Building a new GAMING computer

[Sackman]

O'rly? So the other parts than GPU actually does make a difference? Who would have thought? After you've written 10 pages of pointless drivel here trying to explain how games are about GPU and not CPU? /gasp

Yes, minimum FPS while raiding in wow depends entirely on raw CPU power. Bit over year ago I changed Athlon x2 4200+ into PhenomII x3 720, of course motherboard and RAMs went also in the generation upgrade. I had bought Radeon 4850 card earlier thinking it would make a difference for WoW like it did for most other games. Well, you know what... It did nothing.

That little CPU/motherboard/RAM upgrade pushed FPS during ToC25hm raid from 10-15 at very low graphics into 20-25 with ultra-except-shadows on 1680x1050 resolution, all without touching GPU at all.


Of course overclocks are not necessary, but overclocks are made extremely easy today, up to the point where you can just click it on inside Windows when you're using multiplier unlocked AMD Black Edition Phenom. A processor which is advertised as being unlocked for overclocking. On correctly built computer you can't break anything with it, and can get free 20-40% speed with few mouseclicks. Or you can opt to not do it.

GPUs indeed provide greatest FPS gain for most games. And it does for WoW too, but only maximum FPS gain. I don't think anybody does give a flying fuck if you turn off vsync and see 150 or 250 fps while on air taxi. It's totally inconsequential for the percieved input lag. What matters is minimum FPS, and for that CPU is always the bottleneck as long as you have either medium range current generation GPU or high end previous generation GPU. You see, WoW is not like most of the games, and GPU plays surprisingly little part in your raid performance.

Your lack of computer experience is inconsequential. I have already spoken of bottlenecked systems and you just described a situation with one. I have already explained there is a point where the amount of overclocking potential falls out due to the graphics card being overkill for the game. And I never mentioned that a CPU had no effect on gaming, and neither did I say that overclocking had no effect. I said:

...not everyone wants to overlock, in fact most don't, I know I won't overclock my next PC...
...You don't need those few FPS that knowing how to do it provides, and to do it properly, stress test it, and build a system around it?... Let the regular people just buy a PC that they can put together out of the box - or even just take out of a box...

...Tell him what he can get that requires him not learning anything new - that will run most games at 40+ frames at his resolution, and will run WoW for all intents and purposes. People always got to go down some beaten track and begin comparing and rationalising their own scenarios...

Addressing CPU overclocking and the gain of it in WoW in one particular situation:

...Ultimately, if you make the right processor choice, it isn't an issue - atleast for gaming. And if you consider the standard person/gamer, limited in their knowledge of such things, voiding their warranty over FPS greed is not something I would advise...
...Essentially the issue with having an i5 is that it's per core clock is not great for single threaded applications. In a true multi threaded (World of Warcraft)application there would be no bottleneck, no reason to overclock as the gain would likely not even be seen...
...I don't know what i5 you have but I assume it was a <3.0ghz stock version(It was a 2.66Ghz). If it was greater than 3.0 then it was a serious system bottleneck as a 3.0ghz i5 would handle practically the market of games available without giving a substantial increase through overclocking without a seriously CPU intensive game like Cryostasis...
...there was an inherent problem with your system that made your overclock so significantThe processors clock speed was low...
...CPU overclocks are beneficial but are not as significant as they are made out to be nowadaysIn relation to gaming...
...GPU overclocks are still VERY significant - but I would always advise buying a pre overclocked GPU...

Continued overclocking:

...A GPU overclock is substantially more effective at increasing overall gaming FPS. Any counter argument to that based on individual games is moot in that the majority of games benefit from a GPU overclock more than they do a CPU overclock and that includes new games...
...If the OP want's to process Dalaran for his AFK'ing then teach him to overclock and have him risk his hardware and warranty...
...Overclocking is not a benefit to throw upon the masses, it is not something I would advise, it is not something I would recommend...
...It is something I would recommend people avoid. Alongside that, the GPU will in most circumstances in most games trump the CPU in FPS per % overclock...

