Where's my bottleneck? Most cost effective to upgrade or build my own?

[MelodicAssassin]

Hey! I bought this HP desktop about 4 years ago, iirc, and last year I bought a video card for it which made a huge difference in playing WoW but I believe I'm getting to the point where it's time to toss it and get something more tailored to my needs. BUT, I'm coming here for advice on which route to take and which would be the most cost effective.

My Current Setup
CPU - AMD Athlon II X4 645
Motherboard - FOXCONN 2AB1 (CPU 1)
RAM - 6gb Dual Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz
Graphics - 1023MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 (EVGA)
Power Supply - Not sure where to find this, but I believe the one I have is 500w
Operating System - Windows 7 Home bleh
Resolution - 1920 x 1080

My primary use for this PC is playing WoW and LoL. I have zero problems with LoL on Ultra Settings, and I have most WoW settings on Ultra except (Sunshafts: Low, Particle Density: Good, SSAO: Low, Texture Filtering: 4x Anisotropic) The problems I run into when playing WoW is during large raids and in high population zones such as Ashran/Tanaan Jungle.

Bottom line, I want to be able to play on Ultra without any hiccups. My budget is around $800, which I understand can get me a new decent rig, but if I can get better performance by, say, throwing another 6gb RAM in or something inexpensive, by all means that's the route I'd like to take.

Now, you're the experts! Here's my questions, and my thank you in advance!

1) What's the bottleneck in my current setup and is it worth replacing or am I better off building a new system?
2) If building a system is your advice, can you throw together something for me from PCPartPicker like I see on other threads?

Thank you so much!

[Kagthul]

The whole thing is decidedly low-end. The CPU is what is causing hiccups in WoW - which is very single-thread CPU performance bound (and which those AMD chips are bad for).

At this point you're better off building a new rig.

Head to the Upgrade forum and make a new post with all of the information in the sticky (budget, re-usable parts, etc) and we can try and help you with a build.

[fixx]

You can probably start with just motherboard+CPU assuming a new board will fit into the case and from then on upgrade piece by piece. But it's not guaranteed with HP that a new board fits and you need a case also.

[Akainakali]

HP and most large volume PC manufacturers use customized cases and motherboards in their machines.

So you are probably going to need a new case and power supply.

Newegg frequently sells bundles with all or nearly all of the components you need for a new system especially as part of their daily shellshocker deals. You do need to sign up for their email newsletter to take advantage of their sales in most cases.

http://www.newegg.com/DIY-PC-Combos/...ionStore/ID-33

http://www.newegg.com/special/shells...llShocker-LB2B

You will also need a copy of windows. That's usually not included.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

WoW on Full Ultra with AA and Shadows? Not possible even with the very best of highend gaming-PCs, most certainly not possible with some random laptop.

[Akainakali]

It's a desktop, not a laptop.

For someone with a grammar sig, you might want to read more carefully.

WoW is actually a fairly moderate game in terms of it's hardware demands, even at 4k. An nVidia 960 can manage about 60 fps at 4k. Not exactly a powerhouse of a card.

It's not Crysis by any stretch of the imagination.

[Lathais]

It's a desktop, not a laptop.

For someone with a grammar sig, you might want to read more carefully.

WoW is actually a fairly moderate game in terms of it's hardware demands, even at 4k. An nVidia 960 can manage about 60 fps at 4k. Not exactly a powerhouse of a card.

It's not Crysis by any stretch of the imagination.

Yeah, but if you have a really old or an AMD CPU, your not gonna be getting 60FPS even at 720p. As stated previously, it's a very CPU Bound game. Sure, it's GPU demands are paltry, but it puts a lot of strain on a single core of any CPU.

[Noctifer616]

WoW on Full Ultra with AA and Shadows? Not possible even with the very best of highend gaming-PCs, most certainly not possible with some random laptop.

