Upgrade time, assistance? How high do I need to go to survive dalaran?

[Jheusse]

I'm not running my teams right now, but some recent hardware issues have caused me to look at upgrading some parts and making some swaps, and I'm keeping my teams in the back of my mind.

Current box, I ran 4 toons to 60 several times with this:

ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
BFG GeForce 9800 GT OC 512 Card
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Windsor 2.8GHz S Dual-Core Processor Crucial 4
GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel
XP Pro
2 160 GB 7200 RPM HD (both IDE drives, Seagates)
Running on a 22" widescreen Viewsonic monitor

Have been having some freezing issues, the screen would just lock, no artifacting, no apparent heat issues, I've blown the case out several times. I thought it might be a memory thing, as it seemed the longer I had gone since a reboot the more likely the freeze was, it also showed up the more windows I had open. I guessed I had a bad chip on one stick that only got accessed when I had a lot open or hadn't rebooted for a while. I planned to test it, but hadn't gotten it done, I generally started rebooting just before raiding time and it worked fine.

Then last week one of my hard drives flat disappears, it's not being recognized at all, ruined a night of raiding while I updated one of my installs on the other HD. Hmm I think, maybe that HD was dying. Then the system freezes again. Then 2 days after the "missing" missing hard drive is recognized normally and I can launch wow from my solo play folder.

Friend of mine has the same mobo, and we're thinking that's a likely culprit, so I'm starting my shopping, asking for recommendations or experiences with how much of a boost to expect from various upgrades.

Upgrades I'm considering, in order of importance, using some of anandtech's guides for input (he did a new one today http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=3563&p=2 ):
New mobo (ASRock A780GMH/128M maybe?)
Hard Drive (at a minimum get away from IDE, but 1 SATA, dual SATA, SSD?)
New processor (Probably Phenom II quad core, the new 45nm units)

I'm looking at AMD because of familiarity and longtime comfort with them, and I like that the newest CPUs are compatible with DDR2 and DDR3 so I can delay a memory update.
I'm not planning on going to Vista on this box, planning on making the jump to 64 bit and 8+ GB memory on the newer OS when it gets a little more mature
Not planning a video card upgrade at the moment, though I have set a budget aside if I need to update my PSU.

I don't overclock, I don't need massive HDs, the two 160s were half full, though I have multiple wow folders on both.

This is too long for a simple request for input on mobo/processor/HD upgrades, sorry.

Budget 2-300 bucks, likely newegg.

[EaTCarbS]

I would definitely get a Quad Core processer, you will notice the difference

Upping to 6g or 8g of ram wouldn't hurt either.

Also, are you running the x32 bit version of XP, or the x64 bit?

[Jheusse]

32 bit XP Pro. I realize that limits me to ~3.5G memory recognized.

Not really looking at going to a 64 bit right now, as that's primarily Vista, I'm kind of holding out to jump to 64 bit and the new Microsoft OS at the same time.

[Crucial]

I have an AMD Quad Phenom 9950 black edition, 8 gigs ram @ 1066, Vista 64, raid 0 velociraptor drives, Nvidia 8800 GTS and with 5 clients I'm lucky to get 12-15 fps on my main in Dalaran with lowest settings on... it's brutal. Any other zone I get 60 fps main, 30 fps on clones no problem. CPU is maxed in Dalaran. Next system will definitely be an Intel...

[Enndo]

Get an i7... You won't regret spending the money at all.

Edit- Windows 7 64bit is available for DL on microsofts website, free for 1 year.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

To give you a feel for the differences in Dalaran. My alt (4-box) system was:

• Core2Duo OC to 3.1GHz
• 4GB RAM (normal 1066 stuff, nothing spectacular)
• Your basic SATA-300 non-raid, non-high-performance model :P

I was having issues in Dalaran. Alts would lag behind so bad I'd have to run 20 yards, stop for a second, run 20 yards, stop, repeat, etc. Real pain in the butt.

So, I swapped the Core2Duo out for a Q6600 2.4GHz OC to 3.1GHz and I don't have to wait for the alts any more. Granted, when I first get there, all my systems chug a bit from a bajillion alliance scrubs hopping around in circles in their raid purplez. Aside from that, no difference in graphics, motherboard or HDD. The CPU there really does help a ton.

[MiRai]

Edit- Windows 7 64bit is available for DL on microsofts website, free for 1 year.

True that! Well worth the upgrade.

[wowphreak]

There are 2 main issue to solve in order to be able to run in dalaran lag free having enough memory and being able to load texture fast enough.

The memory issue can be minimized if yeh dont run at a super high rez with all affects minimized. I'm not sure what the cut off point is but if yeh want to play in high rez yeh have to have more memory which force yeh to go with a 64bit os I would say 6 gigs at minimum.

If yeh have enough memory or play at a low rez loading texture wont be that big of a deal it may cause some stuttering but wont be a game killer.
Having an ssd drive would reduce the stuttering.

[Jheusse]

One idea I came up with was to set up a dual boot capability of XP Pro and the 64 bit windows 7, at least until I was comfortable with the new OS. Though I'm not really guru enough to pull that off without significant research, but free 7 for a year would be cool, could track down a cheap copy later.

Then it would make sense to go to 8 gigs of memory in addition to the mobo, processor, HD upgrade.

SSD drives don't appear to hit the capacity vs. cost that I think I would need, unless I kept it stripped down to bare essentials.

Ironically I also have a dual core laptop with vista 64, 4 GB of memory, and a 1 GB video card I could get into play, as well as an older box that was my main wow box at the beginning of 2008, just networking all of them and getting the configs set up is a beast. musical monitors is annoying.

Contemplating the following combo from newegg for 259, though my digging around shows this board may have some gremlins, stuttering display that can't be tracked down and debugged.
AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor Model HDZ940XCGIBOX - Retail
GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Something at that level of processor and price point is about where I'm aiming at this time.

I run my raiding main with high settings through one folder, and my multis on 2 HD with individual folders with all settings turned way down, and sound off on all but one.

Moving forward I'd probably have 1 symlinked folder for the 4 kids, and 1 folder for my raiding main, since he uses so many more addons.

[Lax]

One idea I came up with was to set up a dual boot capability of XP Pro and the 64 bit windows 7, at least until I was comfortable with the new OS. Though I'm not really guru enough to pull that off without significant research, but free 7 for a year would be cool, could track down a cheap copy later.

I was running XP 64-bit and decided to install Windows 7 on a separate hard drive in case I wanted to go back. I haven't yet. The performance difference is too great. I'm getting 30 FPS in dalaran at the moment with my 5 online at 1680x1050 resolution with lowest graphics settings, which is a big jump from 12-18 or so I was getting before. The lag in loading textures in Dalaran is also better (less time) than it was in XP. Oh, and I use 1 WoW folder, period, on a 7200 RPM SATA drive, sound on all of them. My personal opinion at this point is moving to Windows 7 from a previous one is probably a better upgrade than an SSD drive (loading times seem much faster on the same hardware), but that's just based on my experience and I haven't used an SSD drive myself.