i5 760 or i7 870/875 for 10 boxing?

[echo]

Hi all,

Question for those with experience 10 boxing. Assuming the rest of the system is the same, Will the i7 870/5 offer significant/noticeable improvement for 10 boxing vs the i5 760? I see the 760 for $175 right now, with the 870 at $220 and 875 at $250. I dont mind spending the extra $ if it will net me tangible benefits for 10 boxing, but if I can just overclock the 760 and have it offer similar performance I'm fine with that also, especially since I would only be using the hyper threaded 8 core of the 870 for multiboxing, for all my other daily computing use I'm sure the 4 non hyper threaded core of the 760 will do me just fine.

If it makes a difference, I'm listing the other parts that might be pertinent to wow multiboxing. Please advise if anything should be adjusted.

video - ATI 6870
Memory - Patriot Sector 5 G series 8gb DDR3 PC3-10666
OS - Win 7 Professional 64 bit
SSD - OCZ Vertex 2 60gb
Power - Cooler Master Silent Pro M700 series Modular 700w

To recap. to those currently multiboxing or has experience boxing with the 760 or 870/5; which one should I get? Thanks in advance to any that can help. :)

[EaTCarbS]

Will the i7 870/5 offer significant/noticeable improvement for 10 boxing vs the i5 760?

short answer: yes.

[Owltoid]

You sure you have enough RAM to 10 box? I only bring this up because if you want to do it on one machine, and if that requires more RAM, then you may need a different MB which means other chips may be better too.

[echo]

Thank you for the feedback Eatcarbs. :)

And thank you also owl. Well, I think I'm only getting the 8gb to start but I'm getting it as 2x4gb and most of the LGA1156 P55 mobos that I've looked at have 4 memory slots. I fully plan on getting another set of 2x4gb to increase total to 16gb if I 10 box. But for now I'm waiting on Cata to see how viable 10 boxing will be then. Mostly I just want to build a system now with room for upgrades to 10 box if I choose to pursue that once cata comes out, but for now 8gb will be plenty for any non multiboxing endeavors. But you bring up that maybe other chipset might be better for 10 box? Do you have any recommendations? I am not set on any particular brand or chipset, so if you have experience with something that will do the job just as well, I would love to hear your suggestions. Thank you also for taking the time to reply. :)

[Owltoid]

There are lots of guys on here much better at hardware than I am... I'm just here to play devil's advocate :)

[EaTCarbS]

I personally prefer the 1366 sockets :)

[ParanoidPenguin333]

Not talking about chips from a WoW perspective…

But the i7 930 and beyond offers “true” hyper threading. Currently Newegg has an i7 950 for 279.99. If your willing to pay 250 for the 875, you should def consider the 950 to add another 6 months to a year of lifetime use on your machine on the back end (if you find yourself upgrading a lot, then ignore this comment on upfront upgrade cost optimization)

You should be aware also that the 930 and beyond also requires some upgraded demands from the motherboard and ram due to its true hyper threading capabilities.

If my comp sci theory classes from ages ago holds true in the practical world, a true hyper threading should give you significant performance improvement (as in not just benchmark numbers, but human observable results)

Side note: J&R is offering some ram at huge discounts…it may curve some of your cost as well…but the problem is you may have to buy it tonight…or this weekend at the latest

[burningforce]

I thought I read somewhere (anandtech?)that hyper threading when playing games would actually be a small performance drop due to the coding of the game software.
I also read that an i7 950 is not a good overclocker, so if you want to overclock I would stick to the i7 930.

As for the OP question
I do not think there would be a huge jump from i5 760 to i7 870. I believe the i7 870 features updated instruction sets and clocked higher then the i5. Other then that I would not pay a premium for the i7 870 unless it was only a $10-$30 more.
I would also look into getting more memory, not sure if 8GB will cut it with 10boxing with the updated WoW graphics

[echo]

Thank you penguin and force! I will go read up a bit more on the issues you two raised. Also thank you for the heads up on the ram sale Penguin. More research is always good before I actually commit to a build. :)

[Ualaa]

I personally get the best performance with each of the four physical cores (i7 920) on each of my five games, and none of the virtual cores (hyperthreading) assigned.

