PC help so i can play Shadowlands

Games, Gaming & Hardware
#1

Hi there folks,just bought Shadowlands and resubbed to give the expansion a try.

These are the specs for my PC:

Processor:Intel(R) Core™ i3-9100F CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz|
Installed RAM:16.0 GB
System type:64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Graphic Card:NVIDIA GeForce GT 710

Now the time i played BFA i didn’t have any problems,i mean i didn’t run in ultra settings but it was good enough for me.

Now with Shadowlands there is clearly some shuttering,laggy with some delay.
Happens mostly in towns or when doing a raid like open world boss.

I am computer tech illiterate but from what i have read around using google it could be the graphics card.

I’m really on a tight budget so if i had to get a new graphic card i could spend 120 euros or maybe 150 euros top,can’t go above that.

Would really appreciate some help on this matter.

Thanks and have a nice day :slight_smile:

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#2

For that cpu, you’re looking at various options here in just graphics card. Please be advised that this is best for 1080p gaming and only entry level for 1440p.

The cards are:

Geforce GTX 980 TI
Geforce GTX 1070
Geforce GTX 1650 or 1660 TI

The 1660 is out of your price range though, cheapest I could find was £289.99

Same for 1070…

There’s a GTX 1050 TI for £140

Right now though, GPU prices are just insane so if you can look for 1060, 1070 and 1650, 1660 and see if there is a cheap second hand, doubtful. May have to save up more at this on going time for a card.

The closest to your budget but still over is a AMD RX 570 card.

But again, you have to look at various stores in your country to find the best price and if they have any of the above in stock but that is what you should be looking for around your price range. The 570 though only has 4gb vram but it’s the closest to your budget but still £160 here in UK at least. It would be best for a 580 or 590 for AMD and a 1070 or 1650/1660 for nvidia but definitely guessing you need to save up more beforehand.

2 Likes
#3

First of all thanks for taking the time to reply,when it comes to the tech side i am really in the dark.

Luck has it i got a translating job for this week so i can probably spend about 200 euros or so on the graphic card.

When it comes to graphic cards and processor could i get first the graphic card and then maybe in a month or so get a new processor?
I mean when it comes to choosing a graphics card do i need to keep in mind my current cpu or can i get a graphic card that will work both with my soon to be graphic card and my future cpu upgrade?

Thanks in advance for the help,it’s killing me not being able to tank dungeons at the moment…last run was awful,sooo much lag and shuttering.
Outside for solo questing it’s ok,world bosses also doable if there isn’t to many people but yeah dungeons and raids out of the question.

cheers

#4

Ones I mentioned as in GTX 1070, GTX 1080 and GTX 1650/1660 will be fine for 1080p with processor and mid for 1440p.

Moving to a i5 if your motherboard supports it could help a lot as well. i3 is sort of for basic stuff, word processing and business things. Maybe something to look into at a later date and upgrade it to an i5 9th gen which will suit better for gaming. So an i5-9400f or if you can find a cheap one i5-9600 should help a bit.

The GTX 1070 or 1080 will be enough I think to push things a bit more, do that first and if not then look at a faster 9th gen cpu to upgrade. Most is still look about and keep an eye if any good deals come about however.

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#5

Just want to comment the GPU Hoisho mentioned

I have a GTX 980, it does the job quite well.
Card is outdated but still serves its purpose.
So a GTX 1080 would not disappoint you

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#6

Hi there…First things first,no hate for the Nvidia team…Good GPUs,they do overcome the ATIs but basically double the price for about 10% performance…
Now…let’s take things 1 at the time…

