WoW

Does anyone on here play?

I have never played, but my girlfriend used to.

I am looking at buying her new parts for a computer and building her a beast of a machine.

So far I have:

Phenom II X4 Processor.
4G RAM.

I was wondering, what's the best graphics card to get? I'm definitely going with a PCI-E x16. But I just don't know which one to get?

I want the computer so she can run the settings on high without lagging.

Thanks!

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Comments

Knives Out

Going by the CPU and amount of RAM you have already,I think any modern graphics card will run warcraft fine (aside from maybe integrated graphics cards). WoW's an older game and the min requirements were always a bit on the lower side so you don't necessarily need a powerhouse computer to run it.

An equally important thing to look at in terms of actual lag, is the speed of your internet connection. Sure your video card will have to be able to process the amount of information being received from the game, but if theres a bottleneck at the internet connection - there is only so much traffic your video card will be able to process due to that bottleneck.

If you don't have a budget and plan to play more than just WoW on that PC, by all means toss the best card you can into it and the fastest hard drive RPMs you can find - and it should be okay for about a year or so maybe. I don't know much about the newer graphic intensive games like Crysis so not sure what the minimum is if you were planning to play newer games.

If you are on a budget don't intend on playing much else Tom's hardware site updates a list of best graphic's cards for your money.

Components Graphics Cards Reviews

Hope this helps you

kriscamaro68

Newegg.com - EVGA 512-P3-N879-TR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

This will be enough to run what you want and a little bit more.

darkerosxx

I'm running a 8600m GT 256MB on my laptop and I run everything on high with no lag. Anything new today will probably do the same.

bwcarty

A safe bet on nearly any component is to go to Newegg, select the category you want (e.g. video cards), click the "Top Sellers" link on the left, and sort it by best rating. One of the top items in that list will likely be the one you want. Read up on the top 2-5 in your price range and go from there.

wd40

darkerosxx wrote: »

I'm running a 8600m GT 256MB on my laptop and I run everything on high with no lag. Anything new today will probably do the same.

not a good example, if you have a full HD monitor ( 1920 * 1080 ) or larger ( maybe 1920 * 1200 ) you will need a powerful card to handle the extra pixels at the same frame rate.

so you need to check the card against your monitor’s resolution.

+
GTX 9800+ is a bit old .. Get a GTS 250 at the same price "I hear it is the same card with a new body and name and some small improvments, I have one but I'm not a gamer.

but be careful, you will need a big case "Full tower" + a good power supply "500 watt's from a good company should be ok "make sure it has the appropriate power connections", a generic PSU will be fried"

Newegg.com - BFG Tech BFGEGTS250512OCE GeForce GTS 250 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

You can also get a 1 GB version.

bgrablin

wd40 wrote: »

Newegg.com - BFG Tech BFGEGTS250512OCE GeForce GTS 250 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

You can also get a 1 GB version.

And it comes with some kickin' 3D glasses!

vCole

I used to run it on a P4 2.4Ghz 1GB of DDR-333, and an nVidia geforce fx5500 128MB.

Now I run it on:

Core2Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz
8GB of DDR2-800mhz
EVGA GTX-260 896MB

Xenz

Any currentish graphics card will do fine. Get the best within your budget. There are tweaks you can do to get a little better performance out of the game, but for the most part it's all the same. The only thing that kills even some of the midrange boxes is shadows. It's absolutely horrible and can slow everyone down to < 30 FPS. One notch into shadow quality and everything else on high should be able to run smooth on what you're making. Just get something decent graphicwise. I run an 8800GT and I get > 40 FPS usually.

The difference in the shadow engine is huge:
Shadow Quality 1 notch: 85FPS indoors
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/7772/wowscrnshot092909124813.jpg
Shadow Quality 1 notch: 73FPS in a major city/indoors
http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/7927/wowscrnshot092909132543.jpg

Shadow Quality full: 25FPS in a major city/outdoors
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/8821/wowscrnshot092909132028.jpg
Shadow Quality full: 37FPS in a major city/indoors
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/1682/wowscrnshot092909132455.jpg

Maybe some of the others in this thread can comment on how high their settings are, and if their shadow quality is set high with what card.

Paul Boz

You can play WoW on any decent laptop so as others have said, any video card will be fine. I don't play WoW any more but I had a buddy over and he hooked his laptop (exactly the same as mine, xps m1330) to my 52" LCD via HDMI and it looked flawless. He's only got the NVidia 512 mobile chipset for reference.

darkerosxx

wd40 wrote: »

not a good example, if you have a full HD monitor ( 1920 * 1080 ) or larger ( maybe 1920 * 1200 ) you will need a powerful card to handle the extra pixels at the same frame rate.

so you need to check the card against your monitor’s resolution.

Could have asked before you assumed...

I'm running 1920x1200 on my laptop. Yes, it's big, and yes, I'm running maxed out settings on WoW just fine.

wd40

darkerosxx wrote: »

Could have asked before you assumed...

I'm running 1920x1200 on my laptop. Yes, it's big, and yes, I'm running maxed out settings on WoW just fine.

Oops

I was not talking about wow only, I was talking about other newer games .. my mistake

darkerosxx

You're right. On most games I can run normal fine, but not everything on high. WoW is an exception to the rule for the 8600m GT and probably any "m" Nvidia card.

Leaning towards any cards now, Jamie.English?