World of Warcraft Performance Guide
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 23, 2005 12:17 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
WoW CPU Performance
A fast CPU is just as important to WoW as a fast GPU, which is generally the case in any modern day 3D game. We looked at performance across 18 CPUs on a X800 XT at 1024 x 768, using the same settings as our GPU comparison.
Intel is remarkably competitive here; while they normally get completely demolished by AMD in gaming performance, the margins are much closer this time around. At higher resolutions, the AMD-Intel gap would effectively disappear between most competitors. Our recommendation here is to focus on getting a good video card and picking the platform that is more affordable and better suited to your needs.
The Athlon XP is clearly behind the times here, but given its age, it is not too surprising to see it at the bottom of the charts. Athlon XP owners will probably want to upgrade to an Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 before seeking out a faster video card in order to maximize their upgrade dollars.
There is one interesting phenomenon that we noticed when looking at Intel's WoW performance - the Pentium 4 600 series first performs poorer, clock for clock, than the 500 series, but at higher clock speeds, it actually outperforms the 500 series. Given that the Pentium 4 600 has a 17% higher latency L2 cache, that added cache latency is more pronounced at lower clock speeds. Once again, the difference in performance (clock for clock) isn't large enough to sway our recommendation either way. We'd still suggest the 600 series over the 500 simply because of the added features.
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SDA - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Nice, thorough article. I was surprised at how competitive the 6600GT was with higher-end cards in WoW... looks like it'd match or outperform the X800 Pro across the board. Thanks to the CPU scaling section, I can come to a fairly safe conclusion that this isn't because of other system bottlenecks.I tend to agree with #2/7 on LOD. If LOD isn't invisible or damned near it, I disable it immediately. It hurts my brain to see a blob morph into a tree.
Question on widescreen: how does WoW generate the widescreen picture? That is, is it horizontally stretched or vertically clipped relative to the 4:3 image, or is it actually the same with more added on on the sides?
sbuckler - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Why is my northwood cpu too slow? - you never tested with one so how do you know? Going by previous comparisons it's probably faster then a similarly clocked 5 or 6 series pentium.EODetroit - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Oh yeah, #2 is right, to be harder on the video cards, turn "Level of Detail" off. Its a feature that replaces far away textures with low detail ones, and subs in the high detail textures on the fly as you get closer. Keeping high detail textures on regardless would have been a more interesting test.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
EODetroit1280 x 768 is the resolution I used, it's a widescreen resolution that some folks have been using because of its 15:9 aspect ratio.
Take care,
Anand
EODetroit - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Nice article, its practically the first of its kind, since almost no one looks at MMORPGs even though they can get really low framerates at times. I heard EQ2 is the most graphically intensive game on the market, bar none, you might look into testing it too.WoW is now my game of choice, replacing Enemy Territories (I'm a FPS guy at heart, but WoW is fun and I'm hooked). I'm hoping that when Battlegrounds comes out, it'll be like ET on crack, except taking months to max your character instead of minutes.
One thing... on Page 4, you list the one of the resolutions you tested as "1280x768". Is that accurate or was it really 1280x960 or 1280x1024, which seems more likely.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Woodchuck2000Ask and ye shall receive, the first page has been updated :)
Take care,
Anand
segagenesis - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Minor points... I would add that using LOD causes a noticeable level detail change ass you walk along, you can see the obvious detail changes. I keep it *off* even if it reduces performance because otherwise mountains/trees/stuff look like they are morphing as you get closer to them :PAlso, in large areas like the barrens setting the terrain distance to 100% makes a difference compared to Teldrassil as you showed. I still get 30 fps which is fair enough for a 9800 pro at max detail.
Woodchuck2000 - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Any chance of picture rollovers? I'm finding hard to spot some that many DX8/9 differences scrolling up and down!vetonveton - Thursday, April 29, 2010 - link
I have pen intel{R} pentium{R} 4 CPU 3.00Ghz 2.99Ghz..... RAM: 1 GB.... grafic:96 MB!! Can i play WOW on this??? please guys,I need a quick answer!