Question on clock speed

[demonicpanda]

For WoW, mostly, I was curious how important core clock speed is. The processors listed for both minimum and recommended system reqs are running at 3.0GHz, but I'm having to shell out some cash for a new comp in a somewhat emergency (I mean in the grand scheme of things it's not, I could stop playing for a month or so, save some more, and watch netflix on my tablet, but that's less than ideal) and am looking at a i5-6400 instead of the i5-6600 I wanted to get.

The problem is the 6400 runs at 2.7GHz, while the others listed run at 3.0GHz, without any listing from Blizzard what core clock speed minimums should be.

Am I going to have performance degradation or be unplayable if I go with the 6400? Or is 2.7GHz going to be "good enough"?

[Sorshen]

WoW likes CPU speed more than anything. i5-6400 isn't bad, but your minimum framerate will suffer.

[Lathais]

For WoW, mostly, I was curious how important core clock speed is. The processors listed for both minimum and recommended system reqs are running at 3.0GHz, but I'm having to shell out some cash for a new comp in a somewhat emergency (I mean in the grand scheme of things it's not, I could stop playing for a month or so, save some more, and watch netflix on my tablet, but that's less than ideal) and am looking at a i5-6400 instead of the i5-6600 I wanted to get.

The problem is the 6400 runs at 2.7GHz, while the others listed run at 3.0GHz, without any listing from Blizzard what core clock speed minimums should be.

Am I going to have performance degradation or be unplayable if I go with the 6400? Or is 2.7GHz going to be "good enough"?

Well, you can't really look at just clock speed. An i5-6600k running at 4.5gHz is actually faster than an i5-2500k running at 4.5gHz. You can only compare clock speed within the same generation. The other thing to look at is not the clock speed, but the Max Turbo Frequency. The 6400 actually has a Max Turbo Frequency of 3.3 gHz while the 6500 is 3.6. Still the same difference, .3gHz, but it is better than you expected. Another thing to consider, if this is for WoW only would be to look at an i3. The i3-6300 is actually faster, running at 3.8. For WoW only this would be better, for just about anything else the additional cores would be better though.