drew
Reformation
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs: | reply to SixOfNine
Re: Ideal WoW PC - $400 Budget
never stepped foot in: SSC, MH, or BT.
So, dunno. |
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Shatter
join:2006-07-24
Waterford, MI | reply to Bes
I have a core 2 duo with E6850 processor, 2 gigs 800mhz ram and 8800GTS with all settings maxed. On Hyjal trash I get maybe 40-50FPS without any overlclock even when I stand in the middle, on average im around 120-150fps without vert sync locked. |
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SixOfNine
Brake In A Ladylike Manner.
Premium
join:2001-08-30
Sterling, VA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| Hmmm, here's the core of my rig:
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0 GHz Socket 939 (bought Feb 2006)
- 2GB OCZ Platinum SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200 -- bought Feb 2006)
- EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card (bought April 2007)
As I said, I had some fps issues in Hyjal. Some of it might have been related to post-patch add-ons (casts a suspicious eye at Omen) and some of it might have been add-on spam, which I cut down on, mostly by raising the minimum amounts that SCT reports.
I've read that WoW places more of a workload on the CPU and RAM than it does on the video card, so maybe I'll find a newer, more powerful socket 939 CPU, but any suggestions are certainly welcome.
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Verizon FIOS |
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Greydoom
join:2008-04-01
Kitchener, ON
| reply to Bes
Trying to get a more powerful 939 chip will cost you more than getting a new chip and board nowadays, i have a 2.4 Ghz in our kids comp and i thought it had failed the other day... I checked for CPU prices and i did find that locally it would be cheaper to buy an Athalon 64X2 chip (2.5 Ghz) and Mobo (under $200 for the combo) for the price of just a 939 chip (which i would have had to special order...)
My 0.02 but we have some awesome computer stores in Ontario... |
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SixOfNine
Brake In A Ladylike Manner.
Premium
join:2001-08-30
Sterling, VA
·Verizon FIOS
| said by Greydoom  :Trying to get a more powerful 939 chip will cost you more than getting a new chip and board nowadays, i have a 2.4 Ghz in our kids comp and i thought it had failed the other day... I checked for CPU prices and i did find that locally it would be cheaper to buy an Athalon 64X2 chip (2.5 Ghz) and Mobo (under $200 for the combo) for the price of just a 939 chip (which i would have had to special order...) Good point -- thanks. I actually got a free xfx mobo with that video card.
I have an awesome computer store here in Virginia: newegg.com. 
In any case I paid more for my 2.0 GHz AMD two+ years ago than I would have to for any of these.
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Verizon FIOS |
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Greydoom
join:2008-04-01
Kitchener, ON | reply to Bes
Yeah we have »www.canadacomputers.com/ right around the corner from me... Danger Will Robinson! DANGER!!!
lol! |
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Greydoom
join:2008-04-01
Kitchener, ON
| reply to SixOfNine
Yeah pretty sad... i built my LANbox system from scratch about 6 months ago and cost me about $1000... then my wife wanted the same thing, so i got the money together about 3 months ago and built almost the exact same thing (a little better since some of my parts were already obsolete  ) and ran me about $550... i wasn't impressed, but knew that was how it was going to work. LOL! |
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Bes
join:2006-01-24
Canada
| reply to Dissembled
Thanks for the link, I'll look more into that before I actually purchase anything.
Yeah, no one can do anything about lag generated by Blizzard or your own ISP. I'm not too worried about that, though.
Shatter:
Wow, that's a pretty expensive processor. Sounds like a very nice rig, though.
SixOfNine:
Your rig also sounds nice, but also pretty expensive.
Someone else also mentioned that WoW is more CPU and RAM dependent, and if you guys are right, I wonder, am I heading in the wrong direction with the Intel Dual Core E2160? Even if I OC'd it to a decent level--somewhere around 2.5-3.0ghz--would it be any good for WoW? I'm also planning on buying 2x1GB RAM sticks.
Oh, speaking of RAM, I was wondering, if I bought a GFX card that is DDR3, would I need to buy DDR3 RAM? Or how does that even work, exactly? I'm confused about all this DDR stuff. What are the differences? |
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Bes
join:2006-01-24
Canada
| Anywho, here's what I'm thinking:
What do you guys think? With tax, that total becomes $383.51, and shipping is free.
I'm not 100% sure on compatibility, though. Does anyone spot anything that would not fit? |
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drew
Reformation
Premium
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA
clubs: | I'm convinced you could get a better processor, mobo and video card for that, but I don't know if the CA -> US rate is messing with me. |
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chaud
Serious Business
join:2004-07-09
Anderson, SC
 ·Charter VOIP
·Packet8
| 360 Canadian dollars = 352.90656 U.S. dollars
Still, they pay a LOT more for some components just looking at newegg and then at that site.
I have no idea about Intel CPUs, I know C2D are nice, but more expensive. They are supposedly better for overclocking than same gen AMD CPUs, by mine works fine, and I paid ~$110 for a decent mobo + amd x2 3600 brisbane, and from 1.8 stock it is running fine at 2.6. If I were more confident about temps, considering Brisbane temp sensors don't work, I would go higher. It booted at 2.9 but wasn't stable because I didn't want to up the voltage. |
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Vathral
Premium
join:2002-08-26
New York, NY
clubs:
 ·Earthlink Cable Mo..
