AMD Performance in Blizzard games

dralejr · November 4, 2013

My first post/question.

I know my sentence structure is terrible I ramble a bit and don't really know when to end a sentence.

I'm thinking of upgrading my current rig, Right now I have an old Intel H57 motherboard, I don't know the exact make and model. That's paired with an Intel Core i7 860. I don't really have any problems with performance, the main reason I want to upgrade is because my motherboard has started making a very very high pitched beeping that is giving me headaches. I believe it is coming from near/close to the USB 2.0 ports in the back. (If anyone knows a way to fix this please tell me).

I don't have a lot of money, I mostly play Blizzard games (StarCraft, Diablo, WoW) with a few others thrown in. I like maxing the majority of the settings. I have an AMD Radeon HD 5850 (I'm thinking of upgrading to either an R9 280x or GTX 770) I'm told its usually the GPU that dictates gaming performance but that Blizzards games are very CPU heavy.

With that said how are Blizzards games on an AMD FX-6300 (From what I've seen this would be more of a sidegrade than an upgrade)?

What about an AMD FX-8320(50)?

I want to max out most settings and get 40+ fps.

The ABSOLUTE most I want to spend on the Motherboard/cpu is $350 Canadian. Preferably closer to 250-300.

Should I stick with Intel and get a Z87 board with an intel core i5 4670k? Or will AMD have enough power to give me good fps in these games not really optimized for Multiple Cores?

Thanks for any help!

Skanic · November 4, 2013

Stick with intel , as Blizzard games are alway heavily single threaded. And you won't see an improvement on that in the future. If you were to play games like crysis 3 and bf4 and games that support multi threading then a fx 8350 is not bad.

Now the gpu,

Blizzards games seem to favour the nvidia gpu's but it depends on what you want to do. If you want to stream or do youtube videos(ShadowPlay) and not much overclocking than a GTX 770 is a pretty solid choice(note that both cards are more or less the same in performance.

G-Sync is imo crap for higher end gpus like the 770 and higher, because you already get enough fps and its more targeted for the budget cards. On the amd site you get the upcoming Mantle API for bf4 and other TBA titles that will use it. And if you are a fan of Overclocking than the 280X got you covered those amd cards are beasts at overclocking, My 7950 is at 1200 on the core and is as fast as a 680

It's up to you what you want.

Classics · November 4, 2013

Blizzard games are horribly unoptimised, I get 60 - 40 FPS everywhere in WoW except in raids, where my FPS drops to about 10 - 20. My friend that has an i7 3770k OCed to about 4.5Ghz and raids with me only gets about 5 frames better than me at all times. Just go with whatever will fit your purpose more, more cores are good for future games and rendering/recording and gaming/livestreaming and gaming whilst the i7's just dominate at single threaded tasks.

Maxibonbits · November 4, 2013

The FX 6300 is more than capable of running wow. Compared to what you currently have the difference may be quite small but noticeable.

if you are upgrading to a new platform you may want to look if you can get a cheap 3570k or 3770k with a decent Z77 board.

KneesWeak · November 4, 2013

My first post/question.

I know my sentence structure is terrible I ramble a bit and don't really know when to end a sentence.

I'm thinking of upgrading my current rig, Right now I have an old Intel H57 motherboard, I don't know the exact make and model. That's paired with an Intel Core i7 860. I don't really have any problems with performance, the main reason I want to upgrade is because my motherboard has started making a very very high pitched beeping that is giving me headaches. I believe it is coming from near/close to the USB 2.0 ports in the back. (If anyone knows a way to fix this please tell me).

I don't have a lot of money, I mostly play Blizzard games (StarCraft, Diablo, WoW) with a few others thrown in. I like maxing the majority of the settings. I have an AMD Radeon HD 5850 (I'm thinking of upgrading to either an R9 280x or GTX 770) I'm told its usually the GPU that dictates gaming performance but that Blizzards games are very CPU heavy.

With that said how are Blizzards games on an AMD FX-6300 (From what I've seen this would be more of a sidegrade than an upgrade)?

What about an AMD FX-8320(50)?

I want to max out most settings and get 40+ fps.

The ABSOLUTE most I want to spend on the Motherboard/cpu is $350 Canadian. Preferably closer to 250-300.

Should I stick with Intel and get a Z87 board with an intel core i5 4670k? Or will AMD have enough power to give me good fps in these games not really optimized for Multiple Cores?

Thanks for any help!

id probably look for a 3570k or a 2500k for cheap and a decent z77 board for $100

Clinicall_eh_PC · November 6, 2013

a good clocking 6300fx is more then enough to play blizzard games.

i get better min frame rates when i disable two cores and push the overclock +200-300mhz more then on 8 cores on my 8350.

there is only ONE single game instance where i can indisputably say that upon system start up and client start up where my FPS can and WILL drop to 4-9 fps.

however after the first pack or first 30 secs in level i sky rocket back to my basic average fps 180-240 and stick there unless i'm running kamikaze crypt runs where there are 400+ baddies on screen. that is deemed server lag as intel and amd alike TANK fps.

So if money is tight. Go AMD cpu and Nvidia GPU.

for blizzard games i would say fx6300-fx8350 are equal in performance to an i5 2500k,

my system specs:

Fx-8350 @ 4.67

Rog Crosshair -V- Formula-Z

Asus Gtx 580 (i've used a few generations of nvidia and amd cards and this card trumps em all in this game)

H100i

X850 psu.

you will see greater performance running blizzard games on an SSD or even better if you have 16gb+ ram and run your game from a Ramdisk. more so then intel vs amd or nvidia vs amd