Looking for LGA775 quad results with World of Warcraft.

[killem2]

Currently I have an E8400 clocked to 4.0ghz, 8 gigs og ddr 400 ram (clocked to 867 OR 876 or something due to the oc), and a stock HD 5850. I was wanting to know how wel a quad would increase my FPS in places like dalaran/ironforge

Right now I can drop to as much as 40 fps with max detail and shadows and all of that. But when I'm out in the open its triple digits for miles.

 

[Optix]

Wow! That's some crazy memory you have there. A 100%+ increase.

Anyway, I look at it this way. If you're a gamer, go with a beefy dual core, which you have. If you're a media nut, go with a quad. I may be way off here but so far, until game developers code software to make better use of multiple cores the dual core is still king of the hill when it comes to cost/performance.

This doesn't answer your question but if anything I would upgrade your memory and motherboard. You'd see a performance jump even there.

 

[killem2]

Yeah for sure on the gaming stuff, I do make some dvds once and a while and they take for ever on this dual core.

I do know wow can use 4 cores just never seen many benchmarks with them in there.

Ah well. I'll just hold off until I can find a nice used or new OEM quad

 

[Rob Williams]

You are a tad confused on your memory speeds... you're likely using DDR2-800, which is 400MHz.

Honestly, unless the game is heavily multi-threaded, which I'm highly doubtful World of Warcraft is, moving to a quad-core isn't going to give you an ounce of difference. It might actually make the situation worse, unless you plan on overclocking it to the same 4.0GHz clock speed.

Chances are good that it's not your hardware that's causing the slowdowns, but the Internet latency. Yes, believe it or not, latency does somehow affect the FPS in games, though I don't think I've ever figured out the reason as to why. I'm just willing to believe that even on a top-end machine, the issue would still exist.

 

[killem2]

You are a tad confused on your memory speeds... you're likely using DDR2-800, which is 400MHz.

Honestly, unless the game is heavily multi-threaded, which I'm highly doubtful World of Warcraft is, moving to a quad-core isn't going to give you an ounce of difference. It might actually make the situation worse, unless you plan on overclocking it to the same 4.0GHz clock speed.

Chances are good that it's not your hardware that's causing the slowdowns, but the Internet latency. Yes, believe it or not, latency does somehow affect the FPS in games, though I don't think I've ever figured out the reason as to why. I'm just willing to believe that even on a top-end machine, the issue would still exist.

That's right, I was just going by what the bios said not sure why it says 867 though. Very strange.

This is exactly what I have

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184

Model
Brand CORSAIR
Series XMS2
Model TWIN2X4096-6400C5
Type 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
Tech Spec
Capacity 4GB (2 x 2GB)
Speed DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

 

[Rob Williams]

The E8400 uses a 333MHz front-side bus, a 9x multiplier and a memory divider that allows the memory to be an even 400MHz. Because you overclocked, that divider had to change, and since it was impossible to retain 400MHZ (it could be possible to go under), it went over. You can download a tool like CPU-Z and check the memory tab to see what divider is being used:

http://cpuid.com/cpuz.php

 

[Optix]

WoW may very well use 4 cores but it certainly isn't using them like they should be. Supreme Commander, which was supposedly developed to utilize multiple cores even falls flat if I remember my benchmarks correctly.

Your OS could even be off loading a bit of work to those extra cores making you think that the game is utilizing them although I don't know if OS's even do that properly. Odd considering how "advanced" Windows 7 is supposed to be.

I'm still going back and forth about a cheap dual core or a more expensive dual core with hyper-threading simply because games just aren't being coded for use with multiple cores the way that I wish they would be.

I was going to bring up the memory discrepency but I was typing my first response and work in between helping someone set up their LDAP server but completely forgot. Nice to see you aren't running DDR with a monster chip like that although I'm sure AsRock has a board out there capable of doing it.

You could see if your memory frequency could be increased a bit more if you are looking for a performance pick me up. Believe it or not I noticed a fair bit of difference in my start up and shut down times with a simple 160mhz increase in frequency at stock timings. There have been a few people on overclocking forums that have gotten those sticks up to a pretty good speed but not all kits will clock the same.

On the other side of the coin you could see if you can tighten up your timings. It's sort of like anti-overclocking. Keeping the same frequency but trying to lower your timings resulting in faster performance. The only draw back to this is that 775 Intel rigs tend to like faster frequencies instead of tighter timings like AMD systems do since the memory controller is on the same die.

If you need help overclocking memory, just ask.

 

[Rob Williams]

WoW may very well use 4 cores but it certainly isn't using them like they should be. Supreme Commander, which was supposedly developed to utilize multiple cores even falls flat if I remember my benchmarks correctly.

From what I've read, WoW <em>does</em> support dual-core, but I'm not sure about multi-core (as in, more than two cores). I can't see it, because as far as I can tell, WoW just isn't a game that needs it. If all of the characters on the were were AI/NPC, then I might be able to, but as they're all player-controlled, that's more of a latency issue, not a CPU or graphics issue.

Your OS could even be off loading a bit of work to those extra cores making you think that the game is utilizing them although I don't know if OS's even do that properly. Odd considering how "advanced" Windows 7 is supposed to be.

Well, it's important not to believe that Windows 7 is a miracle worker in that regard, because it's not. It's impossible for an OS to just turn a program into a completely multi-threaded application. That's up to the game developer. It can specify various parts of the game to off-load to various cores. I am not sure if any current game really takes huge advantage of this yet. I just downloaded Supreme Commander 2 on Steam last night, so I'm hoping to test that soon to see if it can take advantage of the Core i7.