Considering a Computer Upgrade

I am a 5x boxing looking for a slight upgrade to my current system. Overall, I am happy but I want to get better graphical performance. Currently, I set my slaves to lowest possible setting and have my main window on good with view distance and projected textures set to max. I'd like to have each windows view distance set to max with graphics set to at least fair / good.

I believe my limiting factor is my system RAM and my graphics card.


Current System:

OS : Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601920
RAM: OCZ Platinum 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Mobo: ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
GPU: EVGA 896-P3-1257-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Hard Drive: Dual Kingston 64 GB SSD in Raid 0


Considerations:

For ram, I am thinking G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin. Right now I have 6 GB. With all 5 clients loaded, my peak RAM usuage is around 5.21 GB. I think some may be offloading to solid state disk, slowing things down.

My motherboard has several utilites to overclock so I could go up to DDR3 2000. Would it make a difference?

For the graphics card, I'm not sure. I am an Nvidia fan, but I am hearing that ATI is the king lately. I'd rather not blow a wad of cash. I'd like to keep it around $150 range or so.

According to Tom's hardware, the best value card is the Radeon HD 5770 1 GB for $130.


What are you thoughts? Anything I've missed?

I'd try a better video card first. The 5770 is really underpowered for 5 copies of wow. It'll work, but that will be a big limiting factor. So much so, that the extra ram might not even make a difference. In fact, the GTX 260 that you have is faster than the 5770.

I upgraded to a GTX 580 from a HD 5870 and there is a BIG difference. No lag in SW anymore. I was getting like 15-20 FPS in SW, now I max out at 45 FPS (which is what I have my main window set to max).

Thanks for the feed back. I didn't realize the 260 GTX was indeed faster. That would have been a mistake.

So you are recommending a 580 GTX then? A quick check on newegg says they are around $500. A bit more than I want to spend. I'll consider it though. I have no problems spending that much money, I just like to be cheap and save money :)

Another question.

Currently I have 3 sticks of 2 GB RAM. My mother board has 6 slots, so 3 slots are unused.

If I bought the GSkill RAM above, which is 3 x 4 GB = 12 GB, could I just plug them into the 3 empty slots?

That would bring my total to 18 GB.

the nvidia 460 (1G) is the sweet spot for bang for buck.

Check the motherboard owners manual if you can do that 18G thing.

Overclocking is not worth it.

See my web site for recommended products / systems.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by daanji

Another question.

Currently I have 3 sticks of 2 GB RAM. My mother board has 6 slots, so 3 slots are unused.

If I bought the GSkill RAM above, which is 3 x 4 GB = 12 GB, could I just plug them into the 3 empty slots?

That would bring my total to 18 GB.

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I never recommend mixing and matching memory, it can have a negative impact on your setup.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sam DeathWalker

the nvidia 460 (1G) is the sweet spot for bang for buck.

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560 Ti replaces the 460, just came out last week.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sam DeathWalker

the nvidia 460 (1G) is the sweet spot for bang for buck.

Check the motherboard owners manual if you can do that 18G thing.

Overclocking is not worth it.

See my web site for recommended products / systems.

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1. Depends on what you want.
2. More ram is often good.
3. DISAGREE!
4. Stop pimping your goddamn site.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sam DeathWalker

Overclocking RAM is not worth it.

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Fixed.

As for the OP's question, I would recommend an Nvidia GTX 560 ti (or 570 / 580). I would not suggest going with anything cheaper/slower, as it wouldn't help much over your existing 260.

Not sure why I have to say this so many times: multiboxing is aways limited by cpu/ram. You can easily 5box with that $130 video card (how do I know? I used a $75 card for quite a while). Shadows are retarded, so turn them off (name one video game where you were awed by the shadows). You don't need AA/AF, view distance, spell effects, water/grass on the alts, turn them off.

Unless you'll be doing a lot of instance swapping or whatever it is called with keyclone/IS, then you'll want the better video card. Or you'll be playing other games (dead space 2, black ops, rift).

Just my 2 pesos.

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

name one video game where you were awed by the shadows

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I run around with my toons looking straight down to minimise lag. Shadows help me navigate north/south etc... so it's VERY IMPORTANT.

Leaving my playstyle aside ;) I totally agree, RAM first then GFX shortly after, I noticed a significant improvement when i went from 6gig to 8 on my core2Duo. Your PC is what i'm currently considering buying, but with 12gig ram and a 560 ti as Fen mentioned.

I'm currently running an i7-950 with 12GB RAM - with 5 WoW sessions open, I see about 8-9GB being used. The benefit of having 12GB shows when opening other apps (several IE windows, media player, excel, email, etc) - there's no reduction in the RAM available to WoW, so less impact on performance.

