The Burning Crusade -- hardware upgrade time?
by Paul Sherrard 
Dec 21st 2006 at 3:38PM
Back in October, Mike Schramm let us know what the Burning Crusade system requirements were going to be. Now that we're in the holiday season and the expansion is a matter of weeks away, do you plan on making any upgrades in order to get the most out of the Outlands?
I've been playing WoW on a number of systems since beta. I started on a 12" PowerBook G4, then swapped to a 1GHz Duron desktop, then to a 15" PowerBook G4, then a 20" iMac G5, and now I play on both the iMac and a recently-purchased Core 2 Duo system with an ATI x1900. Through all of those systems, the two most important factors I've found in playing WoW are system memory and the video card.
For memory it seems that 2 gigabytes seems to be the sweet spot for playing WoW on OS X, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. With only a single gigabyte, all of my systems have seemed to chug a little, relying on caching to keep everything going. If you play with Teamspeak or Ventrilo, or have iTunes running in the background, you're definitely going to want 2 gigs of ram.
With the video card situation, it's all about where you can move the sliders in your Video Options. On my iMac, I play with the default settings except that I've turned the viewing distance down to minimum, and that's with the 128mb ATI 9600 pro that comes in the system. With the PC, everything is cranked to maximum on the 256mb ATI AIW x1900. I've played around on different systems, from the AMD Athlons through the Core 2 Duo chips, and it seems like WoW's not really a system resource hog in terms of processing power.
So, what system did you start playing WoW on, way back in 2004? What do you see yourself playing WoW on in 2007? Is the expansion inspiring you to upgrade or change your system at all, or will you stick with what you've had all along?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Tricks, Expansions
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
betaoverrated Dec 21st 2006 3:50PM
If you have that 2gig ram sweet spot. A good high end card....You are ok in Beta.
The graphics in BC were about the same. Terrain had more depth and the zones. But that's about it. The same old cartoony graphics as usual.
If people out there already are struggling with graphics in current state...and ram is below 2 gig.
Yes getting a ram increase is a suggested in my opinion.
Im on max graphics with 7800gtx sli.... all is fine.
I have half way into the year bought the second card to run SLI...so I cant really help you on the graphics advise...im a bit on the overboard power setup now.
I do know Ram was a huge issue even with the one card. When I increased ram by a Gig...everything smoothed out. No lag in Ogrimmar ever.
Pinqvin Dec 21st 2006 3:52PM
When I first got wow, I was still playing with my 6600GT,3000+ Sempron with 768mb low clocked memory. And it was horrible. Specially end game raiding.
Now I'm playing on quite a better machine ^^ Intel C2D E6600,7900GT and 2gb of memory. And it indeed does look like 2gb is the sweet spot for wow and you can still do a few other processes in the background (if you are like me and multi task while playing) :)
seek916 Dec 21st 2006 4:41PM
I started out playing WoW on my old 1ghz 1gb ram ati radeon 128mb card, and it ran decent. Then purchased a MacBook Black 2.0ghz 1gb ram and it ran ok kinda choppy but MacBook's arent made for gaming. Recently I upgraded to a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual 4600+ 2.41ghz 2gb ram and a ATi radeon xt1950 256 with ddr3, and everything runs perfectly smooth no problems at all. I'm thinking that this PC is gonna run just fine for at least a couple years.:)
Dave Dec 21st 2006 6:32PM
I have a system that's only a year or so old, so I don't need that sort of upgrade...
but since I've started playing and keep seeing screenshots of someone's UI in a widescreen mode, I find myself really really wanting a big widescreen monitor. I never figured a 19" monitor would ever be "small" to me, but I'm totally planning on spending a chunk of my tax return this year on a 21-22" widescreen monitor.
thingy Dec 21st 2006 5:04PM
I started off with an AMD XP 3000+, 512MB RAM and an nVidia Geforce Ti4400 128MB that is now 5-6 years old. After a month I upgraded the ram to 1GB, then a few months later to 2GB. That is how I've been playing for the last 1.5 years, the video card still does well enough though when there's close quarters AoE's going on I'm at a frame a second (supression rooms and places like that). Other than that it's fine for raiding. I will be purchasing an nVidia 6600GT 256MB off a work colleague as soon as he gets it back from someone he leant it to. It's a shame my system only supports AGP video cards and not PCI-E ones. :(
I would probably be better off hooking up my monitor/keyboard/mouse to my laptop, 2GB RAM, 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo (original), 256MB nVidia 7400 Go. The only reason I don't use it primarily is I only have one monitor and I like having a second box to regularly look things up on the 'net or do other things with. Can't use the lappy's screen as it's only 12" which is nowhere near enough screen real estate.
