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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Conspiracy - Thursday, March 31, 2005 - link
I'm running an Intel 2.8GHz 800FSB overclocked to 3.4 and 1GB of memory. I also have a Geforce 6800GT Ultra. Nice setup and can play any game at max rez w/o issues. Even WOW is quite nice. However I did have a lot of issues with disk swapping, mainly in big cities like Orgrimar. I fixed it by setting up a Raid 0 config. I rarely, if ever, get any disk swapping issues. This is a pretty huge key factor with performance IMO.drdavis - Thursday, March 31, 2005 - link
It was great to see the comparison to the Mac as I am a Mac user playing WoW (PowerMac G5 dual 2Ghz with ATI 9800 Pro) as well. I agree with the assessment that the bottleneck is most likely the OpenGL driver. I am curious, it would be nice if a comparison could be made to the PowerMac running an Nvidia 6800 instead of the ATI card. I have been told that ATI never was one for screaming OpenGL performance and Nvidia usually did a better job with OpenGL drivers.eastvillager - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
The only WoW performance issues I have are on Blizzards side of the connection, lol.eastvillager - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
Pinnacle - Tuesday, March 29, 2005 - link
While I commend the intention of doing a performance review on game that are not first person shooters, I think you have missed the point. Yes your enjoyment of warcraft is going to depend on your hardware, but GPU probably has a secondary role to CPU, memory, internet connection speed, LAN speed and probably a host of other items.What I would like to know is something concrete about how much data is moved about while playing the game, and what you guys think the WoW servers should/could be running on to implement the game. Sorry if I sound too critical - I think The Anand Team does a great job!
Brunnis - Saturday, March 26, 2005 - link
Hey, Anand, did you ever get around to checking that AthlonXP 3200+ system of yours? Every test that you do with that system shows it being EXTREMELY slow. I've never seen an AthlonXP 3200+ doing this bad on any other site... Some results that you've published with that system have even been proven wrong. Most notably the 263kB/s WinRAR result (normal is 380-400kB/s).Just as the results from some of your previous reviews, this one shows the AthlonXP to be clock-to-clock as fast as a Prescott CPU. This is just as rediculous now as it was in your old tests.
Are you really SURE that everything is okay with that AthlonXP system? I'm still not convinced.
jiulemoigt - Saturday, March 26, 2005 - link
Ok I'm confused there is a built in frame counter in wow so benchies should be cake. Oh and approacing the action house isn't video cards probs it's lag from too many people. The numbers are not right I have a AMD64 3200+ that gets more frames than the graph when set back down to the right clock speed, and the FX-55 when paired with a 6800gt is signifactly faster than the graph what did you use to get the frames per sec?Mizuchi - Friday, March 25, 2005 - link
Wouldn't more memory help with disk swapping?mdk30 - Friday, March 25, 2005 - link
"We found a maximum of 3% variation between runs as long as there was no disk swapping that occurred during the benchmark (more on that later)."Did I miss the follow-up to this comment about disk swapping? I just went back through the article again and still can't find anything. I've had annoying stuttering problems with WoW when my drive is working hard, so I was just wondering if there was anything that I could do to minimize that effect.
Mizuchi - Friday, March 25, 2005 - link
Holy crap. I ran the game with default settings, like use high quality textures and shaders and the game looks sooo much better. Guess that's the difference with a DX9 card. I will play on my laptop now, I think. :)Cancelling that order on the Dell. Keeping the RAM. I'm going to find a video card deal and get in... so much more enjoyable with better visuals. Choppy frames is still a problem, but I might get over it.