Is it worth upgrading from a Q9550 to a i7 920?

[pbrigido]

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!

[Enndo]

Iv'e never used your current chip, but I can tell you my i7 is a beast and begs for more even with 5 clients running.

[Phanes]

I use the I7 extreme with 12 gigs of ram and it eats up 5x wow. My Cores usually only run around 7 to 11% and the RAM only gets into the 60% range when in Dalaran.

The I7s are some monster systems just make sure you match up the RAM correctly.

[Enndo]

Yeah I forgot to mention that. I'm also using 12 gigs of corsairs 1600 DDR3, the new XMS3 which is identical to the dominator series but without the massive heat sinks. For an i7 the faster the ram the better becuase it really makes good use of it.

[pbrigido]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Very interesting...I am tempted to check my bank account now to see if there are enough funds available!

One more question. Personally I don't see a need to change my video card from my GTX280 to a GTX 285...unless anyone can offer a reason to do so.

Thanks again!

[Enndo]

Between the 280 and 285 I don't think its worth spending the money to buy a whole new card. The 280 is very close to the 285. I went with a 285 sc edition just cause I had a little extra cash that week lol.

[pbrigido]

Great, that's what I was thinking. Now I believe it's time to start price shopping!



Thanks all for the great feedback! :thumbup:

[kermitforney]

Check out HardOcp.com ('http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTY0NCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==') they have an excellent CPU scaling article that was written yesterday. Bottom line is you aren't going to see much value in purchasing a Core i7 chip, especially if you throw in the new mobo/DDR3 memory you're going to have to purchase, for such a minimal performance gain. My QX9770 overclocked provides me with similar performance metrics in comparison to the Core i7 architecture.

Bear in mind that you will see significant performance gains in other areas aside from gaming performance.

[Selz]

Your current CPU is good enougth, it wont woth it for you to upgrade to an i7 sins you have to switch ram and motherbord also, just buy a zalman cooler and overclock your current cpu to 3.6Ghz and ud be fine enougth untill lich king is over and till that time you can get a better cpu than the i7

[Sajuuk]

Unless you've somehow fried your CPU/Mobo, I don't think it's worth it. However, if you wanted to make another computer and use the Q9550 for your main and the i7 for your slaves. Even that wouldn't really be worth it.

[Simulacra]

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!Hi, this is quite interesting because your setup is very close to mine except I don't have the GTX280, I have the GTX 250 - embarassing I know. The thing is my fps doesn't drop below 27 in bgs or anywhere else really and I'm using a much lower spec card. The only difference I can think of is that my wow data is on an SSD. So maybe give that a go before you splurge. Oh and I'm running WIndows 7.

[pbrigido]

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!Hi, this is quite interesting because your setup is very close to mine except I don't have the GTX280, I have the GTX 250 - embarassing I know. The thing is my fps doesn't drop below 27 in bgs or anywhere else really and I'm using a much lower spec card. The only difference I can think of is that my wow data is on an SSD. So maybe give that a go before you splurge. Oh and I'm running WIndows 7.



That is interesting. I actually have 4 Samsung 64GB SLC SSDs in RAID-0. It is unbelieveably fast...so I am still trying to put my finger on it. When I head to Dalaran, my FPS really suffers, and I have a feeling that it is my CPU. It tops out at 100% in each core, versus when I am just hanging out in the Barrens with a constant 60 FPS and CPU usage around 20% per core.

[kermitforney]

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!Hi, this is quite interesting because your setup is very close to mine except I don't have the GTX280, I have the GTX 250 - embarassing I know. The thing is my fps doesn't drop below 27 in bgs or anywhere else really and I'm using a much lower spec card. The only difference I can think of is that my wow data is on an SSD. So maybe give that a go before you splurge. Oh and I'm running WIndows 7.



That is interesting. I actually have 4 Samsung 64GB SLC SSDs in RAID-0. It is unbelieveably fast...so I am still trying to put my finger on it. When I head to Dalaran, my FPS really suffers, and I have a feeling that it is my CPU. It tops out at 100% in each core, versus when I am just hanging out in the Barrens with a constant 60 FPS and CPU usage around 20% per core.Have you tried overclocking your CPU, your line of processor has a ton of headroom, but I wouldn't go that route unless you have previous experience with overclocking.

[Simulacra]

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!Hi, this is quite interesting because your setup is very close to mine except I don't have the GTX280, I have the GTX 250 - embarassing I know. The thing is my fps doesn't drop below 27 in bgs or anywhere else really and I'm using a much lower spec card. The only difference I can think of is that my wow data is on an SSD. So maybe give that a go before you splurge. Oh and I'm running WIndows 7.



