How much to pay to play wow on ultra?

[BicycleMafioso]

I never have any issues at all. My FPS never drops below 40 even in SW when there's countless players everywhere. I did two months of research before I built but I build awhile ago. For him I would just wait and see how AMD's new stuff is. It can't hurt.

---------- Post added 2011-09-20 at 09:43 PM ----------

No not really. All he brags about is how he has a $1000 cpu and its REALLY annoying. Every game that I've played since building this comp has been at max settings with no issues. I built almost a year ago.

That would be an i7-970 then? Costs about 800USD I'd say, while the 990x costs 1417USD. But stuff are 40% cheaper there, so that might be it.

Either way, nothing AMD has on the market matches them, but he would've been better off spending 150~USD on the i5-2500K who would've been better yet.

[DeltrusDisc]

I'm glad im not going back to Intel. My AMD build is just as good as my buddys freshly new Intel build and I spent half the cash he did.

Funny.

And did he foolishly build an X58 chipset-based Intel computer? If he did, then yes, you're correct. However in folding applications and video rendering his would probably blow your computer sky-high.

Anyone who builds a computer with an i5-2500K for instance, is using some of the latest hardware, which AMD is far behind on. I'm guessing you built some Phenom II computer, let me guess, a 1090T or 1100T? You see the thing is, an i5-2500K CPU can easily be overclocked up to 4.5GHz, note: easily. I've not heard of too many people doing that with Phenom II's.... you have to have some insane cooling solution and be very careful as the auto-shutdown on those CPUs is much lower than Intel's. Phenom II is ~2 year old hardware, i5-2500K and its siblings are less than a year old and blow anything of AMD's out of the water right now. Yes your friend may have foolishly bought something from Intel that is also old technology, but I assure you, any of us here with 2500K/2600K CPUs, know how little we actually spent and how much extra we got free. My CPU is at 4.5GHz and I know some who have their own even higher... it doesn't cost extra money to OC, so while you're probably at a slow stock speed, we'll be blasting by you. Enjoy your 2 year old technology buddy, and sorry you are so stubborn.

And before you say I'm an Intel-fanboy, I'm really not, I'd like to see AMD take back some of the market, if they ever get caught up... Bulldozer should have been out around the time Sandybridge came out, if AMD can't catch up soon, Intel will have no reason to keep prices cheap.

And you say you did 2 months worth of research? When? How? What kind of research? Let me put AMD's best Phenom II up against the i5-2500K, which is not Intel's top Sandybridge CPU, the i7-2600K is, as it has Hyper-threading, but the 2500K has been shown to be a bit better in gaming at times.

Here you are, the 6 core beast from AMD, the Phenom II x6 1100T BE vs the 4 core Intel i5-2500K.... let's see what the benchmarks show...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Produ...1.62.129.63.64

[Tmoney511]

You can't prove anything without numbers my friend.

Numbers they shall come.

[Konics]

ultra (as in everything on ultra) and 25s dont mix well

[Tmoney511]

Funny.

And did he foolishly build an X58 chipset-based Intel computer? If he did, then yes, you're correct. However in folding applications and video rendering his would probably blow your computer sky-high.

Anyone who builds a computer with an i5-2500K for instance, is using some of the latest hardware, which AMD is far behind on. I'm guessing you built some Phenom II computer, let me guess, a 1090T or 1100T? You see the thing is, an i5-2500K CPU can easily be overclocked up to 4.5GHz, note: easily. I've not heard of too many people doing that with Phenom II's.... you have to have some insane cooling solution and be very careful as the auto-shutdown on those CPUs is much lower than Intel's. Phenom II is ~2 year old hardware, i5-2500K and its siblings are less than a year old and blow anything of AMD's out of the water right now. Yes your friend may have foolishly bought something from Intel that is also old technology, but I assure you, any of us here with 2500K/2600K CPUs, know how little we actually spent and how much extra we got free. My CPU is at 4.5GHz and I know some who have their own even higher... it doesn't cost extra money to OC, so while you're probably at a slow stock speed, we'll be blasting by you. Enjoy your 2 year old technology buddy, and sorry you are so stubborn.

And before you say I'm an Intel-fanboy, I'm really not, I'd like to see AMD take back some of the market, if they ever get caught up... Bulldozer should have been out around the time Sandybridge came out, if AMD can't catch up soon, Intel will have no reason to keep prices cheap.

