Question about Chaud's monthly recomendations

[Zulfarror]

Hello, I was just looking through Chaud's computer builds for March and I just want to know what each can actually do.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...th-Daily-Blink

If you follow the link and scroll down you can see the different builds, and so for example, what would be the difference in effect [in the game(WoW SC2), fps, graphic-wise, etc] between the dolphin and narwhal? And what if I get the narwhal with an SSD?

Thank you In advance

[BicycleMafioso]

This all depends how comfortable with overclocking you are.
Going say Narwhal vs Dolphin and strictly speaking WoW, you'd notice no difference in-between them, FPS-wise.

If you were doing other games, possibly. Complementing the Narwhal with the Corsair F120 would speed up every loadingscreen and any boot-time. Program-startups et c are near instantaneous.

The builds aren't perfect, but they are all compatible within itself, so you'll run into no issues.

[Zulfarror]

Ok thank you. Yeah I've never overclocked, nor built a computer, but it's mainly just about following instructions, or so I think. Is there any site that deals with overclocking and how to do it perhaps?

[Deleted]

Overclocking isn't really necessary unless you have a really old CPU. And even then the few extra Mhz won't make a big difference as it's all about extra cores today.

WoW will run fine on any decent PC that isn't older than 4 years. And even modern games aren't hugely demanding because they're built with consoles in mind. So unless you play in High-Definition with FSAA and AF then there's really no need for UBER PC Power.

[BicycleMafioso]

Ok thank you. Yeah I've never overclocked, nor built a computer, but it's mainly just about following instructions, or so I think. Is there any site that deals with overclocking and how to do it perhaps?

This video should tell you the essentials around both how to overclock the i5-2500K/i7-2600K and explain about the motherboard-series.
It's fairly informative.

[Fuzzykins]

Or you can be cool, get the Asus P8P67 Pro, and take full advantage of the auto-overclock.

[Adappy]

Or you can be cool, get the Asus P8P67 Pro, and take full advantage of the auto-overclock.

Except the auto-tuning tends to turn the core voltages unnecessarily high. It'd probably be better to learn how to do it manually, it's not that hard and you will have lower temperatures.

[Chronius]

Except the auto-tuning tends to turn the core voltages unnecessarily high. It'd probably be better to learn how to do it manually, it's not that hard and you will have lower temperatures.

Hehe, tell me about it. I decided to try it.
I selected the extreme option for the autoclocking and let the machine do its thing. 5mins later it settled on 5GHz at 1.68V
=) I think im staying clear of the auto clocking feature henceforth.

[Jurwi]

Or you can be cool, get the Asus P8P67 Pro, and take full advantage of the auto-overclock.

The auto-overclock is bad. It can easily boost your voltage too much and skyrocket your temps.

[Zulfarror]

OK very thanks for the responses about Overclocking and the FPS, but just to make sure, what graphics would I be seeing in WoW? I played WoW on ultragraphics and SC2 on high/medium and I think it fried my old HP laptop, so that's why I'm looking to get a better desktop

[vesseblah]

Overclocking isn't really necessary unless you have a really old CPU. And even then the few extra Mhz won't make a big difference as it's all about extra cores today.

99% wrong for games. Multiple cores do almost nothing and the speed of few (2-3) cores is more important. There are few extremely rare exceptions that benefit from multiple cores, Civ5 comes to my mind. In WoW 20% CPU overclocking is almost exactly 20% more speed in situations where the game lags most (in busy cities and raids). OC can give pretty big performance boost in both old and new computers.

WoW will run fine on any decent PC that isn't older than 4 years.

Also 100% wrong. Try doing 25-man raids on 4 year old computer with modern 1920x1080 monitor and you'll be screaming for mommy in about 2 minutes. Unless you happen to like lego block graphics of course.

[Deleted]

99% wrong for games. Multiple cores do almost nothing and the speed of few (2-3) cores is more important. There are few extremely rare exceptions that benefit from multiple cores, Civ5 comes to my mind. In WoW 20% CPU overclocking is almost exactly 20% more speed in situations where the game lags most (in busy cities and raids). OC can give pretty big performance boost in both old and new computers.

Completely agree, the 20% extra speed is also very accurate and a lot of cpu's you can buy now have 30% or more headroom

[nwo]

The difference between Dolphin and Narwhal builds in the two games mentioned is that the Narwhal build would get 50-60% better fps out of the box (stock speeds). The difference would not be as significant in other games, but it would still be around 20-40%. If you get an SSD, it will just increase your load times, it will not affect your fps.