  1. WoW is actually CPU intensive. A high core count CPU will not help…you want a high burst/low core count CPU …now what this means?Well…as an example…a 2 core 5 Giga hertz CPU will perform a lot better in this particular application than a lets say 10 core CPU @ 1 Gica hertz …(ofc this is just an example,these CPUs don’t acually exist,it is a question of “How much VS how fast”…if u want a bunch of apps running in the background while you are playing wow,then unfortunately you must change the CPU…but if you are a regular user that has WoW open,discord and maybe let’s say a Youtube page for music,you’r CPU is more than capable to eat all of that for breakfast)…As a last idea @ point 1 …Intel CPUs are known to “turbo boost” pretty hard and you have an high end class i3 so it will boost comfortably around 4 giga hertz and upwords …Intel advertise it @ 4,2 Giga hertz /core stable with stock cooling…this is MORE what enough for casual WoW + a few apps running in the background…you are good with that CPU
  2. RAM…16 gigs is more than enough…Intel is knowd to be very comfortable with a lot of ram @ low frequencies…in this case i assume this is the case…but ,again,you are safe,Intel likes a lot of ram, the actual frequency of the RAM dose not matter much for Intel (is a different cookie for AMDs,but that is a story for another time)…Verdict : 16 GB RAM paired with an Intel just works…
  3. GPU…NVIDIA GT 710…now this may be a tricky one…the GT 710 was not half bad…it was some will say “Good”…but it may not be a GT 710…you have a fairly new CPU …so I will like to assume that you spiked a bit and you cheaped out on the GPU and probably is a Chinese knockoff of some sort…I recommend install gpu-z program and post what it will say…
    before you jump in to buying a new GPU…
    You don’t need it IF it is a genuine Nvidia GT 710 with your setup…
    You are talking about BfA working fine but now it skips a bit…Please allow me to recommend 2 simple options…
    1)Check if V-sync is on or off in WoW’s settings…if it’s “off” set it to “On”
  4. ask a friend to change the thermal paste of your CPU…it should be a 20 mins job not worth more than 20 euros…Intel’s have a “bad practice” of boosting they’r silicons (The CPU) pretty high and they very hot because of that there for cooling Intel’s is a bit of an issue…
    As a last advice…this dose not make or break the issue above…but…what kind of hard drive you have?is it an old “spiny 7200 RMP bulky western digital” stuff? If so…that dose create some issues…mostly with loading times…but if this is the case,if you have one of them very old hard drives,then there is a problem with the shaders between the GPU’s Vram and the long access times between GPU and Hard drive…
    Hope this helps…please feel free to ask more questions but if you are on a limited budget,don’t jump in to buying a new GPU just for WoW…WoW basically dosn’t use the GPU at all…
    Yours,
    S.
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#7

The game uses up to 4 cores with minor scaling above that. Note that OS and other apps can use extra cores while the game is running. And usually highest tier Ryzens and Intels aside of high core count also have highest clocks and cache which does play a role. Also frequency is not enough to describe a CPU - you need IPC as well.

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#8

Yes…you are correct but the key is in your statement “Up to 4 cores”…and …Basically is 1 core multi threading…high core count silicons do more or less nothing for games because the gaming code atm is not optimized for true multicore …It dose not do 1 instruction/cycle/core…but as you said and I was saying…if he or she has like 2 browsers with 14312531631 tabs open,some Photoshop rendering something in the background,folding proteins ,or running some AI Sim then he;s poor i3 will melt ,throttle,laak lvl4 caches,the BUS will be flooded,the Mobo’s north bridge will be so hot you can fry an egg on it,the nonECC rams will blue screen and so on and so forward…but I’m VERY sure this is not the case…there for that i3 9x is more than capable…
Yours,
S.

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#9

No, the game uses up to 4 physical cores. 2C/4T will be slower than 4/4 and that will be pretty much identical to 4/8.

There is no north bridge any more. Nor does your rambling brings any value. Quad core i3 will be inferior in all possible aspects. It will be enough to run the game but barely - any addon or bigger battle and there can be a severe FPS loss (GT 710 would be the bigger limiting factor).

