Hardware for Wrath

[LavCat]

I've done a litte investigating over the past couple weeks and I thought I'd share my observations. It seems 3.0.2 performance (and thus Wrath performance) is a big sticking point, so I felt it would be good to share my knowledge.

Thanks for the recommendations. I did not see anything with which I would disagree. I have been concerned with frame rates since my post in the other thread. The game was unplayable for me. Much of the problem is probably more CPU related than GPU related.

My motherboard is a socket 939, and I am not in a position to replace it. Actually I have had four socket 939 motherboards (three here and one at my former place of work). A direct lightning strike did not help. (While I was playing WoW.) My arm is not quite the same either.

Currently for WoW I am using a motherboard made from parts of two different Asus motherboads. The CPU is an Opteron 185. Until the recent patch I was always happy with it. I still think it is a good CPU. In the last week I have been experimenting with overclocking. WoW seems stable at 2.73 GHz. Higher than that Windows was OK but WoW would lock up within half an hour. I have not tried increasing the processor voltage as I am a little afraid of frying it.

With my former graphics card I would stop in mid air flying into Shattrath. I recently got an Asus 4870x2, which I can not afford. Now from Concillian Point I get at least 20 FPS. Sometimes lower in other parts of Shattrath. Raiding is OK in BT, but still not good enough in AV or Sunwell. I have not been to Hyjal since the patch.

I am not convinced the second GPU is worth it; I am not even sure it's working. But the graphics are lovely. We are required to raid with spell detail maxed out. One selling point for the Asus was the artwork on the card. another was the free copy of WoW. But the biggest reason for getting the 4870x2 is that no known single 4780 card would work properly in my configuration. The GPU fan is blocked by the card two slots away, which in my case is the disc controller. The 4780x2 is long enough that the fan clears the disc controller with room to spare.