Mobo/cpu/ ram upgrade

[satsuma]

Thinking to upgrade but only want to spend as little as possible, mainly want to use the system for wow 20-man raiding without any lag

Any help would be really appreciated <3

[g8ina]

It would help if we knew the system as it stands

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What is the budget you have??

What is your existing CPU and GPU??

Are you running the game at 1080p??

[satsuma]

my system is pretty ancient, i have Intel Core i5 2500K, 4gb ddr3, GByte GA-P67A-UD4. I'm playing wow on medium to low settings and when things get hectic i drops quite a lot of fps

[Dashers]

What graphics card do you have? Frankly it's your graphics card that has the single biggest impact on gaming.

Your CPU is a few generations behind, but it's quad core 3.3GHz with turbo, which is plenty good enough for games. You can get a second hand GeForce 1060 6GB for less than £200 on ebay.

If you're on a budget, I would look at, probably in this order:

- Buying a second hand more powerful graphics card (directly boost fps).

- Buying a SSD if you don't already have one (should improve load times).

- Doubling your RAM capacity (iron out potential background paging problems).

All of these can be bought independently so you can do bit by bit as finances allow.

[RaTTuS]

I'd get more ram - your MB can go up to 32G https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer...91/32/302/2057 so max will be 4x8GB
then
new GPU - as much as you can afford
and win 10 64bit - new install on SSD

no need to change motherboard and CPU - it OK ....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

my system is pretty ancient, i have Intel Core i5 2500K, 4gb ddr3, GByte GA-P67A-UD4. I'm playing wow on medium to low settings and when things get hectic i drops quite a lot of fps

WoW is massively CPU limited during raids. It is also primarily limited by a single core too.



https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/a...06-png.104237/

So the first port of call,is to overclock that Core i5 2500K,and have at least 8GB of RAM in the system. In fact I would try and aim for 16GB.

Also,what graphics card do you have?? If its very old one and slow card a GTX1060 3GB would be a good start,as WoW still runs better on Nvidia cards overall,although newer AMD cards in DX12 are pretty solid.

If you don't want to overclock the CPU,I would look at the Core i3 8100 or Core i3 8350K,but only if the upgrade is for WoW.

[satsuma]

i infact have 8gb i put 4 by accident and my gfx is a amd HD6950 2gb

[satsuma]

i only seem to drop fps when there is a lot going on i.e lots of adds spawning so i thought it was my cpu but i can grab more ram

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm assuming you haven't told us what graphics card you have as you are using integrated graphics in the 2500?

8GB if RAM should be enough but you will struggle on 4GB, but you need some sort of graphics card.

[scaryjim]

i infact have 8gb i put 4 by accident and my gfx is a amd HD6950 2gb

I'm assuming you haven't told us what graphics card you have as you are using integrated graphics in the 2500?

8GB if RAM should be enough but you will struggle on 4GB, but you need some sort of graphics card.

The post with the GPU details got stuck in moderation - now released as above.

I suspect CAT's suggestion - to overclock the CPU - is a good one, and definitely worth trying before you spend lots of cash upgrading your PC. iirc Sandy Bridge had a good reputation for overclocking. You might want to invest in a good third party CPU cooler first.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

WoW is very CPU limited,so overclocking the CPU is a good start.

[satsuma]

Okay thanks for the help but i haven't overclocked anything before, is there a decent guide and/or software to help me do this?
I have a CORSAIR H50 cpu cooler, is that okay or should i invest in a better one?

[DanceswithUnix]

Just in case, is your internet connection up to 20 player raids? Networking can be a problem, I think *everyone* lags in Dalaran

The GPU does look like the weak spot, was trying to work out what the modern equivalent of your card is and got to about r7 260X or 265 (which isn't hard to get a step up from) but I need to get on my morning commute so I will have to save any further thoughts for later

[Bagnaj97]

I've not played for a couple of years now, but when I did damage meters caused a huge slowdown due to CPU usage, in particular Recount. Skada damage meter didn't have such a big performance hit and was pretty similar in functionality. If you're using recount, try disabling it to see if there's any improvement.

As others have said, WoW is largely CPU limited and not very multi-threaded, although your CPU isn't too bad. If you do upgrade your CPU, as Intel still has a slight lead over AMD in single threaded performance I'd recommend an Intel chip and if it's purely for WoW I'd pay more attention to clockspeed than number of cores. Avoid the Celerons, other than that the only "better" Intel chip I'd be wary of in your situation is the i5-8400 (i5-8600k is fine) because it's got low base clock speed, although in reality it would probably be fine due to turbo. I think for WoW the best bang/buck is probably going to be the i3-8350k, even if not overclocking, due to the 4.0GHz base clock.

On the GPU side, WoW specifically I'd be looking at an RX470/570 or GTX 1060 3GB as a minimum. Normally I'd avoid the GTX1060 3GB like the plague because I don't think 3GB is enough, particularly for newer titles, but for WoW it'll be fine. Historically WoW has run better on Nvidia cards, although that's not to say Radeons have run it badly. Now though there's a new DirectX 12 renderer that, for the time being, runs poorly on Nvidia, but you can still select DX11.

Looking at your current rig I'd upgrade your GPU to start with as your CPU isn't too bad. If you're still not happy with the performance then upgrade your CPU/motherboard/RAM and you've already got the GPU.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is the motherboard a P or Z board??

Here are some tips on overclocking Sandy Bridge CPUs:

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/th...uide.18227651/
https://www.overclock.net/forum/5-in...k-edition.html

Regarding GPUs,Nvidia is faster in DX11 than AMD is in DX12,but there is evidence to show,AMD seems to be less CPU limited than Nvidia as a result.

Edit!!

Some CPU benchmarks.

The first set are from the latest patch in the last few weeks and the second set are from April 2018.