Graphics or Processor

I currently have a Phenom II x4 945 & a Sapphire HD7770 GHz Edition
I can run the game on High (Laptop) fine and the game runs on Max albeit a little choppy.

I'd like to upgrade to the HD7950 to hopefully get 60fps on Max. I'm worried my CPU will bottleneck this GPU and I'm wondering if I'd get a better return out of upgrading the Phenom II to an i5 4670. Currently, I can only afford one as neither are cheap on a budget.

I'd prefer not to do any OCing.

cpu by a huge mile, all mmos are far more cpu hungry then a gpu, not to say a gpu isnt that important, in the world of mmos its cpu, theres a lot of info that needs to be dealt with and player actions on screen, thats something that isnt dealt with by the gpu, this is coming from a mmo player that had a phenom 2 before from 3.4ghz oced to 3.9, and went to a I5 3570k 4.4 ghz stable, can push for more but need a better motherboard to do that, all with decent temps and silence, gpus get cheaper anyways, also advice, the element you will gain is minimum FPS when shit hits the fan so to speak

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Originally Posted by raelgun

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I beg to differ. It was being discussed in the beta forums - a better GPU is what really makes a difference in this game. People with a lot worse CPUs than mine (i5-3570k) - but with something like a Radeon 7850 instead of my 7770 - were able to pump up the game to high if not maximum settings with nearly 60FPS. Even OCing their CPU hardly affected on their framerate. I'm currently running standard settings for desktop with FXAA enabled and stick at 60FPS.

However, I'd like to add that this is the only MMO I've seen with that particular scenario. Any other time, a better CPU is what tends to make a difference. Why FFXIV: ARR is the odd one out I have no idea; I could make an educated guess, but that's about it.

if your talking about world events, then this is a pointless scenario, the case in point is raids, more specifically 24 mans, when talking in say wow, the fps to consider is always 25 man raids as the bar, you can never take account of world events since the variables cant be controlled in any way in the slightest, fixed situation in raids matter especially with the battle log behaviour, so no, im not wrong, a cpu will be a greater addition no matter what for mmos in this case.
all mmos in a raid situation behaves differently to the world

If you're basing the performance on those benchmark, it's not very accurate. While the information in the benchmark is set, hence the CPU wasn't as stressed, the higher scores just indicates the ability of your computer to push out frame rates for static contents. In real games however, you'll notice a good difference with a better CPU, especially in highly congested FATE that there are a lot of people doing everything at once. I would go the CPU path.

This is just my opinion, but there's not going to be a large difference switching your graphics cards. You might get a better return with a processor for now (may be different when the 8000s series releases). If you decide to upgrade your CPU be sure your motherboard has the correct chipset to match that of the new CPU.

I don't want to interfere but nobody said if it was for world event or raid 24 mans like you say it is, so for mee he/she is asking for better overall performances in the game which include fates :) so i would say CPU increase would be better.

This game isnt graphically intense so I believe you would see a better benefit from upgrading the CPU. Infact - my other half has only one step up the GPU that I have but has a 4ghz 8core CPU compared to my 3ghz 4core and it STOMPS on my performance. Also HDD speed counts alot for loading and instances/quests to update hense my upgrade to a SSD when I get my pay.

edit: this of course is all tested and written pre-directX upgrade that SE are planning on.

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Originally Posted by SoraKaiser

I don't want to interfere but nobody said if it was for world event or raid 24 mans like you say it is, so for mee he/she is asking for better overall performances in the game which include fates :) so i would say CPU increase would be better.

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the issue is, fates over time will die down, as a result, system stress goes down with this, but 24 man raids system stress will remain consistent, you dont upgrade for variables you cant control, you upgrade to the areas you know you need that performance in a consistent manner

To reiterate my previous point... I suggest looking at some external sources as to CPU/GPU upgrades and their effect on benchmark scores; here's a thread on FFXIVRealm that I found. I really do suggest reading through a few sources you find on Google before making a final decision.

sheer, people have done benchmarks for other mmos, even wow, and they dont relate very well with raids as ive mentioned, benchmarks are synthetic, if you check linustechtips, he knows his stuff for hardware quite well, and all his benchmarks are all ingame runs in the same area all the time, hes stopped using tools to bench with since they are misleading

I have a intel 2.4 quad core 775 very old cpu.

***I had a NVidia 8800gts and could play a lot of games on high settings np, because of the CPU and my raptor HD drives etc.***

When playing this game, I had to have everything on low and could just barely run around in game it was jerking around so bad and my frame rate was 2 and 3 frames a sec. I went and bought a NVidia 770 and did not replace anything else but the card and I can now run on HIGH EVERYTHING. Same 2.4 quad etc I did not change anything but my vid card and went from unplayable to I can handle anything this game wants to dish out.

One followup to this. my card is a pcie 3.0 card. my mother board is still the old 1.0. np at all. card works just fine and the game screams now.

Don't get me wrong - I am not sure how your CPU stacks up against my 2.4 quad if it is lower than mine I would prol do cpu, however that's when you start talking maybe a new board and new memory etc etc. I went with a card first because I plan on building a new computer and I can put this fancy new card in my old out of date system and by in another year before I upgrade. I was just overwhelmed that the game was UNPLAYABLE like 1200 on the full benchmark with every setting turned down unplayable and just by buying this really nice vid card I have no lag at all and I went with desktop high on the benchmark and got over 8500.

Just my 2 cents for what it is worth.

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Originally Posted by raelgun

sheer, people have done benchmarks for other mmos, even wow

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I'm aware that benchmarks aren't something to blindly follow. As I said:

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Originally Posted by Sheer

I really do suggest reading through a few sources you find on Google before making a final decision.

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Some MMOs are more dependent on the CPU than the GPU. It depends how optimized the game is for each component. From what I have seen and have found through my own experience, the game is much more reliant on the GPU than it is the CPU. Having a decent GPU and CPU is crucial to any game in general, and there are games that are hugely dependent on your CPU (PlanetSide 2, anyone?), but particularly for ARR, I feel they've smoothed out the optimization for the CPU so well that it would be a better deal to invest in a better GPU than a better CPU.

On top of that... If they do decide to invest in a better CPU, and it turns out they want a CPU that uses, say, requires an AM3+ socket, they may very well have to upgrade their motherboard, since the Phenom II X4 945 requires only an AM3 socket (unless the motherboard is already an AM3+ socket). Glancing over AM3 socket CPUs that would be better... I can't really find any that would be worth investing in unless they upgraded their motherboard to an AM3+ socket.