And you say you did 2 months worth of research? When? How? What kind of research? Let me put AMD's best Phenom II up against the i5-2500K, which is not Intel's top Sandybridge CPU, the i7-2600K is, as it has Hyper-threading, but the 2500K has been shown to be a bit better in gaming at times.

Here you are, the 6 core beast from AMD, the Phenom II x6 1100T BE vs the 4 core Intel i5-2500K.... let's see what the benchmarks show...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Produ...1.62.129.63.64

Most of what you read is sales pitches or personal opinions. There is so much more involved in building a powerful computer (GPU, Memory type, etc). Honestly, even with gaming while streaming music, I dont even use above 65% of my processors power. Starcraft 2, Crysis 2 on ultra settings without a glitch. The money I saved buying a quad Phenom II 965 instead of a Bloomfield 970 allowed me to more money towards my gpu and ram. CPU benchmarks mean nothing without the right components supporting them. Intel to me have great products, but its like owning a Ferrari to get around in NYC. I'll take a ride in an AMD taxi anyday and probably get there sooner. I'm not on stock clocks lol. Also my friend is far from being fullish. He knows his stuff. You don't even know one bit of me so don't even call me stubborn. I'm so far from it.

[Deleted]

May I suggest that you all move back on topic and stop with the "Intel vs. AMD" nonsense. Really.

It is well known that the current Sandy Bridge CPUs handle WoW extremely well. Even the i3 2100 excels in this game.
Shadows are drawn by the CPU which is the most demanding setting given an environment with many objects (i.e. a 25-man raids; 25 players or in a city).
WoW is an old game and doesn't require a lot of GPU power to run properly. As stated earlier, a GTX 460 or a HD5770 is just about overkill enough for this game.

@OP
Cheap option is to go with the i3 2100 and a GTX 460/HD 5770. The more future proof choice is to go with an i5 2500(k) and a 560 ti/HD 6950/HD 6870, especially if you want to play newer games like Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: ToR.

[Swarts]

I've got steady 60 FPS in raids both 10 and 25man. My system went for around 2.4k USD

[Tmoney511]

That would be an i7-970 then? Costs about 800USD I'd say, while the 990x costs 1417USD. But stuff are 40% cheaper there, so that might be it.

Either way, nothing AMD has on the market matches them, but he would've been better off spending 150~USD on the i5-2500K who would've been better yet.

Yeah your stuff is cheaper. He just likes to blow money and brag sadly.

[pacapaca]

If it helps any I have the following system and all settings on max (incl shadows) at 1920x1080. I typically get ~45fps in org. The video card is getting pretty old but this game is hardly cutting-edge.

Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.4ghz (stock cooling or I'd go higher)
8GB Corsair DDR3-1600
ATi Radeon HD4850 512mb
Crucial M4 128GB SSD

The only time I've experienced any sort of stutters was doing the "many whelps" achievement in Ony's layer with ~100 whelps and massive amounts of AOE (and then it did get pretty rough haha).

[Tmoney511]

May I suggest that you all move back on topic and stop with the "Intel vs. AMD" nonsense. Really.

It is well known that the current Sandy Bridge CPUs handle WoW extremely well. Even the i3 2100 excels in this game.
Shadows are drawn by the CPU which is the most demanding setting given an environment with many objects (i.e. a 25-man raids; 25 players or in a city).
WoW is an old game and doesn't require a lot of GPU power to run properly. As stated earlier, a GTX 460 or a HD5770 is just about overkill enough for this game.

@OP
Cheap option is to go with the i3 2100 and a GTX 460/HD 5770. The more future proof choice is to go with an i5 2500(k) and a 560 ti/HD 6950/HD 6870, especially if you want to play newer games like Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: ToR.

Nice post.

[DeltrusDisc]

Most of what you read is sales pitches or personal opinions. There is so much more involved in building a powerful computer (GPU, Memory type, etc). Honestly, even with gaming while streaming music, I dont even use above 65% of my processors power. Starcraft 2, Crysis 2 on ultra settings without a glitch. The money I saved buying a quad Phenom II 965 instead of a Bloomfield 970 allowed me to more money towards my gpu and ram. CPU benchmarks mean nothing without the right components supporting them. Intel to me have great products, but its like owning a Ferrari to get around in NYC. I'll take a ride in an AMD taxi anyday and probably get there sooner. I'm not on stock clocks lol. Also my friend is far from being fullish. He knows his stuff. You don't even know one bit of me so don't even call me stubborn. I'm so far from it.

