Graphics Still playing wow.. 2560x1600

I'm still playing World of Warcraft....

About a year ago I went from my trusty 7800's to an 8800gt hoping I would get a boost in FPS at 2560x1600. I was and still am very disappointed that in Shattrath, Tempest Keep, Black Temple etc... that I'm getting around 9 to 20 fps

I've started dual and soon to be triple boxing on my second monitor, 1280x1024.

While dual boxing the 8800gt dosen't seem to suffer too much FPS, but its still very low.
(running each wow on separate cards doesn't help fps either, at least with 8800gt and a 7800gt)

My system specs are:
Opteron 170 @ 2.3ghz
SLI board, 8x going to each PCIE slot (board refuses to boot in single card 16x mode)
3gb ram
8800gt

My questions are....
Where is my slow point in my computer? Why am I still getting poor FPS after getting a 8800gt? What video card should I have? is it my processor thats slowing me down? if I had two matching video cards could I run wow through each and get decent fps when multi-boxing?

Thanks much

-EVRE-

 

Slow point?

"Opteron 170 @ 2.3ghz" Thats slow.

Playing at that rez needs a bit of horsepower.

Also various addons in wow nerf performance.

 

Yeah, you (like me) could do with a complete computer overhaul.

 

CPU Scaling With The Radeon HD 4870 X2
tested http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=770

lowley X2 dual cores not so hot there even at 3.2ghz (shame realy no point makeing gameing AMD pcs even the X4 did not do so well) still i use AMD for home pcs and MCE boxs (allso have the m3a32-delux for my server )

WOW is more CPU limited then GPU limited (think wow is allso single threded as well)

 

*sigh* My old Opty has served me well... guess its time to retire the old beast.

Thinking about this as an upgrade and see how the 8800gt takes to a new processor. It will also be fun to see how the 7800gt likes it too

ASUS M3A78-T AM2+/AM2 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $145
OCZ Vista Upgrade 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 $70
AMD Phenom 9850 BLACK EDITION 2.5GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core $170

(^^ AMD fanboy)

*edit* my sig is OLD!! and side note, opty pulls 20watts less power dropping that 100mhz, to 2.3ghz.. I thought that was huge.

 

Forget AMD tbh

Clock for clock the phenom is very similar to your current chip.

 

Moving to a new processor is not actually going to make a huge difference. What kind of frame rates are you getting most of the time?

 

Actually with WoW new processor/mobo/mem combo will do a lot, I recently (and finally) upgraded from my old AMD64 to an Intel Q6600 and my framerates more than doubled. For the first time ever I can ramp everything up settings wise at 1920x1200 and Shattrath now has 50-60 fps as opposed to 10-25 before.

I consider WoW to be more of the retard of the MMOs only because of the way it was written, entirely too much is done on the CPU.

 

Yes, but WoW isn't intensive at all. His setup should be able to handle WoW at that resolution, IIRC.

 

Oh yah, it's not intensive at all, until you start running 2 copies at once on the same windows machine. Surprisingly running 2 copies at the same time on my hackintosh is a joke, it just sits there looking at me as if my challenge is laughable and dares me to give it something to actually do. lol

 

Oops, didn't read that. My apologies.

So, I would recommend the extra cash to go Intel (not Phenom).

 

Also remember that 2560x1600 IS a very high resolution. It may not be a very intensive game, but it is still over 4 million pixels to render however many times a second your refresh rate is (I'm guessing 60Hz?).

But I think your CPU is definitely the culprit.

 

Run 2/3 comps instead of 2 or 3 SLIed cards, your opty should be able to handle second monitor at 1280 res great and get a new comp to run the 2560 res one, with Stardock Multiplicty and a LAN you only need 1 mouse and keyboard to control the lot (you just need the montiors in a viewable area), works for me with epic eve accounting, I can run my own fleet this way

 

Wow a lot of replies! (err bad pun)

Just kinda a side note, hooked up a third monitor, this time a 17" and hooked it into the 7800gt (the 19 and 30 hooked into the 8800gt) and I'll be amazed that fps hasn't suffered too much more.

Lamaltor is correct tho, I need to offload the work from the opteron, I'm going to raid the bone pile for my old S754 3000+ and make it run the two monitors at 1280x1024.

Time to start hunting Ebay for a cheap intel quadcore box to drop the 8800gt into. (I wont buy Intel retail....)

Thanks for the info!

-EVRE-

 

I wouldn't rule Phenom out completely if all you're after is better FPS in WoW. Phenom might be the vastly inferior CPU, but it is much, much cheaper. If I was upgrading to play only one game, I'd pick up the Phenom Black.