Computer Upgrade / WoW Bottleneck

[BondExtreme]

Well of course two GTX 460's would out perform the 5970... The 5970 would eat one 460 up so just get one 5970 and save money.....

But at least you're recommending an Nvidia product to someone who has some nice cash. I myself go with ATI since I can't afford any Ferarri's like the rest of you and with the way Nvidia likes to put their prices ;D (Please don't get offended by that... I'm being sarcastic and at the same time i'm not)

[Abilities]

I have overclocked my i7 920 to 4.2ghz on air. Its a really versatile cpu in overclocking terms. I have also recently upgraded to two XFX 5770 in crossfire, which are DX11. Really awesome stuff.

[Cilraaz]

Well of course two GTX 460's would out perform the 5970... The 5970 would eat one 460 up so just get one 5970 and save money.....

But at least you're recommending an Nvidia product to someone who has some nice cash. I myself go with ATI since I can't afford any Ferarri's like the rest of you and with the way Nvidia likes to put their prices ;D (Please don't get offended by that... I'm being sarcastic and at the same time i'm not)

Dual GTX 460s are cheaper than one Radeon 5970 and outperform it. At least get your information correct if you're going to try to correct me.

Maybe it's not the best solution since he wants DX11.

I think Radeon 5970 is one of the best cards in the market, so maybe it's not a bad choice.

The GTX 460 is a DX11 card.

One day people will stop trying to correct me with wrong information.

[Boubouille]

1. I'm not changing the computer, I'm upgrading the GPU and the Hard Drives.

2. The GPU has to be changed because GTX 285 doesn't support DirectX 11 and Cataclysm does. My job is to post the best quality stuff, and I can't do that if my GPU doesn't even support it.

3. The SSDs are here because ... well, you clearly never had to process 1500 screenshots on photoshop or reinstall/redeploy your beta client in the middle of a patch day because something went wrong. I did. It's not just to get funny load times on WoW, I really don't care about that.

4. My low framerate is because I multitask, a lot. It means that I run WoW in windowed mode and ... well, it literally EATS YOUR FRAMERATE ALIVE. The other reason is that I have ridiculously high settings to make sure the screenshots look perfect, try running everything on Ultra details with max AA / max Aniso while frapsing, then we'll discuss.

5. It goes on the company account anyway.

6. There! Screenshot!

Now, back to the questions.
Dual GTX 460 : Heat/Noise higher than a GTX 480? I sleep next to the computer and I don't think I can survive with less sleep than what I already have.
Overclock: Link to a nice tutorial to overclock my i7 without burning down the house please. (I have a huge Noctua on it, it can take some extra heat)

[Cilraaz]

Dual GTX 460s' tested at 8dB less than a single GTX 480 (also quieter than your current GTX 285). Temps are also lower than both a GTX 480 and your current GTX 285.

As for points 4 and 6 above, your best bet for upgrading is overclocking your i7. That will help with raw framerate in WoW, especially considering the nature/level of your multitasking.

[Deleted]

I just recently got a 1GB GTX 460, it's amazing. Runs cool, and it only gets noisy under a lot of stress. Mine's got the blower-style fan, too, so it's even louder than the normal one, but it's still bearable. Regardless, it's pretty much silent when idle.

If you don't want a 480 I'd say get two of those.

-Allidr

[Dijkstra]

Bump.

SSD
Crucial RealSSD C300 - SSD 128 Go 2.5" Serial ATA 6Gb/s. Good? (Seems it can lose perfs over time, but shouldn't happen with windows 7 apparently)

This is correct, the performance loss issue should be fixed thanks to TRIM which is available in Windows 7.

Also, the current plan is to have a WoW SSD + system SSD, does it change anything? Could I just get a kickass 250gb SSD and split it in 2 partitions without any real loss of perf?

Having two SSDs would be a bit faster due to them being on seperate SATA headers, but probably not noticably so.

I assume that you want to have seperate drives/partitions for organisational reasons rather than performance issues. Unlike with HDDs, partitioning an SSD confers no performance benefit as it is equally fast to access any part of the disk. It used to be the case that partitioning an SSD would magnify the over-time performance loss, but as that is no longer an issue, this has also gone away. Partitioning an SSD should be fine.

