3+ year old system upgrade opinions

[MiRai]

With just the gpu and SSD upgrades what kind of results would you expect considering my other components. My goal is to five box and maybe be able to run something on another monitor like stream a movie or music etc etc.

You can get a rough estimate of this yourself by playing at your desired framerate, turning your video settings to their lowest setting, loading up anything else you expect to be doing, and then monitoring your CPU and GPU usage. Each time you kick up the settings a notch watch the load of each component and make a note on where it sits each time.

I say rough estimate because...

1) If you GPU bottlenecks before your CPU, then you don't exactly know where your CPU is going to bottleneck; but you should be able to guess by looking at how much each notch increased the load. I would assume that since the High and Ultra presets are pretty demanding while running multiple clients, that they may use up a little more CPU than Fair, Low, or Good.

2) Your GPU doesn't support DX11, so any DX11 results could possibly be skewed.

[sdleelee83]

Ok you all provided some great points. I'm going to go with an overclock on my CPU, the gtx 670 4gig, and an SSD. Starting from scratch this weekend. Do most of you all prefer using two installations of wow on the SSD or one per account? (i know its a software question I apologize)

[JohnGabriel]

Dont want to derail your thread much, but curious if one were to overclock should it be a water cooled system?

[MiRai]

Do most of you all prefer using two installations of wow on the SSD or one per account? (i know its a software question I apologize)

If you know it's kind of a software-specific question, then... What software do you plan on using? If you're using ISBoxer there's no need for multiple installations.

[sdleelee83]

Yes. I'm going to go with a self contained unit for just my CPU. Low maintenance, lower costs, and decent results.

Sorry but were asking about just overclocking in general or me personally?

[Ualaa]

There are plenty of air coolers that are fine to use.
Although in general, with a liquid cooler the system can be pushed further.

I'm using a Noctua NH-D14, which is an air based cooler.
It actually cools better than about half of the liquid cooling systems, from the benchmarks I checked out.
But any of the higher end liquid cooling systems would surpass that.

[sdleelee83]

Out of curiosity ualaa what do you keep on your SSD? Windows, and one or two wow installs?

[Ualaa]

Out of curiosity ualaa what do you keep on your SSD? Windows, and one or two wow installs?

I'm using a pair of OCZ Vertex 3, 120GB drives, striped into Raid 0.
I'm using 123GB of 212GB.

At the moment, I've got Windows and assorted system stuff.
Adobe, Cyberlink (Blu-Ray software), Firefox, iTunes (but the library is on a different drive), Java, Open Office, uTorrent, Ventrilo, Webroot (Anti-virus) and XSplit Broadcaster.

As far as games go: Diablo III, Everquest I and World of Warcraft.

[sdleelee83]

Thanks for the reply and I do plan on using IS boxer.

[sdleelee83]

Thanks again for the help everyone. OCZ vertex 3 is in the mail with a CPU cooler, and a SSD. Come in tomorrow. Ordered an evga gtx 670 4 gig and will be in Friday morning.