Fast CPU + 7850 = not enough?

[Deleted]

Gave my pc some small upgrades to be ready for MOP! Got a second SSD - due to some hardware swapping with my brother got the 7850 - watercooling for my cpu to get some more mhz.

Current specs

2500K - 5.2ghz (1.43v - watercooled 100% stable)
8GB 2133mhz cas 9
HD7850 - 1ghz core memory 1.3ghz (5200 mhz)
1920x1080

Os on a Vertex 4
WoW on a kingston SSDNow+ 96GB (vertex 2 like performance)

Issue - With a moderate amount of ppl at stormwind Ah i hover around 50-60 FPS - when i lower the shadow detail from ultra to medium i go up to 90-100 fps.

What causes this? Is my 7850 not fast enough to do wow - Ultra - since i have been considering going 27" 2560x1440 should i get a 7950 or 670GTX? Or has there recently been some crossfire support? a second 7850 would be the cheapest (and fast for other games) options!

Or is there anything else i can do about this?

[Milkshake86]

Gave my pc some small upgrades to be ready for MOP! Got a second SSD - due to some hardware swapping with my brother got the 7850 - watercooling for my cpu to get some more mhz.

Current specs

2500K - 5.2ghz (1.43v - watercooled 100% stable)
8GB 2133mhz cas 9
HD7850 - 1ghz core memory 1.3ghz (5200 mhz)
1920x1080

Os on a Vertex 4
WoW on a kingston SSDNow+ 96GB (vertex 2 like performance)

Issue - With a moderate amount of ppl at stormwind Ah i hover around 50-60 FPS - when i lower the shadow detail from ultra to medium i go up to 90-100 fps.

What causes this? Is my 7850 not fast enough to do wow - Ultra - since i have been considering going 27" 2560x1440 should i get a 7950 or 670GTX? Or has there recently been some crossfire support? a second 7850 would be the cheapest (and fast for other games) options!

Or is there anything else i can do about this?

case and point going above 60 fps does nothing for you unless your on a 120Hz monitor. Even @ 5.2Ghz i5-2500k is not god, shadows not only spawn in visible areas but in areas not even loaded, shadows preload its pretty terrible and @ ultra will crush everything in its path.

[haxartus]

Your CPU is not fast enough.
I don't think that any CPU is fast enough to draw Ultra shadows on 500 people at the same time (at least in this horribly optimized game).

[Milkshake86]

Your CPU is not fast enough.
I don't think that any CPU is fast enough to draw shadows on Ultra on 500 people at the same time (at least in this horribly optimized game).

Especialy not with the way the game handles loading said shadows which goes to optimizing but at the same time the way they load is like a toad coded it.

[Kankipappa]

Just use Shadows somewhere good/high? Shadows @ Ultra really need that additional cpu/gpu power and just for the record, the small increase of shadow's LOD detail from Ultra to High vs performance hit it isn't worth the money anyway... You could always check this stuff by using third party tools like afterburner for example to check the GPU-usage, if you're wondering is it CPU or GPU.

Either WoW is really badly coded (well duh...) or the windows meters lie when people talk about the "slow CPU", but I can hit 99% gpu usage before I can even hit 50% cpu on my 2500K @ 4,7GHz + GTX 470 @ 800/2000 system and my fps crashes down to 40-50fps with Ultra shadows on crowded city.

And no, I wouldn't change your CPU just yet for minor if nothing as upgrade...

[Deleted]

ah - so Shadows is actually more a cpu option then a GFX option - i assumed it had something to do with that!

Doubt it- but would a Sandy Bridge-E with a decent overclock help? I have been offered big bucks for this cpu - i could get a 3820 + motherboard without losing any money.

---------- Post added 2012-08-27 at 11:14 AM ----------

Milkshake86 - I was looking for a steady 60FPS during any situation - currently it's not even steady 60FPS!

if a 5.2ghz sandy can't do it - what can? a 5.5ghz ivy?

Lets see how it behaves during raids - i upgraded from a 4ghz X6 so it should be a lot better

[Milkshake86]

ah - so Shadows is actually more a cpu option then a GFX option - i assumed it had something to do with that!

