Is It Absolutely Necessary To Overclock For WOW?

[RC1981]

The only game I play is WoW and I'm in the middle of gluing together a new setup. I'm going with a GTX 570 gpu and am wondering about my cpu. I know WoW is more cpu intensive, but could I get away with an i3-3220 with this gpu and be ok? Or do I absolutely HAVE to get an i5 and overclock in order to get decent fps at high settings? I don't need to have Ultra, except for Particle Density. What kind of FPS could I expect under those circumstances?

 

[dscudella]

I played on my setup (sig) on Ultra at 1920x1080 and got 60fps solid while questing and running 5 mans. In SW I dropped down to around 50fps. It's not that bad. Raiding 10/25 mans could be different.

 

[The Stealthinator]

You don't HAVE to OC your CPU as long as you have a good one. e.g. if you have an FX CPU, to get better performance you would have to because those models really suck. I don't know what FPS you could expect because I don't have that same build as you so I can't judge very well.

 

[RC1981]

Best answer selected by RC1981.

 

[RC1981]

I played on my setup (sig) on Ultra at 1920x1080 and got 60fps solid while questing and running 5 mans. In SW I dropped down to around 50fps. It's not that bad. Raiding 10/25 mans could be different.

Thanks dawg, looks like that's what I'm going to go with. Is that 6850 a good deal for a gpu and/or am I going overkill with the gtx 570?

 

[dscudella]

Thanks dawg, looks like that's what I'm going to go with. Is that 6850 a good deal for a gpu and/or am I going overkill with the gtx 570?

The GTX 570 stomps a mud hole in the 6850. If you've already got it keep it. The only thing the 6850 is better at is it uses less power (by almost half), is quieter & produces less heat...that's it.

 

[RC1981]

The GTX 570 stomps a mud hole in the 6850. If you've already got it keep it. The only thing the 6850 is better at is it uses less power (by almost half), is quieter & produces less heat...that's it.

I don't have it yet, I'm still shopping gpu's. I'm trying to squeeze my budget to the limit and slip a gtx 570 in there under $200. The only ones I've found are refurbished, which I'm kind of hesitant to buy actually because it's such a good card there must have been something really screwed up for someone to have returned it already.

Also I found a Zotac brand one, but it's so much cheaper than the rest I'm thinking there must be something wrong with it. But Zotac does come with a great warranty so if there's anything wrong then I can always take advantage of that.

I'm also mulling saving about $50 and going with a 7850, but according to everybody AMD fails at everything WoW, so I'm hesitant there too.

On top of all that the only benchmarks I can find for any cards with Mists of Pandaria are under an OC'ed i7, so I'm probably way overestimating what performance I'll be seeing. Why don't they ever make benchmarks for the kinds of budget systems that people actually buy? There's a lot more questions on here about i3's and i5's than about overclocked i7's.

 

[dscudella]

By using the i7 they remove any possibility of a CPU bottleneck so the numbers you get directly reflect the video card in the review. Take for instance Battlefield 3. A game that utilizes 4 cores. You would see a huge difference if they benchmarked it with say, an i3 instead of an i5 or i7.

As far as what video card to get, for $200 there's the 7850 2gb or the GTX 660 2gb or a new Zotac GTX 570 1280mb.

At $250 the only new card that becomes available is the PowerColor 7870 2gb or the GTX 660 Ti (after rebates)

Edit:

The GTX 570 is pretty much even with the 7850 where as the GTX 660 beats them both. At your price point ($200) I would go with the GTX 660.

 

[RC1981]

By using the i7 they remove any possibility of a CPU bottleneck so the numbers you get directly reflect the video card in the review. Take for instance Battlefield 3. A game that utilizes 4 cores. You would see a huge difference if they benchmarked it with say, an i3 instead of an i5 or i7.

As far as what video card to get, for $200 there's the 7850 2gb or the GTX 660 2gb or a new Zotac GTX 570 1280mb.

At $250 the only new card that becomes available is the PowerColor 7870 2gb or the GTX 660 Ti (after rebates)

Edit:

The GTX 570 is pretty much even with the 7850 where as the GTX 660 beats them both. At your price point ($200) I would go with the GTX 660.

Sounds like fun, but the benchmarks I've seen of these cards aren't going to be the performance I see because my cpu is different, and WoW is a particularly cpu heavy game, correct? I'm going to see far less performance out of mine I imagine, regardless of GPU. Is this right? If so, then I guess it would be worth the extra $30 or so to upgrade to an i5 and get a cheaper GPU like a 7770. Yay or nay?

 

[dscudella]

I've already shared my performance with you. Take what you want from it. Anyone of those video cards we've discussed would net you better performance than what I'm getting with my i3-2100 & Radeon 6850. The i3-3220 is faster than the 2100 anyways.

No way should you trade GPU performance for CPU performance. If you can afford both, get both. If you can only afford one, get the video card.