If you want to see how much of a limitation your video card is - download an app called GPU-Z (http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz), run it, and see what % of your GPU is being utilized when you multibox WoW. if it's near or at 100%, then you should probably look at upgrading your video card as well.

GPU-Z and it's sister app, CPU-Z are great for testing the utilization of GPU's and CPU's respectively, if you're looking for bottlenecks in your system (they provide good info if you're overclocking as well).

Cheers,
S.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stealthy

I'm currently running an i7-950 with 12GB RAM - with 5 WoW sessions open, I see about 8-9GB being used. The benefit of having 12GB shows when opening other apps (several IE windows, media player, excel, email, etc) - there's no reduction in the RAM available to WoW, so less impact on performance.

If you want to see how much of a limitation your video card is - download an app called GPU-Z (http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz), run it, and see what % of your GPU is being utilized when you multibox WoW. if it's near or at 100%, then you should probably look at upgrading your video card as well.

GPU-Z and it's sister app, CPU-Z are great for testing the utilization of GPU's and CPU's respectively, if you're looking for bottlenecks in your system (they provide good info if you're overclocking as well).

Cheers,
S.

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Thanks for this. I got GPU-Z and it is showing, with my current graphic setting, GPU load is around 80% with almost max GPU memory utilization. My x4 slaves are set to the lowest possible setting, the main window is set to fair.

So I'm thinking a Nvidia 560 Ti with 12 GB system memory will make everything better.

Here is a screen capture from GPUZ and Task Manager.

Both show the GPU load, GPU memory, System Memory, and CPU very loaded.


Perhaps it is currently CPU bound. Hmmm.

Again, another common missconception: Thinking that because your gpu/cpu utilization is at a certain percentage means it's time for an upgrade.

I can use calc.exe and peg my i7 at 100%, does that mean it sucks? Nope. If I'm rendering a video on a pentium 2 vs an i7, they both will be at 100% or whatever, the main thing that matters is how long it takes each processor to render.

F@H will use 100% of your GPU, whether its a 560, 5970, or a ti4200.

I'm not saying a new video isn't a bad idea. You can max out your main window and make everything look pretty, and if you decide to pick up a new game you know you'll be fine at least for a year or two.




Getting a bit more offtrack. The biggest mistake I see people do is use Crysis as a benchmark. Crysis has one of the most unoptimized 3d graphics engines I've ever seen since City of Heroes. Compare it's graphics to Unreal 3 which runs silky smooth on almost any system. Going back to Quake 3 Arena days, that engine was incredibly optimized for it's graphics level.

You need RAM, get another 6GB if possible, at least 10GB if you're 5boxing on one machine. Try that first.

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

You need RAM, get another 6GB if possible, at least 10GB if you're 5boxing on one machine. Try that first.

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Why would someone put a total of 10GB in an i7/1366 system? Couldn't afford that 6th 2GB DIMM?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

Not sure why I have to say this so many times: multiboxing is aways limited by cpu/ram. You can easily 5box with that $130 video card (how do I know? I used a $75 card for quite a while). Shadows are retarded, so turn them off (name one video game where you were awed by the shadows). You don't need AA/AF, view distance, spell effects, water/grass on the alts, turn them off.

Unless you'll be doing a lot of instance swapping or whatever it is called with keyclone/IS, then you'll want the better video card. Or you'll be playing other games (dead space 2, black ops, rift).

Just my 2 pesos.

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Multiboxing is not always limited by CPU and RAM - by making a sweeping generalization like this, you're just creating your own misconceptions. I'm not saying a graphics card upgrade is a magic bullet either, but most of the time there will be a combination of factors that will improve performance.

Sure you can 5 box with that $130 video card with all the settings turned down, just like you can drive around town in a shit-box Hyundai - doesn't mean you want to though. Some of us like the eye candy, it makes for a enjoyable playing experience - and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

Again, another common missconception: Thinking that because your gpu/cpu utilization is at a certain percentage means it's time for an upgrade.

I can use calc.exe and peg my i7 at 100%, does that mean it sucks? Nope. If I'm rendering a video on a pentium 2 vs an i7, they both will be at 100% or whatever, the main thing that matters is how long it takes each processor to render.

F@H will use 100% of your GPU, whether its a 560, 5970, or a ti4200.

I'm not saying a new video isn't a bad idea. You can max out your main window and make everything look pretty, and if you decide to pick up a new game you know you'll be fine at least for a year or two.

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We're not measuring performance in calc, rendering video, or F@H - we're talking about performance in WoW. The idea behind using tools like GPU-Z and CPU-Z, is to establish a scale of performance relative to WoW itself.

