Upgrades for a MMORPG?

[Ulti]

I currently play an MMORPG (Vindictus) and find that I'm lagging a bit and so I wanted to ask what would be an upgrade.

Here are my current specs incase you can't see on the left:

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1240L v3 2.0Ghz (3.0Ghz Turbo) - Similar to a low clocked i7-4770 from what I know.
RAM: Samsung Green 16GB
Storage: Samsung 830 256GB SSD x2
Graphics card: MSI Gaming GTX 960 2GB
Resolution: 2560x1440

I mainly find that just running Vindictus + Chrome and a Skype call in the background doesn't really have any issues apart from when I host but I find that when I run an additional client of said game in VMware to just stand in town crafting whilst I do raids on the main client, I end up lagging. When I say lagging, I mean my average fps drops to around 30-40fps and also sometimes the cursor/keyboard is actually somewhat unresponsive. I used to have an i5-4570 before upgrading to the Xeon E3-1240L and the system would actually completely freeze for a bit and I thought the Xeon would completely solve it but unfortunately, it hasn't done so.

Here is a screenshot of the load on my PC when doing a dungeon with only 1 client and said background processes:


Here is a screenshot of the load on my PC when doing the same dungeon with the extra client and same background processes:


GPU usage seems to stay roughly the same at around 70-80% load mostly but CPU usage shoots right up to 100% on all threads.

Now my main thought is that I should upgrade to an i7-4790k and try to overclock it as it is basically the same CPU but if it runs at 4.0 Ghz stock and 4.5Ghz turbo out of the box that's already a doubling in stock clock speed and 50% increase in turbo clock speed which could give a performance difference? Is my line of thinking that same CPU but with clock speed increase should yield tangible performance benefits correct? On the other hand, if it's effectively the same CPU with the same number of cores and threads, will simply increasing the speed in this case here actually give me better performance?

Alternatively I could upgrade to a GTX 970 to make my system more balanced but MSI Afterburner indicates that it's only using 70-80% on load and VRAM usage is only 1-1.2GB on load despite gaming on 2560x1440. However, the GTX 970 is between 40-50% faster on most benchmarks.

What would yield a bigger performance increase?

[Bonebreaker777]

If the system shows 100% utilization on the CPU but 70-80% on the GPU, I would say the CPU could be the bottleneck. Or rather sloppy optimization of the game itself?

[Bonebreaker777]

Duplicate post. Sorry!

[Ulti]

If the system shows 100% utilization on the CPU but 70-80% on the GPU, I would say the CPU could be the bottleneck. Or rather sloppy optimization of the game itself?

Yep, MMORPGs are renowned for having sloppy optimisation hence I'm not sure if upgrading the CPU for the faster clock speeds would make a noticeable difference.

[Domestic_Ginger]

If you wanted to check; disable the boost and see how badly it runs?

Everything points to the cpu being the problem.

[EndlessWaves]

Those turbo figures you're quoting are single core turbo which won't be active here. Four core turbo is 2.6Ghz on a E3-1240Lv3 and 4.2Ghz on an i7-4790K.

I don't know if this would be a use that would benefit more from the Crystalwell cache on the Broadwell chips though, the i5-5675C and i7-5775C. In some games the i5-5675C outperforms the i7-4790K.

Have you looked at the price of 8 core Xeons?

If the first picture is the CPU load of only the game then it does look pretty well multi-threaded.

What does the (overall) memory committed read?

[Ulti]

If you wanted to check; disable the boost and see how badly it runs?

Everything points to the cpu being the problem.

That's a good idea. Although if it was only turboing at 2.6Ghz then the difference between 2.0Ghz and 2.6Ghz might not be easy to tell. I just want someone to reassure me with a similar that they may have gone through.

Those turbo figures you're quoting are single core turbo which won't be active here. Four core turbo is 2.6Ghz on a E3-1240Lv3 and 4.2Ghz on an i7-4790K.

I don't know if this would be a use that would benefit more from the Crystalwell cache on the Broadwell chips though, the i5-5675C and i7-5775C. In some games the i5-5675C outperforms the i7-4790K.

Have you looked at the price of 8 core Xeons?

If the first picture is the CPU load of only the game then it does look pretty well multi-threaded.

What does the (overall) memory committed read?

4.2Ghz up from 2.6Ghz is still a very sizable jump.

