Building a Bare Minimum WoW PC

[jordan1794]

Hello all! My girlfriend is going to be building a new PC sometime next year but will probably wait until the new Nvidia cards come out.

In the meantime, she wants to play WoW and her laptop just can't quite do it (Even running all settings on minimum, screen resolution at 1366x768 w/ 50% scaling it struggles to keep 30 fps in the open)

So, just to get her by I am going to build the cheapest thing I can to run WoW.

Was wondering if I could get some assistance, right now I need a Processor, looking to spend less than $30 on the processor. Right now the best thing I've found is a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600. Does nearly double the performance that the minimum recommended processor for WoW does (Going by PassMark's website), and I can get one used w/ shipping for $13.

Before I move on to the motherboard, I was wondering if anyone has knowledge of a better processor, to get more bang for my buck while still staying under $30 (Including shipping)

 

[Frick]

Do you have any parts you can reuse? If you're going Core 2, I would look for a Wolfdale if I was you. The e8400 usually costs less than the quads, and I will probably be quicker (higher clocks). Here you usually have to pay less than €10 including shipping. What about GPU?

 

[jordan1794]

Do you have any parts you can reuse? If you're going Core 2, I would look for a Wolfdale if I was you. The e8400 usually costs less than the quads, and I will probably be quicker (higher clocks). Here you usually have to pay less than €10 including shipping. What about GPU?

I have some old parts laying around, and I know I can get some more for free and/or cheap.

I've got a GT 640 for the GPU, should be MORE than enough to run WoW on low settings. Have an old 500 GB hard drive as well.
I am pretty sure I can secure a power supply for free, as well as a case.

The only things I expect to need to purchase will be the processor, motherboard, RAM, and cpu fan.


And right after I posted I thought about it, the E8400 is my second pick, it's $2 less than the Quad. The quad scores higher, but will the E8400's higher clock speed mean it would still run WoW faster?

 

[Frick]

And right after I posted I thought about it, the E8400 is my second pick, it's $2 less than the Quad. The quad scores higher, but will the E8400's higher clock speed mean it would still run WoW faster?

I don't know it for a fact, but I'm guessing it is. Unless they've massively updated the engine lately. BTW I ran through most of Draenor on that CPU, 4GB RAM and a GT530 on 1680x1050.

Maybe you post in the Buy/Trade/Sell forum, someone might have some old junk they want to get rid of.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Maybe you can slide up the scale a bit?
$103 after MIR: GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3H FM2+ with 860K combo
Don't know if an AM1 setup might work. Where's @newtekie1 ? $89: MSI AM1I AM1 + AMD Athlon 5350

Edit: Or even: $150 after $10 MIR GIGABYTE GA-B85M-DS3H-A bundled with Intel Core i3-4170

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Maybe you can slide up the scale a bit?
$103 after MIR: GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3H FM2+ with 860K combo
Don't know if an AM1 setup might work. Where's @newtekie1 ? $89: MSI AM1I AM1 + AMD Athlon 5350

Edit: Or even: $150 after $10 MIR GIGABYTE GA-B85M-DS3H-A bundled with Intel Core i3-4170

AMD CPUs and GPUs aren't known to perform well in WoW. Though the Godavari APUs would probably be okay.

 

[eidairaman1]

P4, pEnt D, AXP,A64, core 2, Phenom1 can run it fine.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

P4, pEnt D, AXP,A64, core 2, Phenom1 can run it fine.

P4 and Pentium D would run WoW terribly!

 

[Frick]

P4 and Pentium D would run WoW terribly!

Very much true, unless playing vanilla/BC on a private server (my first experience on WoW was on a Pentium III and a Radeon 9000).

 

[RCoon]

I used to run WoW on a Turion X2 TL-62 and a Radeon X1350 mobile GPU with 2GB RAM.
Translation: A giant mass of poopie laptop.

Get yourself a (newer) Pentium/Core2, 4GB RAM and a low-midrange GPU. GT 640 should do fine

 

[silentbogo]

Instead of Q6600 look for Q8300. Many years ago I replaced CPU/MoBo with a Q8300 + P45 combo. Could overclock it to >3.4GHz with no voltage increase easily and they go for ~19-20 on eBay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-...615738?hash=item43e6f4dc7a:g:FlMAAOSwFnFV~IJo

I was really shocked how expensive are used P45 boards , so I'd suggest to look for something a bit lower. My old P5Q Pro costs almost as much as it was new on eBay! WTF?
Only found a lower-end P43 mobo for ~$55, but that is still too expensive.

Post a [WTB] thread, pretty sure someone has a nice LGA775 board here with an adequate price

Also a good alternative is to look for APU combo. I recently bought a couple of A4-5300B's+A55 boards for less than $40/each locally, and it is even cheaper in US.
Performance-wise it is better than E8400, and it is cheaper/newer/cooler and has many advantages over the old counterpart. I could even play Portal and Dota 2 on an iGPU @1280x1024

 

[Frick]

Instead of Q6600 look for Q8300. Many years ago I replaced CPU/MoBo with a Q8300 + P45 combo. Could overclock it to >3.4GHz with no voltage increase easily and they go for ~19-20 on eBay.

I'm not sure the extra cores would benefit him honestly. Wolfdale is a wee bit faster clock-for-clock too (not that it matters much), plus has higher stock clocks in case he gets a bad example.

 

[xvi]

I'm at least 30% sure that currently, World of Warcraft will favor single-threaded performance. Seems to really love Intel CPUs and nVidia cards. I think that E8400 would do well. (Edit: I was wrong. See my tests in the spoiler.)

I think I should be able to do some testing. Going to put this in a spoiler because lots of screenshots.