That is interesting. I actually have 4 Samsung 64GB SLC SSDs in RAID-0. It is unbelieveably fast...so I am still trying to put my finger on it. When I head to Dalaran, my FPS really suffers, and I have a feeling that it is my CPU. It tops out at 100% in each core, versus when I am just hanging out in the Barrens with a constant 60 FPS and CPU usage around 20% per core.Have you tried overclocking your CPU, your line of processor has a ton of headroom, but I wouldn't go that route unless you have previous experience with overclocking.Which reminds me - my processor is oced to 3.2 - I can run around Dalaran at 25-30 fps with almost max graphics setting on the main....what os are you running?

[Sam DeathWalker]

Those tests are not people multiboxing.

The I7 archtechture on a X58 board, cept for the DMI buss, is way ahead of anything else. Like 24Gigibit/sec from memeory to cpu to video card.

Nothing is going to come close to i7/x58 for multiboxers.

But you don't need more then a 920, and your video card seems fine. Just get a raptor and yur fine.

Guys with Intel and the SSD drives saturate the DMI buss (2gigibit/sec) so they dont get the extra texture transfer they would expect from the specs:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intel-core-i7_3.html

[Starbuck_Jones]

I don't think your right on that Sam. In the article that you posted, the bridge is listed as 2GB/s That's big B. Sata2 drives as well as sas drives are 3Gb/s theoretical transfer rates. Little b. So 1GB = 8Gb. So that gives us a 16Gb pipeline to the northbridge where the cpu, ram, and video are. To max that out you would need over 5 drives. Basically 6 in a raid 0 to cap it on paper (you would prolly need 3x this many drives to actualy cap it in real world use). Very very few people have that in a personal PC.

In my opinion that is not going to be a bottle neck for anything and maxing it out will only reduce load times during the start and entering an instance. You may see a framerate dip when you first get to Dalaran, but once the textures and stuff are loaded, I do not see that having any effect on performance running around Dalaran when everything is already loaded into ram. If your suffering performance issues in Dalaran then you either do not have enough RAM or you do not have your folders symlinked and are multiplying how much needs to load and wasting resrouces.

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Media_Interface


It is a (perhaps modified) PCI-E x4 v1.1 interface

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

In PCIe 1.x , each lane carries 250 MB/s.


As a point of reference, a single-lane PCIe card has nearly twice as much bandwidth as the most common PCI interface, a 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus (133 MB/s). A PCIe x4 slot has bandwidth comparable to the fastest version of PCI-X 1.0 (64-bit 133MHz.) An eight-lane slot has a transfer rate comparable to the fastest version of AGP.

A PCIe x4 slot has bandwidth comparable to the fastest version of PCI-X 1.0 (64-bit 133MHz.)

Lets see 64 bits is 8 bytes at 133mhz is 1GByte/sec DMI is full duplex so 2Gbyte/sec

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTransport

3.2GHz HT is 12.8GByte/sec

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=481869&seqNum=2

Hit "view table" and thats like a ton of buss speeds.

You are correct the DMI buss is 2000MByte/sec and a SATA2 max is 300MByte/sec. There is no way to saturate the DMI buss with SSD drives.


Well thanks for pointing that out.

[Sam DeathWalker]

So the trick is to get the wow folder into system ram:

Wow folder in System Ram for $800 ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=22057&')

[Noids99]

Lol...

anyway back on topic, my 2c is that its not worth the upgrade at least on paper, as I have not personally experienced the difference. I have a 920 system with 12G ram, raid 0 intels and GTX 295 and still get patchy fps at various graphics settings. The biggest setting that influences my performance is the draw distance. If I set this to min, I can get 45fps comfortably on all chars in Dalaran, but if I set it to max, I can be in unpopulated areas and struggle to get 20. Make sure it is set to minimum on your slaves and that the shader setting is simple to ensure you are getting the most out of your setup.

Cheers

[heffner]

What's wrong with your current setup that you need to improve upon?

If it were me, I would just save for an entirely new system and buy it when I had enough cash. You might as well upgrade it all since the technology is constantly moving forward.

Then start 10 boxing :P

[grap]

well .....

i have some idea to think ;) ;)
i m in summer holidays ;)

do you know the tools and the spy/graphism to use for searching and see where is the bottleneck in our system ?

