Windows Just looking for advice...

OK; this is a gaming question & a hardware question all rolled into one and because I don't spend my 'every waking second' on these - or any other - forums, I'm expecting major 'fail' fallout for this.

Comments along the lines of 'Post it here* (*insert Forum section appropriate), n00b' will only serve to detract from my use of Forums, so if all you have to say is then be advised I have & find it easier to post a question than spend all day looking through stuff that is returned in search results but proves irrelevant.

Right; the query... what hardware specc. is required to get World of Warcraft to play at it's best quality settings possible, and/or what are the the most common limiting factor to reduction in Game Quality settings...?

Current setup exists of:
i5/750 w/ AC FP7
W7HP 64-bit
4GB RAM
Gf 8800GT 1GB OC + '1680*1050' monitor on D-Sub**

(** being replaced by '1920*1080' on DVI, any day now)

... let the fallout commence; maybe a useful response of two...!

 

Oh; and I know the gaming world doesn't consider WoW a real game, but that isn't the issue... :-/

 

Ok, first of all, you've set yourself up for some abuse by insulting and talking down to those who like to hang out on this forum, if you had taken the time to read the forum a bit, you would know that 99% of the people here are intelligent, friendly and likeable, much like you're 'real life' friends.

If you are asking for something from someone, whether it be 20p, some information, or someone's daughters hand in marriage, I always find I get further if I start friendly and polite about it.

But, to answer your question:

Your GPU is the limiting factor. WOW is not a particularly demanding game, and your CPU and RAM is more than enough.

If you wanted to cover all bases, you could upgrade to something around the £150 mark. A Nvidia 560 or a Radeon 6870 would suit you perfectly for the forseeable future, even at 1920 x 1080, and should you wish to expand your gaming tastes, would pretty much be able to hand most games out there today.

 

^^ exactly. your 8800 is ancient in the world of gaming hardware. if you want top performance its time to replace it with something current.

 

'Post it here* (*WoW forums), n00b'





Sorry, but people that start off their posts like that deserve to be flamed and ridiculed...

 

Seconding Parge's advice. A new graphics card would help you out quite a bit, the rest of your system is decently current. What specific card is right for you would require an idea of your budget but again Parge has made some good safe recommendations, the step up from an 8800GT would be massive even to a GTX560 or HD6870, so no need to worry about not spending enough and underperforming.

I do have to say, though, that WoW has gotten more demanding than most give it credit for, Blizzard has been constantly improving the graphics. It's certainly not as visually stunning as many other modern games but makes up for this by routinely putting players in situations with large amounts of players, enemies and spell effects to render. Compare a screenshot from a raid in Cataclysm to a screenshot from a player standing around in a forest on vanilla and you'll hardly believe it's the same game.

And on a final note, are we really that scary? And here I thought everyone was nice and friendly.

 

No we're not.

Compared with some forums I could mention we are a collection of kitten lovers, who eat nothing but marshmallows and use the word "fluffy" at least five times every day.

But we do like our games though.

 

Thanks for the advice, all... a new graphics card'll be the next thing I get, then.

In my defence, I only included the 'flame invite' - as Parge put it - in an attempt to defuse any 'posting on a gaming forum, when all you play is WoW... LOL' input.

Posting here was a gamble, for me as I feel that those of us who 'only' play World of Warcraft aren't seen by the gaming community as 'worthy of consideration' in comparison to the likes of Crysis, CoD., etc... I could be wrong, but does a game have to be a 'hardware killer' to have to taken seriously...?


Once again, thanks for the input...

 

just on a sidenote, doesn't your current rig run WOW just fine?

had an old athlon x2, Gts8400 rig that ran wow very nicely, even cat (as far as i remember).

 

When I had my 8800GT, I tried WoW, and it ran perfectly fine too.

And it runs alright on my mates E5200 with a 256MB 8800GT.

You'll not have many issues with that setup, the graphics card could be updated for other more demanding games, but if all your playing is WoW, then its not worth spending the money on. The 8800GT is still a very capable card.

 

I consider myself a gamer and I'm a former WoW player. I've not quit I just don't have the time any more and it's so geared for casual play I even prefer dabbling the way I do. I'm planning on reactivating my account next week for a month of WoW play. I definitely consider it a good game, but not everyone enjoys it.

Anyway I used to have a 8800 GTS and it ran WoW maxed out great. However a GPU upgrade is always nice if you fancy upgrading something,

 

Mate, what you play is what you play. It takes all sorts! Some people on these forums actually do play Call Of Duty and have the front to admit it!!

I concurr with the rest - a more up to date graphics card would be good - it might even prove useful if you decide to play *ahem* a proper game ;-)

 

I played WoW on the second system in my sig (8800GT) and found it... tolerable, but not good. Or rather, it was good while I was playing it but only tolerable after realizing what an upgrade had done.

"Maxed" can be different depending on the person. Putting everything on "High", or whatever the best quality is, isn't always maxed. Add in anti-aliasing, anistropic filtering and varying resolutions and you're looking at massive FPS differences even when all the other settings are the same. Then take into account that WoW has a shed load of other settings such as render distance, view distances, clutter density, etc. and it's hard to make sure that any two people are actually running at "maxed".

It's also hard to say exactly what is good from person to person. Some people might honestly not mind or even notice a game dropping to low frames per second, some of my WoW buddies played on iMacs and the FPS they were getting in raids was painful for me to watch yet totally normal for them. My standard (which seems faily common) is usually to make sure no situation drops the minimum below 30FPS, an 8800GT wouldn't cut that. The OP seems to already play and knows first hand what kind of gaming experience he's getting, if he's looking on forums for recommendations on improving his experience then it's obviously not cutting it for him.

 

Did this man insult people who post on forums AND wow in the same post?

Sir, if your intention was to fire an arrow straight through my heart... BULLSEYE!

Also, graphics card is probably your best bet for "smoothness". Stick a USB stick in the side of your PC too and put that windows vista/7 virtual paging system on it, that sped up loading time substantially on mine and a few other people I knows computers, and I have 4 gig of RAM also.

 

I would have thought 8800gt would be enough already, if it isn't look on ebay for second hand cards, a gtx 460 can be got for £100 or you maybe able to get away with getting another 8800gt for sli for £35. I had 2x 8800gts 512mb in sli and it ran games far more demanding than WoW at high levels until i upgraded last year.

 

I believe this is known as sh*tposting

But here, LET ME GOOGLE THAT FOR YOU.

 

Always make sure you get rashes checked out, especially in "sensitive" areas and always be polite.

 

One other thing work checking is what mods you have running, as some can take up rediculous amounts of memory, and may be slowing things down a bit.

 

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/ATI/ATI+6800+Series+/XFX+ATI+Radeon+HD+6870+1024MB+GDDR5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+with+FREE+S.T.A.L.K.E.R%3A+Call+of+Pripyat+%26+Shogun+2+Games+?productId=44533&source=googleps#

You even get two very good "real" games free with it.

 

Wow loves CPU clock speed and a good internet connection.

Have you considered overclocking your i5?