Thinking of upgrading my cpu/mother/memory

[Dinazzo]

Cheers everyone

i been running a
Intel core quad cpu Q6600 2.4ghz
8Gb memory
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280

i was thinking of upgrading to a
I7 920 proc
with 12 gig memory
same graphics card

i just wanted to know if this would help me alot or would i be wasting my money
the reason is i want better game play in cities and WG battle grounds

my current system lags in Dalaran and WG its not really bad but sometimes its just too much
as overall playing away from the cities and bgs it plays great hardly no lag just in those troublesome areas

cheers and thanks for the advice

Dinazzo

[Dinazzo]

I mean motherboard not my mother lol cheers lol

[alcattle]

The upgrade would help, question is how much. Also need to find where the lag is coming from, like it my be while loading from disk so a SSD might help more. I would try that first, $150 and it can go with you if/when you upgrade. Also how is the latancy? How full is your realm? Anything can cause lag.

[Ualaa]

I went from a Q6600 (stock speed), 8GB of good DDR2 (800mhz), and a 4870 X2 video card.

I upgraded to an i7 920 (stock again), 12GB of DDR3 (1600mhz), on an Asus P6T motherboard.
Unfortunately, the board did not like my 4870X2 Ati card, but I downgraded to a GTX 275 (comparable to the 4870 X1).



With the Q6600...
- I could break follow, mounted in Dalaran.
- I could break follow, flying with quick altitude changes on epic mounts (any toon leading).
- I could lose mounted follow in Alterac Valley.
- The game was playable anywhere, but my CPU would reach 100% in Dalaran/Wintergrasp.

With the i7 920...
- I cannot break follow in Dalaran, unless they get caught on a corner.
- I can only break follow (epic flying) if the Paladin is leading with Crusader Aura on (not including crossing phased areas).
- Alterac Valley is smooth everywhere.
- My CPU does not go over 25% anywhere.
- Dalaran is not high frames per second, but even very expensive computers aren't 60 FPS everywhere in Dal.



The i7 920 was initially purchased shortly after moving to IS Boxer from Keyclone.
IS Boxer is a bit more intensive on the system, so if I was still using KC the improvement would likely be slightly better then it is; and it is a massive improvement.

I've also put warcraft on a 64GB SSD, which was also a huge improvement.
But that was quite a bit after the CPU/Ram/Motherboard upgrade and the video downgrade.

[Dinazzo]

my ping in game goes from 100 to around 500 varies never realy the same most of the time around 200 to 300

i have the same problems ulaa mention pretty much the same thing
i also now use ISboxer

my server is meduim to high some times very high

i was thinking of getting a ssd driver but i have 1Tb and a 300g sata drives 300g not being used atm
i have no idea how to hook the SDD up with my 1Tb drive something about raids and setting them up i not done before

i pretty decent on working on a pc but i never fooled with a raid setup

Dinazzo

[Ualaa]

The easiest upgrade will be a smaller SSD, you won't need more then 30GB.
I went with a Patriot Torqx 64 GB SSD, which was the smallest in its line.
220mb/sec sequential reads, and a 10 year warranty was a good selling point.
It has the wiper.exe utility (if you're running Win7) which is the same thing as TRIM.

I had to format mine, before it was accessible to add/copy warcraft to it.
I could see it in Device Manager, but not My Computer.

If your motherboard supports AHCI drivers or has them installed already, that is a boost for the speed of an SSD.
Pretty much, change to AHCI in Bios, if you start up you have them.
If you don't, then start in safe mode, and use the disc that came with the motherboard to install them.

There are some tricks to increasing the performance of an SSD.
Things like disabling Indexing on that drive.
If your OS is on the drive too, disable System Restore.
Quite a few tricks actually, a forum search on any site for SSD's will have them.

You won't need a RAID for an SSD.
Basically stick wow on the SSD, or even just the Cache and Data folders and use Symbolic Links to connect this to your normal wow folder. I stuck my whole wow folder on mine, its easier that way.

We don't really get any benefit from putting IS Boxer on the SSD; it runs once and then is in memory until you exit out of it.

[heyaz]

I have that exact same setup, except a ATI 4950 (or whatever). I added an SSD and now dalaran, wg, av, etc. are smooth as silk. I can even 5 box in the middle of the courtyard in WG with 100s of people and it stays pretty smooth, although I can't control the server lag. When I zone into a city, bg, or dungeon it is almost instantaneous.

I think you will still have problems if you just upgrade the CPU and RAM as the bottleneck is often the HD constantly loading 1000s of textures.

I run 2 teams, one of them uses mouse broadcasting with ISBoxer so all 5 windows are high resolution. I still get 20-40 fps even in WG with that setup. My other setup has the alt windows rendered at a very low resolution, and I can get nearly 60 fps in WG with that one.

I'd recommend an SSD over any other upgrade, it makes that big of a difference.

[Dinazzo]

ok I will look into trying that next i not sure about the drivers and motherboard drivers i knows it has sata and supports raid thats about all i know about it
ok its a xfx nForce 680i LT SLI motherboard

[Dinazzo]

Onboard Serial ATA II

300MBps data transfer rate

Six Serial ATA II connectors

NVIDIA MediaShield RAID with support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID
0+1, RAID 5, and JBOD
Supports hot plug and NCQ (Native Command Queuing )

it what it says in the manual

[zenga]

You should consider that cataclysm is around the corner, most likely with increased demands. Which means that doing a costly upgrade now can become obsolete in lets say 6 months.

[Dinazzo]

ok i look up on tigerdirect so many options lol the 600 dollar one i don't want to spend that much the rest i can afford

heres the link
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=4147

which one would you suggest or should i find the one you have
I also looking at this one i think this one would be the one to get what do you think
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4824263&CatId=4147

128g should be way more then i need for my wow and anything else

cheers
Dinazzo

[Ualaa]

I wouldn't say obsolete.
If its an improvement now..
It will be better then the current system, come Cataclysm.

However...
What may be smooth and wonderful now, might not be in Cataclysm.

[Dinazzo]

yea i thinking of that too but i will ing pay some to get a decent overall gameplay

i was thinking of this drive

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4824263&CatId=4147

any suggestion

dinazzo

[Dinazzo]

yea it may not play well then again it should be better then some people

and if have to upgrade then well i wait till then for the cpu and motherboard

i think go with a drive this time around

cheers
Dinazzo

[zenga]

Yeah obsolete was probably not the proper term (as you might have figured English is not my native language). What i was trying to say is that an expensive upgrade now might lose a lot of it's value when cata launches. A smaller upgrade that runs the game just fine for now, and a major upgrade when the cata requirements are known, might be a wise choice.

[Dinazzo]

yea i understand you thats the nature of the beast for me and my games as Wow is not the only game i play but its the only game i box

sure the prices will go down on the drives and sure they will always come out with somethign better and WoW i willing to bet they going to keep a certain system specs to appeal more people from low systems to high end systems more money that way

like i said its the nature of the beast and well i been beating that beast for a long time and got nothing out of it lol lol

cheers
dinazzo

[Ualaa]

(as you might have figured English is not my native language)

Well, based on your posts, in English..
I would not have thought it wasn't your native tongue.

So you're doing infinitely better, then I would in your language.

[Dinazzo]

heck he is even doing better then me in my own language

so a yes or no on that patriot 128gb torqx

cheers
Dinazzo

[alcattle]

Well, based on your posts, in English..
I would not have thought it wasn't your native tongue.

So you're doing infinitely better, then I would in your language.
Do Canadian speak English? I guess on the left coast it is kind of close, except for their special terms eh?

[zenga]

Any native English speaker who attempts to speak French reminds me of manuel from Falty Towers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5035TY5RSpg). And ualaa, i wasn't after a compliment or any confirmation that my English is fine, it was more self sarcasm because I used the wrong word. However, appreciated the kind words.

I live in the flemish part of Belgium, our native tongue is Flemish (which is close to Dutch). Given that we are only with 6m people, that the other part is speaking French and that the 3rd official language here is German, you might understand that if we don't speak any language besides our own, we won't get far. So typically here everyone who enters elementary school starts to learn French at age 8-9. When we enter high school (age 12), we start with English. And most start with German at age 14. When going to uni there is often the option to learn Spanish as well. Fun thing, in school I failed most foreign language tests., or it was a very close call. Once I was dropped in the real world, that changed slightly: speaking a foreign language for 1 month while being abroad beats studying it for 6 years in school.

Anyway, to finish my attempt to make an informative off topic post: it should be forbidden for any Frenchie to speak English, and for any English speaker to speak French. One way or another those accents don't match and it leads to situations where i piss my pants :D

[Ualaa]

The English/French thing is kind of funny, when you consider that they are both the official languages of Canada.

Quite a few in Montreal in particular are bilingual. Outside of Quebec, aside from the odd few people who were in French Immersion, not a whole lot of people speak French. In Vancouver, there are more Chinese/East Indian speaking people then French, although English is again the predominant language.

[zenga]

In Vancouver, there are more Chinese/East Indian speaking people then French

*than

sorry couldn't resist :D

[Dinazzo]

lol ok lets see if i can get this back on topic
i was thinking of get that torqx drive or should i get a differnt brand maybe a newer one
i don't know much about these drives other then what i read or see

thanks
Dinazzo

[Ualaa]

I went with a Patriot Torqx 64GB SSD.
The exact model was: PFZ64GS25SSDR

I'm happy with it, although the 128GB version is 280mb/sec, mine is 220mb/sec.
I've been happy with Patriot products in the past.
And a 10 year warranty is nice, especially reading the 1 star/egg reviews on many SSD's, where most are good but a few go within a few months.

There are a lot of options out there.

[Dinazzo]

Ok i order the drive should be here in about 2 to 3 days
now how do you do the symbolic links deal i don't understand how that works

i goin to put my whole wow folder on that drive and leave windows where its at or should i put the OS + Wow on there as well

thanks and cheers
Dinazzo

[Ualaa]

If you want Symbolic Links...

Put the entire wow folder on the SSD.
Then put a copy of the wow folder on your normal drive, but delete the Cache and Data folders (possibly Interface too).
Create a symbolic link from the Cache (and then from the Data folder) to the copied Warcraft folder).

There are commands, which look like DOS commands /mklink something or other.
Or use the utility I found (which I used, prior to the SSD)... http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

If you go with Symbolic Links.
Come patch day, break the links.
Patch the full copy.
Redo the links.
Then copy wow.exe from the parent/full (and patched) copy to the new folder.

In theory, the Data folder doesn't change much, but is what is read most of the time.
So having it on the SSD is the most benefit for speeding up warcraft.
With the least re-writing of data to the SSD.

Honestly, I just put all of WoW on the SSD, and did not bother with SymLinks.

[Dinazzo]

thats what i was thinking just putting the whole folder on the ssd drive and running wow from there

as for the links sounds like alot work and i don't want to be broken down on patch day as i like to get log back on and playing right away

thanks and cheers
Dinazzo

[Dinazzo]

well since the patch my frames have dropped i should be seeing easy 30 but i seeing like 0 up to 30 no more then 30 and its goes up and down bad

so i turn everythign off i had on all addons off except for jamba and ISboxer flew in to WG did ok was out side the walls still goin good then we get inside and 2 of my 5 toons disconnect
my frames where around 20is or so

i sure hope this drive helps me

i just goin to put my wow folder on that drive and run it from there is that ok ?

cheers and thanks
dinazzo

[Ualaa]

I had to format mine, before it was visible in "My Computer".
But the entire wow folder is on the SSD.

I just did a copy/paste from my C drive.

[Dinazzo]

yea that was my plan i have a backup copy of the wow folder on a portable drive when every they update or patch i just recopy to that drive it saves me from haveing to reistall and then re download the patchs
did that once and took me 4 days to get it all re installed i was like jez forget that lol

anyway dive will be here tomorrow and i goin to delet everything on this drive and re install windows
i not getting the frames i should and this is windows 7 64bit

if i can get the frames i may go back to vista 64 bit as it seems to play better in vista then 7 not sure why from what i understand 7 is suppose to be better and I do like it

cheers and thanks
Dinazzo

[Ualaa]

There is something called the TRIM command, which is like a defragment for an SSD.
As far as I know, you need to be running Windows 7 to use it.

