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  1. #1

    Default Priority when upgrading hardware

    With the holidays around the corner and black friday almost here, I've been thinking about making some upgrades to my 3 year-old computer in order to be able to properly 5-box in WoW:Legion (mostly dungeons and dailies/questing, with raids being a low priority). Graphics are not a priority, as I'm fine with medium on master and low (with particle effects on for fire and stuff) on the slaves and don't play any graphic intensive games

    Currently, I'm running on 8GB of ram, i5-3570, Nvidia 650 Ti, and still running on a HDD. I've 4-boxed dungeons without issues so far, but RAM use does approach 100%, so I'm thinking that's a guaranteed purchase, probably going to go up to 16GB. I'm also thinking about a SSD, so any recommendations are appreciated. I'm not looking to spend more than $100-$150.

    So with all that being said, what would be your usual priority when it comes to upgrading hardware?

    PS: English is not my first language and im no computer expert, so sorry for any glaring errors!

  2. #2
    Member Ughmahedhurtz's Avatar
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    The RAM is a given, yes.

    SSD will only help load times, which will also affect some stuttering due to texture loading when doing large PVP battles or running around high-population capital cities.

    With that in mind, I'd upgrade the video card first, then CPU, then SSD.

    Not sure if you're aware but NVidia cards generally follow these rules:

    * The first digit is the generation; second digit is what I call the performance category with higher being more powerful.
    * 950 is faster than 750 > 650
    * 980 > 970 > 960 > 950 > 940
    * Usually, one previous generation of a higher performance level will be faster than the current generation at a lower performance level. So a 780 will likely outperform a 970, a 770 will outperform a 960, a 680 will outperform a 960, and a 580 Ti will dramatically outperform a 950 Ti (that last one I can confirm on systems I have built).

    I refer to http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/g...s-cards,1.html when considering which GPU to upgrade to. You might be surprised at how affordable some of the previous generations cards will be.
    Now playing: WoW (Garona)

  3. #3
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    In general, if you open the Performance Monitor, you can view the strain your current game is putting on your hardware.
    Anything that is close to 100%, or that hits 100% of an available resource, indicates something that is a bottleneck for your current system.

    Upgrades to bottlenecks are where performance will increase.

    Not really sure what the requirements will be for the next expansion as I've not been in WoW for a while now.
    But... the performance monitor will show you what your bottlenecks are.
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