What kind of card could run WoW?

[PzyMazter]

So my friend wants to play WoW and she has a crap Dell computer. P4 2.6ghz 256 mb SDRAM, 64mb onboard video. Theoretically, this would meet the minimum spec right? Unfortunately, I benchmarked less than 3,000 (three thousand) 3DMark01. So I'm thinking WoW is going to require something more.

She doesn't want to spend more than $100 on the video card AND game, if possible, and wants to buy locally. So I was looking at BestBuy's selection, which is pretty much GeForce FX 5500 or older. The 6200 comes in at $130, too much. I'm just wondering, in order to get the game to run "reasonably well", what could I get for an absolute minimum? She found the game for $30 at EB, so that leaves $70 to maybe $80 for a videocard capable of running World of WarCraft. Doesn't have to be maxed out graphics, just make it "resemble the screenshots."

Any suggestions?

 

[Fadey]

Depends how well u want to run it , my old comp is 2.53ghz 1 gig ram and has an old geforce 4 ti4200 and runs WoW 1024x768 all high expect view distance... A fx5500 should run it fine 800x600 but the 256 meg sdram is REALLY gonna limit her.. i dont think it will really work even with a top 3d card..

 

[sparkyclarky]

Up her to 512 RAM, and aim for a GF4 Ti series or better (WoW runs fine on a Ti4400). Buy online unless you want to wait a month and see if you can score a crazy deal on some RAM and the gfx card on Black Friday. Don't be afraid to buy used from this forum if money is tight

 

[imported_ST]

someone i know, cough, runs wow at 1024x768 fine with a old pentium 3 667MHz with 384MB ram and a nVidia 5500 PCI card.

Of course, that person prefers their 7800gtx, but when friends come over without computers, what else can a person do! Oo

 

[defiantsf]

Yeah, definitely up the memory to 512M or more first. A faster GPU won't do her any good if the HD is constantly trashing from all the swaps.

 

[Sonikku]

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong. I can hardly ever get more then 30 fps in WoW with moderate settings with a gig of corsair ram, AMD Sempron 2400+ and a 9600XT.

 

[Markbnj]

WoW is not very graphically intensive. They intentionally used few polygons and a lot of rich textures. I ran it at 1600 x 1200 all settings maxed on a 6800GT in a Pentium 2.5 ghz with a 400 mhz fsb. What will improve it more is lots of ram, since even with smooth framerates you will still be lagging as the game loads textures in a large city.

 

[BrokenArrow]

My nephew plays this game on a rig with an athlon xp 1800+, 512mb ram, and on a nforce chipset with built in GF2mx graphics. I think he has 64mb allocated to video. It runs ok for him. He's running at 800x600. Its not that intense of a game as far as the graphics requirements go. Major cities and busy areas will always be laggy because of the traffic. I'd say a $50-$80 nvidia or ati card will run it just fine.

 

[SunnyD]

Yeah - yeah yeah... get as much SYSTEM ram as possible. I just upgraded my machine but it hates 512meg of my ram - so I'm only running with 512meg. I can't even walk through Ironforge now and that's with a video card upgrade to a 6800 too.

 

[Marsumane]

Originally posted by: Markbnj
WoW is not very graphically intensive. They intentionally used few polygons and a lot of rich textures. I ran it at 1600 x 1200 all settings maxed on a 6800GT in a Pentium 2.5 ghz with a 400 mhz fsb. What will improve it more is lots of ram, since even with smooth framerates you will still be lagging as the game loads textures in a large city.

Having played WoW for 4 months and having had put in 30+ actual accumulated days, I have found WoW to be the game of graphical extremes. You have alot to play with in choices with regards to iq vs speed. You can run the game on a gf3, but to turn everything on at a decent res with a bit of filtering u need atleast a 9800p/6600gt/x700p range card. But as people were saying, you first need more ram. Ive seen this game run on a system with 512mb of ram and it was unacceptable for myself, but seems to pass for most. Honestly, ive seen the game crawl down to ~3fps on my system (1gb of ram) due to large battles. The 512mb system in that same situ im assuming would have left u wondering if your computer just stopped responing all together. So base minimum you would probably want to look for 256mb of ram and atleast a gf3 though i strongly reccomend higher if you have any care for iq or intend on doing large scale battles that would consist of 50+ chars being drawn on the same screen (late game 20+ days in total played time) Anandtech did some benchmarks on this game a couple months after it was out. You should search them out.

 

[Marsumane]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Yeah - yeah yeah... get as much SYSTEM ram as possible. I just upgraded my machine but it hates 512meg of my ram - so I'm only running with 512meg. I can't even walk through Ironforge now and that's with a video card upgrade to a 6800 too.

Yea the system that i had just looked at that my friend was paying on (2.2ghz p4, 512mb ram, gf4 4200) the barrens looked like my system's Ironforge (~3300+axp, 1gb ram, 9800p oced). Walking around for the initial minute in those situations is comparable to being obliterated from a few too many drinks in rl. Aka: choppy.