The optimal solution for you is probably to buy two drives, put them in RAID 0, then partition them as you like.

GPU
GTX 480 are too loud, too hot, and eat babies apparently. What's up with that? Isn't ATI 5870/5970 better? (I'm not a fanboy of any brand)

The leading edge cards of each brand currently have approximately equal performance, but I understand that the ATI cards are a bit cheaper and use less power. I know that some of the older ATI cards tended to run quite hot, but understand this has improved lately.

[anti-wow]

The GTX 460 is a DX11 card.

One day people will stop trying to correct me with wrong information.

Eh... Sorry?
I mistaken with GTX 260.

Is something wrong with people trying to correct you?

[Boubouille]

The leading edge cards of each brand currently have approximately equal performance, but I understand that the ATI cards are a bit cheaper and use less power. I know that some of the older ATI cards tended to run quite hot, but understand this has improved lately.

5970 seems a little more expensive, but I don't really trust SLI based solutions so I'll probably go with that since GTX 480 seems to have a few issues.

[Kation]

If you want to buy SSD (which I would recommend for increase of performance) buy an OCZ Vertex. It's probably the best SSD out there for its price. If you don't want OCZ one, at least check what micro controller your preferred SSD is using. If it's JMicron, run away. If it's older Samsung, run away. Those SSD (while having insane write/read speeds) stutter for 500ms every once in a while because they're not optimized for Windows use (windows tends to randomly read/write small chunks of data from/to disk and it makes some of the SSDs really annoying to use). And no, it's not only first loading screen increase, but every time you enter a new zone/instance. I also agree with the guy that said RAID0 with two SSDs is what every geek on this earth would want for their disks =D

When it comes to GPU, I would agree with people that say 2x GTX460, however fermi2 and new radeons are on the horizon, so if you're not in a hurry, you might want to wait till the end of September.

And you really need to swap to Windows 7. Its memory management is so much better than Vista, it makes babies in Korea cry.

[Ravasha]

lol ridiculous setup





You saw that coming right?

[Dijkstra]

5970 seems a little more expensive, but I don't really trust SLI based solutions so I'll probably go with that since GTX 480 seems to have a few issues.

I'd agree with avoiding SLI/CrossFire solutions as, last I read, WoW doesn't support these so you'd quite possibly see an FPS drop rather than any increase.

What I currently do is have two cards installed, but not CrossFire'd and run a monitor off each. This allows me to have a card dedicated to handling WoW while still using my second monitor. The performance increase is minimal (a handful of frames), but it's there.

Then again, if anyone can find me a credible source to say there is a benefit in WoW to SLI or CrossFire, I'd love to see it.

[BondExtreme]

Dual GTX 460s are cheaper than one Radeon 5970 and outperform it. At least get your information correct if you're going to try to correct me.

One day people will stop trying to correct me with wrong information.

Hey man. How about paying attention to what I wrote before trying to correct me I DIDN'T say two GTX 460's wouldn't outperform one 5970......... Two GTX 460's would but not one of them.. But at the same time you need to remember the 5970 has dual GPU cores so even two GTX 460's wouldn't be THAT much better.

[kiphemyst]

VISTA?!! get win7 now!

[blondie]

I went from Vista 64bit to Win7 64bit. I used to be around 25ish fps in dalaran. I am rarely below 50 now. Win7 opens up a lot of RAM.

[Cilraaz]

Is something wrong with people trying to correct you?

No, I've just dealt with a lot of people correcting me with wrong information recently.

I'd agree with avoiding SLI/CrossFire solutions as, last I read, WoW doesn't support these so you'd quite possibly see an FPS drop rather than any increase.

What I currently do is have two cards installed, but not CrossFire'd and run a monitor off each. This allows me to have a card dedicated to handling WoW while still using my second monitor. The performance increase is minimal (a handful of frames), but it's there.

Then again, if anyone can find me a credible source to say there is a benefit in WoW to SLI or CrossFire, I'd love to see it.

Early reports from Cataclysm beta show even load balancing (ie. proper SLI/CrossFire usage). How accurate that is or if it means SLI will be 100% supported, I can't say as I have neither a dual GPU setup nor beta access.

Hey man. How about paying attention to what I wrote before trying to correct me I DIDN'T say two GTX 460's wouldn't outperform one 5970......... Two GTX 460's would but not one of them.. But at the same time you need to remember the 5970 has dual GPU cores so even two GTX 460's wouldn't be THAT much better.

I never claimed you said that a 5970 would beat dual 460's. You said to get one 5970 to save money. Since they're about triple the cost of a single 460, you're hardly saving money by getting a 5970 over dual 460s.

5970 seems a little more expensive, but I don't really trust SLI based solutions so I'll probably go with that since GTX 480 seems to have a few issues.

If you really don't trust an SLI setup, I'd just get a single GTX 460, as that could easily push Ultra graphics (this is a partial assumption, since DX11 cards aren't taking much of a hit in beta compared to live... and beta has all of their debugging code enabled, which usually leads to lower framerates than a live push). Plus, if SLI proves to be 100% supported in Cataclysm, you could just add a second. You do have a different financial situation than I do, though, so that might factor into the whole idea of throwing price per performance to the side a bit.

[Deleted]

Ave Garfield ^^

Okay,

SSD will help you a lot with loading wow and reading/writing dataz on it (reinstaling etc.) If you want some exact type: OCZ Agility

GPU I´ll recommend ASUS ARES for sure, it´s your best option now. Have no concurention atm. If it´s too expensive try SLi 460 1GB= 50%power/50% of price
If you need to run several WoW´s on highest video settings, like 8 at same time and need enough FPS on each of them then choose ASUS ARES.
If you need to run just like three WoW´s, then 100% choose some of GTX 460/470/480 because of: CUDA, Nvidia Tesla.... It´s very helpful when you work with pictures in PS, rendering videos etc. I can past you some link´s here if you want but I think it´s useless

OS If you have some tech support who wil set your system to best perfomance get Windows 7 Ultimate... Just get rid of Vista. It´s a crap. There´s some tests where´s showed that Windows 7 make you game´s run about 8 fps faster then Vista.

Questions?

edited

[Dethh]

Overclock: Link to a nice tutorial to overclock my i7 without burning down the house please. (I have a huge Noctua on it, it can take some extra heat)

This is helpful for Overclocking.

http://www.overclockers.com/3-step-g...core-i3-i5-i7/

[None]

Ave Garfield ^^

Okay,

SSD will help you a lot with loading wow and reading/writing dataz on it (reinstaling etc.) If you want some exact type: OCZ Agility

GPU I´ll recommend ASUS ARES for sure, it´s your best option now. Have no concurention atm. If it´s too expensive try SLi 460 1GB= 50%power/50% of price

OS If you have some tech support who wil set your system to best perfomance get Windows 7 Ultimate... Just get rid of Vista. It´s a crap. There´s some tests where´s showed that Windows 7 make you game´s run about 8 fps faster then Vista.

Questions?

edited

OCZ Agility is outdated and was replaced with Agility 2 and Vertex 2. The C300 will outperform them in every form. Though I'd look for a Sandforce 1200 based SSD for your usage since it will blow the C300 away in write speeds. And without a SATA3 add-in card the C300 will be outperformed by any Sandforce 1200 controller based SSD in every test.

The Asus Ares is retarded. There's no other way to classify it. Even if it's company money there's no reason to get a 3 slot cooler for an overclocked 5970. And a GTX460 SLI would outperform it for just less than 1/3 of the price.

There's no question that Windows 7 performs better than Vista, but Ultimate is useless unless you absolutely need software that isn't forward compatible with Windows 7.

Anyone want to grab some performance benchmarks with SLI or Crossfire with the beta? I'd personally like to see the performance load changes, if any. I can't find any D:

[Skeeter]

If he only plays WoW wouldn't dual GTX 460s be kind of pointless? I was thinking about switching my 4870x2 for a single GTX460 because all I really play is WoW and I want the Dx11 on a cool and quiet card that has plenty of juice to max everything WoW can throw at it. Is cataclysm getting engine updates to put more load on the gpu instead of processor?