Scenario surrounding my own experience to affirm GPU overkill and CPU vs GPU gain:

The truth is, your GPU maxes the game, in fact it overkills it. My GPU does not, and to upgrade from my 8800gt to something better will give a higher frame rate increase than if I overclocked my CPU(q6600@3ghz w/ ddr2 800 l&s)... hell it would giver a higher framerate increase than if I bought an i7, on a completely new board, with ddr3 ram.

I would probably get about... 10 fps increase from the new CPU as opposed to about 40-60 from the GPU.

and then later finding results on the internet that support the claim to almost exactly as I predicted. Convenience:

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9...enches1680.pngClick to view the image

10 minimum fps gained from q6600 to i5 750 stocks and 1 fps extra on top of the i5 for having the nearest i7 So 11 fps gained in comparison to an i7.
15 maximum fps gained.

ANNNND finally the GPU, it doesn't have the 8800gt but it has the 3870 which is the equivalent in ATI, it also has the 8800gtx. It doesn't have a 460 but that's about the equivalent of a 285 (the 460 SSC FTW that I recommended would be marginally better). I didn't think my guesstimates would fall so accurately.

27 minimum fps gained.
36.7 maximum fps gained.
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/4491/wowuu1920.pngClick to view the image

And in finishing:

I am providing accurate advice to the person - and safe advice, advising him how to SAVE money and potentially voiding warranty unnecessarily.
We are not arguing whether an upgrade occurs, I am stating that:

1. Overclocks are not necessary and constantly advising them on computer users who are not experienced enough with computers to even choose their own parts is stupid. Always get them the best they can - stock.
2. GPU's provide a greater benefit when overclocking compared to the CPU for most games.

[vesseblah]

I have already spoken of bottlenecked systems and you just described a situation with one.

If you had actually read it you'd seen the point people in this thread have tried to explain you over and over again. 9 times out of 10 when somebody in these forums ask "my wow is slow, what I need to upgrade?" the answer is CPU. Almost every single other game on the planet needs GPU first and CPU second, WoW is a huge exception to that rule, and people like yourself really do not believe that before doing expensive mistakes with hardware purchases. How many postings you need to this thread from people who got significant FPS gain from simple overclocking before you believe that CPU is the bottleneck for the game? Maybe you need to try it yourself and be amazed to see how wrong you've been all along.

I have already explained there is a point where the amount of overclocking potential falls out due to the graphics card being overkill for the game.

There is, but that point is on extremely shitty graphics cards. Out of the current generation of discrete DX11 cards only Radeon 54xx/55xx series are too weak to run WoW at full video effects. Every graphics card that costs more than $100 and is DX11 capable will be far above the GPU cap for raiding on 1920x1080 resolution with anti-alias turned off.

I said:

Circular logic to 'prove' your point by quoting yourself is either hubris or stupidity. Probably bit of both in this case.


You can very easily prove to yourself even that WoW is incredibly CPU capped without any overclocking or hardware changes to end this stupid thread. Check out the low FPS sticky and turn off combat log. It's guaranteed to increase your FPS during raids, and you'll see the difference while doing /timetest, idling in Dalaran or fighting Lich King in ICC25. It has got absolutely nothing to do with GPU at all, just another part of the game where slow CPU is being the bottleneck for performance.

[Sackman]

If you had actually read it you'd seen the point people in this thread have tried to explain you over and over again. 9 times out of 10 when somebody in these forums ask "my wow is slow, what I need to upgrade?"1 the answer is CPU. Almost every single other game on the planet needs GPU first and CPU second2, WoW is a huge exception to that rule, and people like yourself really do not believe that before doing expensive mistakes with hardware purchases. How many postings you need to this thread from people who got significant FPS gain from simple overclocking before you believe that CPU is the bottleneck for the game?3 Maybe you need to try it yourself and be amazed to see how wrong you've been all along.



There is, but that point is on extremely shitty graphics cards4. Out of the current generation of discrete DX11 cards only Radeon 54xx/55xx series are too weak to run WoW at full video effects. Every graphics card that costs more than $100 and is DX11 capable will be far above the GPU cap for raiding on 1920x1080 resolution with anti-alias turned off.5



Circular logic to 'prove' your point by quoting yourself is either hubris or stupidity.6 Probably bit of both in this case.


You can very easily prove to yourself even that WoW is incredibly CPU capped without any overclocking or hardware changes to end this stupid thread. Check out the low FPS sticky and turn off combat log. It's guaranteed to increase your FPS during raids, and you'll see the difference while doing /timetest, idling in Dalaran or fighting Lich King in ICC25. It has got absolutely nothing to do with GPU at all, just another part of the game where slow CPU is being the bottleneck for performance.

1. The title reads "Building a new GAMING computer".

2. Thankyou for reiterating what I said, therefore a general purpose gaming computer should be built around the GPU.

3. Lack of multithreading, low bandwidth and low memory on both graphics cards and mainboards is the MAIN issue. Dipping down to low FPS is something that computers and consoles just do on occasion. If your average fps is above 30/40 (depending on taste), and there are minimal spikes at important times then there is no issue and your pedanticalness/obsession is just creating an issue.

4.Then my 8800gt must be incredibly shitty.

5. It's no wonder such poor advice is leaking out of this board then. Assuming everybodies budget includes enough money to upgrade to Vista or W7 and to include DX11 cards is incredibly asinine. When providing computer advice the first step is understanding what the user requires, if what you say about overclocking is true then why are you running i5's/7's? If what you say about GPU's is true why upgrade, an 8800 series outperforms or equally performs a 54xx/55xx? You are suggesting an i5 750 and a 5570 is required to run wow because you can "overclock" the CPU and you are running all bells and whistles 1920x1200 at playable frames.

But if you really thought that was a good idea you would realise first that WoW is a for the most part a single threaded application and any instance where it isn't can be virtualised on a dualcore and even single core CPU. A smarter upgrade is a cheap lga775 such as the e8400 that would overclock to 4.0Ghz given the right setup without any fuss and meet and perhaps even outperform your i5-750 on WoW. Considering lga775 goes back a good 5 years now, and most home PC's (used in home gaming) contain a core2duo or celeron single-core variant it is idiocy to assume that upgrading to a 1156 is required. Most of the core2duo mainboards also have a PCI-E 16x slot, so if the 5570 is all that is required for a bells and whistles it can go in that. A simple £200 upgrade, as opposed to a £700-800 upgrade to i5/7.

In my eyes if they were on lga775 I would suggest an e6600 and a 460, a £250 upgrade that would actually run the game all bells and whistles at 1920x1200 without any overclocking. No user stress, just open up, put in, run, of course an upgrade in PSU might be required but they are so cheap nowadays and the e6600 and a 460 would only require a 450w PSU, £50.


These are the hypocrisies of your advice, if all he needs to do is overclock his PC then he just wants the e8400 and to overclock it. Not an i5 and overclocking it. And yet I am pretty certain the 5570 does not run this game max or anything close to it. Because my 8800gt does not run this game close to max, not even with its market and personal overclock, and not even running alongside a 3.0Ghz q6600.

The main point is, they don't need to overclock at all, but if they did or if you would advise this the first thing you should ask is what PC they are currently running, because if you are overclocking to play wow you are aiming at a tight budget - and if you are aiming at a tight budget you dont upgrade to vista/w7, ddr3, 1156, dx11, i5/7.

6. My advice is sound, you are a shallow, typical, computer enthusiast with little knowledge on what a typical consumer wants from a PC. I am an educated, IT consultant with commercial as well as personal experience who listens to friends/family and customers daily for what they actually require. Your obvious argumentative attitude and petulance I attempt at each post to disregard is a sign of your inadequacy for advice giving. Consistently you try to belittle my advice of overclocking being a bad idea for the consumer and I want to make certain that people recognise your fallacy and how poor your advice actually is despite me never actually telling you that your information is incorrect. I reasoned your information and continued to tell you that overclocking is not what the consumer wants, they want out of the box, out of the box, out of the box. And if they were to overclock? It should be done properly, by someone with a lot of experience who can provide for them the comfort of knowing their PC is going to work and keep working for all intents and purposes, not just giving them the keys to the car and assuming they know how to drive.

You could sustain that you were just arguing a point about the benefits of overclocking, but I made my advice sound for the OP and the posts intentions, and wanted to try and keep it that way. I am not arguing whether or not a gain is made from overclocking, for that is an idiotic stance to take, I am simply trying to get novice computer users and gamers to avoid pitfalls with computer buying that experienced computer users but poor advice givers present to them consistently. Claiming overclocking to be the holy grail of WoW performance issues is going to make people take unnecessary risks, and make stupid choices in upgrading their PC, or indeed running their PC.



Overall WoW's problem is the amount of data to be processed, not the speed of which it needs to be processed. Making the cars go faster on the motorway certainly makes them get to their destination faster but you can drive fast on old roads to a point, the point is the cars only know how to travel in a line - it is up to WoW to teach the cars to drive parrelel as many more of them could reach their destination much faster.

Advising a novice user to focus on their CPU for a multi-gaming PC is ridiculous, advising them to overclock is ridiculous. They want out of the box, GPU with manufacturers overclock and warranty, a decent stock CP. And the fact that an 8800gtx paired with an i7-920 cannot run the game on max 1920x1200 (without ultra shadows) at more than 40fps is a sign of the importance of a GPU no matter what way you look at it.

[vesseblah]

1. The title reads "Building a new GAMING computer".

2. Thankyou for reiterating what I said, therefore a general purpose gaming computer should be built around the GPU.

General purpose gaming computer yes. But you're forgetting one pretty damn big point. This forum is for WoW fans, therefore every single bit of advice here is filtered through WoW requirements to not disappoint WoW players.

3. Lack of multithreading, low bandwidth and low memory on both graphics cards and mainboards is the MAIN issue. Dipping down to low FPS is something that computers and consoles just do on occasion.

I'm guessing you aren't raiding 25-man instances, or you wouldn't say something silly like that. Minimum FPS usually happens when it's most critical moment to react fast, therefore dragging the minimum up is almost exclusively the first priority of optimization in all online games. Average and maximum performance are pretty much irrelevant as long as those are above certain treshold.

When the CPU power goes below minimum required, you will simply disconnect from the game due to lack of processing bandwidth. Great example of this is when you're AOEing whelps on 25-man Onyxia raid.

4.Then my 8800gt must be incredibly shitty.

But if you really thought that was a good idea you would realise first that WoW is a for the most part a single threaded application and any instance where it isn't can be virtualised on a dualcore and even single core CPU. A smarter upgrade is a cheap lga775 such as the e8400 that would overclock to 4.0Ghz given the right setup without any fuss and meet and perhaps even outperform your i5-750 on WoW.

Because my 8800gt does not run this game close to max, not even with its market and personal overclock, and not even running alongside a 3.0Ghz q6600.

No, your Q6600 is shitty, 8800GT is enough to run the game on 1920x1080 resolution with AA off. If you look at the raw computing power i5-760 has roughly 150% more power for floating point calculations (flops) than Q6600. Even though it's not 100% indicative of WoW speed, it gives you an idea of why old generation CPU is junk for game which is heavily CPU dependant.

The generation gap of raw computing power between Core 2 Duo/Quad is so huge that suggesting people to buy C2D/C2Q based architecture today is like recommending them to buy black and white TV's. Sure you can watch your favourite shows from it, but it's old technology.

edit:

The important bit you're missing when looking at charts like the benchmarks you linked on page 2 that those are done with /timetest, ie. with most of the CPU hogging features disabled like combat log for example. It's mostly a benchmark for best graphics performance and heavily dependant on GPU, but has very little relevance to how the game runs in 25-man raid environment.

The main point is, they don't need to overclock at all, but if they did or if you would advise this the first thing you should ask is what PC they are currently running, because if you are overclocking to play wow you are aiming at a tight budget - and if you are aiming at a tight budget you dont upgrade to vista/w7, ddr3, 1156, dx11, i5/7.

