Video Lag or need new monitor?

[Narina]

Excuse me if this is a dumb question but I am just not that computer savvy when it comes to things like this.

Since Legion released on my birthday this year and I had saved up enough money to pay cash for a really decent machine. I decided to buy myself my holy grail of computers. I have always wanted an Alienware since I first started gaming but my budget always held me back. I know for the money I paid I probably could have built a really super nice machine cheaper but honestly I wanted it to work... if I had done it myself bad things would have happened as I really don't know which plugs in where. Anyways, maybe I expect more from my machine than what it can give me.

My specs are:

Intel Core i7 6950x (10 cores, 25 mb cache Turbo boost Max 3.0, overclocked to 3,8 Ghz)
Windows 10
Dual Nvidia 1080 Gtx with 8gb GDDR5x
32 Mb of DDR4
512 SSD/ 8TB drives
Dual layer blue ray disc reader blah blah
It has a wireless card but I don't use it I am directly plugged into 150 meg fios
I have 2 HP 25vx Monitors
Razer Black Widow Stealth Keyboard
Razer Naga Epic

So that is my machine. Like I said pretty nice machine Maybe my expectations for this machine are too high but I don't think so.

I play wow mainly. I play a fire mage and where I am seeing a lot of my issue is in NH. Skorpyron AOE, Spellblade, Gul-Dan. My machine stutters and spits during the AE. It will almost freeze or my fps drop super low down to around 6-12fps. When I am doing this fight I keep my video settings to high but not ultra. Shadows and things like that are turned off. I would think that with this machine and my cards I should be able to run this at Ultra settings and have no issue at all during big AoE fights.

Could it be my monitor and not my machine or do I need more ram?

When I first got into Night Hold I did bump everything up to Ultra using Nvidias GeForce experience. I let it optimize my settings and it set everything to Ultra, full view distance, ground clutter what not. I turned off the streaming and shadow play options as it caused an issue with Microsoft Groove playing music. When I'd use the player my fps would drop down to 12fps. When I did run it on Ultra during trash and ST fights my machine got super hot. I could actually feel the heat coming off the machine like I was sitting next to a heater. When I checked my temps they were still in the safe range but I can't imagine feeling that kind of heat is normal sitting right next to the machine. As soon as I felt it getting hot I dropped my settings down and upped my fans and it cooled right down. Is this normal to feel that kind of heat on Ultra settings?

So my questions if you didn't feel like reading my whole drawn out post are:

Should my machine be bogging down like that with it's specs on AoE fights? Could it be my monitor is not able to keep up with my video cards? If it is my monitors can you recommend good gaming monitors that would work well with my machine? I really would like to use my machine to its full potential and run everything on Ultra settings if I can. That is one of the reasons I bought this machine was so I could enjoy the game graphics.

Should I physically be able to feel such a heat change running on Ultra with my machine? If not can you suggest things I can do to keep it running cooler. It does have a water cooled system. Should I call Dell and let them know it feels hot? What temps should I worry about on my machine when it does get hot? The last thing I want to do it damage my machine.

Thank you for reading this. Any help will be appreciated.

[Remilia]

The monitor wouldn't cause frame dips or anything.

I'd disable SLI for WoW and check the CPU temperature with something like hwmonitor or what not.. Also if you can overclock the CPU provided it's not overheating.

[Lathais]

So that is my machine. Like I said pretty nice machine Maybe my expectations for this machine are too high but I don't think so.

That is pretty much your problem right there. Your expectations are too high. WoW cares about one thing and one thing only, IPC. So it's all on your CPU. You have a very beefy CPU, but it's beefy in more cores, not IPC. In fact, because it has more cores, it has to be clocked lower than a standard 4 core, therefore, lower clocks, lower IPC. You say you have it OCed to 3.8, which is all fine and good, but even a 2500k hits 3.7 stock and most people OC them well beyond that, and then have better performance than what you are getting.

It could also be that you are running dual 1080s. WoW does not officially support SLI, so I would imagine that could be causing some problems. As a first step, you could try turning off SLI and just using one GPU. I still think you are going to be limited by your CPU though, as it is not really meant for high IPC Single Core Usage.

[Deleted]

Lots of lua errors from addons? Probably not, but disable all addons and see if you still have the same issues?

[Narina]

Thanks no errors, I use very minimal addons.

Lathais you speak all greek to me. Thank you for your reply. I guess I was expecting to be able to raid and not have issues that is the reason I bought the machine.

[Deleted]

Damage Meter addon?

Recount has had a rather long standing issue with causing massive FPS drops in heavy AOE.

[Denpepe]

Thanks no errors, I use very minimal addons.

Lathais you speak all greek to me. Thank you for your reply. I guess I was expecting to be able to raid and not have issues that is the reason I bought the machine.

you bought the wrong machine for the job, you could have bought something at around half the price you spent and have better results.

Wow needs fast CPU cores with high IPC something like an i5 7600k or i7 7700k, those are 4 core CPU's, but they run faster then you CPU which has 10 cores, wow's main thread runs on 1 core and uses a couple more cores for some minor stuff, also wow does not officialy support SLI so if it works, you are in luck, if not too bad.

That said, the game should still run better then it does if your CPU is keeping up at 3.8 so as stated b4 try running with only 1 graphics card to see if that helps.

[Lathais]

you bought the wrong machine for the job, you could have bought something at around half the price you spent and have better results.

Basically bought a Ferrari to drive in a school zone.

[Biernot]

Basically bought a Ferrari to drive in a school zone.

Or more precise: He bought an 18-wheeler to transport a single suitcase, when a Ferrari could have done the same job way faster.

[Narina]

Damage Meter addon?

Recount has had a rather long standing issue with causing massive FPS drops in heavy AOE.

I used skada. Could that be an issue?