Which component is holding me back more CPU OR GFX

[darkpaladin012]

Hi, I am not sure if this should be under CPU, graphics or games because it's a combination of all 3.

Anyways I built my own PC about 2 years ago it has a AMD Phenom II x4 965 black edition cpu (3.4ghz), 8GB ram, 750w psu ASUS m4A8TD PRO usb 3 mobo, a ATI radeon 6870 HD vapor x edition, Windows 7 64 bit.

here is some info that I'm not sure matters:
- Play World of warcraft
- Most of the settings are set to low cept view distance, shadow quality, environment detail are set to high (not ultra), and I used to get about 60fps before the last patch and now i get 25-30fps (but this is probably due to something caused by the game patch).
- when i stream in 1080p it drops the fps to about 15-25fps (in game frame drops are normal while recording)

What I want to know is what is holding me back more my CPU or graphic card?

I want to upgrade one of them but I only have enough money to get a 150-260$ card and it will be an ATI card or a new motherboard that supports the newer FX 6-8 core processors since I have one of the highest end cpu's for the time it was bought (2 years ago) and i cannot upgrade and keep the same mobo.

 

[payturr]

DUST YOUR COMPONENTS MAN. Your GFX card & CPU heatsink is probably caked in it, go buy compressed air, rip it apart, dust it out.

 

[darkpaladin012]

I dust out my PC once a month and it's fairly clean inside. The fps drop i think is due to some bad coding of the new patch since most players that i know had a massive fps drop post patch.

What I wanted to know though is which component would be better to upgrade for better streaming/recording my CPU or GFX card with the fact I will not throw out $500 for a new GFX card, there are some decent upgrades for $250 range. Also the new FX 6-8 core CPU's only cost between $100-150 plus the mobo to go with it would be another $100-150 all of the other existing components are compatible and do not need replaced.

 

[payturr]

Your CPU is fine then IMO, you probably should just overclock it if anything because it'll still be good for about 2 more years, and if your motherboard supports relatively new cards, you may want to put in a 7870 GHz edition. You don't have to upgrade everything my friend.

 

[miggtt699]

If you can, run a fraps benchmark on WOW, then overclock the processor just about 200mhz if you can, bench it again, if you get any FPS improvements, you might be hitting a CPU bottleneck. You can still keep that CPU, as it is one of the best PriceXPerformance CPU's out there, and it's a black edition CPU, it's OC ready. Try to get the most out of it while you can, then if you wan't to upgrade, and want to go AMD, get the FX-8350 or the FX-6300, both are great CPU's under 200$(?) (I'm living in portugal and my online local store sells them for about 179€).

 

[darkpaladin012]

If I manually OC it to 3.655 I get 1 fps average less (23.339), if I use the Turbo E V - turbo unlocker the fps average was almost exactly the same as non OC 24.106 non OC 24.107 OC'ed.

So I guess that means I should get a a better GFX card

 

[miggtt699]

If I manually OC it to 3.655 I get 1 fps average less (23.339), if I use the Turbo E V - turbo unlocker the fps average was almost exactly the same as non OC 24.106 non OC 24.107 OC'ed.

So I guess that means I should get a a better GFX card

6870 isn't that bad, is it? By the way another test to see if you're hitting a CPU bottleneck is turn down the resolution and see what fps's are you getting, if improved, might be a GPU bottleneck.

 

[popatim]

check your wow setting, the patch may have turned things on that were lowered or off.

For streaming its definitely your processor holding you back. Even with a dedicated capture card live streaming a game hits the cpu hard.

 

[darkpaladin012]

6870 isn't that bad, is it? By the way another test to see if you're hitting a CPU bottleneck is turn down the resolution and see what fps's are you getting, if improved, might be a GPU bottleneck.

It was one of the top 4 cards 2 years ago, now there's about 41 high end cards that are better than it.

If I turn all of my settings to the lowest i definitely get a higher frame rate by between 10-40 while streaming/recording depending on the location.

When streaming/recording as i mentioned with settings turned low I dont get higher frames by overclocking but I do get slightly higher frames when i OC while not recording.

So I think i may end up getting a 7870 or 7880.



As for the comment about the wow frames randomly dropping, no I would run wow at ultra before and after all settings were turned up/on it was definitely an issue on their end especially since everyone was experiencing it and it only occurred when outside in a specific zone with a certain types of clouds in the sky.

Also I use xsplit not fraps or a capture card and you can change the settings to give your cpu a lighter load while still maintaining decent to good quality, though i dont know the specifics on what it changes when you do that. So it isnt very hard on my CPU unless i turn the video encoding preset up higher.

 

[ssmokeyy]

If i were u i would try a gtx 660 ti first than motherboard cpu upgrade. I used to raid in top tier guilds and always used gtx cards never had problems but friends always had slow down when they had there ati cards. my wife still plays and she been using a asus laptop with core i7 with gtx 560 and gets around 45 to 60 fps in raid. Just something to think about.

 

[THSNOTLEK]

Also make sure limit fps isn't on in fraps. If you have it set to 30 than it will try to stay at 30. In movies under Video Capture settings. Set to a really high one.