World of Warcraft Performance Guide

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• digit - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link

  #23
  did you check the motherboard specs on that computer?
  when i was looking at them to get one for my girlfreind the motherboard didnt have an agp or pci-x slot for an addon video card.
  i could be wrong though...

• g33k - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link

  Typo on pg 4. "Thankfully from a performance perspective, the Radeon 9800 Pro behaves very similarly to the X700 Pro (a big slower, but nothing huge)"

• ppi - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link

  Thanks for the article, I would however have one comment.
  
  The test itself does not show it, but in practice the game is quite CPU dependant, especially in areas where it counts - when the game gets crowded.
  
  My resoning behind this is that when I'm increasing or decreasing resolution by one step, performance difference is always minimal in any realistic scenario.
  
  I'm not sure how to test this, though. Maybe if you could stuff a full raid (40 ppl) in some corner of the game. I'm quite sure CPU dependancy would then be MUCH more pronounced.

• Hans Maulwurf - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link

  "I'm all about getting a lot of bang for the buck and here's what kind of system I chose to get"
  -Well, you shouldn´t buy a Dell.
  
  Anand, great review. I had to build a PC for EQ2 some time ago and couldn´t find any benchmarks. This WoW benches would have helped. Thank you!
  
  What I don´t understand is why Blizzard offers no benchmark for WoW. It would be very usefull. I thinks your benches are like the flyby UT-bench (though it´s not your fault - anything else is impossible for you), but a botmatch-like bench would be more interisting. I guess Blizzard could build a good benmark level with ease.
  
  Oh, one more question. Why don´t you write anythink about the command rate (1T or 2T) you used - it´s quite important! And if I remember correctly a tRas of 10 is not optimal for NF4 boards. I think its 7 or so. Possibly there are similar problems with the P4-setup.

• segagenesis - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link

  I almost thought that was a downgrade until I read you plan on adding memory/video. Not too bad a deal but I almost feel compelled to ask "why?" when its not significantly different than your previous system. Im still using the same XP 2400+ for ages yet get a consistent 30+ fps just about everywhere (discounting large towns where it will drop to 15, but still... what kind of computer does good in Ironforge when there are 50 chars on screen?). No jittering at all.
  

• Mizuchi - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link

  Great article. This was exactly what I had been wanting to know, but it came 1 day too late, as I've already ordered a system without any recommendations.
  
  I am on a two year old 2500+ XP Barton with 512 MB PC2700, 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache, Radeon 9700 Pro system. General gaming away from many players is smooth, but going through the Crossroads, Origrammar, Ironforge, and flying on a gryphon/wyvern would be terribly choppy. I would guesstimate where I would run by holding down the movement keys during lag and then wait a second for an update and continue until I did what I had to.
  
  It is also a pain to alt+tab out to use Thottbot, which is why I so rarely use it... (I end up being the one of the newbs to beg in /1 (general chat) for hints).
  
  Along with the new system I've bought, I ordered extra RAM (2x512 Cosair Value Select $93 shipped from Chiefvalue.com) in order to multi-task better. And plan on looking up a good priced 6600 GT card.
  
  I'm all about getting a lot of bang for the buck and here's what kind of system I chose to get:
  
  Dimension 4700
  Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology (3.00GHz, 800 FSB), Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition Qty: 1
  Unit Price: $739.00
  Processor Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology (3.00GHz, 800 FSB)
  CP308B
  [221-5224]
  
  Memory 256MB DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (1x256M)
  256M4
  [311-3619]
  
  Keyboard Dell Quietkey® Keyboard
  QK
  [310-1582]
  
  Monitor FREE! 17 inch Ultrasharp™ 1704FPT Digital Flat Panel
  1704FP1
  [463-8573]
  
  Video Cards Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 900
  IV
  [320-3872]
  
  Internal Hard Drives 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
  80S
  [341-0883]
  
  Floppy Drive and Memory Keys No Floppy Drive Included
  NFD
  [340-8688]
  
  Operating System Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
  WHXP
  [412-0721]
  [412-0688]
  [463-2282]
  [420-4834]
  [420-4927]
  [420-5099]
  
  Mouse Dell 2-button scroll mouse
  SM
  [310-1871]
  
  Network Interface Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet
  IN
  [430-0412]
  
  Modem No Modem Requested
  N
  [313-3607]
  
  Document Management Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0
  AAREAD
  [412-0705]
  
  CD or DVD Drives -- Read, Write and Store Data Single Drive: 48x CD-RW Drive 48CDRW
  [313-2434]
  
  Sound Card Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio
  IS
  [313-2758]
  
  Speakers No Speaker Option
  N
  [313-4514]
  
  Productivity Software Pre-Installed WordPerfect®, Powerful Word Processing
  COREL
  [412-0701]
  