Doubt it- but would a Sandy Bridge-E with a decent overclock help? I have been offered big bucks for this cpu - i could get a 3820 + motherboard without losing any money.

No, nothing will make you happy in this situation, even a dual x79 Mobo w/ 2 3960x's would struggle w/ shadows clearly not @ 60FPS but again unless your on a 120Hz monitor 60 is fine.

[Confined]

No, nothing will really sustain a 60fps in a crowded major city with ultra shadows (or ultraxion for that matter)

[Spoonman]

Do u own a i5? i7 > i5, my god the difference, at least it was for me

[Kankipappa]

But like I said, just check your GPU-usage meter to be 100% sure. If your CPU hits to 100% before your GPU ever gets there, then you can say your CPU is not enough.

Something tells me it's the GPU in this situation anyway although CPU is also needed for shadows. Something also tells me that WoW is not so perfectly threaded program, that i7 over i5 would really give any major benefit. I'm betting it's the overall frequency over cores in WoW... :P

[Confined]

A cpu will never reach 100% while gaming, and If it does then that is seriously wrong.
My old q9400 was running at 40-60% in wow while the performance is obviously below current gen i5s.
Does that mean my HD7850 is choking on wow?

[haxartus]

A cpu will never reach 100% while gaming, and If it does then that is seriously wrong.
My old q9400 was running at 40-60% in wow while the performance is obviously below current gen i5s.
Does that mean my HD7850 is choking on wow?

It means that WoW can't fully utilize anything above a dual core.

[Confined]

Which in turn means that wow is never GPU capped with a 7850 at 1.3ghz
Also the Game splits the load among all 4 cores unless asked otherwise.

[Quintana]

There is no logical upgrade you can do that will achieve what you want. What you have now is overkill for WoW anyway, just turn the shadows down to high or good and you'll be fine.

[xebtria]

I have an I5 760 @3.67ghz, a 5870 @ stock clock, 1336mhz ram (synched with cpu core via FSB and multiplier) (don't ask me about the timings), full hd screen, so pretty mediocre, OS and wow on a vertex4, and I run orgrimmar on prime time @60-80 fps with everything on ultra (including shadows) and AAx4 and AFx8. I recently found out that youtube in the background causes quite a FPS drop. and sometimes setting AA to 8 and back to 4 also helps - for whatever reason.

other than that - I wouldn't really care if I have 50 or 90 fps. it doesn't make much of a difference in these ranges anyways...

[xStevooo]

i5 3570k 4.6ghz with 2gb gtx670 jetstream and i play on ultra 100+ fps 120hz 3d LED
Gw2 runs at 80+ on ultra 1920x1080

[Deleted]

Well having Hyperthreading wouldn't help at all - WoW isnt multithreaded - i know that!

How does WoW handle CF these days?Are there any disadvantage. The 7850 prices are down by quite a bit these last few days - i could get a second one quite cheap! Not for Wow but for other games - but if there are disadvantages in WoW...

---------- Post added 2012-08-27 at 12:10 PM ----------

ah i forgot one important thing!

I played windowed! I prefer it that way - always have. This makes my FPS go a bit lower but it's the same scenario (shadows down => FPS way up).

[noteworthynerd]

I may be talking out my arse here, but the last WoW benchmarks I saw indicated that the game played a lot nicer with NVIDIA cards.

This has always been my experience as well, I play Alliance on a high population server where the Alliance to Horde ratio is .29:1 and I never drop below 55 FPS in Stormwind. The only big difference between our PCs is that I have a 680 vs your 7850, and your CPU is clocked higher (clocks past 4.6 are largely placebo, so I've read).

I play on preset Ultra and I've followed Synthaxx's guide to Maximum Graphic Settings (I have my spellEffectLevel set to 50 though).

As shown by Tom's Hardware, the 7xxx series have a particularly hard time with WoW:

[Deleted]

Disable Aero if playing in a window will help a bit and free 80-100MB of aero crap off the gfx card ram.

Also make sure you havnt turned anti-aliasing up too high or super AA on in CCC.

[Deleted]

I should go for a round of LFR to check the fps during raids - but SW fps have double going from a X6 4ghz + 570 GTX to i5 5.2ghz + 7850. Atleast that was worth it