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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biegstvo - Tuesday, July 8, 2008 - link
CPU seems to make a difference. I only have a 1.8 Ghz, and it's slow, but I'm not sure how much that has to do with the fact that it's a Celeron, with it's cut down cache, etc. If I got a 1.8Ghz P4, or even 2.* Ghz, would that help a lot?(I realize socket 478 is old, but I still have [cheap] room ahead of me even in this outdated format.)
edeus - Monday, October 31, 2005 - link
It would be good to know if there was raid on this test machine - as CPU tests may have been skewed because of it.shady28 - Saturday, January 7, 2006 - link
This article should be updated in some way. With the advent of battlegrounds, the biggest performance hits come in battlegrounds where there are 30-40 vs 30-40 other players. The front lines can easily have 60 people PvPing, plus a dozen or more NPCs thrashing around.
I can say unequivocably that a Radeon 9600Pro is incapable of dealing effectively with this. I seriously doubt anything below a 9800XT can give you even moderately good framerates in those circumstances. I'd also like to see something showing any differences in 512MB cards vs 256MB vs 128MB in games like WoW and EQ2, since those games have tons of textures and constantly have to reload new textures as you move around in-game (both for the landscape, and textures on other players representing their armor and weapons as they come into visual range).
xinc - Friday, May 6, 2005 - link
To poster 50.Yes, when ram comes into question, it would be more beneficial, to have at least 1gb of ram to avoid lag issues.
Graphical quality wise, my laptop sucks for detail, and frame rates are mediocre at best (I use default settings for details etc), however with 1gb of ram, I am lag free when passing by the auction houses in Orgrimmar, and Iron Forge.
Thanks to Anand & Co. for performing these tests... at least it gives us as the general public an idea of how to spec a "WOW gamebox"
Now my question to anyone reading these comments, and who would know more about performance... would you choose either a Geforce 6600GT or a Geforce 6800? (not GT just 6800)
it's about a $80 premium for the 6800 where I live in Canada. Thanks for any help.
Solanio - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
I'm running it on a Mac with all settings set to max, highest refresh and all shaders on and I'm noticing hardly any lag*. But I haven't been able to compare it to a PC yet.People even complain about lag in open channel when I'm not suffering any. - But again, what seems 'normal' to me might seem slow to others. I'll know better when I'm able to compare.
I have a G5 dual 2GHz with 2 G RAM and the 6800 Ultra DLL NVIDIA card connecting via DSL.
I do have to say though that visually the game is beautiful and I'm really enjoying it.
*(The only time I notice lag is when I log on at peak times, there's sometimes an initial second of jump and then now and then rarely when entering an area like Goldshire, when there are a bunch of characters and I've been off somewhere else, like Westfall - but that is rare and it only happens for a moment and then everything is smooth).
bluebob950 - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link
what model 6600gt did you use in your test?Anemone - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
2gb for the more intense raids helps noticeably on the Intel side of things.$.02
matbe - Tuesday, April 5, 2005 - link
Great article! It's hard to test mmorpg performance but you succeeded. Must be a first, at least with such reliable tests! Again Anandtech impresses me. Would love to see a test of the more graphics intensive EverQuest2 too!DPOverLord - Monday, April 4, 2005 - link
Ram wise does this mean if we plan on building a computer it makes more sense to buy the ram now then later?drdavis - Friday, April 1, 2005 - link
OK, followup to the Mac post. I was looking through the Mac support forum on the WoW community site. The FPS rate drop is a known issue that was introduced and a fix is in the works. So, hopefully Blizzard will have it soon!See http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=w...