970 = old hardware. Phenom II 965 = old hardware. Yes, you went the better route for gaming than your friend.

And sales pitches? Like, lol? Anandtech is a 3rd party benchmarking website to compare thousands of different pieces of hardware. >_>

I see on Newegg your CPU is about $130, well I got my i5-2500K for only $180 at Micro Center way back when they were still fairly new. It's honestly not that far off, certainly not like how the i7-970 is... And trust me when I say, I know how much is involved in building a powerful computer... at Micro Center I also got them to lower my GPU by about $60, so I got that cheaper than most as well. RAM? $50. $100 for all 16GB. And when playing those games, with Chrome open with 20 tabs I've seen that my CPU uses hardly 50% of its power. So if you really want to wage war, read more about your competition before taking a sword to a machine gun fight.

I'm done with this, I wanted to simply point out that Intel is in fact better for gaming right now, however if we all want to look at 2 year old technology, then yes, the tides turn a bit. At least my motherboard will be able to upgrade to Ivybridge CPUs this coming Winter/Spring, no need to get a new motherboard or anything. I'm pretty sure you don't have a Bulldozer capable motherboard soooooooo.... Enjoy your Phenom II. At least you're happy with it.

---------- Post added 2011-09-20 at 10:11 PM ----------

If it helps any I have the following system and all settings on max (incl shadows) at 1920x1080. I typically get ~45fps in org. The video card is getting pretty old but this game is hardly cutting-edge.

Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.4ghz (stock cooling or I'd go higher)
8GB Corsair DDR3-1600
ATi Radeon HD4850 512mb
Crucial M4 128GB SSD

The only time I've experienced any sort of stutters was doing the "many whelps" achievement in Ony's layer with ~100 whelps and massive amounts of AOE (and then it did get pretty rough haha).

Nice choice for RAM and SSD dude. ^_^ Got the same!

[Uggorthaholy]

Custom build by Uggorthaholy

mobo – Msi P67, SLi/CF ready – $129.99
cpu – Intel i5 2500K – $219.99
ram – Corsar 1600 MHz Vengeance Low-Profile 2X4GB – $57.99
gpu – Twin Frozr GTX 560 Ti – $239.99
hdd1 – Samsung Spinpoint 1TB – $59.99
os – Window 7 Home Premium 64-Bit – $99.99
psu – Corsair 80+ 650w – $84.99
sink – Corsair A70 – $41.42
case – Cooler Master HAF 912 Mid Tower – $59.99

Final Price – $994.34
Note that certain parts can be changed in/out for personal preference, ESPECIALLY the case. I do not include SSD’s because I am not comfortable/knowledgeable enough to recommend them with any form of confidence

This is what I would suggest if you want high to ultra custom settings with a smooth framerate in 25 mans. Direct answer FTW.

[Deleted]

With my overclocked i7 2600k 4,8ghz/gtx580 system i get between 50-75fps in 25man raids(in combat) with everything on ultra. tho on some fights like lord rhyloth and beth i turn the shadows to low to avoid my FPS droping to 30-35fps during some parts of the fight >.< thinking of buying another gtx580 just for this reason

[DeltrusDisc]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115066

i7-970 is $601, for those wondering.

---------- Post added 2011-09-20 at 10:23 PM ----------

With my overclocked i7 2600k 4,8ghz/gtx580 system i get between 50-75fps in 25man raids(in combat) with everything on ultra. tho on some fights like lord rhyloth and beth i turn the shadows to low to avoid my FPS droping to 30-35fps during some parts of the fight >.< thinking of buying another gtx580 just for this reason

You're that afraid of 30-35 fps in just a couple fights, that you'll put $1,000 worth of GPUs in your computer?

[Wries]

With my overclocked i7 2600k 4,8ghz/gtx580 system i get between 50-75fps in 25man raids(in combat) with everything on ultra. tho on some fights like lord rhyloth and beth i turn the shadows to low to avoid my FPS droping to 30-35fps during some parts of the fight >.< thinking of buying another gtx580 just for this reason

That GPU upgrade will gain you nothing. Shadows are unoptimized and straining on CPU. Unhappy with the framerate? Wait for a better CPU to come out, blizz to fix their stuff or keep lowering your shadows-slider.

[DeltrusDisc]

That GPU upgrade will gain you nothing. Shadows are unoptimized and straining on CPU. Unhappy with the framerate? Wait for a better CPU to come out, blizz to fix their stuff or keep lowering your shadows-slider.

Ivybridge teehee.