Gregger

My system is quickly becoming outdated, if its not outdated already. I have around 600 dollars to upgrade my system.

AMD Athlon Dual Core BE-2350 - 2.1 ghz
2 GB of DDR2
ATI Radeon X800, 256M
Gigabyte MB GA-M615ME-S2

What kind of upgrades can I get for around $600 US? What should I upgrade to? I usually get fine FPS, except on add fights and Sarth 3D. Then my FPS drops down to 3-5.

 

Szynszyla

In first place i'd think that something is very wrong with your PC and setup if you are getting that low FPS during 3D.
I recently switched from Athlon2500@2772mhz (!) , DFI NF2 and 1gb ram with GF4Ti 64MB (no comment) and i never had FPS problems even in wotlk. Raid FPS i would say at around 25FPS minimum at 1280*1024 resolution.

Currently im running
E2160@3608mhz
Cheapest 2x1GB 800mhz CL5
GA-EP31-DS3L and Radeon 1950pro.
With such setup im able to pull 25FPS minimum 1280*1024 max details on sarth 3D while frapsing and my PC is probably 1/4 of your budget.

But for your needs and 600$ you could aim for

E5200 ~80 euro / 100$ -> Overclocking
GA-P31-DS3L or GA-EP31-DS3L ~80euro / 100$
Keep memory and PSU if you have a good one
R4850/4870 or even 4870x2

You could probably even afford 4870x2 if you bought things from 2nd hand but that would probably require also a new PSU. I think cheapest would be pentagram 520W for such config.

The above platform i made for a friend lately with E5200 running on 3.6ghz stock cooling and 4850 with a results of avg 40-50FPS min during fraps recording. Max details, 1280*1024 AA/AF maxed out. Hope that helps.

 

Brekk

Recommending a 4870x2 is beyond stupid for a system running WoW. We just went over the CPU bottle necking of this game within the last page.

He would benefit much more from getting a 4850/4870 and using some of the saved money to get a 7x00 or 8x00 series Intel CPU. Even one of those graphics cards is overkill for WoW's requirements. Also, depending on what OS he's planning on running after doing these upgrades it could be very beneficial to upgrade to 4gb of ram, definately for Vista as its RAM footprint is larger then XP's making 2gb a tighter fit.

PS: 1280x1024 is a very low/poor resolution to judge the performance capabilities of a computer.

 

Szynszyla

Indeed its too low resolution, but the difference between 1680*1050 on R4850/70 or 1920+ will be noone, and i doubt a person above wants PC only for WoW. There are not many people with very narrow needs.

Any Exxx/E8xxx is overkill becouse the price isnt comparable to the actually CPU performance. Ok, any E8xxx will o/c higher on same voltage but is the 4x higher price worth paying to reach 4ghz for a "casual OCer" when you can reach the same on pretty much every E5200 made in Malay? The Costa Rica ones are usually slightly worse.

The difference between E5200 and E7xxx is non existant, E8xxx has more cache but who cares, the performance gain is not worth it.

Overclocking is nowadays insane way to save sometimes thousends of money without anything than well choosen parts.

Hint: Vista doesnt use more ram than XP, vista just use it way better and ram is so cheap its not even worth mentioning.

Another thing about CPU performance is that, exacly same proccessors, one running higher MHZ might be slower than a mirror proccessor running few thousend MHZ less.
MHZ is not magic number, overall strenght of CPU is carried by the CPU FSB, the higher the FSB, even at lower MHZ the better.

E5200 2.5ghz stock FSB 200, multiplier 12.5 (200x12.5 = 2500mhz = 2.5ghz)
vs
E5200 2.4ghz o/c FSB 400, multiplier 6 (400x6 = 2400mhz = 2.4ghz)

The one running at higher FSB, lower MHZ is much faster.

 

Brekk

Based on his current system specs I doubt he's playing many other modern games. I really don't understand you're point on this. There is a MASSIVE performance difference as resolution increases.


