What specs to upgrade for frapsing wow on ultra?

[Alarinth]

Hi there!

I want to get more into moviemaking, and for that reason I think I would need to upgrade some parts. I'll dig up what information I can find.

Current Build~
Computer- 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Manufacturer: Dell
Model #: XPS 8300

Ram-
Size: 8,00 GB

CPU-
Manufacturer: Intel
Model #: i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40 GHz, [8 CPUs]
Speed: 3401 MHz

GPU- I assume this is the graphics card.
Manufacturer: Radeon
Model #: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x6719), HD 6900 Series

Operating System-
Name: Windows 7
Bit: 64

Resolution-
Size: 1920x1080

================
Now what is it you want....
I want to be able to play wow in ultra settings, and record with fraps on max settings there as well. When I try to do it in my current specs, it just drops down to 20 fps or so, and starts stuttering from time to time.

How much you want to spend:
maximum 750 EUR.

What Country are you from:
Norway.

[Banawani]

If you're going to fraps get an additional HDD dedicated to data. If you try to fraps on the same HDD that your game is on, you will experience massive frame rate issues.

You can also broadcast to twitch.tv but set the channel to private so it will store all of your recordings for you to access later (there is also an option in some broadcasting programs to only record).

I'll put together a build from partpicker and put it up here.

[Faithh]

Buy yourself a streaming card instead of upgrading the cpu or gpu.

[DeltrusDisc]

Yeah, honestly, your have some great parts there.

The biggest help is just more HDDs, and maybe reinstalling Windows/WoW, and other programs on an SSD, if you want to get one.

But for Fraps, the biggest help will be tossing in a second 7200RPM drive at least, 1TB+ to write the raw video files too. Should cost less than 100 Eur I believe to buy one. You could always buy a couple and RAID0 them.

Honestly it seems you have a decent enough amount of money you could get an SSD like the Crucial m4 or Samsung 840 Pro and a HDD or two and still have a few hundred left over. I look forward to seeing Banawani's mini-build.

[Alarinth]

Hi, and thanks a bunch for the swift replies!

I am not very techsavvy in terms of hardware, so this advice is good to get. When I think of it, I have a 2nd empty slot for another HD in my cabinet, and I've been meaning to put something in there. Currently the other one is a 1,5TB HD, not a SSD - would it be a smart move to make this one an SSD? Also, if I did that, would it be adviceable to reformat and put the OS on that drive?

edit: Taking a closer look at your replies, it would seem I should buy an SSD and reinstall wow there, and fraps to my 1,5TB disk. If I do this, do I need anything bigger than a 128GB SSD? Would it be ill spent money (as in, if I'm gonna buy an SSD, should I buy a minimum size that is bigger than 128GB?)?

[Oliria]

The best advice I can give you is simply using another program than Fraps. I have a 2500k at 4,6ghz, 670gtx, 8gb and a dedicated HDD for recording. Using fraps I can do 30'ish FPS with high settings, simply because fraps uses so many ressources.

I bought and switched to Bandicam instead, now I can fraps at 120FPS if need be. I drop around 5-6 FPS if I dont have vertical sync (so running way above 100fps) and run a perfect 60fps with vertical sync. Bandicam is not just using less ressources, the filesizes are also much smaller than Fraps. I use 80% quality from Bandicam but I could do 100% (it just makes the files much larger).

Another option is something like MSI afterburner (yes it can record), but I like Bandicam better. If you want reference here is our Tortos kill from earlier this week:
(cant post links but my profile on youtube is DaktivateAR)

80% quality (aka not the best possible) and youtube puts it down to 30 fps as you know. But you can see in the left bottom corner is my FPS counter for ingame FPS.

[DeltrusDisc]

Hi, and thanks a bunch for the swift replies!

I am not very techsavvy in terms of hardware, so this advice is good to get. When I think of it, I have a 2nd empty slot for another HD in my cabinet, and I've been meaning to put something in there. Currently the other one is a 1,5TB HD, not a SSD - would it be a smart move to make this one an SSD? Also, if I did that, would it be adviceable to reformat and put the OS on that drive?

edit: Taking a closer look at your replies, it would seem I should buy an SSD and reinstall wow there, and fraps to my 1,5TB disk. If I do this, do I need anything bigger than a 128GB SSD? Would it be ill spent money (as in, if I'm gonna buy an SSD, should I buy a minimum size that is bigger than 128GB?)?

For one, I would not do what Oliria suggested, I've never even heard of this "bandicam" and recording at 120 fps is silly and not supported really by any website, so that would be a HUGE waste of resources, plus no 7200RPM HDD could handle that. It would also be quite massive files.

