[Advice] Recording Firelands Raids with 1080p

[zoefschildpad]

before you do anything rash, try it out with your current setup and see how it goes.

I think your processor at least should be able to handle it. It's a quad core, 2 cores for wow and 2 for fraps (does fraps even use 2?) I know that when I was recording wow a few years back on my then brand-new quad core, I barely noticed an fps drop from recording. As for upgrading your video card, you can always do that tomorrow.

run the game and see how it goes, if it doesn't perform well enough it's probably your graphics card. If the game plays fine but you get a big performance drop when recording, it's definitely not the GPU because the GPU doesn't do anything for fraps, fraps merely takes the data that is outputted to the monitor and stores it on disk.

[Evildeffy]

Radeon card uses bit less electricity, but Nvidia cards have better coolers meaning less noise and heat. My personal favourite would be MSI GTX560ti Twin Frozr simply because it has one of the best coolers around.

Incorrect dude, it is completely brand and reference/non-reference design related that dictate sound and heat coming from cards.

Your saying of "AMD cards are hotter and noisier then nVidia" is unfounded.

However if you want a priced upgrade that's good, find a reference 6950 and flash upgrade it to 6970.
That is better then pretty much anything what nVidia offers.

Edit: This does not change FRAPS speed, FRAPS relies on CPU and HDD speed, if you have a crappy ass CPU then you won't be able to do a damn thing.

[naadra]

3.3 on the Intel I5 processor is faster then the AMD 3.3, it basically has newer technology that lets it do a lot more in the same time as AMD chips can. So for example when your chip is thinking about one process, the Intel chip is thinking about 3 for example. see what I mean? hopefully that made sense heh sometimes I dont explain too well, let me go get my helmet!!

[Wries]

Can't make less heat. A "cooler" (heatsink and fans in almost all cases) merely makes the heat go away from the GPU faster, it's still hot air that needs to go somewhere.

Initially Nvidia's fermi (400 series, specifically GF100 which was GTX 465, 470 and 480) was known for making a lot of heat and power draw. And while the 460 (+500 series) improved on this point they still do consume a lot of power and put out a lot of heat. 500 series had in a sense better stock coolers, often without radial fans like the GF100 400 series came with.

As for decent third party heatsinks, many cards from both manufacturers got them.

[Romulan1993]

I'm looking at buying this monitor, It seems incredibly cheap for a FullHD monitor, can anybody knowledgeable indicate whether this would be a good purchase? http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...2350vr-sn.html

[vesseblah]

Incorrect dude, it is completely brand and reference/non-reference design related that dictate sound and heat coming from cards.

Your saying of "AMD cards are hotter and noisier then nVidia" is unfounded.

Speaking of reference coolers on cards, GTX560ti runs both cooler and quieter than Radeon 6950. Fermi cards' reputation for being hot and noisy comes from early GTX400 lines, and those are not being sold as new anymore. Coolers in GTX500 series are far better.

However if you want a priced upgrade that's good, find a reference 6950 and flash upgrade it to 6970.

Speaking of incorrect...

Only the early reference models of Radeon 6950 were flashable to somewhere between 6950 and 6970 in performance, but those cards have not been produced in a long time and are unavailable in most parts of the world.

---------- Post added 2011-07-28 at 05:18 PM ----------

I'm looking at buying this monitor, It seems incredibly cheap for a FullHD monitor, can anybody knowledgeable indicate whether this would be a good purchase? http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...2350vr-sn.html

Don't see anything wrong with it, and LG is decent brand in the cheaper end of LCD/LED screens, so it should be fine. It probably has the same problem as all cheap-ass screens, which is limited adjustability of the stand.

[Musta Kyy]

You should first try recording with 1080p (when you have the new monitor), and then decide if you want to go for a new CPU and/or GPU.
Note that there are a lot of factors that may lag your recording,
your harddrive might have too slow write speed (it is best to record to another harddrive if possible, so you arent recording on the same one that you have windows and wow on),
your WoW settings might be too high, if you are recording boss fights, you could try reduce atleast view distance, shadow quality, anistrophic filtering and multisampling.

Before I could advise you what to buy, can you tell the exact model of your processor? (you can download CPU-Z to see it) If it is good enough, GPU upgrade will help, because 9500GT is quite old, but if your CPU is not good, then upgrading GPU will not help, because then your CPU will still be the limiting factor.

Edit: Btw, that monitor should be okay for gaming and general use.

[ispano]

I'm so confused now, I have a bigger clock, but ur smaller clock is better? OMG I need somebody to hold my hand right now. Can somebody just link:

1. A not so expensive CPU that will increase my fps.

Then just think about it. If something with a lower clock performs better, ask yourself why. Maybe it does more in each of those cycles, maybe it's newer tech that can do things more efficiently than older CPUs or different tech CPUs, like i7 tech vs Phenom II tech. Even if you know nothing about how CPUs work and all that, it's fairly simple to understand why the lower clocked chip is faster.

[Evildeffy]

Speaking of reference coolers on cards, GTX560ti runs both cooler and quieter than Radeon 6950. Fermi cards' reputation for being hot and noisy comes from early GTX400 lines, and those are not being sold as new anymore. Coolers in GTX500 series are far better.

Still does not change the fact what i wrote, it is unfounded calling nVidia coolers better then AMD's coolers when clearly it depends on the maker if they add custom cooling or not, and yes whilst there are cards that can be cooler then their counterpart, it still doesn't make A better then B.

BTW, it isn't just the coolers that the GTX4 series are cooler, micro-architecture updates saw to that due to power draw.

Speaking of incorrect...

Only the early reference models of Radeon 6950 were flashable to somewhere between 6950 and 6970 in performance, but those cards have not been produced in a long time and are unavailable in most parts of the world.

Still availible here, flashed 2 of them just about 8 - 9 days ago, The Netherlands.

Basic reference models are still being sold.

Edit:
The only difference in cooling on a reference GTX480 vs. 580 btw is nothing more then a closed shroud (cover).
The entire design and TDP are identical, nothing changed, it was mostly an architecture change.
Edit2:
To clarify, i meant with design and tdp being identical is that of the cooler, Architecture change i meant the card (PCB) itself.

[naadra]

Just be careful on the "flashing" thing if you decide to do it and go that route. In most cases it will void the warranty as well. The downside is you have the possibility of frying your card or having to deal with studdering issues possibly unless you up the juice on it in some cases. The other bad thing is unless you got a reference card with a bios switch on it, once you flash it and something goes wrong or it does not work quite well or gives you video problems then you are stuck with trying to reflash it again etc. possibly causing more problems. It is not a guaranteed 6970, I would just spend the few extra bucks and get a 6970 if you decide to go that way.

[Evildeffy]

Just be careful on the "flashing" thing if you decide to do it and go that route. In most cases it will void the warranty as well. The downside is you have the possibility of frying your card or having to deal with studdering issues possibly unless you up the juice on it in some cases. The other bad thing is unless you got a reference card with a bios switch on it, once you flash it and something goes wrong or it does not work quite well or gives you video problems then you are stuck with trying to reflash it again etc. possibly causing more problems. It is not a guaranteed 6970, I would just spend the few extra bucks and get a 6970 if you decide to go that way.

The dual BIOS switch is the reference card i'm referring to.

Don't try it on any other variant of the reference models.