Right now an e5200 is 73$ on newegg. An e8500 is 187$. That's not 4 times the price.

what?

Yes it does. The base OS has a larger RAM footprint leaving less of the total RAM remaining for other system uses. I'm not saying "lulz Vista is teh suck," but compared to XP you will benefit more from 4gb of RAM on Vista. And why does it being cheap mean its not worth mentioning. When he has a budget of 600$ for upgrades recommending something that is cheap and will show performance gains is exactly what he's looking for.

So you're recommendation is to use his current old ram probably DDR2 400-667 based on his system specs with a FSB of 400mhz... which would require DDR2 1600, which does not exist...


Learn english, learn about computers, then give people your technical recommendations.

 

Ravelvan

Not really disagreeing with anything you are saying, but a FSB of 400MHz would only require DDR2 800 if you are running a 1:1 ratio (or possibly lower spec memory that could overclock to 800MHz), which definitely does exist.

Although I've never use an AMD CPU, so it's possible there is something I don't understand about them.

 

Szynszyla

If you had so much clue, than what about FSB:Ram ratios or differently called strap levels?

And AMD is different ball game with o/c at the moment not worth even mentioning performance wise compared to C2D.
We are still in the topic of o/c CoreDuo/C2D not his current AMD as its impossible to compare.

I bet he could get a nice Malay E5200 for as much as 50$, making it 1/3 price compared to E8500 where he wont feel the difference beside having those 130$ in the wallet. This money can be spent better on Graphic card, memory or PSU as doubt he has a decent power supply.

Make it as 50$ for CPU, 50$ for GA-P31-DS3L, Pentagram 520W 65$, 20$ pentagram karakorum on CPU and you have so much money to play with choosing graphic card / memory or have a nice holidays out there. High-end parts are not economicly justified compared to things listed.

 

Brekk

FSB x 4 = Memory Frequency

Quad Data Rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I run DDR2 1066 in my system. The fastest FSB that's stock capable of running at is 266mhz. The fastest DDR2 you can get is 1200. That is stock stable at 300mhz. You might get lucky and have some DDR2 1066,1200 that is stable when OC'ed to 400mhz FSB but its highly unlikely that's a 33% OC over stock if your using 1200. That's huge.

different word, same thing. FSB x 4 = memory freq in Intel systems.

I didn't say anything about AMD. Those closest I mentioned was carrying over his current 2gb of DDR2 rather then getting new ram. Which you yourself said was a poor investment. If he chooses to keep using the same RAM i guarantee he cannot Overclock the FSB.

Excuse me. I missed the memo where a VERY good cpu for 187$ is now an excessive high-end part. It's not like I'm telling him to switch to a coreI7 extreme.

 

Ravelvan

In that case sorry, I must just be misunderstanding something. All I know is I can set my memory to run essentially whatever speed I want, down to a minimum of 2xFSB. Currently I run a Q6600 at 400x8 with DDR2 800 RAM, so I must just be incredibly lucky...or am completely confused with terminology.

I'm positive this is not necessarily true. Using memory dividers you can run your memory at many different frequencies no matter what you have your FSB set to.

 

Brekk

yeah you can adjust the RAM to run slower. But then you're not benefitting from OC'ing the FSB. And might as well just OC with the multiplier instead.

And unless he already has DDR2-800 or higher he will not be able to adjust it to run on a 400mhz FSB. This wouldn't be such an issue but Szynszyla is trying to tell him to OC the FSB, and not worry about new RAM. Those two are contradictory to eachother.

 

Asmo

You're confused and Ravelvan is correct. The quad data rate you're talking about is on the fsb between the chipset and the cpu, the ram is only running at double data rate (DDR=double data rate). So at least the way I always see these things referred to on overclocking sites is with a fsb of 400 and 1:1 memory ratio the actual fsb speed is 400x4=1600 and the ram 400x2=800.

I'm personally running this core2duo overclocked to 3.3ghz with 413fsb on ddr2 667mhz pc5300 ram. There are people hitting fsb speeds well over 600mhz with ddr2 ram.

