I would definitely prioritize CPU power for WoW, when I played it a few months into mists the old desktop I was using had extreme issues with fps drops depending on how much was going on. in empty areas with a few people I had almost 60 FPS even on moderate or high graphical settings(1920x1080) that was with an hd 4670. On the other hand the first generation phenom quad core it had pretty much died in raid situations and the fps could drop to 5 or 10 fps at times.
I doubt they've even upgraded the engine since its the same expansion still, so keep that in mind.
I'm fairly confident the fps drops were due to the cpu for the reasoning that even in big cities, areas with just a lot of people and no graphical effects or AI going off, the fps dropped to almost the same levels. It just got ten times worse in a raid in that it would have random freezes and stuff and no graphical change would help it, even putting everything at minimum was almost identical to max. In the overworld, only the draw distance had any fps drop effect really.
CPU and your HDD/SSD is more important than GPU for WoW.
And for what it's worth, I can max it with my 2500k/560Ti at 40FPS on a high pop server at shrine/in org, though that's obviously not optimal for play so I have liquid detail down, AA down to 4x, sunshafts down and ground clutter down. Plenty to increase performance while not causing a damper on graphics.
An A10 can probably get you by on medium or medium-high with a few select things disabled or on low (water, shadows, sunshafts, texture projection, etc.).
I'm fairly confident the fps drops were due to the cpu for the reasoning that even in big cities, areas with just a lot of people and no graphical effects or AI going off, the fps dropped to almost the same levels. It just got ten times worse in a raid in that it would have random freezes and stuff and no graphical change would help it, even putting everything at minimum was almost identical to max. In the overworld, only the draw distance had any fps drop effect really.
CPU and I/O. WoW still uses a (heavily) modified WC3 engine and the way it loads models is still the same. If you are loading an area with many players, your client will lag/lock up from the I/O bottleneck and CPU bottleneck.
One of the few games where being installed on an SSD actually does make a difference in gameplay framerate. Though only due to it's age, really.
I decided to go with an A10 desktop (not really mine, helped pick it out for my friend's sister). There were probably better options but all of the PCs with dedicated GPUs I looked at had FX CPUs. AMD seems to be pushing towards making FM2 their flagship socket, so it'll have a better upgradeability path (since it's unlikely any more CPUs will be released for AM3). The A10 is alright for WoW anyway, so there's nothing to lose.
Also, how does the Radeon HD 7730 compare to the integrated graphics on the A10 desktop APU?
I doubt they've even upgraded the engine since its the same expansion still, so keep that in mind.
I'm fairly confident the fps drops were due to the cpu for the reasoning that even in big cities, areas with just a lot of people and no graphical effects or AI going off, the fps dropped to almost the same levels. It just got ten times worse in a raid in that it would have random freezes and stuff and no graphical change would help it, even putting everything at minimum was almost identical to max. In the overworld, only the draw distance had any fps drop effect really.
And for what it's worth, I can max it with my 2500k/560Ti at 40FPS on a high pop server at shrine/in org, though that's obviously not optimal for play so I have liquid detail down, AA down to 4x, sunshafts down and ground clutter down. Plenty to increase performance while not causing a damper on graphics.
An A10 can probably get you by on medium or medium-high with a few select things disabled or on low (water, shadows, sunshafts, texture projection, etc.).
CPU and I/O. WoW still uses a (heavily) modified WC3 engine and the way it loads models is still the same. If you are loading an area with many players, your client will lag/lock up from the I/O bottleneck and CPU bottleneck.
One of the few games where being installed on an SSD actually does make a difference in gameplay framerate. Though only due to it's age, really.