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World of Warcraft: More Hard Drive or RAM Intensive?

R

RedShirt

Golden Member
I have a laptop with a Mobility ATI 9700, 512MB PC2700 RAM, 1.5 Ghz Pentium M (centrino) and a 60GB 4200 rpm hard drive.

World of Warcraft will run GREAT at times on this, and crappy at others (when new scenery is shown, when multiple new things appear on screen etc). I notice when it runs all choppy, the hard drive is working its nuts off. I did an alt tab in the middle of the game and noticed about 560MB used (have 512). I only have enough money to upgrade either the RAM or the HD.

I would go 1GB PC2700 RAM or a 7200RPM 60GB hard drive. I'm leaning towards the drive, since it seems to get choppy when the drive accesses a lot (my 4200 rpm drive is dirt slow, it's the drive that came with the laptop), but I don't know if the reason it accesses a lot is because it has to access the page file since the system has 512 MB of RAM.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
The reason it is accessing your drive so much is because your ram is full so it is using the page file, sure getting a faster HDD would alleviate the problem, but getting more ram would help ALOT more.
 
I can always tell who doesn't have enough RAM when we go through an instance or to the tram station or something similar.

I get to the other side and sit down or /sleep waiting for them to get through. 512 isn't too bad, but when people are playing with 256 I have to wait a LONG time. Guy I was with lastnight had only 256. Going to the tram took my computer about 8-10 seconds to load and he took about 45 seconds longer than me.
 
Well my RAM is ordered and is on it's way. My desktop computer runs the game GREAT (6800OC soft modded with 16 pipes, 1GB PC3200 RAM, 3.0 Ghz P4, etc etc).

It'll just be nice to take my laptop somewhere and when I'm bored play some world of warcraft. I guess back when I got a gig of RAM for my main box it was overkill, but I guess slowly it has become the norm for people. That's why I was a little surprised to hear that 512 wasn't cutting it anymore in this thread (and why I thought I needed a new hard drive over the RAM).

 
When I alt-tab out of WoW it's at around 650 MB or so usage. This is about in line with the other games I play (Battlefield Vietnam, UT2004). They are all in the category where 512MB is acceptable, but there is a definite improvement with a gig.
 
Wow, got my RAM today and there was a BIG DIFFERENCE (before they ended the beta). WOW. All settings on max (minus AF/AA) and it was SMOOTH.

Thanks for the help guys.
 
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