WoW at 1440p and medium graphics. Hardware?

Community General Discussion
#13

GTX 970 has limited VRAM and you may hit that limit. The 6GB GTX 1060 or 8GB RX 580/480 are much better options and are younger meaning the electronics is less likely to die from age. And as others mentioned avoid 3GB GTX 1060 due to VRAM but also due to lower performance.

Looking on Polish allegro on buy-now offers there is few 1060 6GB from 130 EUR. There is a lot of 8GB RX 480/580 starting from 90 EUR (and 3,5GB GTX 970 are bit higher while being inferior). Bid auctions (like on ebay too) could yield lower prices if lucky - and the only way to fit GTX 1070 or Vega 56 in your budget.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1780-geforce-1060-vs-radeon-580-vs-radeon-570/

It all comes down to price. The difference for non-high-end setup will be small. And WoW scales nicely among at least few cores. The game doesn’t have any obsession with single threaded that much and the OP is on a tight budget so GPU would be the element to focus.

Some of my benchmarks: https://rk.edu.pl/en/benchmarking-and-analyzing-world-warcraft-performance/

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#15

AMD RX 570 should go for that price, even less, and is a more modern choice

#16

RX580/480 second hand start at around 90+ EUR.

#17

Nice, I wasn’t very up to date on the prices I guess. Although it might also depend on the location

#18

WoW scales very little with cores, more than 4 won’t give you any big improvements to FPS unlike some modern game engines which require 6-8 to run optimally.
Also WoW does scale VERY well with higher IPC (singlethreading, clockspeeds etc).
The 3000 Ryzen series has a big improvement in IPC over the 2000 series.
Buying a 2nd gen Ryzen for WoW now instead of going for a 3rd gen would be a decision the op would regret soon.

About your benchmarks, the CPUs you tested all have very low singlethreading performance.
Also you did not test any 2nd or 3rd gen Ryzen for comparison, neither any current Intels.
My old I5-3570K has about the same performance as the fastest CPU in your benchmark, if not a little higher.
Now i can tell you that my 3900x which i got like a week ago has doubled my framerate.
The 3600 i recommended will be almost the same in WoW performance wise.

EDIT: did a quick search and found a benchmark with the 2600 vs 3600 in games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpUSSXDAsmY
You can see the difference can be quite big, especially in cpu-limited games with an old engine like counterstrike (mostly singlethreaded like WoW).

#19

4 is more than one and it’s a much simpler game so doesn’t need to use 6 or 8 cores.

Doubt it. It would have to be a perfect scenario of not being GPU, bandwidth, network and WoW server limited. So you go to some secluded old zone where there is no one else and maybe there you could see CPU effect on the FPS which would be 200+ if not more. In more realistic scenarios there is way more performance bottlenecks this game can show. Even top of the line systems can show odd performance problems, quite often after a new major patch :wink:

Good but not groundbreaking. The 2000 series are still here and are heavily discounted. If the OP is on a tight budget picking double-discounted XMass Ryzen 2000 could be much better value (where as juicy 3000 chips will likely keep high price due to demand and XMass sales). If the price isn’t critical then yes 3000 would be a good choice but it won’t make or break the PC.

Some are still using Sandy Bridge CPUs and don’t feel the need to change. It’s all about how much you want to spend and how often.

Define “very low” as IMHO you are exaggerating by a lot. All of Ryzens have modern single threaded performance: https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-7-2700x-review,9.html which in conjunction with low requirements of WoW allows people to play with lower tier hardware. Most popular steam GPU is still GTX 1060 and so forth.

The more budget you have the more expensive parts you can buy. The question is does 3600 is still within budget of the OP alongside acceptable GPU? Also did you measured your framerates in different scenarios, 1% lows etc?

The question still stands. Is upgrading from 120 FPS to 140 FPS worth the extra cash and do OP has it? What if OP has a 60 Hz display and will cap WoW at 60 FPS anyway? What if that 20 FPS upgrade requires much better GPU than the OP will have?

Also do note that in 2020 we will get Ryzen 4000 with yet another improvement. You would have to upgrade your PC yearly to stay at the “top”.

#20

Like i mentioned above already, i come from an ivy bridge CPU.
I really did feel the need to upgrade for better FPS in raids and in general.
It’s not that it was unplayable, but in 30man heroic raids my FPS were way too low to perform at 100% (drops to about 20 FPS).
Even with 20man in mythic, there are some bosses where i had drops to 30ish (Azshara e.g.).
Now im getting ~60 there.
It makes a big difference, because WoW sub 45ish FPS feels like playing in slowmotion.

Low requirements for questing and such yes… but raiding and worldbosses is on another level.
The game is very cpu-limited in raids.

I have been playing and raiding progress in WoW with my I5-3570K since MOP, that’s 7 years.
So you would assume i know my FPS and can compare them to what i get now with the Ryzen 3900x.

We are not talking about 120 vs 140 in WoW.
More like 45 vs 60 in raids.

Ryzen 3600 is out now not in 2020 and it’s the best bang for the buck if you want to upgrade right now.