Sylythn Dec 21st 2006 5:28PM
Interesting results - I play on a Radeon 9800XT 256MB at full graphics settings, 1GB RAM, and Vent up at the same time...and I've never experienced any issues, save for a few seconds of loading npc and player sprites when I zone into a capital city. I don't plan on having to upgrade with TBC at all - at the most, I might have to back down the graphics settings a bit.
My system balks at medium to high settings when playing Oblivion - besides that, I've yet to see it be limited.
Shaz Dec 21st 2006 5:36PM
i started out on a bollocks'd gateway 3ghz 1gb ddr ram and a nvidia 5400. I hated that machine. I put it in 1600x1200 and all the lines disappeared and it looked awesome! i only got 3fps though.. so as of '07 ill be playing on a dual core duo E6400 2.16ghz, 3 gigs of ddr2 533mhz ram, nvidia 8800 gtx pci-e 16x [if only i had the money for 2] and the new intel evga 680i mobo.
i only have a few parts of it going right now but in a month or 2 itll be completely built and sweet as hell.
Ngnsewa Dec 22nd 2006 2:35AM
My Christmas present to myself is a computer upgrade :D
2gig RAM included!
Uncle Vinny Dec 21st 2006 5:46PM
I just bought me an Nvidia 7900gs, and I am in *heaven*. Full resolution on my 19" monitor, full effects, and no more sluggishness. My frame rate is touched by Buddha now -- it's achieved enlightenment.
I used to hate hanging around the GY flags in AV because the glow effect would slow me way down. Now it's zippy, snappy and frisky. Yahoo!!
Tibbsy Dec 21st 2006 6:49PM
I built myself a mid-range gaming rig - AMD Athlon 64 3800+, XFX 7600GT, 1GB DDR, Raptor 10K RPM harddrive. I use dual 19" monitors so I can play WoW on the left and read WoW Insider on the right. Performance-wise it's smooth at max resolution and all effects maxed out :D
No problems at all during standard gameplay. After several hours though, between being in and out of AV or Ironforge uses up over 800MB RAM and watching streaming content on the web, the system can blow over the 1GB of RAM, which is when you hear the computer beginning to swap stuff on the harddrive. I think having 2 GB of RAM would make a big difference for people who play like I do.
The number 1 priority for people is RAM. When you're walking through a major city, the game wants to store information about every other player within a certain distance. This causes a lot of memory usage. And when you exceed your RAM's capacity, your computer has to put that information somewhere - hello Mr. Hard Drive. The problem with that is writing and reading from the hard drive is one of the slowest operations a computer can do. That's often why you start seeing chunky-ness during gameplay. If you're running Windows XP and play WoW but don't do much else during that time, 1 GB of RAM is enough. If you're like me, you probably want more. 512 MB is okay, but in major cities I can guarantee that you'll stutter after a while.
Kyriakos Dec 21st 2006 7:07PM
Yeah, I bought all new hardware back in October, before the official delay. If I'd known about the delay, I would have waited to get one of the new 680i Nvidia chipset based motherboards that just came out within the past month.
If you're putting together a gaming rig with AMD CPUs these days, you should get your head examined. The Core 2 Duos are cheaper and definitely more performant. If you're putting together a new gaming rig, you need to check out this article regarding Core 2 Duo overclocking - A $225 core 2 duo E6400 overclocked from 2.13GHz to 2.88GHz using the STOCK INTEL COOLER crushes the $650 Athlon FX-62. This article lays it all out:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2802
I also got one of the rare EVGA 7900 GTOs for $260. You can find them on ebay now, but that's about it. These are essentially the same hardware as the 7900GTX, but with downclocked RAM. You can overclock the GTO to GTX speeds using Coolbits - so easy! Also, there are articles explaining how people have flashed the GTOs w/ the GTX BIOS, but just using coolbits to overclock the GTO gets you to the GTX clock speeds.
So, yeah, definitely go with more RAM, to get you to 2GBs. Upgrade to a new video card if you have the money. And, if you're going all the way, get one of those new 680i boards with a moderately priced Core 2 Duo and overclock it! I got an E6400 that I've overclocked to 2.8GHz.
Matt Dec 21st 2006 7:13PM
Oh noes. I wasn't aware that the expansion was going to put more of a crunch on my system. I currently play on a HP Laptop with an AMD Turion 64, ATI Radeon Xpress 200m, and 1gig of RAM.
Currently I'm able to play flawlessly. Should I not expect this to be the case with BC?
Cheezedog420 Dec 21st 2006 9:46PM
I also have no problems with Wow on my computer... But thats to be expected since I built my computer to run programs like 3d Studio Max 8, facemaker, Poser, and Photoshop CS.