Assigning the virtual cores to games, is a very minor performance hit.

[echo]

I personally get the best performance with each of the four physical cores (i7 920) on each of my five games, and none of the virtual cores (hyperthreading) assigned.

Assigning the virtual cores to games, is a very minor performance hit.


Just to clarify. So are you saying that you get better performances by not assigning any of the virtual cores at all Uaaa? Or that the virtual cores perform only slightly worse than the physical core and that overall it's still better to assign them to some of the wow instances?

Just want to make sure I understand you properly because if the former is true than there's really no point for me to spend an extra $90 for the hyper threaded cores when I can put that towards, say, another SSD drive. :D

[Sam DeathWalker]

I'd go for X58 (I guess P55 is ok also though) and the i7.

My opinion, and I am sure many will disagree, is that for wow only (as its coded for 2 cores max) processor speed is more important then the number of cores. And at any rate, even 10 boxing the bottleneck is never the cpu, its the SSD to Video Card that slows everything down.

An X58 motherboard and even the 920 i7 should be more then enough (unless a faster i7 is available for a little bit more cost).

Money should be spent on the video card ram (more the better 1G is minimum) and on the SSD.

8G with a 64 bit operating system should also be good enough, although no doubt more is better.

I have a revo SSD drive coming Ill report the results in dala soon enough, to see if I am right as I have a 3.2gHz duel core cpu.

[Ualaa]

With the i7, you have four physical cores and four logical cores.

I've tried all eight cores on all five games.
And a lot of combinations of some cores here others there.

I get the best performance with the four physical cores each assigned to all five warcraft sessions; ie, allow Windows to determine which games need what amount of processor power.

Surprisingly, having none of the logical cores assigned to any game is better performance (only very slightly) than having logical cores assigned anywhere.

[Ishar]

Slightly off topic, but what about the amd Phenom x6 1090T?

Seems like having 6 cores might serve 10boxing better than the still quad-core i7. I think some of the reviewers remarked that it out performed the i7 for extremely threaded cpu-intensive applications (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/7) Not sure wow counts in either instance, but when running 10 it might. I dunno. Something to consider. (since he's looking at Mobo's, i assume the OP isn't stuck with existing infrastructure...but that would obviously change things).

i really don't know; with 10 processes competing for 4/6 cores i'm not sure if processor speed continues to be the king. Be an interesting case study, perhaps, lol.

[ParanoidPenguin333]

There are a couple of things to consider when comparing AMD and Intel. One, AMD typically over clock their chips at point of sale. While I don’t know what the specific situation is for the chip you’re speaking about. It’s one of the marketing tools AMD typically uses to claim they have faster chips than Intel (per dollar cost basis).

Secondly from a comp architecture perspective, you are some what correct in that you can not look at just cores as the basis of speed. One should consider each WoW instance on the machine as a collection of sub tasks. So while you may be running 10 instances, it doesn’t mean you are doing 10 things that need to be split among 4 or 6 cores, but more like 10 trillion (as oppose to 1 trillion operations for one instance) operations that need to be split between 4 or 6 cores. So it doesn’t matter which does it…so long as it is done.

For example a bakery making pies. Some of those subtasks can be done in conjunction with one another (like making the dough that will go to making different types of pies), while others task must be done in conjunction (each pie needs to filled independently). In addition try to think of the oven as the actual logical processing unit. In this way, the real estate time of ovens becomes a bottle neck (you can’t speed up the cooking of pies). So in the most ideal pie baking algorithm, all your pies are waiting in front of the oven to get baked, no time is wasted with empty ovens cause of the transfer of pies, and the time the oven is open (losing heat) is minimized as much as possible. Taking this example back to the real world, hyper threading is optimizing cpu processes that minimize the need to move subtask in and out of the cpu, so in this way it minimized the overhead of memory accounting (less cpu usage – but necessary the logical unit) and maximize the times the cpu is “working”.

In summing, more ovens, faster pies get done, but if you only need to bake ONE pie, don’t matter if you have 100 ovens or 1, it will take the same time.