 

Szynszyla

I am sorry but you are terribly wrong about it. Repeating it again that you wont feel any difference in games with high FSB and ram running =<800mhz compared to higher values but you still gain great CPU performance.

People don't play in SuperPI, they play games.


Yes ram dont overclock, damn. You cant say he needs new ram without knowing his current one, and even if he is lucky to not have FSB wall ~350+ his ram is likely to be enough. In worst case scenario he just have to pay 5$ for new 2x1GB considering he can always sell the old one. Was ram worth mentioning all this? I dont think so, couse the price is just silly.

 

Degorn

Only AMD Black Edition and Intel Extreme series processors come with unlocked multipliers nowadays.

As for the rest of the debate, whoever is interested in the subject should stop by some respected overclocking forum like XtremeSystems before following the advice from someone on any of the sides taking part in an internet forum argument.

 

Szynszyla

Every CD & C2D comes with unlocked multiplier.

 

sarf

Regarding the login screen being the stress test of GPUs... there is an addon (well, it's not really an addon, but labeled as such) on wowinterface named BlackLoginScreen. It removes the dragon, background scene and the music. You end up with a black background (quite soothing) which does not eat your GPU alive (it just gnaws it into submission).

I have a problem with WoW - it runs OK on FPS, but as I do raids I experience higher and higher latency (in excess of 10k). The more people in the raid, and the more addons I have activated (generally), the faster the increase happens. I am using the Java wow-proxy to disable the packet delay, and FreeCap to route WoWs data through that proxy. Should I fiddle around with my router to see if I can prioritize the traffic, use a secondary computer to act as the proxy... ?

If I disable almost all my addons, I can squeak by with only a 100ms increase in 10-mans. When we did Sartharion+0 with 17 people, however, I experienced severe latency issues. After disabling nearly every addon (including Omen, which, as a tank, is something I'd rather not do) I managed with a small increase (1-200 ms, hard to judge as the latency measurement read 2.5k+ for the rest of the night) to normal latency (~170 ms, using the wowproxy).

I have an AMD X2 4200, 2 gigs of ram, a Radeon 1950PRO and probably way too much crap installed on my system (lots of services and remnants of programs who were installed once).

Be like a child - greedy, self-centered and immune from prosecution.

 

Gregger

OK, well I went out and bought the following parts, then we went and ran Sarth3D. I play on a 24"Widescreen HD monitor (1900X1200 reso). With everything maxxed out, I was getting around 54FPS during the "whelp" phase. I was tanking adds throughout the encounter.

XFX MB750I72P9 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
XFX GX285NZDBF GeForce GTX 285 Black Edition 1GB 512-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80580Q9400
OCZ Platinum 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2P10664GK
LOGISYS Computer PS750X14 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Power Supply

I managed to get all of that, plus a case for around $570 at microcenter near me. What are some other modifications I can do to decrease my load times and increase performance?

 

sarf

Get a SSD / ramdrive and put your MPQ-files (in fact, the entire Data directory) on it, then create a hardlink for it (Windows - use Junction, Mac/*nix users can probably use ln).

If you use non-Windows-based OS (perhaps it is possible with the symbolic links in Vista/7?), you can do a "ghetto RAID" version of this by placing each individual MPQ-file on its own physical drive.

Be like a child - greedy, self-centered and immune from prosecution.

 

Feorthas

Regarding the CPU limited discussion that came up--and blew up--recently, I'll gladly confirm that just about any old S939 A64x2 running at stock clocks I'd probably CPU limited in Lich King (but not Burning Crusade!); I recently took my 4200+ from its stock 2.2 Ghz to 2.5 Ghz (for those who care, 250x10 @1.4125v, mem set to DDR333 (yielding 416.25 mhz); runs Prime95 for 6 hours, no issues) and I noticed a drastic improvement in 25m raid framerates and the quality of the "Death Knight Voices" (would no longer stutter/crackle all the time, only while in raid now :p).