For example, previously on my system I was running dual HD 5780's. If I parked my group on Orgrimmar, turned all the settings down to their minimum on my main, I got about 80% GPU usage on average and 40 FPS. Dialing the settings up to 'fair' and I saw about 90-100% usage with a drop in FPS down to 20-30. Moving the settings up to 'good' and I saw a constant 100% usage, along with a big drop in FPS to about 10-15 . At the same time if I looked at my CPU and RAM usage, and saw that neither were maxed out, then its logical to assume that the video card had become the limiting factor at these settings.

Sure enough when I upgraded to the GTX 580's I saw a big jump in FPS - I can now run my main at 'Ultra' settings with shadows at 'good' and still get around 30 FPS in Org. To be fair, my system setup is probably a bit different to most (more on this in another post) - but my point is these tools are perfectly valid to use as point of comparison for performance within WoW.

Cheers,
S.

Back to the OPs questions:

1. For $150 the best upgrade you can make to your current system is more RAM. I run a 12GB system very similar to yours and sit at 8-9GB utilisation.

2. You can perform this upgrade by either purchasing a 3 x 2GB kit (pick something that is rated to 1600MHz ideally) or a
3 x 4GB kit. The 2GB kit should slot into your empty slots quite happily as long as it is decently rated (ie. not 1066MHx or anything stupid). As I think Fenril mentioned mixing memory can sometimes have pitfalls. With your existing motherboard in Tri channel setup, adding a new 3 x ? kit should not be a problem. If you were to mix different DIMMs in the same channel you will run into problems but normally this may just reduce you to dual or single channel efficiency.

Personally I wouldn't worry about the 3x4GB kit if you want to go for 18GB total. Currently WoW is not allowed to use more than 2GB per instance so you will never use more than 10GB unless you have other programs open which also use a decent amount.

Where the 3 x 4GB kit would be nice though is if you want to overclock your CPU. I run my 920 at 4GHz very happily on air 24/7. The gear that you have should support this quite nicely. If you had all 6 of your DIMM slots full however, the memory subsystem on the X58 motherboards can often be a weak point for overclocking.

In summary if 3 x 4GB ram fits into your budget, then pull the trigger, no questions asked. Once you have the 12GB you can then play around with OCing the CPU at your leisure (even on the stock intel cooler).

If you would rather save the cash, go for 3 x 2GB for 12GB total.

I agree with the other guys, once you have the ram, save for a video upgrade next, but anything less than a 5xxGTX is probably not worth the cash. I also like NVIDIA over ATI for WoW performance in general. Check out the Tomshardware WoW performance summary if you want to compare hardware for single wow instances.

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Originally Posted by Noids

I agree with the other guys, once you have the ram, save for a video upgrade next, but anything less than a 5xxGTX is probably not worth the cash.

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DISAGREE.

While the 5XXGTX cards might provide the most performance/best performance if you've got the money, there's nothing that says you couldn't get a couple ATI/older cards and run multiples of them and split performance of slave instances between them. And while the power usage/heat might not be worth it, there's nothing saying a couple gray market (used) cards wouldn't be less expensive than a 5XXGTX card.

But this is just me arguing for the sake to argue.

Thanks for the feed back everyone.

I decided to order

GIGABYTE GV-N560OC-1GI GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PC
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)

Once I get them and installed, I'll report back on how my performance has improved.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sajuuk

DISAGREE.

While the 5XXGTX cards might provide the most performance/best performance if you've got the money, there's nothing that says you couldn't get a couple ATI/older cards and run multiples of them and split performance of slave instances between them. And while the power usage/heat might not be worth it, there's nothing saying a couple gray market (used) cards wouldn't be less expensive than a 5XXGTX card.

But this is just me arguing for the sake to argue.

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The problem with multiple cards and WoW is that you need multiple monitors. Not sure if the OP has this luxury or not. While multiple monitors can actually be a cheaper option than a 30" obviously, if it's not the case, then multiple cards will perform no better than a single card for WoW on a single screen and in some cases worse.

Good stuff with the purchases Daanji, should be a nice improvement for you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noids

The problem with multiple cards and WoW is that you need multiple monitors. Not sure if the OP has this luxury or not. While multiple monitors can actually be a cheaper option than a 30" obviously, if it's not the case, then multiple cards will perform no better than a single card for WoW on a single screen and in some cases worse.

Good stuff with the purchases Daanji, should be a nice improvement for you.

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You don't necessarily need multiple monitors. You can rig up dummy plugs so the OS sees another monitor. We would be using isboxer to have slaves render on the extra cores.

But I do agree that one powerful card is an easier solution.

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Originally Posted by Fenril

Why would someone put a total of 10GB in an i7/1366 system? Couldn't afford that 6th 2GB DIMM?

