Hardware upgrade, which piece?

Hey, i currenlty experience a fair bit of lag on my 3 alternate clients when quad boxing and was wondering what would be the most limiting factor, i know its not a super computer and since im on a budget i would rather only upgrade a piece that would make the most difference

E6600 @ 2.6 ghz
4gb 667 Ram
8800GTS 640mb

Running the alternate 3 clients on 1 core of the processor seems to lag those down so im leaning towards upgrading the processor, however i almost max out on ram with 4gb and the graphics card could do with an upgrade, hence my post here as to what would be the best thing to upgrade

Going to 8GB of RAM will likely be the cheapest upgrade. The only CPU upgrade you can do without a complete rebuild is moving to a Quad Core if your mobo supports it. The issue with that upgrade is that the Q9550 costs more than an i7 920 for far less performance.

I had nearly identical hardware and updated to 8GB of RAM (on a 64-bit OS) and upgraded my GPU to a 275GTX. I use ISBoxer and by setting the non-active sessions to 20FPS and lowering the graphics options on my slaves I get 50-60FPS in almost all scenarios.

Honestly, I think just upgrading your RAM will be the best bang for your buck. If you are going to up the CPU I'd say it would be worth looking into moving to an i7, which will require a new MOBO and RAM.

Thanks for the help, will probably go with an upgrade to 8gb of ram then,
With a processor upgrade i was only looking at going up to a quad core, with the expectation that setting 1 wow to each core would give me a big performance boost? Was really looking at going to a Q8300 or similar just for the quad core aspect, any insight?

Is the only thing you are concerned about boxing WoW? Because a Q8300 is going to be a downgrade in many scenarios. If you do want to upgrade the CPU at least get the Q9400, it's only $40 more.

In any case the RAM is going to be well worth it. Going from 4GB to 8GB added about 20FPS.

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Originally Posted by jonoelgrande

Hey, i currenlty experience a fair bit of lag on my 3 alternate clients when quad boxing and was wondering what would be the most limiting factor, i know its not a super computer and since im on a budget i would rather only upgrade a piece that would make the most difference

E6600 @ 2.6 ghz
4gb 667 Ram
8800GTS 640mb

Running the alternate 3 clients on 1 core of the processor seems to lag those down so im leaning towards upgrading the processor, however i almost max out on ram with 4gb and the graphics card could do with an upgrade, hence my post here as to what would be the best thing to upgrade

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Hey bud, upgrade that Video card. I went from a 8500 GTS to 9800 GTX and it made night and day. Stay away from the GTS. Also I am only running 4 gigs of memory and I am fine but I will up to 8 when I get some cash.

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Going to 8GB of RAM will likely be the cheapest upgrade. The only CPU upgrade you can do without a complete rebuild is moving to a Quad Core if your mobo supports it. The issue with that upgrade is that the Q9550 costs more than an i7 920 for far less performance.

I had nearly identical hardware and updated to 8GB of RAM (on a 64-bit OS) and upgraded my GPU to a 275GTX. I use ISBoxer and by setting the non-active sessions to 20FPS and lowering the graphics options on my slaves I get 50-60FPS in almost all scenarios.

Honestly, I think just upgrading your RAM will be the best bang for your buck. If you are going to up the CPU I'd say it would be worth looking into moving to an i7, which will require a new MOBO and RAM.

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Video Card is the key word here

Actually, I upgraded the Video card first then the RAM a few months later. Adding the RAM was a 20FPS increase.

Pretty conflicting views there :P, think ill go with a memory upgrade unless anyone else can say its definetely worth upgrading the graphics card to say a HD5770 or 5850, the memory would cost alot less and even if it doesnt provide that much of an increase in performance, at least im only out $60 or so

What OS are you using? In some cases, the 8 GB will not help a lot cause you OS will not use them...

Still if your OS is capable of useing more RAM, RAM will be THE performance Booster No. 1
Maybe you could consider not upgrading thhe graphics card rather than installing a second one ? (Also requires your OS being capale of using it)

Kind regards, jens