Poor people can't afford to buy cheap. Ever heard of that old saying. Holds here perfectly. i5 is excellent investment for playing WoW because it has almost guaranteed potential to overclock for 50% which gives you power of $1k CPU for $200. That is the bottom line why i5 is heavily recommended on these forums. Real budget builders are recommended to buy Phenom II x2 550/555 based setup. It currently gives best value for money, and also offers pretty nice margin of overclocking and a chance to unlock disabled cores.

6. My advice is sound, you are a shallow, typical, computer enthusiast with little knowledge on what a typical consumer wants from a PC. I am an educated, IT consultant with commercial as well as personal experience who listens to friends/family and customers daily for what they actually require.

Yeah, and I'm the king of USA. Waving titles is poor crutch for your total lack of knowledge when it comes to matters of WoW's inner workings.

Consistently you try to belittle my advice of overclocking being a bad idea for the consumer and I want to make certain that people recognise your fallacy and how poor your advice actually is despite me never actually telling you that your information is incorrect.

Neither me nor anybody else are arguing with you about merits of overclocking. We are arguing that CPU is more important than GPU for WoW. Do you finally get it or shall I start also using fancy words to sink it in, the kind you're trying to pathetically boost your self-deluded intellectual superiority with?

Overall WoW's problem is the amount of data to be processed, not the speed of which it needs to be processed. Making the cars go faster on the motorway certainly makes them get to their destination faster but you can drive fast on old roads to a point, the point is the cars only know how to travel in a line - it is up to WoW to teach the cars to drive parrelel as many more of them could reach their destination much faster.

Start of that paragraph was the only thing on your posts that actually make any sense.

The part where you go off the road (following your metaphor) is that your technical knowledge seems to be about decade behind of reality. Currently nearly all buses inside computers are serial but run at extremely high speeds, it has been the trend for quite some time ever since USB and SATA became mainstream. Increasing the number of lanes seems to be fail strategy in many ways. On software side it shows in painfully obvious way on poorly multithreaded applications.

WoW was made at a time when CPU race between Intel and AMD was all about rising clock speeds, and it shows. It's poorly parallelized. But you can help that with modern CPU's by upping the speeds, and overclocking is simple and effective way to do that. It's not perfect solution, but it works perfectly well.

[llDemonll]

1. The title reads "Building a new GAMING computer".
But if you really thought that was a good idea you would realise first that WoW is a for the most part a single threaded application and any instance where it isn't can be virtualised on a dualcore and even single core CPU.

except that WoW runs with three main threads as of 3.1 ...

[vesseblah]

except that WoW runs with three main threads as of 3.1 ...

2.0.1 actually (TBC pre-patch) is when the game was made multithreaded. But there are numerous changes to the engine before and after that.

[Sackman]

Setting processor affinity =/= multicore optimisation.

I linked you the performance upgrades in the form of benchmarks earlier.

I showed you the jump in FPS based on CPU and GPU upgrades.

I showed you that the GPU provided a bigger boost. Your help is much appreciated in the community, yes WoW is a CPU intensive game, no it is not more CPU bound than GPU bound if you want to run all bells and whistles 1920x1200 until your GPU can handle it. No the 8800gt cannot all bells and whistles 1920x1200. No the q6600 is not a shit processor.

Yes WoW is poorly optimised regarding CPU's, yes overclocking your CPU will increase your minimum FPS especially in Dalaran, or during AOE fests during raids. No I have never had problems dropping to 20 fps and this has never impacted my performance or enjoyment. If I dropped to 1 fps? Sure.

AOE'ing Onyxia 25 whelps? Yeah a problem. Mostly due to addons. Addon free, even going for the achievement? No problem.

Yes when you run the game all bells and whistles with max settings at a nice average framerate it is more beneficial to upgrade or overclock your CPU. I said this myself earlier, why do you continually think I am arguing this point?

[llDemonll]

Yes WoW is poorly optimised regarding CPU's, yes overclocking your CPU will increase your minimum FPS especially in Dalaran, or during AOE fests during raids. No I have never had problems dropping to 20 fps and this has never impacted my performance or enjoyment. If I dropped to 1 fps? Sure.

