Minimum specs to quad box?

[Lasivian]

Ok, here is my latest wishlist:

Newegg.com - Once You Know, You Newegg

2 video options and 2 MB options, and I guess I would need a new power supply with this.

Suggestions?

Thanks

[Lasivian]

I added an SSD, I'm curious if 4GB of memory will be enough tho

[burningforce]

this article suggest that the older 4870 card beats a 5770 card. AMD?s Radeon HD 5770 & 5750: DirectX 11 for the Mainstream Crowd - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

also I have a geforce 260 core 216 card and it performs ok, but check out comparison charts from various tech sites and make a decision based on what your gaming needs will be. You could get the 4870 if you plan on boxing a few characters at the same time, and when you get the hang of it and enjoy it, you can either upgrade the video card at that time to something more powerful or first try making 4+ trial accounts and test everything on the system to see what the slow performance is coming from.

usually it will be a lack of processing power and or slow hard drive speeds and network latency. There are tools like permon.exe in windows 7 that can show you what is happening in real-time so you can identify what is causing the major lag and slowness.

I never had a amd machine, so I can not speak to much about their processors or motherboards for amd chips. But if I were to choose based on those two boards, I would go gigabyte because the msi board is micro atx, and it only has 1 pci-e slot and 1 pci slot. So if you plan on putting in a recent video card, it will go in the pci-e slot but most likely cover the only pci slot, thats if you need it.

But you can save around $70 downgrading to the GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 which is $107 or so. I am not sure what the difference between the the GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 and GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD5 AM3 are atm, I have to get going soon so i can not research for you, so you might have to do some sleuthing on your own hehe.

And that gskill memory you linked looks weird. It looks like value memory or gskill knock offs :P. But I would suggest spending 10-15 bucks more and getting memory with heat spreaders and possible lower timings. And also you might need to switch to a different brand of memory, I am not sure if this affects amd gigabyte motherboards, but when I have 4 slots filled on my intel gigabyte board, it is hell to get the right timings setup properly. Some people say it is a gigabyte hardware problem when that 4th slot is occupied with memory, others say it is the quality of the memory. And gskill and gigabyte blame each other for the incompatibility.

and don't be afraid to shop around at different online vendors and or check out stores in your area that sells tech stuff, newegg is price gouging like hell for the last few years. Just make sure the online store and tech stores in your area are reputable and check what their return policy on opened computer hardware.

ok gotta run, sorry for the extremely long ass post. hopefully you can get a kick ass computer for yourself soon. also if someone with a little more amd experience can help him with the build, that would be cool as I might not have time in the next few days to research and compare amd motherboards/processors/memory.

[burningforce]

also before I forget, check this site for power supply reviews JonnyGURU.com - Seasonic X-750 750W Review

remember the most important piece in a computer is the power supply. your $1k gaming rig won't mean jack if the $50 power supply you bought blows from the stress and takes your computer components with it

[Tim]

From what I have seen from people broadcasting Cata on JTV, the system requirements have easily doubled back from Vanilla WoW.

[Lasivian]

Newegg.com - Once You Know, You Newegg

That is what I finally went with.

The 6x cpu is for me, the 4x for my GF.

Hopefully it'll work without too much grief. Heh.

I don;t mind playing with "average" graphics if I'm having fun with others.

[fogy]

Originally Posted by Korton

Yes, playing through beta made me aware of this.

Normally, I can easily get 60 FPS in Orgrimmar (pre-Cata)

After Deathwing goes on vacation to Azeroth and Orgrimmar gets re-vamped, i get about 20-30 FPS if I'm lucky, and this is without the four hundred people in Orgrimmar at the same time.

Egads. The wife's iMac won't be happy when our teams reach post-Cata Lagaran.

[Tim]

I would skip the AMD CPUs, instead go for the Intel i7 930 (Lots of sites selling them for $199 and they blow away all AMDs) and go for 6GB of DDR3.

[jasikapetro]

I would add another 256mb of RAM to that system, but it should be fine for processing power. What will your eventual setup be? If that machine will be a combined backend/frontend, compared to just one or the author, the requirements change.