CPU or Graphics Crad??

[the77boudreau]

Quick run-down....

AMD 955 black x4 3.2
8 gig 1600 DDR3 (4x2)
Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3
HIS Radeon 6850 ICEQ 1GB 775mhz
Thermaltake 750 Power Supply
Windows 7

2nd system is the same except for GTX 460SE video card.

I am finding that it's widely agreed that WOW is CPU driven and prefers Intel, but I'm not extremely knowledgeable in picking upgrades. Neither rig runs bad at good-high stings but would like to go high-ultra or at least see a steady 60fps on the current settings. In 15-25 man raids it hovers around 40fps and dips into the 20s from time to time. Home and world latency is most always approx. 40ms if that means anything.

Would going to a Nvidia 960 be enough? (again, finding WOW prefers Nvidia over AMD?) Or do I need to look at upgrading MoBo/CPU to Intel?
Any help is greatly appreciated.

[BicycleMafioso]

While a graphics crad would be an upgrade, it's not your issue atm.
Changing a graphics crad will be a benefit in high-ultra in many settings, but not in raids. That's where you want the better CPU.
TBQH, I would start off with overclocking your current CPU. If you don't have a proper cooler, well, chances are you'd be keeping it anyway.
You will be getting performance out of the cooler; overclocking it by 25% (4.00) will boost your FPS by 25% too. Or well, it did when I was playing.
But you would likely be better off just switching: Your cpu is aged these days. Modern day AMD's do better, and intel do better yet.

As far as preferring nVidia, meh. Any high-power graphics crad will do well enough. You don't need an nVidia crad to get good performance.

[the77boudreau]

Ok then...apparently I"m not pushing my card(s) as high as I could on either pc and the CPU would do me better in the short term. I'll look at the overclock as they run plenty cool currently. I'm not against a cooler upgrade if needed and am not necessarily on a set budget...just didn't want to replace/upgrade unnecessary components.
Thank you for your time and response.

[BicycleMafioso]

If you do not have a budget and really can fit a mobo/CPU upgrade into it, I really would do it. I just prefer to give people advice that doesn't involve spending themselves out of problems if possible.
Getting a cooler to overclock will give you 25% more performance and upgrading both CPU/motherboard might double it. It's up to you to find out what you want to spend and what gives you the best upgrade for the money - but you probably will not have a great time raiding with ultra with your current CPU.