New System for WOW running at 1920x1200 Resolution

[Jesda]

Hi Guys,

I'm setting new system for World of Warcraft that is running one or two monitor.

If one monitor it will be Dell 24" with resolution of 1920x1200
If two monitors it will be 2x Apple CinemaDiplay with Resolution of 1680x1050

My components are:
Motherboard: Asus P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP
CPU: Intel E6420, 4MB L2, 2.13GB, 1066MHz (maybe overclock)
Memory: 2x 1GB Samsung DDR2 800Mhz or 2x 1GB Corsiar DDR2 667Mhz (not sure with corsair)
HDD: Seagate SATAII 7200rpm 320GB (wish 10k but can't justify the HDD Size)
Graphic: Asus EN8800GTS/HTDP/320M
DVDRom Drive: Pioneer SATA 212D
Case: Antec P150 or CoolMaster CAC-T05 (not sure if CoolMaster's PSU has enough power).

Looking for your advise. Oh btw. I'm going to with Windows Vista Home Premium.

 

[Praytus]

Certainly overkill for WoW. If you're looking for cases with a built in PSU, you may want to take a look at the Sonata III.

 

[Arcanedeath]

You may want to consider the P5K Deluxe instead of the P5B, also I'd go w/ the Antec case of those 2 choices, I'd suggest getting some Micron D9 based chips, they are so cheap nowadays it just doesn't make sense to get anything else.

 

[Roguestar]

If you're not overclocking, get any value brand DDR2-533 (corsair/crucial valueRAM is good). Otherwise just get whatever DDR2-800 is cheapest on offer at Newegg.

Overkill for WoW, though.

 

[Jesda]

The case I metion come with PSU, Antec come with 430W and Coolmaster come with 350W.

If I choose for its price, will 350W is enough for the system above?

 

[Roguestar]

Not if it's a crappy quality one. I'd play it safe if I were you and invest in a seperate PSU. A Seasonic 440W would do you fine.

 

[Jesda]

The Antec P150 comes with High Efficiency 430-Watt ATX12V v2.2 Neo HE power supply

I might not overclock because I don't want to mess it up and I love it quite.

So if Antec power say it 430w it good enough right, because I just use PSU calculator, for my set up it only it request 275W.

 

[TallBill]

Switching over to a real computer instead of a mac huh? Smart choice. Overkill for WoW though.

 

[erwos]

An 8800GTS for WoW? I'd be shocked if you needed more than an 8600GT. Same thing with the CPU - WoW's big problem tends to be the amount of memory it wants to suck down once you're past a certain point.

 

[Praytus]

Well, he is pushing a 24" monitor.

 

[f4phantom2500]

Originally posted by: Praytus
Well, he is pushing a 24" monitor.

Yeah, but it's WoW. You don't need nearly that caliber of hardware to run wow really well at those settings.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2381&p=4

look how old those cards are, and they run it very well at 1600x1200. A 7900GS will blow those cards away and can be had for about $100 after rebate (check the hot deals forum).

Also if you go to the next page on that review you'll see a breakdown of the processors...the fastest they have is a group of 'old' single core Athlon 64's and they are blazingly fast in that game. You can get by with a cheap A64 X2.

 

[Arcanedeath]

My little brother still runs WoW decently on a 754 A64 3200+ a couple gig of DDR and a 6800GT AGP and he's at 1650x1080 so as stated the system your getting is a bit overkill for just WoW but if you play any other games it will come in handy

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: erwos
An 8800GTS for WoW? I'd be shocked if you needed more than an 8600GT. Same thing with the CPU - WoW's big problem tends to be the amount of memory it wants to suck down once you're past a certain point.

I play WoW on an 8800GTX .

Your setup looks fine, but I don't know why you're building a decent system and sticking with a "built-in" PSU... although it's typical that people let the PSU slide into obscurity when designing new PCs to build.

 

[mercanucaribe]

First of all, you don't need that horsepower for WoW. Second of all, you'll want the 640mb 8800 for such high resolution, unless all you'll ever play is WoW, in which case you're wasting money on that system.

 

[Synomenon]

If you're going to be playing at 1920x1200, I'd get a video card that has more than 320MB. I think a 512MB 7950GT would be better in your case (even a 512MB 7900GS would be just fine). An 8800 is overkill for just WoW.

 

[busia12]

Just for some perspective....