I'm not entirely sure what you continue to argue .. weren't you earlier saying that GPU was the more important thing for smoothly running WoW?

@vesseblah true, but I was speaking that WoW went from two -> three main threads in 3.1, not that they went from a single thread to multiple threads

[Sackman]

I'm not entirely sure what you continue to argue .. weren't you earlier saying that GPU was the more important thing for smoothly running WoW?

@vesseblah true, but I was speaking that WoW went from two -> three main threads in 3.1, not that they went from a single thread to multiple threads

The GPU is more important. I have proven that with the benchmarks I provided. CPU is more significant in WoW compared to other games but it still didn't trump the FPS gain at minimum and maximum compared to upgrading the GPU. (Although when the GPU is capable of running the game all bells and whistles, the CPU trumps the GPU especially in overclocking for increasing AVG fps).

But no my main concern was that advising people to overclock is bad advice. And making purchases assuming overclocking, is bad advice - from my experience in both working at a local computer retailer - working in a commercial firm as part of a IT repair, web design and internal/external IT consultancy team, and advising friends and family regarding computer purchases, upgrades and repair.

My knowledge comes from the market and it has been an apparent and VERY OBVIOUS trend, that people don't want to fiddle around, and that it's best they don't fiddle around even with a small amount of knowledge unless they are using it to learn. People want to pick it up and play it, they want to pull it out the box plug it in and use it, they want to put it in the CD drive and have it pop up on the screen and install.

They don't need to be pressured into overclocking, or assume that they are going to overclock, or even get an inkling that it is a good idea.

Anyway, beating a dead horse. I will hope that they don't take your advice and void the warranty on their hardware by overclocking.

[llDemonll]

Yes, you have told us (if i remember correctly) that the GPU is the better upgrade, but the benchmarks for GPU only matter if you are rendering world .. i.e. not a raid setting. WoW is terribly easy to run if there is no one else interacting with you, onboard graphics of decent motherboards can run it, but as soon as you interact with others (the whole idea of an mmo) the CPU is what makes the bigger benefactor. yes, you need a semi-decent graphics card to run wow in a raid setting, onboard wont cut it there, but you dont need anything new-age, a two year old card will run wow perfectly fine (i have a 512mb 256-bit 4870 and i run on max with 3/4 shadows).

yes, not everyone wants to overclock, but that doesnt mean that buying a good GPU will make up for a bad CPU. it is still a CPU-bound game and needs a nice CPU (be it overclocked or not, a stock i5-750 will work fine) more than it does a GPU

[Circuit]

that memory speed is over kill unless you are gonna do some liquid nitrogen cooling and some serious overclocking if you want the best performance out of your computer you should get a small SSD for your OS at least (32GB ish) just to load programs on everything else (media documents porn stuff like that ) should go on a secondary hard drive if you wanna have awesome performance get 2 small SSDs and put them in raid0 and you should also consider getting 2 big HDDs so you can do raid1

im an AMD/ATI fanboy so i wont say anything about your processor or video cards...

[joeyc]

Well, this thread escalated into a larger discussion than what I originally expected.

I have always been under the impression that WoW in particular is a rather CPU demanding game, opposed to most other games, which rather depend on a good GPU. Although WoW is the game I play the most, I also (as stated in my first post) play COD, BF etc. However, I thought (and still think :P) that the list I provided is good enough for both aspects, e.g WoW, first person shooters as well as RTS games.

I do not have a great deal of knowledge when it comes to computer components, but I would appreciate it if someone could answer me this: will it be good enough for WoW? I'm mostly thinking about 25 man raiding, which is by far the scenario in which most people experience fps lag. After reading all the posts you guys provided I suppose it would handle most other games on Ultra as well? Given that it has 460GTX SLi (and as you said yourselves, most games rely on a strong GPU :P ) Well, that is if I have understood things correctly...

As for the CPU itself, i see that the i5 is mentioned repeatedly (as a good enough CPU for WoW..?) I'm considering the i7 950 and I suppose that one is stronger than the i5 and an even better choice?

