World of Warcraft - Low Framerate Issue Please Help

[Jwilson]

Now, i'm pretty sure that my computer meets the recommended specs for WoW but I still get a very low framerate when doing things such as entering towns, raids, flights or pvp. It';s really annoying and i'm not a computer expert so i'm really unsure what I can do to make this problem go away, whether it be upgrading my computer or jus tweaking with some settings.
All my WoW graphics are set to minimum apart from the resolution and that's only because I changed the resolution to 800x600 and saw no improvement so I didn't see the point in suffering the blurriness.

Here is some information about my computer if you need anything please say really need to sort this it's annoying me so much:

Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
Ram: 1022 MB
System type: XP (SP2)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS

Thanks alot!

 

[pdyckman@comcas]

I took a look at 4 or 5 of the 7300 GS graphics cards. Unless you were getting higher frame rates before, I would say that you may need a more competitive graphics card. The 7300 is a 64 bit card. It has 4+ GB/sec Bandwidth. These specs are low. Good Luck.

 

[Jwilson]

Any suggestions on one? thanks for the reply

 

[Cinders]

Hi ya! Your 7300 is clearly the problem. The 7300 is designed to display basic computer images like your internet browser, word processing program and the occasional DVD movie. It is not made for games and is usually found on laptops.

We are talking about a desktop PC aren’t we? If we are not then you have no real upgrade opportunities except to buy a new machine.

At this point I could explain the different video cards you could buy and why to buy them, but I will not. First I need to know if you have AGP, PCI-E, or PCI slots in your computer. If you don’t know then I need to know the make and model of your computer.

All the 7300GS cards I just looked at were PCI-E based, and that's good! That opens up a bunch of possibilities.

The absolute least I’d recommend would for playing games would be the Radeon X1950 Pro (about $160.00) with 512 MB or DDR3. This is a very good card for the money and it plays games at fairly high resolutions with great detail and high frame rates.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102075

The next step is fairly large. The GeForce 8800GT (about $300.00) would be my next recommendation. It is going to display games at very high resolutions with very high detail and great frame rates.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121099

That’s pretty much it. If you need more than the 8800GT you will want to wait a day or two until the new 8800GTS line of video card reviews come out.

Ah crud the Pound. The same video cards only in the UK.

 

[Jwilson]

Pretty sure its just got the one pci: this is the specs from pc world

link to the pc below couldnt post a link because posts lol

That help?

Thanks!

 

[Jwilson]

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/241391

 

[Jwilson]

Wouldn't i need some bigger power supply or sumthing? :S

So i dont need any more ram or anything you think its 99% the card?

 

[Cinders]

I did some major revisions to my first post in this thread, but none of them may apply.

Ok, You need to open your case and look at your motherboard. You need to tell me how many open slots you have at the back of the board. I'll also need to know the color of the slots. Then you can download/install/run CPUz. HERE IS CPUz. Click on the Motherboard tab and tell me what it says your motherboard make, model and chipset are.

 

[Jwilson]

Nah they don't .

Just wondering if the cheaper of the two cards will need a bigger power supply because I seem to remember quite a few people saying things like that about higher end cards needing extra power supplies.

I'm gonna take your advice and buy the X1950 though thanks mate!

 

[Cinders]

For the Radeon X1950 Pro you'll need a quality 450 watt power supply. For the 8800GT you'll need a quality 550 watt power supply. I knew I forgot something. Most gaming computers have 2GB of low latency ram, but I don't think WoW needs that much to play smoothly.

 

[Jwilson]

Bare with me lol

 

[Jwilson]

Ok i'm looking at my motherboard and I don't know what you mean by the slot... i've got 2 medium length white slots with a long part and then a short part to them. i think i can see 4 little green slots but they might not be slots at all. Help :S

as for the motherboard spec its as follows:

Make - Foxconn
Model -945 7MC Series
Chipset - Intel i945g/GZ

 

[Jwilson]

Wait i see a tiny yellow slot only one because one above is being used

 

[thekze]

ur card is causing it.

 

[Cinders]

Ok I have attached a picture of a typical motherboard with PCI, PCI-E and memory slots. Your slots will be in about the same place. The most important slot is the PCI-E slot. It is designed to move a lot of data very quickly and it will run your new video card. You must have one of these slots to buy one of the new video cards I've already recommended to you. If you only have a PCI slot then I don't recommend that you purchase a new video card but an entire new computer instead.

What little I could find on your motherboard did state that you do have a PCI-E slot. I just want you to be sure that you do have the slot and will not be wasting your money.

 

[swen]

i play wow with a framerate that is usually between 15-20 and occasionally drops to around 10-12. while 10-12 is reasonably difficult to play i can pretty much everything including end game 25 man raids without much of a problem. i am curious as to how low your framrates actually go? there ar emany people who play with framrates that low and it really shoudlnt be much of a problem unless u are below 12 at all times. my spec are
-pentium 4 2.43
-geforce 4 64mb
-windows xp
-1 dimm 1024mb

and about the power supply, you should be fine running a better card on yoru current supply as long as your not buying a top of the line card like the nvidia GTS or GTX. i am building a new cmputer with a quad core processor and high end everthing and dont need more than 500watts for it! it will help to upgrade your supply tho, i recommend enermax (very dependable brand) noisetake II 485watt whcih u can pick up for $90 at newegg.com which is what i bouht for my new system. and here is a link with a power supply calculator which will help u figure out how much power u really need if u plan to upgrade.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp

 

[swen]

and another thing, google CPU-Z download it and run it. it is a program that recovers all your computer specs including motherboard, graphics type, etc, it will tell u what type of video card your computer can suppost. ill try to find a link to it later. but if u do get it and run it you will see 6 tabs at the top, the third one should say "mainboard" go under that tab and on the bottom it wll say "graphics interface" what we need to know is "version" "transfer rate" and "max rate" that will tell us what type of card your computer supposts so we can recommend one for u. with a P4 i woudlnt be surprised if your computer had an AGP 4x or 8X slot and not a PCI-e. it really depends on how old yoru computer is!

swen