4 or 6 cores?

[Knytestorme]

Doing a new build to get back into boxing coming into Cata and have a choice to make.

1. AMD X6 + 8Gb Ram
2. i7 + 12Gb RAM

is the ability to put 1 client per core with no overlap on the AMD worth the loss of the extra system overhead the extra 4Gb of RAM will give me?

[MiRai]

You could just punch in AMD X6 Benchmarks and sift through all the results. I use www.tomshardware.com and www.anandtech.com for my basic benchmarking reviews. This article here (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/1) shows that the i7 920 Nehalem [which has been replaced by the Bloomfield 930] beats out the AMD X6 in most benchmarks. You may or may not be worried about power consumption but the i7's 4 cores suck up less power than the AMD's 6 cores. At the moment I'm a fan of Intel, they seem to be heading in a good direction. I, myself, would only recommend AMD, in it's current state, if you were on a tight budget.

[Knytestorme]

The issue is, I'm not particularly concerned with benchmarks from toms, anand, hardocp, guru3d etc (even though I have been going over them all day here a work).

I posted here because I'm interested in seeing if I will see a performance improvement on the x6 while 5-boxing under IsBoxer and putting each client on a seperate core using processor affinity compared to having my main on 1 core and then 2 clients each on cores 2 and 3 with the i7 and that's not a question that will be able to be answered reasonably anywhere but here.

Budget isn't a concern, going with x6 + 8Gb + mb or i7 + 12Gb + mb are both in scope and either option is fine for everything else I need to do with the pc......my only decision between the 2 comes down to which will give me the smoother performace while 5-boxing.

[Owltoid]

depending on the mobo, the i7 could go up to 24Gb of RAM and may be more scalable for the future.

The processor just isn't an issue with my i7 920 (not a bottleneck at all). With Cata that may change, but I highly doubt it.

Just make sure to get an SSD :)

[Drizhal]

depending on the mobo, the i7 could go up to 24Gb of RAM and may be more scalable for the future.

The processor just isn't an issue with my i7 920 (not a bottleneck at all). With Cata that may change, but I highly doubt it.

Just make sure to get an SSD :)
This completely
I also have a 920 I7 with 12 gb of ram. Simply put....amazing...
Formerly a huge fan of AMB, actually had another computer that was an AMD Quad Black edition, which is still sluggish and slow in comparison.

And I as well went with an SSD symlinked folders etc. By far also awsome. If you do get one expect to pay almost $150-200 from the last I saw of them (Been a month or 2 though) don't skimp because there is a price/stat jump around the $140 area.

Good luck

[Owltoid]

I'm using a cheapo SSD and it works wonderfully. I bought it about a year ago, and even then it was only like $75 I think. Many will point you to the nicest Intel SSDs on the market, but for me the cheap RiData MLC version hasn't let me down and I see no lag (only during the very end of some WG fights, but somehow I doubt that's lag on my system)

[Dramoth]

You could always go for the i7 980x extreme with 6 cores.

i7 980x extreme (http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47932)

I have shifted back my rebuild schedule as I want the prices on the components to drop a bit more before I start buying them.

[skwert]

i7 980 extreme - $965 .. amd x4 965 - $180.

I gotta say, that's pretty extreme. I bought the AMD 965 when it first came out, and it hasn't let me down in the least. Are you guys doing more than 5-boxing with these crazy expensive CPUs? I haven't had a bit of lag with this CPU (8GB RAM, two-year-old hard drive), even in Dalaran.

To any poorer folks reading, no you don't need to spend crazy money to be able to enjoy 5-boxing.