Moving on to the GPU... On other forums it was adviced that I should go for the Hawk version, as it was cooler and more silent than e.g the Ganward (spelling). However, one of you suggested that I should go for the Ganward (spelling again) since it comes factory OC'd. Well I browse lists and several GTX460's come up, and quite frankly I have no idea which ones to choose... So, do anyone have experience/knowledge enough with the GTX460's 1gig versions and can point out the best one? If there even is a "best one".

As for overclocking, I am completely green. I've never done it, nor do I know if I should with the components I've chosen. I have however been told that I should, to get more fps. Now, do you suggest I get factory-OC'd parts (if they exist)? Or is it easy/safe enough to do it myself? I know that this is what has been discussed in this thread, but many different opinions confuse me.



I think those are the questions I have for now. I'd like to thank all of you who took time to enlighten me and explain the way you did. I really appreciate it. And please don't hate me if you think my questions are repetetive or noobish :P

- joeyc

[vesseblah]

As for the CPU itself, i see that the i5 is mentioned repeatedly (as a good enough CPU for WoW..?) I'm considering the i7 950 and I suppose that one is stronger than the i5 and an even better choice?

i5 is totally fine for gaming use, and i7 is something that should be considered for math heavy use. If you're editing and recording a lot of game videos, i7 might make more sense, but for strictly gaming purposes it's hard to justify the extra price tag. i7-950 will be probably around 50-100% faster than i5-760 on video effects and compression, think if you'll need it or not.

Moving on to the GPU... On other forums it was adviced that I should go for the Hawk version, as it was cooler and more silent than e.g the Ganward (spelling). However, one of you suggested that I should go for the Ganward (spelling again) since it comes factory OC'd. Well I browse lists and several GTX460's come up, and quite frankly I have no idea which ones to choose... So, do anyone have experience/knowledge enough with the GTX460's 1gig versions and can point out the best one? If there even is a "best one".

Here's pretty big review of GTX460 cards, but it's from summer so missing few newest ones. -> http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-460-review/

Basically what it says is that EVGA cards have best warranty, factory overclocked Palit (sonic platinum) will offer best absolute performance if you're into tweaking, and MSI/Gigabyte are probably best value cards with nice conservative factory overclocks and custom coolers that are cooler and quieter than what the cards originally came with. I'd probably try to get the 1024mb MSI Cyclone card(s) since those are pretty cheap, pretty quiet and have pretty nice headroom for OC later if wanted.

As for overclocking, I am completely green. I've never done it, nor do I know if I should with the components I've chosen. I have however been told that I should, to get more fps. Now, do you suggest I get factory-OC'd parts (if they exist)? Or is it easy/safe enough to do it myself? I know that this is what has been discussed in this thread, but many different opinions confuse me.

Overclocking is something totally optional, here is pretty good and comprehensive guide for OC'ing i3/i5/i7 series CPU's -> http://www.overclockers.com/3-step-g...core-i3-i5-i7/

It's recommended you read it through few times, and then decide if you want to do it or not. With both i5 and i7 you can usually get around 30-50% more speed if you purchase better CPU cooler for about $50. Risks are involved mostly in tweaking voltages, and the guide is pretty clear about that also.

What overclocking does is that it forces certain parts of the computer run faster than they're supposed to. All electronic components have minimum and maximum operating temperature, as well as expected lifetime if you stay at recommended temperature. It's fairly common that if you push a component 30% over it's intended operating temperature and are close to the absoute maximum, the lifetime will start decreasing in linear fashion.

In reality modern CPU's probably last around 10-15 years when used within normal temperatures and voltages, but aggressive overclocking can cut that in half to 5-7 years. It might sound bad when you first think about it, but on the flipside not many use 5-7 year old computers daily anyway. You could think of it as compressing the lifetime of a computer in half. On the other hand it lasts only for few years, but it will run completely dry during that time and there isn't much of value left when it's time to upgrade again.

[Dethh]

The only thing you would consider over clocking is the processor (no it doesn't come factory OC'd). The i7-950 will run all these games flawlessly at stock speeds with that sli set up. However you will notice some dips in fps on heavy aoe or similar events (this is where the OC would help) but it isn't necessary. I wouldn't be concerned with OC it is something that is interesting to some people and not so interesting to others and by no means is required to enjoy WoW on an up to date PC.

