One and a half year old - Still love it

[Deleted]

I bought my pc exacly one and a half year ago, I still remember it causing short circuit or smth similar when I got home and me using extended cable to plug it in.
And after that I logged in, set everything to ultra and never looked back. it was VERY powerful pc for it's time (4870 1gb, intel quad-core,4 gb RAM)
And untill cata it's been always running smoothly at 60 fps, however with Cata I noticed my fps drop to 30-40 quite often, so my question is how is 4870 standing compared to next gen of AVI's graphics 6xxx series, I knew very few of 5xxx could come close to or beat it.

[llDemonll]

WoW doesn't care about the GPU really. the 4870 should be able to handle most everything fine, what CPU you have will be a bigger determining factor in how the computer performs

[wildemu]

My brother has a 4870 HD as well that was bought roughly sept 2009, and he too noticed choppiness in the main cities. He has a quad-core as well and what we found helpful was to revert the ATI Catalyst Drivers back to 10.4. Those are the last available drivers that really performed well with the 4800's. These new catalyst drivers mainly impact the 6000's and are bottlenecking the older ones. My 4830 was rocking in orgrimmar with 10.4, but the 10.12's literally freeze the screen for a couple of seconds.

[Caldrumr]

Yes, I think Cata just has a bit more graphics requirement. I have two PCs, neither of which lagged in Wrath. Now the better one gets about 10-15 less FPS in some areas (but still with no visible lag), and the other computer gets some pretty massive choppiness. I had to set all the settings on the older one to low, and it's still not smooth. =-/

[Samyaaza]

Be sure to disable all the DX 11 functions i.e. water and such...

[Deleted]

so my question is how is 4870 standing compared to next gen of AVI's graphics 6xxx series, I knew very few of 5xxx could come close to or beat it.

Its able to outperform the 5770 and lower in parts. Some DX11 compatible games like WoW and Civ5 however will see the 5770 ahead however, and the difference in other games can be very very tiny. The 5850, 6850, and above all outperform the 4870.

[Moobious]

A 4870 is more than enough GPU for wow, your CPU is more relevant to performance.

What CPU are you running?

[Deleted]

A 4870 is more than enough GPU for wow, your CPU is more relevant to performance.

What CPU are you running?

My cpu is e8200, or q really not sure smth like that but i remember it being 2.33Ghz and 2nm.

[Moobious]

My cpu is e8200, or q really not sure smth like that but i remember it being 2.33Ghz and 2nm.

That is the heart of your frame rate issues. Wow kicks the crap out of older CPUs.

[Deleted]

That is the heart of your frame rate issues. Wow kicks the crap out of older CPUs.

It's not really old when I bought it, it was still quite expensive and supposed to be good. Don't realy think you can call any quad-core old, not at this atleast.

[Xuvial]

Hi there, over 2 yrs old here and also loving it
e8200 is 2.66ghz, it must be a q8200 if it's 2.33ghz. Core 2 Quad series more than fine for WoW and don't let anyone tell you otherwise

I'm also been running q8200 for a while now and bought HD5770 (4870 equiv) almost a year ago, so you could say my setup is very similar to yours. 4gb ram, winXP-32bit :P
Did I see a noticeable performance drop in Cata? Hell yes, everyone did. Textures have been changed/increased, new effects are in play (I'm not just talking about your graphics settings) and most importantly, the number of people in cities has sky-rocketed compared to pre-Cata. The combination of these factors has resulted in the performance, it's nothing to worry about. Your FPS in raids, dungeons and open zones should be very smooth even on Ultra (I'm on ultra with Fair shadows and 4xAF).
30-40fps is around what I get in Org, 60-90 fps in open zones, 80-100+ in dungeons. Around ~40-50 in 10mans, don't really do 25mans anymore :P
Turning on VSync + Triple buffering is something that could be quite helpful in increasing framerates since 60fps is MORE than fine in WoW. I remember comfortably raiding at ~25fps in icc25, still felt pretty smooth and fully playable.

[Moobious]

It's not really old when I bought it, it was still quite expensive and supposed to be good. Don't realy think you can call any quad-core old, not at this atleast.

The core 2 quads are 3 generations old now. In the computer world 3 generations is alot.

[Magezsoul]

I upgraded my Ati 5770 to a 480 GTX Super clocked. Wanna know how much of an FPS increase I got? A wopping three.
Wow doesn't barely even touches your graphics card, get a better CPU or OC your current one.
.
A new 'Sandy Bridge' Setup (The I7-2600k) costs around $450 with a decent p67 1155 MoBo. On a stock AIR! cooler you could probably get a good 4.0GHz out of it.
I'm ordering mine next week, and if you want i'll let you know how much of an increase in FPS I see from my current E8500 @ 3.06GHz.

Much needed upgrade if you ask me, I run in windowed so I get like 15 fps max in raids due to duel monitors >.<

Be sure to disable all the DX 11 functions i.e. water and such...

DX11 is still not fully implemented in WoW, He'd have to change his Config.wtf in order to enable DX11 functions (Like water reflections).
Which TBH if you have a DX11 card you should probably google on how to turn DX11 on for wow. It can increase your FPS by around 20 depending on your setup. It puts more of the 'Wow Load' on your graphics card saving your CPU from doing all the work.