GTX 1050Ti question

[ejpaints]

Current specs below of the identical computers husband & I use to play WoW. These PC's are 5+ years old so it's time to do some updating within reason. Our gaming is almost exclusively WoW & periodic play on a few other Blizzard games. Performance isn't bad, but we have started to have some FPS issues at times since Legion launched. Example: Pulling an entire hallway of trash in a raid at once often causes FPS to drop to about 10. Bosses usually aren't a problem RAM usage has been consistently over 7GB of the available 8GB, but I took care of that this morning & it's in the mail.

Looking at possibly upgrading GPU and saw GTX 1050Ti is only $140 from Newegg.

How much of a difference from the current GTX 660 could we expect? GTX1060 is another possible option, but anything higher than that is going to be more than I want to spend considering I need to buy 2.

Current Specs:
Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel i7-3820 CPU @ 3.6 GHz
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Memory: 8GB Ram (16GB upgrade ordered & in the mail)
Hard Drive (Install): 500GB SSD

Opinions?

[Fascinate]

Not worth upgrading GPU for WoW, you will see no change. I went from a gtx 760 to 1060, everything plays the same. Best advice i can give for WoW performance is you play on recommended settings and monitor your addons to be sure they are up to date.

[HumbleDuck]

My FPS drops to 30-35 in similar situations as well and I'm running a 1080.
Seems to be more of an optimization issue, as dialing the graphics all the way down to 5 usually doesn't help either.
I think it would be better if you play around with settings before spending money on a new GPU ( that's if you are not planning to play other titles of course.)

[Kagthul]

SInce it is a CPU bottleneck, a new GPU won't help.

[ovm33]

SInce it is a CPU bottleneck, a new GPU won't help.

Exactly. Upgrading the graphics card will just make the game look prettier.

Cancel that RAM upgrade Where's Lathais and his RAM usage link..? Save the money to put towards:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-7100 3.9GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.73 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock B250M-HDV Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($61.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($52.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $224.70
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-03-25 19:50 EDT-0400

You will see noticeable improvements in WoW by going to the above build - despite losing 2 cores and 4 threads (which WoW doesn't need.) If you use your computers for anything other than WoW boxes (streaming / content creations / etc.) I do not recommend upgrading at all. WoW loves fast CPU's. If you're willing to invest even more money then look at the 7600k and z270 motherboards and overclock the snot out of it. Overclocking my 4790k nets me 5-10 extra FPS with a simple / safe OC.

[Nellah]

One can get an RX 470/480 4GB for about the same price as a GTX 1050 Ti, and it'll handily beat that GPU in nearly every task. WoW is very CPU-bound, it's true, but a GTX 660 is a very low performing GPU by today's standards, and if you play games that are not WoW you could be looking at a 2-3x performance increase (reference: AnandTech) and will have a much smoother experience in for example Overwatch. Heck, my wife's GTX 960 chugs sometimes on WoW and it's two generations ahead of your GPU.

RAM is a mixed bag. 8GB is perfectly fine for most use cases, and might not worth upgrading if you're thinking of a new build soon. If you're like my wife, however, and have a half dozen Facebook games open in the background, you might just find yourself capping on RAM and hitting the pagefile, which will tank performance if it's on a hard drive and wear out an SSD with a ton of small writes. Easy way to check that is to have Task Manager open while you're doing your typical computer thing. You do say you routinely hit 7GB RAM usage as it is; another 8GB isn't expensive and might help the computer last another few years as the CPU isn't terrible.

You can get a bit more performance out of that chip as well through overclocking. Quad-core Sandy Bridge chips take to overclocking very well.

[Lathais]

Where's Lathais and his RAM usage link..?

Here you go(next time or to get someone else's attention, if you put @Lathais instead of just Lathais, I will see it sooner):
http://www.techspot.com/article/1043...ram/page3.html

Virtually no difference in GTAV, which is pretty much known to be a RAM hungry game, with 65 Chrome tabs open, between 4GB and 8GB and even less difference between 8GB and 16GB. Even though it uses up to 9GB when it is available, with Chrome using it's 2.2GB, that extra RAM usage does not translate into (much)performance. It's all of 1FPS better with 8GB over 16 and nothing going to 16 from 8.