[Sackman]

Well, this thread escalated into a larger discussion than what I originally expected.

I have always been under the impression that WoW in particular is a rather CPU demanding game, opposed to most other games, which rather depend on a good GPU. Although WoW is the game I play the most, I also (as stated in my first post) play COD, BF etc. However, I thought (and still think :P) that the list I provided is good enough for both aspects, e.g WoW, first person shooters as well as RTS games.

I do not have a great deal of knowledge when it comes to computer components, but I would appreciate it if someone could answer me this: will it be good enough for WoW? I'm mostly thinking about 25 man raiding, which is by far the scenario in which most people experience fps lag. After reading all the posts you guys provided I suppose it would handle most other games on Ultra as well? Given that it has 460GTX SLi (and as you said yourselves, most games rely on a strong GPU :P ) Well, that is if I have understood things correctly...

As for the CPU itself, i see that the i5 is mentioned repeatedly (as a good enough CPU for WoW..?) I'm considering the i7 950 and I suppose that one is stronger than the i5 and an even better choice?

Moving on to the GPU... On other forums it was adviced that I should go for the Hawk version, as it was cooler and more silent than e.g the Ganward (spelling). However, one of you suggested that I should go for the Ganward (spelling again) since it comes factory OC'd. Well I browse lists and several GTX460's come up, and quite frankly I have no idea which ones to choose... So, do anyone have experience/knowledge enough with the GTX460's 1gig versions and can point out the best one? If there even is a "best one".

As for overclocking, I am completely green. I've never done it, nor do I know if I should with the components I've chosen. I have however been told that I should, to get more fps. Now, do you suggest I get factory-OC'd parts (if they exist)? Or is it easy/safe enough to do it myself? I know that this is what has been discussed in this thread, but many different opinions confuse me.



I think those are the questions I have for now. I'd like to thank all of you who took time to enlighten me and explain the way you did. I really appreciate it. And please don't hate me if you think my questions are repetetive or noobish :P

- joeyc

The i7 950 is stronger than the i5 by a good degree, probably about 15-20% at stock faster than the i5 (in gaming).

Your build will kill all games except Crysis but it will run Crysis a treat.

Gainward GLH, or EVGA FTW, Gainward GLH is about £200 GBP, the EVGA SSC FTW is £220 I think. I don't know where you are from so cannot give you a place to buy or price for your locale so I gave you my locale prices :P

If you are new to overclocking don't do it. If you have an old system you can practice on and don't care about - learn and do it there first if you really want to. If you want to know where to learn - google search "how to overclock my CPU", do the same in youtube. Watch a few videos, read a few articles and try it on an old PC. If you have never done it, don't do it on the new PC unless you have the money to throw away.

Paying for a factory OC on a graphics card is always better than OC'ing yourself unless you are REALLY tight for money. Keeping warranty and knowing you can take it back if it's not stable etc is a great boon. And it's a good starting point for your own OC even if you are OC'ing. Your factory OC'd GLH or SSC FTW I wouldn't advise you to go any further with so the factory OC will be for the lifetime of the card. (You would probably require water cooling to go further anyway). The i7 wouldn't need to be overclocked, you could get more bang for buck but it's not necessary.

All in all, despite the information I gave, you've never done it so don't overclock

It would run WoW and every game max graphics 1920x1200 with 40 average fps or more (most of the time around 100 average), and would run Crysis(Enthusiast/Very High) with approx 20 min, 35 avg and 50 max I believe. That's going from memory though It should be about accurate but a google search "460 sli benchmark" will likely provide the answer.

EDIT: My god I get lazy as the day get's on. Anyway, 460 SLI Crysis Warhead benchmark lol : http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=7

That bench is using a i7 920. So yours would be a bit stronger, especially with the Gainward GLH or EVGA FTW cards (they are 1GB cards as opposed to 768mb cards used in the benchmarks, and they have much higher clocks).