 

[DarkSable]

^99% of the time, I'd agree with that.

But here's the thing. If you're only using this computer for WoW, considering what you've already said, you'll be way happier with an i5 than an i3. WoW is not a graphically intensive game - my i5-3570k could run high settings with only a 9800GT as a holdover till I got my current card.

The i5 will also make non-gaming tasks faster.

 

[RC1981]

^99% of the time, I'd agree with that.

But here's the thing. If you're only using this computer for WoW, considering what you've already said, you'll be way happier with an i5 than an i3. WoW is not a graphically intensive game - my i5-3570k could run high settings with only a 9800GT as a holdover till I got my current card.

The i5 will also make non-gaming tasks faster.

All I do on the computer aside from play WoW is write my blog and watch YouTube. I use my Mac for all my audio production (which barely runs the Vanilla private server I play on sometimes at 1280x800 with really low settings). But on the other hand, I can do things that are illegal in most states to audio in Logic in a finger snap, which is really what I need it for, but that's different thread.

Also it might be worth noting that I don't ever plan to play at 1080p or above. The monitor I have my eye on maxes out at 1366x768, not sure if that has anything to do with. So i3-3220 + 7770 at that rez is ok? Or should I go with the i5 if I want to save on the gpu and go with a better gpu if I take a crummier processor like the i3? I'm not looking to treat the game with kid gloves, I want decent fps with ultra view distance, ultra environment detail, and ultra particle density. The shadows, sunshafts, water textures, etc don't matter to me, I'll probably just turn them off anyway, and the same with AA. I don't even know what it does and don't notice any difference when it's turned on, so I just leave it off.

 

[dscudella]

Ouch, CRUMMY? That one hurt a little. At that resolution the 7770 will hold up like a dream. If you want to get the i5 & 7770 then maybe upgrade the video card next year once the new line ups drop (if you're not happy with it's performance) that would be a wise decision.

 

[RC1981]

Ouch, CRUMMY? That one hurt a little. At that resolution the 7770 will hold up like a dream. If you want to get the i5 & 7770 then maybe upgrade the video card next year once the new line ups drop (if you're not happy with it's performance) that would be a wise decision.

LOL ok so not crummy

Although I have set up a more detailed thread on MMO-Champion which is a bit more WoW specific so I got into more detail about the actual settings I want out of the game:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1238528-Build-For-Mists-With-Specific-Circumstances-Need-Some-Advice

thanks for all your help

 

[Guest]

WoW isn't that CPU intensive. I've been playing since WotLK and I went from a PII 720 (tri-core) to a Q8200 to a i5 750 then to a 1055T and now a i3 2100. Never really had a problem with it as far as CPU is concerned. When they switched to DX11 in cataclysm I had to upgrade my video card (regrettably I chose a 5850, and I didn't realize how much Blizzard skews their games towards Intel/Nvidia until then.) If you want a good graphics card you can get the 560 Ti 448 core FTW edition (which is about 5% slower than the 570) for $209 from newegg. I picked one up and I run WoW on Ultra everything and I game at 1440 x 900. Also your server choice has a lot do with FPS in those games (more pop= FPS can drop) so don't just think it's one thing or another. Long and short: Your good.

 

[RC1981]

Yea I hadn't really taken into consideration how much Blizzard loves Nvidia, but in the Benchmarks for Mists the 7770 comes out on top in High Settings at 1920x1080, meaning it would probably do even better than that at 1366x768 or 1440x900 especially once I turned off all the stuff I don't really care about like sunshafts, shadows, and liquid textures.

Although it would be nice to just grab a higher card like the 560 ti or the 570 or even the 660 if I wanted to future proof it, it's just that those cards are really expensive for now, and I can always save up if I'm unsatisfied with my performance for something better. If I fail miserably at High settings, it's not really the end of the world for me to go down to Medium for a couple months while I'm waiting to get something better.

 

[dscudella]

If you're not looking to put that much cash into the upgrade then stick with the crummy i3-3220 and 7770 and just overclock the 7770. You're looking at ~$220 for both the CPU and GPU. The 7770 OC's very nicely and will net you an additional 2-3 FPS.

 

[sykozis]

Yea I hadn't really taken into consideration how much Blizzard loves Nvidia, but in the Benchmarks for Mists the 7770 comes out on top in High Settings at 1920x1080, meaning it would probably do even better than that at 1366x768 or 1440x900 especially once I turned off all the stuff I don't really care about like sunshafts, shadows, and liquid textures.

Although it would be nice to just grab a higher card like the 560 ti or the 570 or even the 660 if I wanted to future proof it, it's just that those cards are really expensive for now, and I can always save up if I'm unsatisfied with my performance for something better. If I fail miserably at High settings, it's not really the end of the world for me to go down to Medium for a couple months while I'm waiting to get something better.

Go with the i3 3220, but step up to at least a GTX660. Unless you're running in DX9, you'll see better performance from a faster graphics card.