Is it worth upgrading from a Q9550 to a i7 920?

[Simulacra]

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!

Hi, this is quite interesting because your setup is very close to mine except I don't have the GTX280, I have the GTX 250 - embarassing I know. The thing is my fps doesn't drop below 27 in bgs or anywhere else really and I'm using a much lower spec card. The only difference I can think of is that my wow data is on an SSD. So maybe give that a go before you splurge. Oh and I'm running WIndows 7.

[pbrigido]

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!

Hi, this is quite interesting because your setup is very close to mine except I don't have the GTX280, I have the GTX 250 - embarassing I know. The thing is my fps doesn't drop below 27 in bgs or anywhere else really and I'm using a much lower spec card. The only difference I can think of is that my wow data is on an SSD. So maybe give that a go before you splurge. Oh and I'm running WIndows 7.

That is interesting. I actually have 4 Samsung 64GB SLC SSDs in RAID-0. It is unbelieveably fast...so I am still trying to put my finger on it. When I head to Dalaran, my FPS really suffers, and I have a feeling that it is my CPU. It tops out at 100% in each core, versus when I am just hanging out in the Barrens with a constant 60 FPS and CPU usage around 20% per core.

[kermitforney]

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!

Hi, this is quite interesting because your setup is very close to mine except I don't have the GTX280, I have the GTX 250 - embarassing I know. The thing is my fps doesn't drop below 27 in bgs or anywhere else really and I'm using a much lower spec card. The only difference I can think of is that my wow data is on an SSD. So maybe give that a go before you splurge. Oh and I'm running WIndows 7.

That is interesting. I actually have 4 Samsung 64GB SLC SSDs in RAID-0. It is unbelieveably fast...so I am still trying to put my finger on it. When I head to Dalaran, my FPS really suffers, and I have a feeling that it is my CPU. It tops out at 100% in each core, versus when I am just hanging out in the Barrens with a constant 60 FPS and CPU usage around 20% per core.

Have you tried overclocking your CPU, your line of processor has a ton of headroom, but I wouldn't go that route unless you have previous experience with overclocking.

[Simulacra]

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!

Hi, this is quite interesting because your setup is very close to mine except I don't have the GTX280, I have the GTX 250 - embarassing I know. The thing is my fps doesn't drop below 27 in bgs or anywhere else really and I'm using a much lower spec card. The only difference I can think of is that my wow data is on an SSD. So maybe give that a go before you splurge. Oh and I'm running WIndows 7.

That is interesting. I actually have 4 Samsung 64GB SLC SSDs in RAID-0. It is unbelieveably fast...so I am still trying to put my finger on it. When I head to Dalaran, my FPS really suffers, and I have a feeling that it is my CPU. It tops out at 100% in each core, versus when I am just hanging out in the Barrens with a constant 60 FPS and CPU usage around 20% per core.

Have you tried overclocking your CPU, your line of processor has a ton of headroom, but I wouldn't go that route unless you have previous experience with overclocking.

Which reminds me - my processor is oced to 3.2 - I can run around Dalaran at 25-30 fps with almost max graphics setting on the main....what os are you running?

[Sam DeathWalker]

Those tests are not people multiboxing.

The I7 archtechture on a X58 board, cept for the DMI buss, is way ahead of anything else. Like 24Gigibit/sec from memeory to cpu to video card.

Nothing is going to come close to i7/x58 for multiboxers.

But you don't need more then a 920, and your video card seems fine. Just get a raptor and yur fine.

Guys with Intel and the SSD drives saturate the DMI buss (2gigibit/sec) so they dont get the extra texture transfer they would expect from the specs:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...core-i7_3.html

[Starbuck_Jones]

I don't think your right on that Sam. In the article that you posted, the bridge is listed as 2GB/s That's big B. Sata2 drives as well as sas drives are 3Gb/s theoretical transfer rates. Little b. So 1GB = 8Gb. So that gives us a 16Gb pipeline to the northbridge where the cpu, ram, and video are. To max that out you would need over 5 drives. Basically 6 in a raid 0 to cap it on paper (you would prolly need 3x this many drives to actualy cap it in real world use). Very very few people have that in a personal PC.

In my opinion that is not going to be a bottle neck for anything and maxing it out will only reduce load times during the start and entering an instance. You may see a framerate dip when you first get to Dalaran, but once the textures and stuff are loaded, I do not see that having any effect on performance running around Dalaran when everything is already loaded into ram. If your suffering performance issues in Dalaran then you either do not have enough RAM or you do not have your folders symlinked and are multiplying how much needs to load and wasting resrouces.

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Media_Interface

It is a (perhaps modified) PCI-E x4 v1.1 interface

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

In PCIe 1.x , each lane carries 250 MB/s.

As a point of reference, a single-lane PCIe card has nearly twice as much bandwidth as the most common PCI interface, a 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus (133 MB/s). A PCIe x4 slot has bandwidth comparable to the fastest version of PCI-X 1.0 (64-bit 133MHz.) An eight-lane slot has a transfer rate comparable to the fastest version of AGP.

A PCIe x4 slot has bandwidth comparable to the fastest version of PCI-X 1.0 (64-bit 133MHz.)

Lets see 64 bits is 8 bytes at 133mhz is 1GByte/sec DMI is full duplex so 2Gbyte/sec

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTransport

3.2GHz HT is 12.8GByte/sec

http://www.informit.com/articles/art...81869&seqNum=2

Hit "view table" and thats like a ton of buss speeds.

You are correct the DMI buss is 2000MByte/sec and a SATA2 max is 300MByte/sec. There is no way to saturate the DMI buss with SSD drives.


Well thanks for pointing that out.

[Sam DeathWalker]

So the trick is to get the wow folder into system ram:

Wow folder in System Ram for $800

[Noids99]

Lol...

anyway back on topic, my 2c is that its not worth the upgrade at least on paper, as I have not personally experienced the difference. I have a 920 system with 12G ram, raid 0 intels and GTX 295 and still get patchy fps at various graphics settings. The biggest setting that influences my performance is the draw distance. If I set this to min, I can get 45fps comfortably on all chars in Dalaran, but if I set it to max, I can be in unpopulated areas and struggle to get 20. Make sure it is set to minimum on your slaves and that the shader setting is simple to ensure you are getting the most out of your setup.

Cheers

[heffner]

What's wrong with your current setup that you need to improve upon?

If it were me, I would just save for an entirely new system and buy it when I had enough cash. You might as well upgrade it all since the technology is constantly moving forward.

Then start 10 boxing :P