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Read and comprehend the words "AT LEAST"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stealthy

Multiboxin...redacted...

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So you're saying if my friend has a gfx card at 40% utilization in a game, and I have a gfx card at 55% utilization - both same exact graphics levels and both getting 60 silky smooth FPS - that I would need to upgrade my card because it has more utilization?


Cool story bro.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

Read and comprehend the words "AT LEAST"

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Oh man, thanks for clearing that up. I was totally confused.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by d0z3rr

"AT LEAST"

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Too small for me to read. Care to blow it up plz?

I got the new gear and installed.

With the 12 GB of RAM and Gigabyte 560 Ti Fermi I can now do all 5x clients with "good" settings and maintain 30 frames / second.

Not bad, about what I was expecting.

CPU Load: 70%
System RAM: 9 GB

GPU Load: 98%
GPU RAM: 99%

With the main client on Ultra and the others at Low (with max view distance) these are my stats

CPU Load: 70%
System RAM: 7.67 GB

GPU Load: 60%
GPU RAM: 908/ 1024 GB



Also, the resolution each screen is rendered at is 1920 x 1000. This is what IsBoxer chose as the window layout during the wizard. Should I modify the resolution at all?

I'm betting if I knocked it down, I'd get Ultra at 60 frames / second for each client.

My bad computer barely manage 2x boxing

1gb ram
amnd athlon 64 3.5
nvidiea gt 7600


crappy i know but now i'm considering this upgr package

AMD Athlon II X3 450 Triple Core, 3.2Ghz, AM3, 1,5MB, 95W, Boxed
Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3, 870, S-AM3 AMD 870+SB750, ATX, DDR3, USB3.0, SATA 6Gb/s, GbLAN, PCI-Ex(2.0)x16
Crucial DDR3 1333MHz 4GB KIT, CL9, Kit w/two matched DDR3 2GB, 240pin

and use my old graphic card, will this do big changes to how many i can box? i've heard that wow are more cpu demanding than gpu

any replies on this would be helpful :)

Sorry to get off the thread but he posted here. Miken please post questions like yours in your own new thread if you could. That way the Original Poster know whether they're particularly the one being spoken to.

To allow folks to better help, they'll probably ask for more details on your current computer. Based on the current specs for your computer, you may need a new motherboard to take advantage of the latest pieces of gear, essentially a whole new computer. Particularly you would need a board with the proper CPU socket for the processor you would like. An upgrade to your PSU would probably also be a good idea, especially if you've currently got a pre-made computer from any of the Brands, like Dell or HP. A computer capable of dual-boxing, even 5 boxing, should be manageable on a budget if that's a concern.

Also, there's little point to upgrading everything else and leaving the graphics card from several generations of technology ago. Much of the discussion of what limits WoW performance is based on the upper-tier components with benchmark testing. If you have a poor graphics card, a huge upgrade to your CPU still won't result in a strong increase in performance. Likewise if you have a strong graphics card and a poor CPU, or less RAM than would be required. The key for PC gaming is to strike a good balance in your setup. Besides, with the release of Cataclysm, World of Warcraft received many graphics upgrades that put much more burden on the GPU when you turn the settings up.

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Originally Posted by desolation0

Sorry to get off the thread but he posted here. Miken please post questions like yours in your own new thread if you could. That way the Original Poster know whether they're particularly the one being spoken to.

To allow folks to better help, they'll probably ask for more details on your current computer. Based on the current specs for your computer, you may need a new motherboard to take advantage of the latest pieces of gear, essentially a whole new computer. Particularly you would need a board with the proper CPU socket for the processor you would like. An upgrade to your PSU would probably also be a good idea, especially if you've currently got a pre-made computer from any of the Brands, like Dell or HP. A computer capable of dual-boxing, even 5 boxing, should be manageable on a budget if that's a concern.

Also, there's little point to upgrading everything else and leaving the graphics card from several generations of technology ago. Much of the discussion of what limits WoW performance is based on the upper-tier components with benchmark testing. If you have a poor graphics card, a huge upgrade to your CPU still won't result in a strong increase in performance. Likewise if you have a strong graphics card and a poor CPU, or less RAM than would be required. The key for PC gaming is to strike a good balance in your setup. Besides, with the release of Cataclysm, World of Warcraft received many graphics upgrades that put much more burden on the GPU when you turn the settings up.

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thanks for answer
i can't make any topics yet for some reason.
well i've forgotten my motherboards name, i built this computer myself for about 6 years ago, i want to keep my current gfx card because of the PCI express (i think it is?)

i would need to buy whole new computer but for now i got 200$ budget and that i posted in my earlier post costs 190$ so it seems like a fair deal, then when i can afford i'll upgr my gfx card