I play WoW on my brand new PC. I have an Intel Dual Core E6420, Gigabyte Mobo, and an Nvidia 8800 GTS 640Mb...I play on a wireless internet connection and still push over 70FPS on a bad day with full settings enabled. I would consider it overkill for WoW.... but I know I'll be playing other Dx10 games in the future.

 

[TeejayV]

on one of my computers i run wow on my 42" LCD at 1920x1080 (almost the same rez pretty much).

It runs it eassssssssssy at 60fps full details and 40+ in crowded cities and like IF.

S754 3400+
1.5gb pc3200 ddr ram
soltek nforce3 mobo
radeon x800pro agp 256mb

it's a very very very very very very very very very very very light game.

 

[Pciber]

Hit it on the nose. From the various systems i've played on, there is a definite difference between 1gb and 2gb.. the sweet-spot for wow is 1.5gb.. In the same system I experienced a little bit of lag and stuttering in ironforge and such at 1gb, but none at 1.5gb.

The video card isn't much of a problem, so long as it is decent. Once again, i've had no problems playing it on the following at max settings:
an X800XL @ 1280x1024
an X850XTPE @ 1280x1024
an X850XTPE @ 1680x1050 (22") gave a bit of a problem.. not an FPS problem, but a syncing problem of some sort, where you would see a line where pixels were not matching up and the screen was slightly offset every now and again, only in WoW. I assume a newer driver has fixed the problem.
And, finally, even more overkill with a new computer, an X1950Pro @ 1680x1050.

You may notice a trend for ATI products... I am not necesarily a die-hard ATI fan, however my old job gave me access to new ATI products at an extreme discount

oh, so, uhh, yeah back on topic here.. Pretty much what everyone else has been saying. If wow is all you play to use it for, save some money and downgrade the video card.

 

[Noubourne]

Maybe other people have a different build of WoW than I do, but I run it at 1900x1200 fully maxxed and I have never seen even a hint of lag.

I have a MERE 1GB of RAM and an anemic 256MB video card.

 

[Aikouka]

There's a couple things that can make WoW lag more... noticeably raising the video settings from low to "HOLY SH!T" (see UT2K4 for explanation) level. There's also add-ons. Add-ons can really harm overall speed by polling constantly for updates such as location (for example, getting the x,y coordinates of the player requires a function call and is run constantly).

 

[Narse]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
There's a couple things that can make WoW lag more... noticeably raising the video settings from low to "HOLY SH!T" (see UT2K4 for explanation) level. There's also add-ons. Add-ons can really harm overall speed by polling constantly for updates such as location (for example, getting the x,y coordinates of the player requires a function call and is run constantly).

Exactly, and if you raid it can get even worse, I play at 1900x1200 on a 8800GTX with all settings maxed and with 4xAA, looks fantastic but in heavy AOE like on Hydross I will dip down to high 20s.

 

[gregor7777]

Just for a point of comparison, I run WoW at 1680x1050 on a P4 2.4, 512MB DDR, 9700 pro 128MB on highest quality with only draw distance at medium.

Runs smooth as silk except for a hiccup in the usual places like Ironforge.

So no, WoW doesn't need too much power. Blizzard did a good job in that respect.

EDIT: no AA of AF though

 

[aznxk3vi17]

As another point of comparison, I have an E6600 @ 3.575GHz, 2GB of ram @ 1155Mhz, and an 8800GTX. At 1920x1200 with max details, there are still places in WoW where my frame rate is less than 60 sustained. When I'm getting sustained >60 fps in games like Half Life 2 and Oblivion (not always sustained, but close enough), you know it's just a case of badly written engine.

Or... too many people clustering around the AH.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: aznxk3vi17
As another point of comparison, I have an E6600 @ 3.575GHz, 2GB of ram @ 1155Mhz, and an 8800GTX. At 1920x1200 with max details, there are still places in WoW where my frame rate is less than 60 sustained. When I'm getting sustained >60 fps in games like Half Life 2 and Oblivion (not always sustained, but close enough), you know it's just a case of badly written engine.

Or... too many people clustering around the AH.

I get lower than 60 quite often, but I also run two at once at 1680x1050 and run quite an array of add-ons. I'd probably say that my WoW is much more CPU dependent than it is GPU because of the add-ons, but I could change that if I forced 16xQAA and 16xQAF :laugh:.

 

[mercanucaribe]

They need to release a sharper texture pack for WoW. I don't care much about poly counts in games, but textures really make a difference