The acces time to read data on the disk or the ssd is too low and the system need to wait when it loads data from disk/sata2/ICH10/X58 chipset
it s look like the main trouble but ....

today, i search information on i7 and x58 chipset.
i m not sure of my result but i find this.

x58 use DMI 2 GB/s bidirectionnal with south/sata2 etc
sata2 is 300MB/sc so even 4Xssd raid 0 wont jam.
i try 4 ssd ocz core raid 0 and maxi was around 600 MB/s reading
reading burst acces a little more but short time, near 1000 MB/s so 1 GB/s

x58 use 36 lane PCIe v2.0
graphic card is connect on 16 line PCIe 2.0 so it s 8 GB/s

x58 use QPI with i7 920
4.8T/s so it s 9.6 GB/s unidirectionnel or 19.2 GB/s bidirectionnel
huge QPI 25.6 GB/s is for the i7 extem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_X58

The total bandwidth of the two QPI ports is 25.6GT/s (which means, that taking away CRC bits and commands overhead, the data bandwidth may be more than 22GB/s). Single port max. productivity depends on the processor used - 4.8 or 6.4 with existing Core i7 and up to 12.8GT/s with 8-core future processors (though x58 manual states than on some operations x58 may work at up to 12.8GT/s even with the existing processors)


The X58 has two QPIs and can directly connect to two processors on a multi-socket motherboard or form a ring-like connection (1st processor - x58 - x58 - 2nd processor - 1st processor). When used with the Intel Core i7, the second QPI is usually unused (though, in principle, the second x58 might be daisy-chained on the board).but only one QPI is connect, not the two ....


i7 use 3X RAM memory lines
our is pc3-ddr3-1600 so 48GB/s
initial was 8.5 GB/s so 21.5GB/s but lower speed

graphic card internal RAM speed of ATI4870 is 115 GB/s and Nvidia 159 GB/s for 285
so it can do the 8 GB/s of his pcie 16 in full work
Our GPU is 100percent with 5 wow

it means few times ... the CG 8 GB/s + ssd raid 0 + little other > QPI 9.6 GB/s
i m wrong ???
so if you plug 2 graphic cards .... 2X8 GB/s + disk + little other >> QPI 9.6 GB/s
1 graphic card can wait ? even with sli/cf bridge ?
i m wrong ???

in my PC, my ssd raid are plug on adaptec card 2405 PCIe 8X
i didnt check PCIe V1.0 with 1 GB/s or PCIe v2.0 with 2 GB/s.
if all is full load .... i m very near the QPI maxi


nb sorry for my english ;)

[Sam DeathWalker]

i try 4 ssd ocz core raid 0 and maxi was around 600 MB/s reading

And thats your bottleneck.

Thats why I recomend this 32G system ram system (DDR2):

Wow folder in System Ram for $800 ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=22057')


From what I read two video cards are more trouble then they are worth but as you say on X58 system once the data is in system ram you are good to go.

[grap]

yes but it s difficult to find ddr3 whith high capacity, usually it s 2 Go RAM or i need to change all

For memory card, you have some program to check the capacity in real time ?
i m curious to see in my computer what is the CG ram load for each wow in dalaran city.
maybe 2 GO ram in the CG will be enought ? and cancel all small lags there .....

[Sam DeathWalker]

Task manager will tell you that (look for wow.exe) ... I see 250M in EPL, per instance of wow. Look under "processes", not in real time but ....

Ya 4G DDR3 is to hard to find, and expensive. Thats why I suggest the DDR2 board (but its not I7).

[grap]

ok, thank s a lot

i didnt find on ressource monitor of w7 task manager but i havent the wow pc with me for few weeks, i ll search when i ll come back home.
i read my old screen and i see something strange in the reading disk.

http://i86.servimg.com/u/f86/10/06/67/69/wow1210.jpg (http://servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=73&u=10066769)

http://i86.servimg.com/u/f86/10/06/67/69/wow1110.jpg (http://servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=72&u=10066769)
first wow is main 1900X1200, other are 4 clones 1024X768 and all same around 525 Mo ram
C is velociraptor, D is old data samsung and F raid ssd ... in full work
You can see, except the main with reading 59 MB/min, each clone is half of half reading. 3.4 MB/min 2.5 MB/min 1 etc ...
it s look like the system remember a little the graphics data for the GPU

Edit : thank s for the mistake in GB MB

[KvdM]

You can see, except the main with reading 59 GB/min, each clone is half of half reading. 3.4G/min 2.5 GB/min 1 etc ...Your numbers are a bit off... it's 59 MB/min (notice that the task manager's numbers are in B/min and not in kb/min).

[grap]

yes a mistake. i m not with optical connection ;)
it s B/min
59 783 168 B/min = 59 783 KB/min = 59 MB/min = 1 MB/sec

Over wow ssd reading are lower 50 - 40 - 20 KB/s ... and it s statistic too ;)

[KvdM]

59 MB/min = 980 MB/secYou mean 980 kb/sec ;)

[Sam DeathWalker]

If its using stored textures in video ram for other instances then my guess that 2G Video Ram cards are the way to go seems to be right ......

Thats a very valuable bit of information there Grap.

[grap]

59 MB/min = 980 MB/secYou mean 980 kb/sec ;)
yes !
hooooo not good day today !!!!!
i go to sleep now

i ll need to check my result because now 1MB/s is bad even it s small files to read, it must be better number