Should I upgrade my graphics card?

[gobtol]

I was looking for a little computer hardware help. My framerates have been a little low at times since I have hit Outland, so I thought I would try to upgrade my graphics card. Right now I'm 4 boxing on one machine, but I would like to be able to run 5 in the future. I'm using Keyclone to duplicate keystrokes. My current PC specs are

Windows 32 bit Vista
Asus P5N-E-SLI mobo
Intel E6600 processor
4gb ram
Nvidia 8800 GTS 640
not sure about my hard drive speeds.
2x Acer 22" monitors

Everyone on here seems happy with the new ATI cards, so I was looking at this 4870 from TigerDirect.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4008604&Sku=D10-4872

Does anyone see any problems with that card. I'm open to other suggestions as well. Also, my CPU usage is usually at or near 100%. Should I also be looking at upgrading or overclocking my CPU? Thanks.

[Caspian]

That card looks scary - all those skulls.

I just went to a 4850 about a month ago for 4 and 5 boxing and am very happy. I also put a 9800 into my daughter's computer yesterday and it is very nice (no boxing but could handle it). You will probably be happy with the card you are looking at (skulls or not).

That said, do you see performance issues now? Get a trial account going and test with 5 and see what it looks like. You current card is very good too, a lot of people here seem to 5 box with it just fine. You might actually run into more issues with a dual core CPU (vs Quad core) or 4 GB of RAM (vs 8GB 4 should still be ok generally provided 64 bit OS) before you hit issues with your GPU.

Test with 5, for free, see how it goes. Go to cities and see what happens. Report back here with results and get further recommendations based on what happens. Then spend your monies.

[gobtol]

I tried 5-boxing when I only had 2gb or ram and it was pretty rough. I'll try again once I get home from work. Right now I'm running my main shaman at medium settings, and the alts on lower settings with the sound disabled. I know a lot of people on here are using the Q6600 and are very happy with it. I didn't realize until now that the Q6600 was quad core and my E6600 was only dual core.

[Bigdady92]

defrag your hard drive, that might help. Might look at SATA drives to assist in the paging.


Get the 4870 with 1GB of video ram or the new one with the DDR5 memory it's a touch faster
.

does your motherboard support quad cored? if so get one.

[gobtol]

My motherboard does support quad core, so I'll definitely look at getting one. Tiger has the Q6600s for like $189.99. I believe my hd's are SATA, but I'm not sure. I bought the system from a friend so I'm not very familiar with everything in it.

[Trammel]

i 5 box fine on a q9450/8gb/4850 on 1920/1080, but driving 2 monitors might be worse.

[Bigdady92]

My motherboard does support quad core, so I'll definitely look at getting one. Tiger has the Q6600s for like $189.99. I believe my hd's are SATA, but I'm not sure. I bought the system from a friend so I'm not very familiar with everything in it.Are the cables going to the hard drive fat and wide or small and skinny.

If fat and wide (connecters are about 2-3 inches across) then you have paralell ATA. f they are very small and the ends are L-shaped then chances are it's SATA.

SATA is faster than PATA. Faster drives means you get better performance. If you want to go blazing speed see that thread about the 150mb/s performace with Flash drive. It screams like a banshee.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Lots of folks run 5 with 8800GT cards. I run 4 on one of my alt machines and it's an 8600GT, and that one gets 60FPS on the main and 30fps on all 3 others. Your video card is not your bottleneck.

[gobtol]

I just got home and checked my hard drives. They are all 3 SATA and 7200 RPM. I'm currently running my main window off one drive and the 3 alts off another drive. I'm going to defragment and see if it helps any.

Edit: I checked and my system is setup to defrag automatically every so often. It had ran a defragment 2 nights ago, so I don't think thats going to help.

[wowphreak]

Most likely its nothing to do with the hardware more to do how yeh setup the software.

With vista32 yer gonna get some lag in areas where there is allot of people and npcs.

[puppychow]

you need to read up on symlink and work out how to run WoW from 1 "real" copy and 4 symlinked copies, it reduces disk thrashing a LOT. I run 5 on a e6400 @ 2.2ghz with a 8800GT, and get 60fps in outlands on my main and 30-40 in shatt. I also use the macros to reduce my graphic settings on the alts, helps a lot.

Of course WOTLK is a lot more demanding, I'm going to upgrade to a new PC with quadcore, 4870, 8GB, and vista64 later this month.

[eagleeyee]

Lots of folks run 5 with 8800GT cards. I run 4 on one of my alt machines and it's an 8600GT, and that one gets 60FPS on the main and 30fps on all 3 others. Your video card is not your bottleneck.I cannot stress enough also make sure you have adequte cooling. try putting a 12" desk fan next to your case with the side off...If that imporves your framerate then your problem is cooling.

[gobtol]

I set the maxfps on my alts to 15 frames per second, and it made a very noticeable increase in performance. My CPU usage dropped to around 75% with 4 instances on Outland. I'll see how comfortabel I can 5 box later on today. I'll look into the symlinked copies, but right now the performance is fine. I'm still looking to upgrade for WotlK.

I don't think I have any cooling issues. I'm using an Antec 900 case with like an 8" fan on top, 2 5" fans in the front, one on the side and one or two on the back.