Spoiler: The difference between fun and science is writing it down

Abstract
Since the dawn of the Pentium D and Athlon 64 X2, mankind has debated whether or not having extra cores will improve gaming performance. The conclusion depends entirely on how the game was coded, which is why we are virtually gathered here today.

Hypothesis
By lowering clock speeds down on a modern processor, we should be able to simulate an environment where we have very little single threaded performance, but considerable multi-threaded performance. In theory, a game that relies on single-threaded performance should do poorly when restricted to one core (which we can force by setting core affinity on the game's .exe) relative to its performance when core affinity allows it to take advantage of multiple cores. A game that is mostly single-threaded only should show no improvement.

Test Environment
To maximize the penalty for programs that are single-threaded only, I've lowered my clock speed by half and confirmed that the processor will not clock higher by running a stress test with Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility.

(Fig. 1: An Intel Core i7 6700k limited to 2.0GHz, confirmed by a stress test)

A quick benchmark using a recent version of CPU-z shows the performance differential between a single-threaded application and a multi-threaded application. These are similar to the gains I am expecting to see if WoW does indeed support multi-threading.

(Fig. 2: Single-threaded performance vs multi-threaded performance tested)

For graphics, the nVidia GeForce GTX 980 will be left to run at full speed. This is preferred to further shift the stress on to the CPU. We do not want the graphics card to interfere.

From the task manager, we can limit WoW to run on only one core.

(Fig. 3: WoW-64.exe being limited to one core)

Our test machine now has the following specs:
Intel Core i7 6700k@2GHz
Samsung OEM 1x8GB DDR4-2133
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980

Quality will be set to the Ultra preset and I will stand in a busy town to record FPS.

WoW Performance Benchmarks

2GHz, one core

2GHz, two cores

2GHz, four cores (w/HT Enabled)

4GHz, one core

4GHz, two cores

I've hit the maximum number of attachments now, so I'll just type the rest.
At this point, this processor at 2GHz appears to max out the GPU's capabilities, so I am testing another round at an even lower clock speed of ~1.25GHz

1.25GHz, one core: 17 fps
1.25GHz, two cores: 22 fps
1.25GHz, four cores: 25 fps
1.25GHz, four cores (w/HT): 27 fps

Conclusion/tl;dr
I'm surprised myself, but it does appear that WoW will love all the cores you can throw at it (at least up to 8 threads).
Worthy to note that you need a really slow processor for WoW to rely on those extra cores.

tl;dr: MOAR CORES!

 

[Frick]

snip

Awesome! I didn't even think of trying that! I wonder at what clock speed your CPU matches a 3Ghz Core 2 Duo... Probably lower than 2Ghz.

I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion though. I see 45FPS with dual core and 47 FPS with Quad core + HT. It really depends on what he has to pay for the CPU's obviously. Here the quads can be pretty expensive while the dual core Wolfdales are next to nothing, but if they cost the same the quad is probably better.

 

[xvi]

I see 45FPS with dual core and 47 FPS with Quad core + HT.

I think that was the GPU capping out (pretty similar performance at 4GHz single core too). When I lowered to 1.25GHz, there was a more substantial difference between dual core and quad+HT. I'd agree that dual core certainly seems to be enough

1.25GHz, one core: 17 fps
1.25GHz, two cores: 22 fps
1.25GHz, four cores: 25 fps
1.25GHz, four cores (w/HT): 27 fps

 

[thebluebumblebee]

$100 after $10 MIR:
MSI B85-G43 GAMING LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

bundled with:

1x Intel Pentium G3258 Haswell Dual-Core 3.2 GHz

@xvi : I mildly disagree with your conclusion. There is a big jump from 1 to 2 cores, but I only see a small increase after that. Nice work, BTW.

 

[cdawall]

I played wow on my netbook just fine. Athlon X2 L310/4GB DDR2/X1370 mobile. I don't see why an athlon 5350 wouldn't play it.

 

[Frick]

I played wow on my netbook just fine. Athlon X2 L310/4GB DDR2/X1370 mobile. I don't see why an athlon 5350 wouldn't play it.

They update the engine, and the new areas are always heavier. I played WoD on an e8400, GT530 and 4GB RAM and that is probably the bare minimum. I could lower everything, including resolution, but it's no fun playing on those settings. And when you start to raid and that (which you will) it gets worse.

 

[cdawall]

They update the engine, and the new areas are always heavier. I played WoD on an e8400, GT530 and 4GB RAM and that is probably the bare minimum. I could lower everything, including resolution, but it's no fun playing on those settings. And when you start to raid and that (which you will) it gets worse.

The 5350 would beat that in every way...Unless there is a legitimate issue with the AMD drivers.

 

[xvi]

I mildly disagree with your conclusion. There is a big jump from 1 to 2 cores, but I only see a small increase after that. Nice work, BTW.

The increase is small, true. I certainly agree that dual core would be enough, especially considering those two cores are going to be at a higher frequency (which I think might even give more performance than four slower cores). I was really surprised to see there was a benefit at all though.

 

[jordan1794]

I'm just going to to talk to her, we were waiting to build her computer to see what the new Nvidia GPUs can do, but given they are still many months away she can probably just upgrade the GPU if/when needed.

Probably just gonna go ahead and build her true gaming rig late January, early February. She doesn't want to spend any major money, when she will be building a ~$2,500 rig in the very near future.

Thanks for the replies though! I might still grab an old PC from a family member and see if I can stick a faster processor in it in the meantime.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Too bad you're not in my area:
C2D-e8400, mobo + 2gbs of Ram - $20
Q6600- Gigabyte Mobo- 4gb ddr3 Ram - $50 (Beaverton)

But, it always seems like what you want is available somewhere else on CL.