My awesome christmas present Laptop is used 85% of the time by Wulfa because it lets her play on our bed while Orclette sleeps.
So I currently play WoW using the following:
1022mB RAM
Pentium 4 3ghz 2CPU
Directx 9
SB Audigy 2 Audio D80<------Sound
Intel($) 82865G Graphics Controller 96 meg<----- Video
A monitor that I belive is 11 inches by 10 inches.
My brother assures me that improving my RAM is the best thing I could do with my limited funds.
Eventually I want to get a new monitor, a graphics card, and more RAM. My question is what do you think would be the best thing to improve first?
So I currently play WoW using the following:
1022mB RAM
Pentium 4 3ghz 2CPU
Directx 9
SB Audigy 2 Audio D80<------Sound
Intel($) 82865G Graphics Controller 96 meg<----- Video
A monitor that I belive is 11 inches by 10 inches.
My brother assures me that improving my RAM is the best thing I could do with my limited funds.
Eventually I want to get a new monitor, a graphics card, and more RAM. My question is what do you think would be the best thing to improve first?
Comments
DDR2 RAM is very very cheap right now, and if you use that then it's definitely your most cost effective increase.
However, with 2 gigs of RAM, your onboard video is going to be a huge bottleneck for gaming.
Unless you have vista.. cause that wasted 512 itself....
Quick tips to improve WoW playability and keep max frame rate/details:
:: Have more than 512MB RAM, 1GB is preferable.
:: Any sort of graphics card that doesn't have the word "Intel" on it. 256MB of on-board memory (not shared) on a discrete graphics card is about all most people need, and extremely cheap to come by these days. Go for 512MB on-board video RAM if you want to jack up all the eye candy.
:: Defrag your hard drive.
It's never been cheaper to buy computer components. May I ask what your budget is? I think your dollar will carry you a lot farther than you would initially expect.
@TJ if I save I'll have to wait until next may as in about one month all of my money goes away to another project we're saving for.
@stale WoW runs fine...some of the time. But when I started adding vent I"m noticing a lag on my computer when I alt-tab and open up mozilla etc. This is what I'm trying to get rid of.
@Chris ooo good idea the dear piece of junk has not been defragged in ages I completely forgot to.
@TJ I think I shall hold off on the monitor until I just buy a new one... but RAM/Video card would be able to migrate to the new one when I buy it so I'm still looking at those.
Depending on the age of your computer, your graphics card will be one of three different -- and completely incompatible -- standards. We're currently on PCI-Express 2.0 (which thankfully enough is fully compatible with PCI-Express 1.0 hardware as well). Before PCI-Express took over the world in 2004, there was AGP. Before AGP, there was just vanilla PCI. This transition took place in the late 90s.
If you have a veritable dinosaur in computing terms, which would be any machine built more than eight or so years ago, it's likely that your motherboard is PCI or AGP (AGP would have been "cutting edge" for this machine). For both of those standards, you are extremely limited in your options, though less so with AGP than PCI. Until recently, I had an AGP gaming rig (the card died, regretfully, which forced my hand into upgrading) that performed beautifully.
If I'm not mistaken, that Intel chipset is AGP. Don't take my word for it, though; check before you buy.
Here's the skinny:
The really bad news is that if you are stuck on PCI or AGP and wanted to take the leap to PCI-Express, you're looking at a massive hardware overhaul -- motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU, and probably even power supply. On your budget this is impossible and I do not recommend it.
The somewhat bad news is that if you're stuck on AGP, prices for cards of equivalent performance to PCI-Express counterparts tend to be more expensive, since AGP is technically a "dead" standard.
The great news is that in your price range, there are no less than several dozen cards that perform very well with World of Warcraft. Browse around NewEgg.com and see what you can get. Read the user reviews and make an educated decision. For starters, here are the top selling graphics cards between $75 and $100 on NewEgg, which is at the top end of your margin, but it gives you a good idea of what you can get for your money. Also note that three of them are PCI-Express, while one is an AGP.
It's a lot to take in, and I apologize for my lack of brevity. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to shoot me an email and I will assist any way I can.