Rather interesting that the i5-5675C is priced very similarly to the i7-4790K and offers similar performance but without the HT. I think I would rather stick to the i7-4790K though as I don't really play any new games and I'm assuming it's mainly the new games that will benefit from the Broadwell chips, and not the older games.

8 core Xeons I believe are out of my price range so it's not really an option.

I am rather surprised that it the game seems to be multi-threaded well, however this is whilst I am running Windows 10 with a temporary fix for the game as it's not working properly. I'll do some tests tomorrow when I install Windows 8.1 again as the restore to Windows 8.1 feature doesn't seem to be working even though I didn't touch the Windows.old folder. That's another story though that I won't bother telling.

The memory use in Task Manager shows as the game using 1.1GB of RAM which doesn't sound like a lot at all. I will have to do further tests tomorrow I guess.

[Domestic_Ginger]

Another issue could be connection speed. Can't really offer anything except thinking out of the box

[shaithis]

Can you limit performance in the game client?

If so, the virtual-hosted session for crafting, I would drop the max fps or some settings you know hits the CPU hard.


The other choices are to live with it or get a 6/8 core x99 system (although your wallet may winch at that thought)

[Mister]

I would say most of it is down to poor optimization or the game, like most MMO. The only one I've played that did a good job on that front was Elder Scrolls Online (a very good game now, it's amazing how much they have turned it around since release).

Also, Xeons are not the best choice for gaming and your only wasting money using them for that. They are meant for servers really.

[Ulti]

Another issue could be connection speed. Can't really offer anything except thinking out of the box

My internet connection shouldn't be an issue as I'm getting 60/20 down/up and less than 10ms latency.

Can you limit performance in the game client?

If so, the virtual-hosted session for crafting, I would drop the max fps or some settings you know hits the CPU hard.

The other choices are to live with it or get a 6/8 core x99 system (although your wallet may winch at that thought)

I've got most of the settings on the vm client on low already bar the resolution. I did a few tests and it seems like CPU speed plays a big factor.

6/8 core x99 system will not be worth it for me as I'm not such a hardcore gamer.

I would say most of it is down to poor optimization or the game, like most MMO. The only one I've played that did a good job on that front was Elder Scrolls Online (a very good game now, it's amazing how much they have turned it around since release).

Also, Xeons are not the best choice for gaming and your only wasting money using them for that. They are meant for servers really.

Most of the recent Xeons on socket 1150 have just been rebadges of the equivalent core i5/i7 line without the iGPU and with a lower clock speed so I figured it would be fine here as I thought it was the cores/threads I had that was limiting the performance.

Anyway the problem has been resolved now as I did a bit of research and here was what I found:

1. The load screenshots in the opening post were conducted in Windows 10 where I had to actually use a workaround to get the game to work. I realised this actually caused much higher CPU usage than normal as it involved running an extra program in the background which was normally not utilised.

2. I did a fresh install of Windows 8.1 and found that the game actually uses only 1-2 cores/thread, not multithreaded at all as I previously thought. VMware does use the 8 threads very well though. Guess I'll be sticking with Windows 8.1 for a while longer as I'm actually one of the few that liked it over Windows 7 and, subsequently, Windows 10.

3. I did some tests with the CPU limited to 2ghz (multiplier of 20) versus 3ghz (locked multiplier of 30). I don't understand how this board manages to force a 30x multiplier on a none K series CPU but CPU-Z and Core Temp agree that the CPU was running at 2ghz and 3ghz respectively. When I hosted the latest 8 man raids my fps was around 20-30 fps on 2ghz and 30-40 fps on 3ghz. This suggests that speed of the CPU does make a significant difference. I wish I still had my Pentium G3258 lying around so I would be able to test things a bit further.

I have decided to go for the i7 4790K though when I see it hit below £200 again as I believe it should give me a performance boost.

Part of me does wonder if the i5 4670K would be enough to cope with my usage though if I overclocked it enough (in theory, the game won't utilise more than 2 cores and probably wouldn't utilise the full 100% of the 2 cores, leaving 2 and a bit of extra cores to cope with the VM + Skype call) but I guess I'd rather just spend the bit extra and know I have the power rather than go through the hassle of reselling the i5 if it didn't perform to my liking.

Thanks for the help everyone!