[jstanthr]

in my opinion the i7 would perform better than the amd x6. i have tried them both with keyclone and 5 clients. the overlap from running the i7 hyperthreaded as 0-2,1-3,4-6,5-7,6-7 felt more responsive than just giving the x6 1 client per core with no hyperthreading. i also noticed an average of around 10-15fps better on the intel as well, i think that is mostly due to the x58 having more pci-e lanes than the 890fx of the amd. i tested the i7 with 6gb and the amd x6 with 8gb. used the same gfx in both (2x gtx280's in sli driving 2 displays) if you have any other questions feel free to msg me or email me at jdfelosi@live.com

[Knytestorme]

in my opinion the i7 would perform better than the amd x6. i have tried them both with keyclone and 5 clients. the overlap from running the i7 hyperthreaded as 0-2,1-3,4-6,5-7,6-7 felt more responsive than just giving the x6 1 client per core with no hyperthreading. i also noticed an average of around 10-15fps better on the intel as well, i think that is mostly due to the x58 having more pci-e lanes than the 890fx of the amd. i tested the i7 with 6gb and the amd x6 with 8gb. used the same gfx in both (2x gtx280's in sli driving 2 displays) if you have any other questions feel free to msg me or email me at jdfelosi@live.com

Hmmm, interesting feedback there thank you, but I think I have settled on the build and was just about to post the thread about it for feedback :)

[jstanthr]

intel released the i7 970 today its a 6core 12threaded beast, it is identical the the $1000 980x but with a locked multi and a tad slower, it is stock at 3.33GHz and from what i can tell will be about 1/3 the cost. im replacing my i7 920 with one just 'cause i want to.

[Alashan]

The i7-970 is on newegg for $899 where the i7-980X is $999, not that big a difference, prices might be wrong?

[heyaz]

Does CPU architecture and number of cores (past minimum of 4) really make a big difference, or do we have any indication that it will in cataclysm? I got my best performance in WOTLK with high amounts of RAM and paging disabled entirely, plus a solid state drive. Given a good amount of RAM where swapping never happens anda video card with enough power and RAM to hold all the textures, and a solid state drive to load them near instant, how much is left for the CPU to process? I may be wrong but I never thought WoW to be that dependent on just the CPU... can remember reading a lot of stories of people with top end i7s not being able to get the performance they were hoping for.... I never went past my Q6600...

[Knytestorme]

From everything I've read WoW is more CPU limited than GPU (seen benchmarks that show a 5750 and a 5970 both getting same framerate) so my thinking is that since it is CPU limited and doesn't take advantage of multi-cores or multi-threading that putting 1 client per core would be essentially as effective as running 1 client on a single-core standalone box. It won't be exactly as good due to sharing of memory and buses etc but still should show improvement over 5 clients + OS sharing 4 cores

[alcattle]

I think RAM and data transfer are the biggest areas that WoW slows down with. Many people do fine with core duo's and older GPUs. My quad and 8800 w/320 megs were fine. Get over 4 gigs and a 64 bit OS for the best upgrade for the money

[Sam DeathWalker]

alcattle is correct. Once you get the wow folder into ram you are gold.

its not the I7 its the X58 that is the benifit.

I run 7 clients on amd X2 (30 fps in the field and 10fps in daralan (oh well ....) and under 100ms ping all the time) cpu isnt the problem.

All the lag is from moving textures from the hard drive to the gpu.

Although all my computers are AMD the only logical advise at this point is X58 and 920 (bang for the buck).

Get X58 and 24G ram end of story, once you have those two you don't need much of anything else to be of the highest quality for no lag play.

Buy in this order:

X58 MB with ability to go to 24G ram
24G ram
920
best video card you can afford (but again not needing top price stuff if you have other 3 items).

If you have 24G ram you dont need SSD ....

[Oatboat]

No way you need 24g of ram.

i have 12g of ram and 5 box and it only uses up 4-5gig max with 5 clients, internet explorer, pandora and a couple other background apps running.

24gig of ram is just ludicrous.

[daviddoran]

I think he was referring to utilizing excess RAM as a ramdisk, and run wow off of that, which would be significantly faster than an SSD, but a whole lot more complex and expensive. For the amount of money you'd spend on 24GB of ram you could purchase a very nice RAID of quality SSDs, and save yourself a lot of headache.

