Mists of Pandaria upgrade suggestions?

Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
in Gaming
I built a friend of mine a home theater PC about four years ago, it's served him well, and he only plays WOW on it. It is an AM2+ board with an Athlon dual core and a Radeon 4850. He started playing Mists of Pandaria in his living room and performance is abysmal. He gave me a $400 upgrade budget as a guideline. I was thinking I could upgrade to an Athlon II X4 with a BIOS flash, only about $80 there, then buy something like a Radeon 7870 for around $200 and get a nice boost, but ideally I'd love to just swap the board and get him on a new platform. He wants to run the game on high settings 1920X1080. Ultra would be nice, but if it blows the budget out I'm not sure it's necessary.

I understand this game loads both the CPU and GPU pretty significantly. This is the only game he is interested in and likely will be for a significant period of time. Is it necessary to get on a new processor platform or will an Athlon II X4 not bottleneck the graphics?

Comments

  • MiracleManSMiracleManS Chambersburg, PA Icrontian
    Cliff, I have some reference here, so it might help you decide:

    i5 2300 and 6850 on ultra outside of major cites with only 4gb of ram. Because I spend a bit of time in major cities now, I run on mostly ultra with shadows turned down.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    I don't think an Athlon II X4 will cut it at 1920x1080 ultra. You should consider moving him to a new platform. WoW chugs a lot of CPU in populated areas.
  • MiracleManSMiracleManS Chambersburg, PA Icrontian
    primesuspect said:

    I don't think an Athlon II X4 will cut it at 1920x1080 ultra. You should consider moving him to a new platform. WoW chugs a lot of CPU in populated areas.

    This is absolute truth

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