Because I'm never ever *quite* pegged at 100% on both cores in WoW, with nothing else open, I have a theory about what's going on: WoW's main thread/process has gotten unwieldy, with the additions made in LK, and not a noticable amount has been added to its helper processes. Whether this is due to poor coding or a massive synchronization clusterfuck (very, very possible), we have no way of telling; however, WoW itself definitely isn't utilizing my second core above, say, 50% as I can listen to pandora during a raid without issue and almost watch most YouTube videos without the occasional stutter, both pre/post-OC. Hopefully we'll see a noticable improvement in the future--at the very least, I'm hoping for further use of the second(/third/forth) core(s) that a multicore CPU can bring to bear on the situation.

Additionally, just for reference, I ran BC at 1680x1050/8xAA/Windowed during raids; pre-OC, I could barely run 1920x1200/0xAA/Fullscreen/med-low settings (speaking of, effects & texture detail levels pretty much did nothing to improve framerates) whereas I can now *magically* do 1920/0xAA/med-high settings after the OC. Have an 8800 GT (650 core, 950 mem) for my video card and 4 gigs of ram.

I am not your personal Frost Deathknight knowledge base. If you have a simple question, ask in the simple questions thread; if you have a more esoteric, specific, or complicated question, ask in the spec-appropriate thread.

My PM, WoWmail, and, especially, chat boxes are NOT the appropriate places for these questions.

 

cadavor

Hi Gang,

I did dig through the last 8 pages and didn't see this listed. For AMD users, there is a driver that AMD puts out for your dual-core processors (such as the AMD Athlon64 x2 +3000, +3200, +3800, +4000, +4200, etc) where you should install this driver to actually enable the second core. For example, my old machine is an AMD Athlon X2 3800+ that I used for a very long time, and gave to my wife, who also plays Warcraft. After a few reloads and release of Wotlk, the performance was hurting big-time. We were going to purchase new ram (2gb existing) or a better video card (GF7600GT), but it didn't make sense. I used to play the very power-hungry BF2 on this rig, and now it can't run 25-man raid content with more than 5-10fps?

In looking at the performance monitor, only one core was displayed and it was at 100% utilization. After installing this driver here - Dual Core Optimizer driver, the second core appeared on the performance monitor, and total CPU utilization dropped down to around 50% or so. Additionally, her Dalaran framerate went up to around 25-50, depending on what part of town she was in. 25-man raids became immediately workable.

I saw a few of the folks posting in here have AMD rigs; hopefully this fixes your problem. Best of luck. :-)

 

Lollersk8er

WoW only uses one core, but having at least two makes sure, that you can use that one exclusively for the game. Actually WoW ends up being evenly divided over all cores, it just isn't true multithreading.

 

Szynszyla

As far as its known, WoW does fine with proccessors with 2 cores. Tri/Quad cores are overkill and are not used.
However if you plan to fraps, quad cores could be the way to go performance wise. 2 Cores for WoW, 2 for fraps as fraps as wow, uses 2 cores in efficient way.

 

Degorn

No, they don't. Stop spreading false information, the answers are one search engine hit away.

 

Szynszyla

Ok, slight exaggerating but, as far as i know most or every CD / C2D with disabled multiplier can be unlocked.
The most popular to o/c are with unlocked multiplier however, and/or high base multiplier and low FSB letting you squeeze few more mhz with smaller FSB assuming you have poor mobo, memory or just got unlucky with FSB wall at 300+ FSB

 

Lollersk8er

You can't buy any c2d with unlocked multipliers. OC'ing is always done via raising the FSB and adjusting the memory divider. Please stop spreading false information.

 

Gogusrl

Ofcourse you can, but you all have to remember that regular intel / amd cpus have unlocked multiplier downwards while the Black Edition / Engineering edition are fully unlocked.
So let`s take an Intel E8400. Default is 333x9. The multiplier is unlocked because you can lower it ( I run 400x8) but you can`t raise it.