I think 12GB is the ideal amount for a triple channel system, unless 3GB chips start becoming popular, and 9GB triple channel configurations would be a good bargain. I have 8GB ram in a dual channel setup and its just enough.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Im not saying you NEED to put the wow folder in ram but if you do then you get no lag.

My point is instead of buying better cpu or better video card or SSD your money is better spent on more ram.

[Owltoid]

A cheap SSD does the trick... upgrading it to a RAM drive seems like nothing but overkill.

[Sam DeathWalker]

$600 for 24G?

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-KINGSTON-12GB-DDR3-SDRAM-ECC-1333-KTH-PL313K3-12G-/310235835616?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item483b7f2ce0

[Owltoid]

$600 for 24G?

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-KINGSTON-12GB-DDR3-SDRAM-ECC-1333-KTH-PL313K3-12G-/310235835616?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item483b7f2ce0

$85
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141419

[grap]

video ram in your graphic card is very important too.
i test with sapphir x4870 512Mo, two x4870 512Mo, msi GeForce 285oc 1Go and now i m with sapphir 5870 vapor-x 2Go.

i had i7920 stock + 12 Go ram and display 24in 1900X1200.
OS w7 x64 ssd intel 80Go
wow data syslink on adaptec 2405 raid 0 X4 ocz solid cor 30Go 1er generation so
and 5 wow on the lovely 300Go velociraptor ....

with x4870 512Mo, i used full 12Go ram
with x4870 X2 ... it was the worst !!
with msi 285 1Go, i used near 9Go ram but my cpu was near 100% so limited at stock frequency
the follow didnt break but ips drop in dalaran.

these test were on dalaran city, late in the end of week-end when you have many players :(

now with 5870 2Go and a little x980 3.33GHz .... ;) but 40% on 5 cors ( number 6 is sleeping with 0% ), i use 8 Go ram and to please me i add 2 other screen for the eyefinity so 1x24in + 2X22in.
main 24in full except shadow 2 dots less

For me, the nice i7 920 2.66GHz could breath near 3GHz oc

[MiRai]

$600 for 24G?

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-KINGSTON-12GB-DDR3-SDRAM-ECC-1333-KTH-PL313K3-12G-/310235835616?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item483b7f2ce0
That's ECC...

[alcattle]

That's ECC...
all the 3x4gig on Newegg all more than that, like $340

[MiRai]

all the 3x4gig on Newegg all more than that, like $340
I was implying that unless you have a board that can specifically use ECC RAM then it's completely useless. And in theory, it'd be completely useless for gaming as well.

[alcattle]

Right, I had a feeling that ECC would not work, I was kind of saying 12 gig x2 was a lot of money whatever type you used and $600 could add many improvements even though you would not have instant data as RAM would give you.

[Sam DeathWalker]

Right its ecc and right ecc don't work. Still what then $700 for 24G?




$600 could add many improvements even though you would not have instant data as RAM would give you


Say its $700, my point is upgrading the cpu or video card or adding a SSD for $700 will not be as effective as adding ram. Say you spend $400 for a X58/I7 920 combo and $150 for a video card. Now take $700 and upgrade the cpu and video card and add a SSD. It wont preform as well as a system with the x58/920 and 24G ram and basic $150 video card.

[DLoweinc]

I figured I'd chime in here and add some 4 core vs 6 core info.

I just changed the PC that I am boxing on from an intel core 2 quad q9550 (2.8ghz) to a 6 core amd 1055t (2.8ghz).

Obviously the system boards are different but all other components are the same (Hard drives, video card) with the exception of RAM.

I am seeing less CPU use and less memory usage on my amd 6 core machine with 5 clients running (innerspace). I averaged between 5GB and 6GB of use with everything running on the Core 2 Quad CPU. Now with the AMD chip I am averaging 4GB of memory used.

Both systems had 8GB of RAM with the difference being my 6core AMD machine having 1333mhz speed RAM and the Core 2 Quad having 800mhz RAM.

[d0z3rr]

I ran 6 WoWs on my old ass q6600 with 8gb of memory. 0 performance problems. So yeah, it will be rock solid on a x6.