ATI 5850 with World of Warcraft

[Dark Comet]

I'm about to order a ATI 5850 and have noticed issues with the ATI card with this game. Since I spend alot of time on this game I would like to know if this is rare or common. I know I won't get better FPS then my old 8800 GTS with this game, I'd just like to get the same. So does anyone here play WOW and have a 5850 or 5870. Does it run ok for you?

 

[Lmeow]

It's probably driver-related. I don't play WoW, but I hear problems regarding low FPS in the area 'Dalaran' and during 'raids' (no idea what they are, lol...). Apparently this is because of the masses of people in a small area, and this causes massive internet lag, and that would probably be the cause of your low FPS - probably also on the CPU, as it has to process all the players and the area at the same time I'm supposing.

 

[4745454b]

What issues are you referring to? WoW was one of the first games AMD demo'd Eyefinity on, so I doubt there should be any issues. There is the gray screen issue, but AMD claims they have fixed that with the latest drivers.

Assuming you have a good enough system and monitor, you should see a good boost going with the 5850. It has the speed of the GTX285, which is much faster then your 8800GTS.

 

[Dark Comet]

My systems ok;
Q9450
4GB RAM
Asus Maximus formula MB
Vista X64
Monitor = 1680X1050, might use my 1080P TV as well.

The issues people were talking about were stuttering and FPS drops.

 

[dezze]

I play WoW, running it with an 4890 + PII X3 720 @ 3,4GHz without any problems. Of course there are FPS drops in Dalaran and during raids but that happens with any setup. Also don't expect to run with Shadows maxed out as that is just a very resource unfriendly setting (use 1 or 2 notches below max, almost same GFX quality with decent performance).

 

[Willakan]

WoW was created back in the day of fixed-function pipelines and single core CPUs. Despite a great deal of tweaking and outright replacement of a lot of the underlying engine, it is still not particularly well optimised for modern machines. When some people report Dalaran FPS are comparable to Crysis, you know something is wrong.

TL;DR version. Your new card should run WoW just fine, but don't expect miracles in Dalaran and similar situations. If it does have problems, know that Blizzard have suggested various tweaks to game config files that improve stability and performance on ATI cards.

 

[Dark Comet]

Well I had everything max with shadows full on my 8800 GTS 512 and got 60 FPS in normal zones, 40 - 60 FPS Northrend zones and about 15 - 25 in dalaran.

Maybe the new expansion coming (Q4?) out will help with performance.

 

[dezze]

Well yeah, I have higher FPS than that if I run with full shadows, but I rather have 60+ everywhere I go

It's just that in places where lots of things are happening at once -like the capital of WoW for now, more or less, it's hard for hardware to keep up. Aaaanyway nVidia and ATI cards both work fine in WoW without any trouble. Except for CrossFire, heard some people with 4870X2's having some issues. No idea about SLI though.

 

[museerouge]

World of Warcraft tech Charlesps stated in reply to the topic 'Did wow ever get crossfire support 02/10/2010' on the official WoW forums [http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23094310220&sid=1]

"Support? Yes, has been built in for a long time.

Game advantage from using it? depends. Only on lower end hardware or larger monitors.

The game relies more on the CPU than the GPU so advantages from running multiple video card sin crossfire or SLI will only occur under certain situations. The average user will not really see any difference."

 

[4745454b]

Thats true for nearly all games out right now. My single 8800GS can pretty much max out TF2 except for the AA. (I can't only get 2AA) And this at 1680x1050. Why do I need to run CF? At 2560x1600 or eyefinity setups would you need the extra power.

 

[Dark Comet]

Looking at the charts it seems that WOW FPS does increase with added new GPUs. I think the strain on the CPUs only really show when your in main cities otherwise GPU can make a big difference, although because most peoples FPS is capped at 60 (Average LCD refresh rate) its wasted power.