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#10

he has V-sync off ffs …that is he;s problem…it worked in BfA now it dose not…prob Blizz turned V-Sync off by default with the updates and now he is not losing FPS,they are not synced with he’s crappy 60 Hertz monitor…
second of all I have a crosshair VII and fml it dose have that crappy ICU that manages the crap…but hey…now is a lil bit below the CPU so I just google it…is the south bridge nowadays…
Mea culpa…i’ll go kill myself

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#11

Hiya folks sorry for the late reply.
Pops back in the hospital and i just brought him home yesterday so i haven’t been around here.

So i talked today to my guy at the computer shop and in 2 or 3 days when i get paid i will be getting this:

Gigabyte Intel B660M DS3H AX DDR4 PCIe 4.0 mATX
Intel Core i5-12400f
New SSD my current one is only 250gig so I’ll be getting a 1tb

Apart from that also getting a bigger power supply,current one is a bit lacking so that, mounting expenses and a new fan and I’m out of dough until next month.

Will get all that installed first then next month the GPU,depending on how many translating gigs i will be able to afford one GPU or maybe a pricier one,it all depends.

In the worst case i got less than 300 euros to spend on a GPU,in case i get a lot of work i can go up to 350/380 or so.

Well anyway,thanks for all the replies folks,have a nice day :slight_smile:

#12

Sounds good.

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#13

OP, DO NOT SPEND ANY MONEY ON A NEW COMPUTER.

Your GPU is significantly weaker than your CPU and that is why you are getting low FPS. THERE IS NO NEED TO BUY AN ENTIRE NEW PC.
Please do the below and report your findings to avoid wasting money unnecessarily.

  1. Download HWMonitor. This will allow us to check the weakest link in your PC. Use this link https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
  2. Open up HWMonitor and look for the headings for your CPU and GPU. Under those headings you will find a stat for “Utilization” and a percentage. Remember those rows for the GPU and CPU.
  3. Start up WOW and run around for a few seconds, maybe do a WQ, until the stuttering occurs.
  4. Go back to HWMonitor and look at the percentages. Come back here and tell us the CPU and GPU Utilization percentages.

Your GPU is extremely weak so from what I suspect your GPU % will be 100% and your CPU % will be around 30% most likely. You could probably resolve this problem by simply buying a new GPU without buying a whole new PC.
If you want a recommendation for a GPU please give your budget and your country as prices differ between countries. A 9100F is definitely enough to play WoW on Ultra so you only need a new GPU.

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#14

i3-9100F is a 4-core CPU. Even in BfA for a 4/4 CPU the game could generate close to 100% all core load. And that’s without any addons and extra apps working.

Upgrading to at minimum 6/6 9400F would help, but still if he wants much better performance (like in combat) then a higher tier CPU + modern GPU is needed. Depends on what he want and if he has some non standard prebuild upgrades may be limited (and it looks like he isn’t savy enough to do them on his own).

9400F core scaling in WoW:

https://rk.edu.pl/en/analyzing-world-warcraft-multi-core-scaling/

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#15

Thanks for the heads up.

Although i already have the cash,well most of it…end of this month i will get the rest i need for the GPU and then it’s time to get it all installed.

If i were strapped for cash i would move around the list a bit but since i already have the money i might as well get almost all of my pc upgraded.

With the components i have in my list i should be able to be good for gaming for the next few years,even the next upcoming WoW expansion.

Thanks anyway for the post :slight_smile:

#16

With the GPU dont go lower than RTX 3060 or RX 6600 XT and it should last a while :wink:

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#17

With my budget I’ll be able to get a GTX 1660 or RTX 3060,all depends what offers i can find at the end of month.

The wait is insufferable thou,oh well just gotta make it thru this month then I’m all set.

cheers

#18

Be patient with the GPU. If you rush it and buy a lower tier it will bite you back :wink:

RTX cards are now “restocked” and prices are going down. The same for AMD. RX 6600 XT is on similar level as 3060. By the end of month/next month there will be a new batch of hardware launches (mostly laptops) and some Radeon refresh as well so there is a chance existing card will go down in price even more.

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#19

Roger that bud,thanks for the heads up :slight_smile:

#20

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