[echo]

Well a big thanks to all of you for taking the time to answer my question. Your collective and individual help is greatly appreciated. Given the feedback that I received here, I'm going to wait a week or two, read up on the topic you raise and wait for cata to come out. The whole issue might be moot if cata isnt realistically/enjoyably 10 boxable, in which case I might go back to 5 or even solo boxing.

Thanks again for the help guys! :)

[Sam DeathWalker]

So in the most ideal pie baking algorithm, all your pies are waiting in front of the oven to get baked, no time is wasted with empty ovens cause of the transfer of pies, and the time the oven is open (losing heat) is minimized as much as possible. Taking this example back to the real world, hyper threading is optimizing cpu processes that minimize the need to move subtask in and out of the cpu, so in this way it minimized the overhead of memory accounting (less cpu usage – but necessary the logical unit) and maximize the times the cpu is “working”.

In summing, more ovens, faster pies get done, but if you only need to bake ONE pie, don’t matter if you have 100 ovens or 1, it will take the same time.


And WoW is written for 2 cores, it gets the pies to two ovens at the optimal times. There is no reason to assume that a system that gets the pies to two ovens at the optimal time would work faster with 4 or more ovens.......

[Ishar]

Well, from a strictly logical point of view...

If wow A Threads because it has to wait for some slow task (eg, a hdd read, or user input), and manages to do some computation in the mean time for whatever reason...

Wow b is also going to thread in more or less the same way, for the same reason. (because its going to have a similar load at the same time, if not exactly identical).

Actually, given the nature of boxing, all 10 wows are probably going to frequently be waiting for the same slow task. I think its a reasonable assumption that all 10 will ask the OS to do something.

At this point windows will route requests to processors, as you say. (the 10 trillion tasks=p). Now, at this point, the question becomes a bit more complex. In your typical game, the 10 trillion tasks are not inherently parallel. (Eg, running 1 copy of wow, of course, any more than 2 cores is wasted on wow, though it keeps miscellaneous tasks from detracting from the processor time of wow; cause they are more likely to have an empty core.) Wow is hardly a game that only needs to bake one pie....and this is more a failure of programming. I have trouble believing that in the course of the game there is absolutely nothing that can be done in parallel. And If i'm running the same game twice, all those tasks have to be done twice, even if they aren't parallel within themselves, when done twice, well... Point in case, sitting in the middle of nowhere well after loading the game, one instance of wow is using 10-20% of my CPU while minimized, and has 60 or so threads going. (I assume because of addons, but still). I think its safe to safe to assume that wow is not completely hard drive bound.

So, the question becomes, is the 1090T faster at doing those tasks than the Intel at the same price point? (its a forgone conclusion that the Intel 980x is far and away superior, but is also roughly 4 times the cost..) The midrange i7s is another comparison entirely. And I honestly don't know, meh.

edit: Yeah, the processor I listed is an overclocked version of a slightly cheaper processor. I was mainly pointing out that AMD had a 6 core for roughly the same price as the quad core i7s. Some people (myself included) are not really comfortable with overclocking.)

[Sam DeathWalker]

That makes sense; with one wow client no more then two cores is ever needed, with 5 wow clients then things change and you could resonablly assign 2 cores for each client (or one each).

That assumes each core has its own seperate path to the system ram and with multiple cores running the data buss feeding those cores dosn't get saturated (but that buss is probably the biggest and fastest in the whole computer).

Its not like 4 cores will run 2 clients twice as fast as a 2 core cpu... thats just not going to happen.

But I can see where there will be some advantage in more cores with more clients.

But its going to be hard to guess at how much more performace you will get vs. getting 2 cores at a faster clock speed. Or comparing a faster 4 core to a slower 8 core ....

I think best rule of thumb is to find the normal cpu sweet spot (most bang for buck) and not say pay double to go from 4 to 8 cores at the same cpu speed.

Just get the i7 that delivers the most bang for buck on most tasks and you should be right enough for wow.

Ya me also I never overclock, if you want a faster processor just go buy one.