Upgrading Comp, Need Advice

[Irielle]

Hey, posting for a guild member. He is looking to upgrade his video cards or possibly any other hardware to be able to run WoW on ultra in a raid setting. Was wondering if you guys had any suggestions...specs below.

Thanks!

Mobo: Foxxcon bloodrage GTI
Ram : 12gigs
Graphics cards: Radeon HD 4870 x2 crossfired
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 - 2.67GHz

Edit: Hes looking at around a $500 budget. Need a company able to ship to Canada.

[chazus]

It really depends on what the goal is. A nice 7870 XT for $240 would make a decent difference, however going any higher than that won't help much. Equally an issue is the CPU. Fortunately, that one is cheaper. With a decent cooler, people can push 920's to the 4.0ghz range.

Ultimately another solution is to upgrade Motherboard, RAM, CPU, but that'll run about $400 on top of the video card.

[Yuyn]

Overclock the processor (likely will need an aftermarket heatsink/fan to do so -- $50 there or so) and upgrade the video card to something new, relatively high-end (AMD 7950/7970 or Nvidia 670/680 is the highest to even look at) is the only hardware upgrades I could even possibly recommend for WoW. One software tweak that I've found helps performance/smoothness in WoW on at least that generation of i7 is to disable CPU core parking (the method described to make the option appear in the standard Windows power settings is my preference -- just a minor registry edit, then you just have to disable it there like any other power saving option).

I'm actually a bit surprised your friend can't run WoW on ultra, or very close, in a raid as-is. I was able to run on ultra in raids (10-man mainly, though) with only a slightly-newer system (i7-930, single HD5850), and saw what I considered acceptable performance. I only recently upgraded my graphics card from that 5850 because some rather new games were starting to run a bit less-good than I wanted.

For actually getting any parts, I'd recommend Newegg Canada, NCIX, or Canada Computers for buying in Canada -- depending on where your friend lives, they might even have an NCIX or Canada Computers retail store near them. Don't buy from an American site even if they ship to Canada -- that tends to get serious customs duties.

Edit: chazus, your signature is giving me serious flashbacks to the turn-of-the-millennium.

[chazus]

It's also possible to squeeze out great performance by turning certain things down (Anisotropic Filtering down to say, 2x, Shadows, Liquid, SSAO Low/Off, View Distance to Good or High). You can keep "Ultra" settings and turn those down and see a large performance difference with little effects. Surprisingly, the things that make the least difference, have the largest performance impact.

Edit: chazus, your signature is giving me serious flashbacks to the turn-of-the-millennium.

My time dilation device is working correctly, then! Seriously, though. Who doesn't miss overclocking with a #2 pencil?[COLOR="red"]

[ebah]

Yeah get more fps with:
-aa 2x
-shadows+liquids+ssao off/low
-rest on "high"
-dx9

If he wants the new gpu, go for http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16814161404 its in sale! or gtx 660 ti/670.

[Lemmiwink]

4870X2 and a 5850 is a world of difference. His CPU will be more than good enough to play WoW this expansion and most likely the next. Get a good videocard like the 7870XT or a GTX660 and he should be set for WoW for 3 years at least.