Fraps does purely raw videos, which is the best to work with when rendering, so anything that doesn't do that, is a lesser recording software, in my book.

As for what I think you should do:

SSDs don't need to be screwed down or anything, they can be dangling inside your case for all anyone cares - they have no moving parts, and so long as they are not touching your other HDD, motherboard, GPU, etc, you're golden.

What you could honestly do is this:

Buy a 128-256GB SSD, install Windows, WoW, and Fraps to it.
Buy another 1-3TB HDD (whatever you'd like) and have Fraps record to that.
Then when rendering and compressing, have your program, (Vegas, Windows Movie Maker, etc) save the file to your current HDD.

This would be the best streamline-process possible, and also is personally what I have mine doing. Only way to make it faster is RAID0 HDDs together for faster reads/writes, but the boost won't be quite as big as this.

[Alarinth]

Thanks for the advice, will follow up on it.

SSDs don't need to be screwed down or anything, they can be dangling inside your case for all anyone cares - they have no moving parts, and so long as they are not touching your other HDD, motherboard, GPU, etc, you're golden.

What's the reason for this?

Also, how do I know wether or not my cabinet supports the HDD I'm concidering buying? Is it just plug and play, or are there things that I must check before I simply buy another HDD?

[Evolixe]

Check if you have atleast 2 SATA ports availeble.

They look like this, but the color can be anything:

http://i.imgur.com/hVR6pMB.png


It's safe to assume the fastest connectors are the fewest. So the orange ones there are probebly 6GB/s ports and the red ones 3GB/s.

You will atleast want to connect the SSD to a 6GB/s port. Preferably all 3 HDDs but it's not that common to have more than 2 6GB/s ports on standard Mobo's.

[Deleted]

as long as fraps is on 2nd physical drive you are mostly set really, I recall in 1 raid night, we did 3 hours a night btw, did close to 300 GB of recordings, this was full size, 60 FPS, at 1080p, (this was 10 man raiding with an older setup) its also important you record your footage at the resolution you actually play at, also its worth noting, the FPS recording you set usually sets the FPS you play at, at least to my personal experience it did, so you need to decide if you cant record at 60 FPS consistently or around it.
you may get dips here and there esp for 25 mans, if you cant do that, then you may have to consider 30 FPS, so its a case of trial and error so at least get the trial version of fraps to get a feel for it, I dont like playing at those FPS at all so was willing to tone down the settings as much as I could to do so.
was also wondering if the HDD cache had any performance gain, i.e 16 mb vs 32 mbvs 64 mb, not had the personal chance to test this out

[Evolixe]

That depends on the program you use. If you set fraps to record at 30fps, your own experience will indeed be limited to that framerate. However, not every recording software works that way. There are (better, imo) alternatives to fraps.

[Rotted]

Pretty much in the same boat as you, Ive been pestering these people all night about computers

BUT, the one bit of advice I will give you, is stay the hell away from Dell, theyve turned a useless company to be blunt, I bought a laptop 3 years ago from them, customized, and it cost me 1k GBP, within the first 12 months, I had 5 replacement mother boards, the last three their own engineer came out to replace it, free of charge as it was in warranty, and the first two times, he got sent out with faulty REFURBISHED motherboards, I played fuck with them, saying if its breaks, I bloody well expect a brand new one under warranty, not someone elses refurbished crap, so 5th time was lucky

Then, a day after, and I literally mean a day after, I closed my laptop screen, and genuine accident my thumb was on the touchpad as I closed the lid, LCD screen cracked, so I phoned them up, explained what happened, they said straight away, we wont send a engineer out, you send it to us, (cost me to send it) and it will cost you 136 GBP to replace the screen, and cost me to get it back, wasnt impressed, anyways, after that, something else went wrong, and I sent it to a laptop repair shop, they cracked it open, phoned me and said look, I can repair it, but tbh phone your insurance company for house contents and say it was involved in a traffic accident, he said it was so poorly put togeather it litrally looked like it had been in an accident,

Now got this new laptop, lasted me much longer, never ever had a problem with it or any faults, never ever going to get anything thats a dell product again,

just my two cents though

[Oliria]

Just to clarify my earlier post. My computer runs at 120 fps (or 60 with V-synch) while Bandicam records at 30 fps. Try it yourself, you'll be amazed that Fraps even exists anymore. It takes up so much system ressource that you will never get a good enough computer. There are plenty of other recording tools out there, that does the job just as well with a 10th of the ressource use.

