MoBo with PCI Express 2.0 would. The only thing it won't support is SLI, but dual-video cards is not generally recommended nowadays unless you're pushing higher resolutions than 1920x1200, really like a lot of anti-aliasing, or are playing a game that is very shader heavy (or otherwise GPU bottlenecked).

[wowizcool]

Yep, it'll support it just as well as any MoBo with PCI Express 2.0 would. The only thing it won't support is SLI, but dual-video cards is not generally recommended nowadays unless you're pushing higher resolutions than 1920x1200, really like a lot of anti-aliasing, or are playing a game that is very shader heavy (or otherwise GPU bottlenecked).

Another question for you, which card would be better ZOTAC ZT-50313-10M GeForce GTX 560 Ti - 448 Cores (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 or a HIS IceQ X Turbo H695QNT2G2M Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16?

[Deleted]

WoW is optimized using Nvidia hardware and performs better across the board when played on Nvidia hardware.

Sorry for the following language.. but..

Tired of this shit. You have no proof of that claim.

[Wries]

OP I'd say both CPU and GPU are coming to an end but maybe not just yet. In 25 man raiding it's a CPU upgrade you'd want, but for general pretty things and primarily other games, the GPUs are of more importance. How does its performance not satisfy you at the moment? Do games just lag in general or is it a specific title/situation?

Sorry for the following language.. but..

Tired of this shit. You have no proof of that claim.

You're asking him to link to that tomshardware article? :P

I tend to assume WoW is a person's main concern with performance on this forum unless they state otherwise, in which case I would have you upgrade to a current gen single Nvidia based card. WoW is optimized using Nvidia hardware and performs better across the board when played on Nvidia hardware.*

WoW scales horribly with multi-GPU setups because they haven't ever done a full multi-threaded update to the graphics engine. When Cataclysm launched, WoW still performed barely faster with an SLI/Crossfire setup at best, and actually decreased in performance with some multi-card builds. In other words, your second card is completely wasted on the game.

SLI has been known to work well with WoW today, aside from a few flickering portaits from time to time. When CPU isn't bottlenecking the scene, framerate almost doubles. That said, the game doesn't need much GPU horsepower anyway.

[Deleted]

You're asking him to link to that tomshardware article? :P

Indeed. Was thinking about that.. heh

[wowizcool]

OP I'd say both CPU and GPU are coming to an end but maybe not just yet. In 25 man raiding it's a CPU upgrade you'd want, but for general pretty things and primarily other games, the GPUs are of more importance. How does its performance not satisfy you at the moment? Do games just lag in general or is it a specific title/situation?

Im starting to play alot more of my games on pc instead of console and some of the newer games are tuff to run with this current setup.

[praze]

Sorry for the following language.. but..

Tired of this shit. You have no proof of that claim.

Wow, is this a popular opinion? Not sure how it was missed, but we've all had proof for quite some time...

If you read up on computer hardware, this is an extremely common practice. Most games partner with Nvidia or AMD in order to optimize performance for the varying hardware on the market (among other, more financial reasons). There are times with the difference is negligible, and there are times when it almost seems like they're purposefully crippling the competitor's cards. The only reason you don't see WoW's performance numbers on new hardware very often (ever?) is because not only is it technologically old-school, but as Reguilea mentioned, it's a CPU heavy game. It's not until you get up into the enthusiast resolutions (I run it at 2560x1440) at Ultra settings and anti-aliasing turned on do you see that GPU break a sweat, and even then it's still playable.

Believe me, I'm no Nvidia fanboy, I was running two 5870's in crossfire before one died and I "upgraded" to a GTX 570. I go with what performs best for the games/software I need it in most, and Intel/Nvidia was right for me at the time

Oh, and watch your mouth >_<

---------- Post added 2012-03-07 at 11:59 PM ----------

Another question for you, which card would be better ZOTAC ZT-50313-10M GeForce GTX 560 Ti - 448 Cores (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 or a HIS IceQ X Turbo H695QNT2G2M Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16?

Sorry wowizcool, almost missed this question. These are failry competitive cards, so the performance in benchmarks tend to flip-flop back and forth depending on the title. In general, I'd almost give the win to the Nvidia card, but thewent up $20 on that one, so it might lose on the value scale depending on what you play. I wish I could say to wait for the 7850 for a $250 beast, but the card should probably be priced a bit lower for it's performance so It's of no use at this point.

If you go with the GTX 560 Ti 448, I recommend the EVGA FTW version of the card. It's clocked higher and has an extra year of warranty on it for the same price. If you wait long enough, you should see an "-AR" model number pop up with a lifetime warranty for the same price. I know EVGA and XFX have lifetime warranties on most items, worth considering when you buy

[wowizcool]

of the card. It's clocked higher and has an extra year of warranty on it for the same price. If you wait long enough, you should see an "-AR" model number pop up with a lifetime warranty for the same price. I know EVGA and XFX have lifetime warranties on most items, worth considering when you buy

Alright one last question, I'm gonna get a gtx 570, is paying 40 dollars more for a 2gb version worth it? I play at 1920x1080 I've read the more memory is better when playing at higher res.

[praze]

1080p is borderline "higher res" in my opinion, I wouldn't spend the extra cash on it myself unless you really like anti-aliasing. 2560MB of RAM is quite a lot, but I think EVGA's Classified edition or Gigabyte's Super Overclock Series would actually get you better numbers if you're wanting that extra punch. Overclocking the 2.6GB version yourself would be the best of both worlds, but there's no guarantee you'll get a good overclock out of it. Hope that helps!

[Deleted]

That Toms article has been proven to be wrong and inaccurate.

Guess i had it coming though.

[lolvik]

His post is still worth more than yours, since he can actually show proof, while youre just talking out your ass untill you actually show where it was "proven to be wrong".

[praze]

I'd love to see some numbers, actually. That, and the SLI/Crossfire numbers that show WoW scaling respectably. I wouldn't mind picking up two cards next upgrade, always had more fun with a multi-card build even though it's less stable.

[Deleted]

Well i cant find any evidence now.
But you weren't here around the time the article was released (toms)

[praze]

I was here, just not registered for the forums. Though I've used Tom's Hardware since 2000, I actually saw it on MMO-Campion first.

[BicycleMafioso]

The advice for nVidia cards performing better in Wow is completely unfounded. The 4890 is decent until the price drop in the HD7800 series will occur.

Anything nVidia out there is basically a waste in money, at this time in point, as even they have new cards on the horizon, of which we know nothing.

[Rafax]

That nvidia is better for wow is pardon my french, bullshit, wow is not optimized for either brand and blizzard would be stupid to have optimized it, plus we all know how viable tomshardware is in general lol, and atm as said by tetris, ati is the way to go , past generations dropped in price thanks to the new one and they still have tons of power for wow , getting something like a 6850 or a 6870 would be more than enough for wow atm.