1 edit | reply to SixOfNine
said by SixOfNine :Those of you getting a kazillion fps at max settings: how about during the trash waves in Mount Hyjal? I've had to turn a couple of things down to squeeze out more fps during that encounter. Max settings, 1680x1050, 8800GT card and I get 45fps in the middle of the waves in Hyjal. I love BT though, get atleast 65fps during trash. RoS rapes my fps to ~20 for some odd reason. Not even all the spell effects from P2 of illidan does that.
Still got parts in the system from around 2006. Guess I've spent total 1100 dollars past 2-3 years on the comp I play WoW on.
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Anime / F@H |
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Bes
join:2006-01-24
Canada
| I'm a bit discouraged to hear that some of you with top-of-the-line stuff, or things a lot better than what I have planned to buy, are having trouble in some parts of the game. I'm beginning to believe that what I was thinking of buying won't be good enough.
I'm gonna go back to square one, and think about this some more. Maybe you guys can help me decide:
Intel or AMD?
Nvidia or Radeon?
I don't want to turn this into a brand war, or anything like that, but some people say AMD is better for gaming, and some say Intel is better for gaming. My quest to find a really good system for under $400 has turned into a big headache.
I just want a really fast machine that will run WoW almost flawlessly with a very decent overall FPS, and look wonderful. All for under $400. It's not going to be easy, I know, but I really believe I can do it...with some help. |
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Vathral
Premium
join:2002-08-26
New York, NY
clubs:
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
2 edits | Remember, I'm running at a pretty high resolution and this is smack-dab in the middle of trash. All those particle effects, antialiasing, etc will push it down a bit 
I also run lots of addons that hits 60-80mb.
You won't go wrong with either brand but Intel and Nvidia has been a good combo for me. ATI has some really nice cards that are cheap due to all the Nvidia love with great picture quality.
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Anime / F@H |
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Sithra
join:2008-02-07
| reply to Bes
said by Bes :Oh, speaking of RAM, I was wondering, if I bought a GFX card that is DDR3, would I need to buy DDR3 RAM? No |
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Bes
join:2006-01-24
Canada | Sithra:
OK, good to know.
Vathral:
So you've had some really good experiences with Intel and Nvidia combos?
You're using a GeForce 8800GT right now? What's your processor? |
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Greydoom
join:2008-04-01
Kitchener, ON
| reply to Bes
Ok i've always been an AMD fan, but with the recent developments that Intel have been going through, i have to admit that they are making a better CPU these days. If you are into overclocking, and want to save some cash, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000 black edition is probably the way to go. (i have this in my comp at home now, what a dream CPU) It's runninga about $110 now, and it's stock at 2.6 Ghz, but i have it OC'd up to 3.2 Ghz, and it is still running at about 29 degree's C, with no voltage increase (and is as solid as a rock, no crashes no hangs). Mind you i have a Blue Orb cooler on it (only decent cooler that would fit in my LANbox.) I am running 2 sticks of 667Mhz 1 gig ram in dual channel mode. Humm what else, Vid card is an older 8600 GTS OC, and i never have any FPS issues.. the slowest i have got is about 40 FPS in the center area of shat with all the people milling around the gate to the sunwell area. I have 1 TB of hard drive space between 2 drives, not that that will affect performance all that much. |
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SixOfNine
Brake In A Ladylike Manner.
Premium
join:2001-08-30
Sterling, VA
·Verizon FIOS
| reply to Vathral
said by Vathral :said by SixOfNine :Those of you getting a kazillion fps at max settings: how about during the trash waves in Mount Hyjal? I've had to turn a couple of things down to squeeze out more fps during that encounter. Max settings, 1680x1050, 8800GT card and I get 45fps in the middle of the waves in Hyjal. I love BT though, get atleast 65fps during trash. RoS rapes my fps to ~20 for some odd reason. Not even all the spell effects from P2 of illidan does that. Think I'll try to squeeze some more life out of this socket 939 and upgrade the CPU.
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Verizon FIOS |
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Murrain
Premium
join:2002-12-11
Riverside, RI
| quote:
Think I'll try to squeeze some more life out of this socket 939 and upgrade the CPU.
I did this as well, I upgraded from an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ to an Opteron 175 Dual Core and went from a 7800gt to an EVGA 8800gt Superclocked.
For my tight budget this was best way to bump my old rig up a little...bought both at Newegg (can't say enough good things about this site...I always ship ground and I always get shipments next day).
Anyways...here is linky for Opteron 175:
»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···19103584
You can get a 170 for $99 and you can pick up a 180 OEM (not retail) for $129 at NewEgg as well (When I bought my 175 the 180 was not in stock).
I have an Asus A8N-SLI mobo with bios version ~13. I Was told that as long as this mobo has bios version 13 and higher there is no need to upgrade bios to recognize the dual-core CPU. I installed the Opteron and it was recognized without a problem.
Hope this helps  |
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Vathral
Premium
join:2002-08-26
New York, NY
clubs:
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| reply to Bes
said by Bes :Sithra: OK, good to know. Vathral: So you've had some really good experiences with Intel and Nvidia combos? You're using a GeForce 8800GT right now? What's your processor? Intel e6600
Used to have AMD back in the P4 days and it was awesome. Now I feel Intel has the crown for a decent premium.
I'm at the point where I wont be upgrading anymore and buy a whole new setup altogher.
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Anime / F@H |
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