WoW is a very CPU demanding game. You can build a extremely strong PC and not even get 60FPS in raids, but you can actually up all the settings and resolution and play at the same FPS with higher graphics. The game isn't very GPU demanding unless you play at high resolutions with really high AA settings. In raids the game is actually less GPU demanding then in the open world in my experience, which I assume is due to lower draw distance.

[Akainakali]

WoW is a very CPU demanding game. You can build a extremely strong PC and not even get 60FPS in raids, but you can actually up all the settings and resolution and play at the same FPS with higher graphics. The game isn't very GPU demanding unless you play at high resolutions with really high AA settings. In raids the game is actually less GPU demanding then in the open world in my experience, which I assume is due to lower draw distance.

This hasn't really been my experience. Though I do use at least upper middle to very high end hardware, I have found it very possible to run it with everything maxed out even on a triple screen setup, except under OSX. Even with about as powerful a hackintosh as you can possibly build, WoW still tends to stutter at least somewhat.

Obviously though weak enough hardware can make anything stutter.

[fixx]

This hasn't really been my experience. Though I do use at least upper middle to very high end hardware, I have found it very possible to run it with everything maxed out even on a triple screen setup

The thing with those exaggerations is that after many years and dozens of claims nobody has yet proved it. Wanna be the first?

Make a 1080p video with all settings maxed out and ingame FPS counter visible. Don't even need to be triple screen, one is enough. Go to Onyxia's cave and pull all adds during first or second phase of the fight and enjoy your butter-smooth lagfree gameplay.

[Akainakali]

The thing with those exaggerations is that after many years and dozens of claims nobody has yet proved it. Wanna be the first?

Make a 1080p video with all settings maxed out and ingame FPS counter visible. Don't even need to be triple screen, one is enough. Go to Onyxia's cave and pull all adds during first or second phase of the fight and enjoy your butter-smooth lagfree gameplay.

Try reading what I actually wrote. I don't make absolute statements in general, because there are always exceptions "This hasn't really been my experience" was what I said, not that it had never happened.

"Never stutters under any conditions" is a very different statement to me from "You can build a extremely strong PC and not even get 60FPS in raids".

It doesn't even take even vaguely top of the line hardware to hit triple digit frame rates most of the time in WoW at 1080p, which is pretty low rez these days. You just have to look at video card benchmarks to see that the GPU can have considerable impact on the frame rate.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/G...Gaming/25.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/E...C_Plus/27.html

Can you get slow downs and stutters under some conditions, regardless of the power of your machine. Absolutely yes. Sufficiently poorly programmed, optimized or overloaded software can obviously run very, very poorly, pretty much by definition. Nor is it always possible to optimize things when you are dealing with the kinds of number of players/size of environment/the internets, you get in WoW.

Does this mean you will get them often enough or frequently enough for it to be a significant issue, with sufficiently powerful hardware, absolutely not. WoW simply isn't as demanding a game as others can be. It can't be given the nature of a MMO vs a single player game and it's not even vaguely trying to produce the eye candy or complex environments that something like Unigine Valley/Heaven or Crysis 3 is.

In general in a game like wow, if you have decent hardware and thing consistently suck, you're looking at something being screwed up by Bliz. I get that with the performance difference between WoW under OSX and Windows (though I'm certain Apple's historical lack of interest in games is a big factor). I get better performance on average on a triple monitor set up under windows, than I do on a single one of those monitors under OSX.

I will go check Onyxia. Though that never really seemed to be particularly laggy for me. Front of the Shrine or Dalaran when logging in, back in the day were the worst spots for that sort of issue, though I didn't have nearly as powerful hardware by a long shot back in WotLK. But yes I would definitely get some lag there frequently.

[fixx]

Try reading what I actually wrote.

You said it's not CPU capped and does not slow down, I gave you simple example to prove it is and it does. It happens every time when the number of moving things (players or creatures or spell effects) on screen grows too large. And it frequently does in MMORPGs.

Rest of the post is just TL;DR