pandora Premium Member join:2001-06-01 Outland |
pandora
Premium Member
2012-Nov-29 9:48 am
[Theory] I7 3770K / 4000 GPU no graphics card and WoWLast night, I was working on tuning a new rack mount server. It consists of an Asus P77 motherboard, an I7 3770K, 16 GB of RAM, an old 128 GB SSD and a 3TB mechanical drive.
As the 3770K is unlocked, and the motherboard had a lot of flexibility in terms of tuning clocks and voltages, it occurred to me to see if the integrated 4000 video card would run World of Warcraft.
Overclocking the GPU and underclocking the CPU yielded the best results. at 1024 x 768 and fair (not poor) settings for the most part, I was able to sustain 30-50 fps. When not in WoW the PC draws about 40-50 watts doing mostly non-graphics work (home automation and DVR functions), running WoW brought wattage up to between 90 and 100 (my device to test wattage use is a Kill A Watt 4460).
The integrated 4000 video processor is too weak for decent gaming, but if you can live with lower resolution and less detail, Warcraft is playable. I took an 85 priest through the first half dozen quests in MoP. No deaths, latency was good, frame rate was decent. Playable, but not as enjoyable as my nice high power video card.
If Intel continues to twink it's integrated GPU in subsequent processors, eventually it'll be good enough for most.
Aside from doubling wattage, the configuration and execution in WoW produced a lot more heat (as expected).
I couldn't help but wonder how the I7 4000 GPU worked with WoW.
Note, my heatsink / fan is a small 1U to it my 1U rack mount server chassis, a larger heatsink may have allowed better performance. Overall, the 4000 is overwhelmed by the picture size, then any additional processing required on the rendered image. It is still weak, but greatly improved over any prior Intel offering imo.
Output was to a Panasonic 1080 x 1920 3d HDTV via HDMI. The GPU supports 3D output, and has no trouble even underclocked displaying Hulu, Netflix, Amazon or any other type of video. The OS was Win 7 Pro 64.
Not certain if anyone is interested, it was sort of an experiment on whim, but the results were a bit better than expected.
My goal for the server is to try and have it run it's intended home functions at about 25-30 watts total draw 24/7.
If anyone has a question, before I remove WoW from the PC, let me know and I'll try to check any GPU / CPU question out with respect to the game. |