For WOw, You should probably look into at bair minimum of having
1 GB of Ram,
a 1.5 GHz prossesor,
a Video card with atleast 128MB,
As for me, I just recently spent about 2000 dollars I built myself a Animation work station. (Im extreamly proud of this, because I built it up all by myself. :-) It can of course run any video game on the market so far... but its purpose was to lets me work on 3D models, and 2D textures, for video games. Its componets, prices, and helpful animation student sugjestions are as fallows.
$300 2 x 1 Gigs of CORSAIR XMS2 ram, (I might get 2 more sticks of this stuff when It comes time for a new Prossesor, Just because the Curve editor in 3d Studio Max still gets buggy after a minnute of opperation.)
$420 Nvidia 7900 GTX graphics card with 512 mb of built in ram, (thats as much ram as a PS3 or Xbox 360, Now I could stuff TWO of these bad boys into my computer, but I not found much that hurts just one of these bad boys....)
$220 Digital raptor harddrive, 150 GB, spins at 10,000 RPM, (If you like quiet computers, stay away from this coffee maker...)
$300 Athlon 64 X2 Duel core Processor good for 2.41 Ghz, (The next step up was 700 dollars so I decided to just buy this till prices drop on 64 FX prossesors.)
$240 Asus Crosshair motherboard, (It had been way too long since I upgraded my Motherboard, and this will allow me to go for many, many years without upgrading a motherboard again hopefully... )
$150 +620 watt Energy Max Liberty Power Supply, (would you believe they make these things in 1000 watt capablity now?)
$300 Wacom Tablet (Contrary what you might think its for yeaa of sick minds, its actually for drawing on the computer.)
$40 DVD burner
$50 Dollar Zalman CPU Heatsink fan... (it's my computers touch of bling...)
So Im preatty much set On all my fronts once I get more Ram, and a Better Prossesor. Later on I might get anouther 7900 GTX, but that has no affect what-so-ever on 3d model making... (and Like I said, one is expensive enough...) Other then that, would like to get anouther 24 inch CRT monitor,(I have one of those, and a old 19 inch currently hooked up,) Better computer speakers, and a new Lian_Li case..
chris poloncic Dec 22nd 2006 1:52AM
This makes me laugh hard. I have a 1.76 ghz amd and a 6800GT. I also only have 512 megs of ram. The game runs great for me. The key is to not worry about maxing everything out to give yourself a chubby.
Basy Dec 22nd 2006 2:28AM
@11 or others who are concerned if the expansion is more system-hungry: it's not, don't worry. As with the current game, there are areas more populated with mobs and/or with more graphical effects that might drag the performance down a bit but in general, it's the very same engine so there's no reason your game would run worse past Jan 16th.
Necro Dec 22nd 2006 2:58AM
I want to cry for all of you that payed good money recently for a new video card. There is no realy point in upgrading that for the most part. I'm putting together a system at the moment and i'm going with a mid range video card. No since in getting a new on until they all start using dx10. Right now i'm running a Gforce 6400, 1.15gh athlon, and 768mgs of ddr 2100. it's an old system that still kicks for some reason. I only have problems in wow when there are lots of others around. or the tale tale quick lag spike when another player gets close (great for looking out for rogues)
wedgehammer Dec 22nd 2006 4:53AM
im runnning wow on a macbook 2.0ghz w/ 2gb ram. with graphics settings toned down, it runs smooth. the fans are almost always blasting though, but ive gotten used to it. wanting to get a power desktop for gaming but i dont see it coming in the immediate future as i move around a lot
Bartholemues Dec 22nd 2006 7:36AM
Started off on a Athlon 3000, 1.5GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro, which ran WoW at 1280x1024 and full settings with no problem on my 17"CRT.
I then played on my laptop, Athlon 2800, 756MB RAM, Radeon 9700 mobile, 15.1" LCD. This played OK at 1024x768 with medium settings. I think the lower RAM and slower 4200 RPM hard drive really hurt it but it was still not to bad. Interestingly most other games ran much better then WoW on this system.
Now I play on a Athlon 3800+, 2GB RAM, Overclocked GeForce 7900GS, 23" LCD, and of course this chews WoW up and spits it out at 1680x1050 without even sweating. Can even run WoW and Guild Wars at the same time with almost no issues.
Thijz Dec 22nd 2006 9:03AM
I'm playing the beta with this system:
AMD Athlon64 X2 (dual core) 4200 2.2 Ghz
1x 1g RAM
Nvidia Geforce 7900 GT 256mb
ASUS M2N-E motherboard
and it runs without any problems, i'm planning to get an extra gig RAM in a few weeks, once i've paid back my Nintendo Wii.
Profit Dec 22nd 2006 9:26AM
Wow nice machines above...
I play on a 1.2 Ghz laptop with a 32 mb video card. I have upgraded it to 1 GB ram though...
All settings at low, and I do use Vent. Run's decently (15-20 FPS)...