I was in the same boat as you, used fraps for years. I would have wished somebody told me to throw that program in the thrash bin years ago. It is true as DelrusDisc says about formats, Bandicam renders the footage as it is being recorded but from my experience the end result is the same. If you use Fraps for raw video data (which is why most computers will never be able to use fraps at acceptable levels) you will still have to render it through something like Sony Vegas. Technicly rendering twice (Bandicam -> Vegas) could decrease quality, but I can't see the difference.

[slasher0161]

Fraps is for getting raw footage to edit at a later point, if your just intending to record slap a 15sec intro at the start and then upload to youtube or whatever and don't mind the end result not having a professional finish then yea just about any other program is fine.

I don't think those other programs don't have their place that is for certain however to say fraps is trash is ignorant. I think people just need to look at what they want to do with their recordings and make their choice based upon that.

[Evolixe]

Programs I have in mind are capable of recording in any proper format or quality. Much more detailed than fraps and far less limited in features. Without limiting your own experience.

Fraps is a fast and easy way out, but far from the best.

[Oliria]

Fraps is for getting raw footage to edit at a later point, if your just intending to record slap a 15sec intro at the start and then upload to youtube or whatever and don't mind the end result not having a professional finish then yea just about any other program is fine.

I don't think those other programs don't have their place that is for certain however to say fraps is trash is ignorant. I think people just need to look at what they want to do with their recordings and make their choice based upon that.

I'm sorry but to me, it is you who comes off as ignorant. You will not see any difference in wow videoes, recorded at 1080p to be shown on computer monitors. For the OP: Look up "fraps vs bandicam comparison" on youtube. There are hundreds of comparisons and they all conclude the same, Bandicam is by far the better program with much less ressources spent, and the exact same result in 1080p.

[Alarinth]

Check if you have atleast 2 SATA ports availeble.

They look like this, but the color can be anything:

http://i.imgur.com/hVR6pMB.png


It's safe to assume the fastest connectors are the fewest. So the orange ones there are probebly 6GB/s ports and the red ones 3GB/s.

You will atleast want to connect the SSD to a 6GB/s port. Preferably all 3 HDDs but it's not that common to have more than 2 6GB/s ports on standard Mobo's.

Hi. Just checked this, and apparently I have 2 SATA ports available, SATA port 3 and 4. However, I do not know the speed of those, and 1 & 2 was blue and orange. Shall I assume 1 is 6gb?

Also I've taken up someones advice, and am concidering buying a "Samsung SSD 840 PROSeries 128GB 2.5" OEM". If I do buy this one, I'll have used up all my 4 SATA ports. What options do I then have if I 1 year from now realize I have too little space on my HDDs? The one that came with the comp is 1,5TB, but I assume I can just easily replace that one too?
edit: Just realized the one above is 2.5", and the slot is 3.5". Bummer.

Btw, the empty slot for the new HDD seemed bigger than the one that the current one holds. Does this mean that the current one is 2.5" and a new one will be 3.5"?
If that is the case, I can pick any 3.5" HDD and fill the slot with, right?

I'm sorry but to me, it is you who comes off as ignorant. You will not see any difference in wow videoes, recorded at 1080p to be shown on computer monitors. For the OP: Look up "fraps vs bandicam comparison" on youtube. There are hundreds of comparisons and they all conclude the same, Bandicam is by far the better program with much less ressources spent, and the exact same result in 1080p.

Thanks for your enthusiasm in helping. :-) I'm not extremely picky about the end result, but the notion about resources spent is interesting. I am rendering the videos in Sony Vegas (just to clarify), and doing quite a bit of editing, so using Fraps so far has worked fine for me.

[Evolixe]

If you have a manual for your PC hardware, it's in there. If not, try googling whatever motherboard you have.

You should be able to find it in device manager.

[Alarinth]

If you have a manual for your PC hardware, it's in there. If not, try googling whatever motherboard you have.

You should be able to find it in device manager.

Allright. You must understand, I'm really a hardware scrub... x)

I didn't find what I think I was looking for in device manager, but I did find this interesting thread.

[DeltrusDisc]

What's the reason for this?

There are no moving parts in SSDs and they are completely housed, thus they really need not be bolted down to the case like you want a normal platter HDD. For example, here's my SSD... lol:



No velcro, nothing.

You will atleast want to connect the SSD to a 6GB/s port. Preferably all 3 HDDs but it's not that common to have more than 2 6GB/s ports on standard Mobo's.

SATA 6Gb/s will really be no benefit for any platter drive over SATA 3Gb/s. No reason to "prefer" it.