World of Warcraft requirements help

[tomma]

hi i am not good with any sort of computer talk the only specs i do no is that ram is memory so i am a noob : (
i am looking at buying a new but cheap desktop computer to play wow on as my laptop is now old and crap lol but as i have no clue on computer lingo i dont no if the one i have chosen is good for the job. i would be extremely grateful if i could get someones opinoin on this thanks in advance tomma

Processor Intel® Core™ i3-540 Processor
- 3.06 GHz
- 2.5 GT/s DMI
- 4 MB Smart Cache
Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
RAM 3GB DDR3
Graphics card Integrated Intel HD Graphics
Screen type None
Hard drive 500 GB
Optical disk drive DVD-RW
Memory card reader Yes


price £350 from currys
al advice welcome

 

[Per Hansson]

Your graphics card will not be enough, other than that it looks good
Since it's an integrated graphics card you should be able to easily put an add-in card there if you want to go that way, these articles shows some performance numbers in WoW for different graphics cards;

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-directx-11-performance,2793.html

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,8...-9-und-DirectX-11/Rollenspiel-Adventure/Test/

My personal preference would be to go with a ATI 6950, and then try to mod it to a 6970

 

[MrBlkfx1]

I Agree with Hansson, All you really need is a Graphics Card upgrade. The one he suggested could be a little pricey, But a great choice.

What type of budget do you have? That way we can decide a suitable upgrade for you.

 

[tomma]

i want to be able to get myelf a new desktop for £400 max i have more money but thats realy the amount i feel comftable spending on a desktop just to play wow on. i want to thank you both for you comments and help it has helped alot : ) but i searched for that graphics card and DAMM it is very pricey lol i have mailed a few computer shops in my local area in runcorn showing the specs of what i put up in this post with a ? for the graphics card and asking how much it would cost for them to build it for me and said maybe a graphics card like KFA2 NVIDIA GeFORCE 9500GT none have got back in touch as of yet but hopefuly they will soon.
in your opinoin do you think this graphics card will do the job and have no lag?
KFA2 NVIDIA GeFORCE 9500GT

 

[Per Hansson]

Hi, I would not go with a card without DirectX 11 support for WoW
Because if you get a DX11 card you can enable the "experimental" DX11 mode in WoW, as explained in those articles I linked above, and the performance improvement is quite big...

You can check the specs in my profile here at Techspot, my 8800GTS is quite a bit faster than that card you are thinking of buying but gets no where near enough good framerates when there are many characters or players on the screen at once.
That is with all settings at "Ultra" and 1600x1200 in resolution with 2xMSAA
Of course if you dial down the graphical detail you can play WoW with very low end hardware, but the decrease in graphical detail is very drastic, it's well worth it for me atleast to play with everything on "Ultra"
Especially the water quality on Ultra makes a tremendous difference now with the graphical update in Cataclysm

With this in mind the card I would recommend you is the Geforce GTX 460
There are several models with different amounts of memory but even the most low end model should give you very good performance in WoW compared to a card which does not support DirectX 11
If you are really strapped for cash the Geforce GTX 450 would be the lowest end model, but it's quite a big step down from the 460...

To use the DirectX11 mode do this (Note you should only do this if you have a DX11 card, wont work with DX9 or DX10 cards, just decreases performance on them and all in-game water will disappear too)
Open your config.wtf file (located in ...\World of Warcraft\WTF\) and add the line;

SET gxApi "d3d11"

 

[tomma]

ok spot on advice thanks. i am going to have to just wait until one of the computer shops i emailed get back in touch with me to see how much they would charge for this particular build then i can see how much i can spend on a graphics card because it might be cheaper with them building it so i have heard anywayz lol
but what ever graphics card i get i willmake sure it has directx

 

[Per Hansson]

Hi, if you didn't already make the purchase you might be interested in the just released Intel Sandy Bridge CPU's, they make a very nice improvement vs the older Intel processors...

Here is our own review; https://www.techspot.com/review/353-intel-sandy-bridge-corei5-2500k-corei7-2600k/
And below a picture borrowed from Anandtech's review showing the performance in WoW...

The new Core i3 2100 is 22% faster than the i3 540 you mentioned in the first post, and should be comparable in price...