For Patriot drives, this is called Wiper.exe
You can download it from their site, which I believe is www.patriotmemory.com

I'd use Win7 (64-bit), over any other Windows version.
Even if the trim command was not dependent upon it.

[Dinazzo]

well my drive is not here yet

i think i found one reason for my dropped frames i was running two screens i shut the other off i now get 12 to 15 in dalaran with all 5 running and i think it will be more stable in WG as well with just one screen so now i thinking of getting a bigger screen i have a 22inch atm or should i just stay with the 22 inch

been looking at those LCDs tv screens any comments on that

cheers and thanks
DInazzo

[Dinazzo]

well i got the drive and i can't get it to work its in my bios but not in my windows
been reading up on it they seem to have very limited ways to do things

if they tell you to flash it why not just include the boot up files with the flash instead of telling you go here and there for it i can't get any of the files cause it wants me to log in tired of making new accounts everywhere i go sorry i just ranting

[Ualaa]

I could see mine in Device Manager, but not in My Computer.
The format fixed it, so it was usable too, not just there.

[alcattle]

well my drive is not here yet

i think i found one reason for my dropped frames i was running two screens i shut the other off i now get 12 to 15 in dalaran with all 5 running and i think it will be more stable in WG as well with just one screen so now i thinking of getting a bigger screen i have a 22inch atm or should i just stay with the 22 inch

been looking at those LCDs tv screens any comments on that

cheers and thanks
DInazzo
a GT280 can run as many screens as you can hook up to it (3?) so the lag is elsewhere. Let's talk more when all the hardware is working.

[Slimjim19]

well i got the drive and i can't get it to work its in my bios but not in my windows
been reading up on it they seem to have very limited ways to do things

if they tell you to flash it why not just include the boot up files with the flash instead of telling you go here and there for it i can't get any of the files cause it wants me to log in tired of making new accounts everywhere i go sorry i just ranting


Try right clicking computer and select manage. there is a topic in the left pane that is storage with disk management under it. select disk management. From there, you should see the disk and will need to format it. Then windows will see it.

[Dinazzo]

ok i got the drive up working all of my World of warcraft stuff on it just that nothing else
windows 7 64bit OS

(1) Systemax ATX Black/Silver Gaming Case http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet2.gif (1) Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition windows 7 64bit
http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet3.gif (1) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz 8M Processor http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet3.gif (4) 512MB DDR2 PC6400 800MHz DIMM Memory6gb pc6400 800mhz dimms
http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet2.gif (1) nVidia nForce 680i LT SLI Motherboard http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet3.gif (1) Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drive 250GB (7200 RPM)changed to 1.5tb and 128ssd drive
http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet2.gif (1) GeForce 8600GT 512MB PCIE Video (1DVI / 1VGA)changed to nvidia geforce GTX280
http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet3.gif (1) 20X DVDRW Dual Layer Drive http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet3.gif (1) Ultra XVS 600 Watt Power Supply changed to a bigger supply 800watts http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet2.gif (1) Logitech Value 100 Keyboard PS/2 http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet2.gif (1) Logitech Black Optical Wheel Mouse PS/2 http://www.supportforyourpc.com/tools/images/bullet3.gif (1) Drivers and Applications DVD
this is my setup i have dual monitors but only running one the 22 inch my other is a 19 inch i just use it for browsing the web

i got 10 frames just sitting in dalaran thats with my new drive running

so now i thinking of what i can do to make it faster seems to me it might also be my computer (cpu) cause it a couple years old now

cheers and thanks
Dinazzo

[Dinazzo]

oh the GTX you can hook up 2 screens thu the HDMI outputs

[Dinazzo]

well i playing my 4 druids and i notice my frames are pushing 40 to 60 out of city questing across all toons
and i also updated my driver for my Geforce

goin to try play around with it for a while

cheers
Dinazzo