In all honesty, 4GB is still enough RAM for gaming, though I still recommend 8GB as there are some gains there and it's not that much more expensive. 8GB is really overkill though and 16GB is super overkill.

[Laurathansal]

Hi,

I had a similar issue to yours. Up until early this year, I was playing on a 3 year old laptop, and with Nighthold out, my FPS sometimes dropped to 10-12 fps.

I decided to get a new system, which included:

- Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor 7300HQ
- 12GB RAM 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4
- NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti
- 128 GB SSD for Windows, and 500 GB SSD for games and everything else.

Bear in mind, the above system was a new laptop, which cost me somewhere equivalent to 1000 USD. If you are going for desktop, then the GTX 1050 Ti for laptops is slower than the 1050Ti for desktops. In fact, pretty much most components for desktops will perform better than the equivalent laptop counterparts, and also be cheaper.

Nevertheless, with the above specs, the worst I get in WoW now is 40 FPS in some parts of nighthold, and some parts of the world. Most of the time between 50 and 70 FPS.

So in short: If you get a GTX 1050 Ti, a new CPU and at least 12 GB of RAM, you will see a massive difference. I do not believe you need a GTX 1060.

[Lathais]

One can get an RX 470/480 4GB for about the same price as a GTX 1050 Ti, and it'll handily beat that GPU in nearly every task. WoW is very CPU-bound, it's true, but a GTX 660 is a very low performing GPU by today's standards, and if you play games that are not WoW you could be looking at a 2-3x performance increase (reference: AnandTech) and will have a much smoother experience in for example Overwatch. Heck, my wife's GTX 960 chugs sometimes on WoW and it's two generations ahead of your GPU.

RAM is a mixed bag. 8GB is perfectly fine for most use cases, and might not worth upgrading if you're thinking of a new build soon. If you're like my wife, however, and have a half dozen Facebook games open in the background, you might just find yourself capping on RAM and hitting the pagefile, which will tank performance if it's on a hard drive and wear out an SSD with a ton of small writes. Easy way to check that is to have Task Manager open while you're doing your typical computer thing. You do say you routinely hit 7GB RAM usage as it is; another 8GB isn't expensive and might help the computer last another few years as the CPU isn't terrible.

You can get a bit more performance out of that chip as well through overclocking. Quad-core Sandy Bridge chips take to overclocking very well.

See my link. No, even with 65 Chrome tabs open there is only a very small difference in FPS between 4 and 8 and nearly no difference at all between 8 and 16. Yeah, the more RAM you have, the more things will use, but this does not translate to FPS or better graphics or anything really. The more RAm you have, the more things will get loaded "just in case," but if you have less RAM it will just load what you need on demand and flush what it doesn't need more often.

[Nellah]

Of course more RAM won't change your framerate. It's a quality of life thing, just like an SSD.

[Lathais]

Of course more RAM won't change your framerate. It's a quality of life thing, just like an SSD.

Quality of life in what way? What does it do for you? It doesn't increase FPS. An SSD at least decreases loading times and makes Windows snappier, more RAM won't do that if you already have enough. How exactly does it improve quality of life? It doesn't. It's nothing like an SSD. An SSD has tangible benefits you can see and feel. RAM above 8GB does not have any tangible quality of life improvements. If you have evidence to the contrary, please provide it, I would love to see it, same way I would love to see The Lochness Monster or Bigfoot.

[Gaidax]

No, certainly don't "upgrade" CPU as suggested above, replacing I7-3820 with I3-7100 should be considered a crime against humanity. You will gain a modest Single Thread bump, but a huge downgrade in any multicore scenario, which actual decent games utilize. Shelling out 220 bucks for what is effectively a wash at best or downgrade at worst is terrible idea.

1050Ti makes more sense, but IMO gap is not large enough from 660, I'd go ahead and try to get GTX1060 or RX470 or RX480 for real substantial gain.