What's the next logical upgrade?

[dhise]

Hey guys so I have a decent computer but I don't feel I'm getting the FPS in games that I really should. When I play BF3 on ultra I get great FPS but when I play wow on ultra and bioshock infinite sometimes the FPS ducks to around 30-45. Here is my spec

Gigabyte ud3r triple channel 1366 with i7 930 2.8 ghz not overclocked.
18 gigs of ddr3 ram
4 Gb asus gtx 670
1.5 TB hard drive

Nothing is overclocked, what a new MOBO/CPU make the most sense of an upgrade?

 

[PP Mguire]

From what you are saying, it makes no sense to upgrade your CPU.

BF3 uses more CPU than WoW or Bioshock ever would. Bioshock runs on an old engine, so does WoW. Makes no sense why you would have dip in those games vs BF3.

Are you running AA in either game?

 

[dhise]

Well if I knew what would make sense I wouldn't be here asking
I'm not sure if I'm running AA in the games I assume running AA would decrease FPS? Possibly? Sorry I'm not too great with this.

 

[PP Mguire]

Do you have anti-aliasing on in either game? It decreases FPS greatly, but honestly your rig should be able to handle all 3 games very easily.

To make sure if it's your CPU or not I need you to record your CPU usage while playing these games. If you are able to see a CPU counter while gaming (G series keyboard, second monitor, whatever) then use Coretemp or taskmanager to see how high your CPU is peaking while playing these games. If you can't do this, then you will need to go through a longer process to log CPU usage.

How to Record CPU and Memory Usage Over Time in Windows? - Instant Fundas

 

[dhise]

I knew it was anti-aliasing I just didn't know if i had it enabled or not. I'm on WoW now I will check. I'm at 29 fps with 25% cpu usage and 67% memory usage

 

[PP Mguire]

WHOA 67% memory usage with 18GB of RAM? What all do you have going on in the background?

 

[dhise]

Right now I have 6 gigs installed I have yet to install the other set. I have skype, origin, steam, raptr, browser, gpu monitor and some other things running. I didn't think more ram would really help past 6 gigs all that much. I'm guessing I assumed wrong?

 

[PP Mguire]

Having too many things running in the background can actually hamper performance quite a bit. Your CPU usage isn't too high though. Is your GPU usage at 100% when running these games?

Did you figure out what AA was set to?

 

[dhise]

I couldn't find an AA in WoW but my GPU config just has it default to On. My GPU usage at the time of of 30-35 fps is 44% and 41 degrees. Here's a screen of some info http://i.imgur.com/UJWjyEb.png

 

[PP Mguire]

Well, that right there says CPU bottleneck, but I still think something else is holding it back. When was the last time you updated drivers or did a fresh install of Windows?
Have you tried putting the extra RAM in?
Have you tried turning everything off in the background while gaming?

WoW is seriously quite dated even with their "improvements" and I can't see an i7 930 being any kind of bottleneck to it in the least. Same as Bioshock, as even though they have improved elements, the UE3 is still from 2007.

If you want to skip any troubleshooting then toss a budget and I'll tell you what to get.