  Security Software Pre-Installed No Security Subscription
  NS2
  [412-0754]
  
  Digital Music Dell Jukebox - easy-to-use music player and CD burning software
  MMBASE
  [412-0741]
  
  Digital Photography Paint Shop™ Pro® Trial plus Photo Album™ Starter Edition
  DPS
  [412-0521]
  
  Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options 1 Year On-site Basic Plan
  B111YOS
  [950-1230]
  [950-9797]
  [412-0360]
  [960-2800]
  
  Onsite System Setup No Onsite System Setup
  NOINSTL
  [900-9987]
  
  Internet Access Services No ISP requested
  NISP
  [412-0148]
  [412-0670]
  
  Mail- In Rebate $150 Mail In Rebate
  MIR150
  [463-4507]
  
  Miscellaneous Dimension 4700
  02DIM47
  [463-8574]
  
  Financial Software QuickBooks® Simple Start Special Edition (limited to 50 contacts)
  QBSSP
  [420-5136]
  
  Purchase Intent Purchase is not intended for resale.
  NOT4SEL
  [462-4506]
  
  
  
  
  Save $50 on select Dimension™ 4700 desktops through Dell Small Business.
  Expires on 2005-03-24 06:30:00 - $50.00
  
  
  Belkin SurgeMaster 7-Outlet Qty: 1
  Unit Price: $17.00
  
  You save 50% on Belkin surge protectors from Dell Small Business!
  Expires on 2005-03-24 23:59:59 - $8.50
  
  
  Free 720 Color Printer (Value $49.00)
  Free Dell Color Printer 720 Qty: 1
  Unit Price: $0.00
  Dell Color Printer 720 Free Dell Color Printer 720
  FREE720
  [255-0071]
  
  Hardware Support Services 1Yr Ltd. Warranty- Advance Exchange
  AE1YR
  [902-7040]
  [960-4638]
  [960-2840]
  
  
  
  
  
  ADDITIONAL DISCOUNTS AND COUPONS
  
  
  
  Small Business customers receive FREE 3-5 day Shipping on select all Software and Peripheral items priced $50 or higher!
  Expires on 2007-12-31 06:30:00 - $5.50
  
  
  
  Sub-Total $697.50
  Shipping Discount -$5.50
  
  Shipping $0.00
  
  Estimated Tax $41.85
  Total $739.35
  
  
  Dell just had a good deal going, considering the $150 MIR ($600 cost). It's like getting the monitor for $300, processor $200, HD $50, Mobo $50 and everything else free (Windows XP Home, Printer, Memory, CD-RW drive, KB/M, software, and Dell's support).

• JarredWalton - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link

  Just a quick FYI: Level of Detail (LOD) has nothing to do with the textures. LOD is a ploygon scaling algorithm, so as you get closer to an object more polygons will be added to make it look more realistic. Done properly, it should be hard to spot. Unfortunately, doing LOD properly is very difficult.
  
  With the high-end GPUs, polygon performance generally isn't enough of a problem to make enabling LOD necessary. Lower end CPUs and GPUs can benefit, of course. In the past, I've seen LOD have less than a 10% performance impact, so I'm happier leaving it enabled in most games. (Not that most games actually expose LOD as a tweakable setting....)

• ViRGE - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link

  I wholeheartedly agree with the Mac statements after playing it on a Mac myself. I have a 12" PowerBook Rev. A(867mhz G4, GF4 MX420, 640MB RAM, etc), and the performance I get out of WoW while on the road is abysmal(single digit frame rates when more than a handful of characters are on the screen). Just for comparison's sake, I loaded up WoW on a somewhat similar PC(AXP 2100+, GF2MX original, 768MB DDR, etc), and there's simply no comparison between the two; just eyeballing the FPS has the PC at well over 2x the performance. I even managed to isolate the CPUs in all of this, with the PowerBook almost never hitting 100% CPU utilization in this test(it hovered around 80% or so), meaning the PowerBook should have the edge over the PC, but as I stated before it was losing badly.
  
  I have a feeling a lot of this has to do with the fact that the Mac version is using an OpenGL renderer while the PC is using DirectX, but still 50% is insane. It beats not having WoW at all, but there's still some sort of large bottleneck in there, and I'm fairly sure it's all related to the graphics subsystems.

• civilgeek - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link

  I too would like to see a review like this for Everquest II. I don't play WOW and have not seen its graphics first hand but from the looks of the cards\resolutions that are being used in this review... Everquest is putting a lot more stress on the cards. I know that every video card I have seen thus far will crawl to a halt with the graphics turned up to Extreme Quality at 1280x1024. It would be very interesting to see where the bottle necks are and what card would do the best in this scenario.

• gotsmack - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link

  When measuring fps, could you also show the most common lowest fps achieved?
  
  I want to see what the lowest will be, if I upgrade my hardware.