Laptop for WoW

[betasub]

Nice to see some stats to remind ppl how heavy-duty and graphics-intensive WoW has become with the updates. (Thanks yh125d! ).

Also glad that OP is being realistic about being limited to the lowest settings. I don't think going mobile with this game is going to be worthwhile unless you can get at least a mid-range (x6xx) mobile GPU, but that requires a bigger budget and even then doesn't give great performance (as yh125d's fps show).

 

[Ares202]

The hardware requirements on wow seem to go up quite a lot but the graphics dont seem to improve, it still looks as crappy as when it was first released

my friend can play it on his 9500m ok, (20-70 fps) on 1366x768 high settings, but the 9400m will likely need to put the settings to low

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: yh125d
Also, a big fat no to those who still think WoW isn't graphics intensive at all. The game has changed drastically. My desktop (sig) can't run it at any higher than medium settings at 1280 x 1024 without the FPS dipping below 30 or so, with the shadows all the way down(the big FPS sinkhole)

I had WoW with Burning Crusade pack at 1680x1050 res high settings with my humble 3800+ x2/7800gt card with 4GB(Vista x64),only thing I disabled was shadows,was real smooth so you should be able to play it higher.

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: yh125d
Also, a big fat no to those who still think WoW isn't graphics intensive at all. The game has changed drastically. My desktop (sig) can't run it at any higher than medium settings at 1280 x 1024 without the FPS dipping below 30 or so, with the shadows all the way down(the big FPS sinkhole)

I had WoW with Burning Crusade pack at 1680x1050 res high settings with my humble 3800+ x2/7800gt card with 4GB(Vista x64),only thing I disabled was shadows,was real smooth so you should be able to play it higher.

WotLK areas are very different from TBC areas. On that same desktop with the same settings as I get 30-40 fps I can get 75-90 fps in Shatt (old city)

 

[JACKDRUID]

get a laptop from this deal add 9600m , will cost you around $800-1000 depends on configuration.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Mem

I had WoW with Burning Crusade pack at 1680x1050 res high settings with my humble 3800+ x2/7800gt card with 4GB(Vista x64),only thing I disabled was shadows,was real smooth so you should be able to play it higher.

I did great in TBC with my 7800GT and 3800+ x2 also (2GB with Win2k)

Wrath expansion came out and suddenly I was getting FPS in the low twenties, dipping into the teens just standing and looking around from the spot your first walk off the zepplin in the starting area (Warsong Hold). This was at 1280x1024.

Luckily I was already in the process of upgrading my PC to e7200 / HD4850.

People talking about WoW performance who haven't seen 3.0.x need to realize that the performance needed to run max settings have changed dramatically since they were last playing. 7900GT level performance (8600GT is pretty close to that level) doesn't cut it for wanting good FPS at max settings. You have to drop your graphics quality levels down.

BTW all of my experience is with dynamic shadows at minimum, their implementation of the shadows is not only a huge performance hit, but they don't react to all light sources. This made for some pretty brain bending moments as I'd ride past a lantern and my shadow would be pointing in the same direction all the way past it. This is incredibly disorienting on a subconscious level when the shadow is naturally pointing towards the light source. So yeah, I leave dynamic shadows at minimum.