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#21

I would say the game is self limited wherever mass actions take place - wherever it’s mass players interactions or a raid pull where like many mobs cast at the same time. Move up to massive wPVP and the server crashes.

Assumption?. I had 60 FPS on 1080p with my old PC (R9 Fury and i5 6600) and the only time it had problems is mass small trash in Uldir casting at the same time. My current Vega 64 and TR 1920X easily handles WoW at 3440x1440 at mode 7.

In my local shop 3600 is 160% the price of 2600 new. It’s better but also costs more.

#22

You obviously don’t know what im talking about when i say WoW is primarily CPU limited.
Resolution does not matter for the CPU.
Also lowering the grfx settings will hardly improve your min FPS, if at all.
Remember, i am not talking about 60 FPS in LFR where half of the players are afk or pressing one button a minute.
I am talking about the real stress test in a 20/30/40 man raid with players who are actually playing their char properly and thus increasing the amount of entries in the combatlag drastically.

Even with the fastest gaming CPU (the 9900KS) you will not get 60 FPS all the time.

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#23

Can affirm this. There’s a lot of ignorance going around with WoW because of its engine. The DX 12 improvements of last year helped a bit but it’s still primarily two cores. It just made it so that your graphics card does a bit more of the work. As such WoW just likes high single-threaded clock speeds but even then at around 5 ghz you aren’t guaranteed not to have dips below 60 depending on where you are and your settings.

Oh, and WoW is also pretty unoptimized sometimes. Just look at Val’sharah.

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#24

Keep it real man!

Get a Ryzen 9 3950X Threadripper - MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE motherboard - 128 Gigs of 4000MhZ DDR4 - NviDia TITAN RTX! - 4 TB SSD M2 with 3500MB/s Read and write - 1600w PSU - Schould keep it on Medium settings (the next 10 years)

Everything else you get is JUST A TOY!

#25

I concur on that joke with everything but this. Threadrippers aren’t exactly for gaming. They’ll do I suppose but their main purpose is content creation and the like. :stuck_out_tongue:

#26

I would advise you get way more informed before buying stuff, because if you are seriously considering to get a 900 series card, you clearly need to get some information, because that is no good.

#27

It’s not a threadripper, it’s basically the transition between customer high end and threadripper.

It’s on par or slightly better than the 3900x for gaming, but way better for content creation, but not quite as good as the threadripper, which is also excellent for gaming, and can actually beat the 3950x in some cases.

#28

Most mmos are cpu bound in some way.

And some games especially scale better with single core performance in general, but it’s not because they are just like that, but more because devs need to actually learn how to code for multithreaded programs better.

They are gonna need to do it anyway.

There is an article called.

Why Johnny Can’t Write Multithreaded Programs if you are interested.

Especially considering that this is an old game with an old engine, so this argument applies even more, since when this game was created multiple core cpus weren’t really a thing.

#29

I am very sorry for this late response and very thankful for the answers ive got so far.

A friend of mine will give me a GTX 1060 for free, and I will buy a AMD 3600, 3200 (or more) MHz memory and a motherboard. :slight_smile:

Im gonna play on a 1440p and 144hz.

#30

Don;t cheap out too much on the motherboard and especially power supply.

Never buy a bad power supply.

#31

Nonsense, I use a 970 for WoW and have done so since I bought it, and it runs just fine on both a 4K and 1440 ultrawide monitor at settings 7 toned down on raid settings. Only real slowdown comes with fog effects. But then I dont need 120-140 fps and chuckle at those that claim its a necessity for WoW. If I had limited funds and needed a cheap card just to get by with as a temporary measure, a 2nd hand 970 will certainly do the job.

There’s a whole world of difference to what some people think you need, and what you really need, to play WoW at an acceptable level.

#32

Lol, please.

A single 970 can barely stay above 40 fps maybe at 1440p, don’t bs me, in older games it can get to maybe 60 fps, if you turn down the graphics, but wow isn’t really a great game for graphics, it doesn’t run so well.

And we are not even talking about memory limitations.

The only person saying nonsense here is you.

120 hertz no f way.

You are either lying about your settings, or lying about what card you have.

Whta you said is directly disproven by benchmarks, everyone can do a google search. And even then, even with the lowest settings you cannot get 120 hertz at 1440p with a 970.

And even then, even if all of that was not true, there are still better deals, than a used 970 on the market, so don’t even bother.

#33

Go back and read my post…very…very…very…very…slowly. Google is your friend for any words with more than 2 syllables you don’t understand. The only one throwing BS around here is you as I make no mention of me running this game at 120htz on my 970; why would I when the 2 monitors I have are 60 and 75htz.

I can quite happily play this game at 4k and currently 1440 ultrawide, with a 970. I know this because I do it every day. You are aware you can play games, especially this one, perfectly fine at 40-60fps aren’t you?

As I stated before, if someone was on a tight budget and one was available at a good cheap price, it’s more than capable of getting the job done.

So whay we’ve learnt here is that you really should learn to read before running your chops off and then accusing people of lying :bellhop_bell::end: