i3-2100 - good enough for 25man?

[BicycleMafioso]

i see the point, might consider 460 1gb after all.

I can vouch for the overclocking headroom on a GTX460. While you should know that every chip is different, I've personally achieved 880/4400 up from 675/3600 stock, on stock voltage. I've seen a few above 1GHz, but they're rare.
But like in everything, overclocking is not guaranteed.

With that said, the GTX460 is very capable in stock-settings.

[imtehrogue]

I was using this http://www.trustedreviews.com/Samsun..._Laptop_review few months ago, had all on max (even shadows) was really smooth, and it has a i3-330M so i guess it should work fine?

[Deleted]

World of warcraft is a CPU heavy game, having a 200 USD graphics card won't help the case very much. That said the i5 2500k will be the better option in any case.

I was using this http://www.trustedreviews.com/Samsun..._Laptop_review few months ago, had all on max (even shadows) was really smooth, and it has a i3-330M so i guess it should work fine?

Almost same as you, except i got a 330m Nvidia in mine and upped to 8gb ram. Still runs wow smooth as butter, and suprisingly all modern games (low-medium settings)

[dariok]

The i3-2100 will preform well, I am using an old E8500 which is a 2 core 2 thread cpu of older architecture and I have no problems whatsoever (running on ultra with a 6850).
Only place you might have lag due to CPU bottleneck is in cities on highly populated realms. 25 mans are no match for the i3

[vesseblah]

Now, I'm not sure what you're arguing.

Bah... Missed it under the big picture that blocked out anything else...

[nycnyc88]

With any "Core i" processor wow is severely GPU bound, tested and verified.
If you want to play comfortably (that is 50+ frames per second) on Ultra with your core i3 i suggest you get the GTX560 or its AMD equivalent. Assuming you are playing at 1920x1080.

[vesseblah]

With any "Core i" processor wow is severely GPU bound, tested and verified.

Tested and verified to be wrong, and only in your imagination.

As you can see from the picture below, i5-2500K pulls higher framerate in WoW than i3-2100, meaning CPU does make a difference even with any "Core i".



What is real though is that for most people i3-2100 is good enough, as the performance difference to i5-2500K is notably smaller than the price difference.

[Wries]

With any "Core i" processor wow is severely GPU bound, tested and verified.

Yeah... about that. Details please. Reading the graph in task manager and making a conclusion is not doing it right.

[Sephiracle]

don't keep feeding that troll, he's already been proven wrong in other threads. CPU>GPU for WoW.

[nycnyc88]

Proven? Because you said so? Lol.

How about this:
What will provide higher frame rate - upgrading i3-2100 to i5-2500K to i7 (any) or upgrading GPU by 1 class (For example GTX2xx to GTX4xx to GTX560+).
For FPS GPU will be more important. Ofcourse people like Sephiracle will just argue based on "Because i said so", that sure holds more weight than reading task manager by measuring CPU utilization on WOW.EXE process over time with different graphics cards. Right, sure.
Your CPU Graph is meaningless because it measures CPU performance delta in isolation (What a true test would be is measuring CPU+GPU combos). What i am trying to say is that with any Core i processor, upgrading to a better GPU is more beneficial. Or for people who fail at reading comprehension (Again and again), yes wow benefits from CPU upgrade (i3 to i5 to i7) but it benefits much MORE from a similar GPU upgrade, especially if you play on High-Ultra at high resolution.

[Sephiracle]

task manager CPU utilization is an awfully poor tool to measure anything with.

You're still debating the statement of "hey i have a super powerful cpu, is that alone going to give me good fps"

While we're still talking about "you're going to need a powerful cpu, not just a super powerful gpu."

Hell your edit in that last thread you provided screens of an i7 with no discrete gpu and a discrete gpu and said, "hey, that makes me right."

[BicycleMafioso]

How about this:
What will provide higher frame rate - upgrading i3-2100 to i5-2500K to i7 (any) or upgrading GPU by 1 class (For example GTX2xx to GTX4xx to GTX560+).
For FPS GPU will be more important. Ofcourse people like Sephiracle will just argue based on "Because i said so", that sure holds more weight than reading task manager by measuring CPU utilization on WOW.EXE process over time with different graphics cards. Right, sure.

Although derailed already, upgrading from GTX460 (or above) to GTX560 (or above) will provide 0 fps-benefit while raiding.
From i3-2100 to the K-cpus, there'll be quite a big increase. If you overclock it, it's the biggest upgrade. :>

[nycnyc88]

BTW, from Anandtech, as well
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/t...2100-tested/11
Look at WOW performance graph, this proves my point very well - look at FPS delta (and he is not even using High, he is using medium at 1024x768)... look at Core i5 2500K on AMD and on Intel Graphics - 164 FPS vs 57 FPS, an almost triple increase in FPS, proving WOW is GPU bound on any Core i CPU.

Again, Ultra Ultra Ultra (with shadows)! This setting will tax your GPU make no mistake about it. I saw a significant FPS increase (from about 25 to 90+) going from GTX285 to GTX570....

[Sephiracle]

Yes, thanks for confirming everything for us. Once you have a great CPU, the next important piece is a GPU. That's news to us. /sarcasm

[anb]

What is real though is that for most people i3-2100 is good enough, as the performance difference to i5-2500K is notably smaller than the price difference.

i wonder what happens if you compare 2500k with i3-2130, wich is 300mhz faster than i3-2100 and still 70 bucks cheaper than i5. Judging by a small difference between 2100 and 2500k, my guess that 2130 may be almost on par with 2500k in WoW. Poor AMD 6cores processor results also proves WoW doesn't do much good with additional 2 cores...
Also it would be interesting to compare i5-2400 with i3-2130 (price range 30 bucks between those)

[nycnyc88]

One more thing:
On the CPU chart you posted here is what ANANDTECH says, very important:

Our World of Warcraft benchmark is a manual FRAPS runthrough of a lightly populated server with no other player controlled characters around. The frame rates here are higher than you'd see in a real world scenario, but the relative comparison between CPUs is accurate.

We run on a Radeon HD 5870 at 1680 x 1050. We're using WoW's high quality defaults but with weather intensity turned down all the way.
"

He is using FRAPS (FRAPS is very much CPU bound, since you are essentially taking a sceenshot for every frame.
He is using a very high end GPU (5870)
His resolution is relatively LOW (16x10).
His settings are far from Ultra.

If you are going to post "proven" facts, at least post the whole picture and dont take things out of context.

Sephiracle, just for you, learn to read and comprehend, since you still fail to see what the argument here is. The tone of your reply seems like a justification for wasting money on the CPU you dont really use. Not saying thats really the case, but it sure sounds like it. (Forgivable if you are 18 years old though).

[anb]

He is using FRAPS (FRAPS is very much CPU bound, since you are essentially taking a sceenshot for every frame.

he's using fraps to record only FPS, not a video. Thus, your post makes no sense, sorry.

[llDemonll]

It's funny how wrong you are.

The maximum FPS is determined mostly by the GPU, sure, but anything over 60 is a theoretical waste so that doesn't matter. The minimum FPS, the FPS that will ruin your gameplay if it's a low / non-desireable number is determined by the CPU.

This horse has been beaten dead, I don't know why you're trying to argue your "new" point, nycnyc88, when, had you done any research, you'd see that you're wrong in assuming there is . Standing idle means nothing in WoW, it's the same as saying 'my car makes 1000whp' and just having it sit there; a 500whp car can look the same and people won't know the difference until they're actually in motion against each other. Unless there is actually a load put on the CPU (i.e. raiding), all comparisions are moot and should be, at best, taken at face value and not used as a basis for any argument.

[Sephiracle]

Sephiracle, just for you, learn to read and comprehend, since you still fail to see what the argument here is. The tone of your reply seems like a justification for wasting money on the CPU you dont really use. Not saying thats really the case, but it sure sounds like it. (Forgivable if you are 18 years old though).

You're really bad at this trolling thing.

Let me explain once again:

WoW performance is based much more on the ability of the CPU than the GPU. This however, does not mean that if you throw an i5 with integrated graphics you're going to have a billion fps, which you seem to insist with every post that disagrees with yours. It does mean that you can take a pretty average, mid range card and max everything out with a powerful CPU(read:Sandy Bridge), save for super high resolutions+25 man raids+full shadows.

Your point: CPU power doesn't matter, get a beefy card and you'll max it out. You're still saying that CPU does not matter(read: ONLY IF you get an i5). The point is, you're making the same point as us, but your thought process is completely wrong.

To summerize:CPU does matter, you're saying so in your posts by declaring that if you get an i5, gpu is most important, which is news to no one.

[nycnyc88]

That doesnt matter for this argument. Even if he is just using it for FPS measure (i.e. he is not recording), if you look at other datapoints and analyze both articles in a context of one another, you should be able to realize that at Ultra settings and high resolution, assuming you have a Core I processor (say a Core i3 2100 which is the lowest one), it is more beneficial to spend the $ delta (about $70) on a better video card. You will get more FPS , vs spending those $70 on the core i5 2500K.