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Post by Jonathan on Mar 10, 2009 5:03:57 GMT -5
>.> I went from 488 to 2,488 mb of RAM, which helped a lot as far load screens, changing zones and entering/leaving combat goes, as well as general switching between applications on PC. Helped tremendously and was well worth the ~70-80$ including shipping/handling/customs I paid. I use the default integrated Vid Card Video Adapter Intel(R) 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family (128 MB) that came with the PC, So I figure I'll buy a Video Card online as well.  I have 2 PCI Express 16 slots (pretty sure it's 16, image's scaling would have to be pretty off for it to be 8, and PCI Express 16 became popular in 2004 and I bought my PC close to 2006). One's used for 2 Usb Ports and the other's free. I use Windows XP / CPU Type Intel Pentium 4 516, 2933 MHz (22 x 133) I'm willing to spend a few hundred $ but I know with my PC as old as it is, I wouldn't want to spend more than what my PC can handle, or worse really - end up buying a card my PC wouldn't be able to support. - I imagine I'd end up buying from Newegg or something, but if anyone has any suggestions it'd be appreciated /peer Sosa ^^ My only goal is to up my Fps in-game, I have 2-6 Fps in 25s and 8-11 Fps in 10mans. And even with an old PC, I imagine upgrading from a default Vid Card would yield really good results. So let me know if any other info is pertinent to helping pick a card or please suggest  |
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Milara
Casual Member
Hawt yuri luvvin?
Posts: 25
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Post by Milara on Mar 10, 2009 5:49:03 GMT -5
The ram will probably help a lot. I went from 2 gigs of ram (which was plenty for xp... in fact xp can't really handle more then... 3-4 I think it is?) to Vista where 2 gigs is like the bare minimum. Load times were pretty low... alt-tabbing took like... 45 seconds... and I could see the system strain when I had WoW and vent going on at the same time. My fps would drop by like 20 because of it. So last weekend I bought 6 more gigs of ram... my system board could handle 8 gigs so I filled it out. Now everything runs likea dream. Alt-tabbing is instant... browser, wow and vent going same time? No problem. My fps went from 20-25 to 60. Even Dalaran causes me no problems anymore.
That being said, a better video card will make everything else cause no problems. Lots of spell effects? Sure. Color intensive zone with weird transparent effects? No problem.
It's been my experience that there are 4 places you shouldn't skimp on a computer if you want it to last a long time (as in, not needing an upgrade every six months to a year). Get a good system board... put a good processor in it, get a good amount of ram, and get a good video card. It'll last a long time unless you're into hardcore z0mg FPS with 10 zillion things going on at once type games. You pay a little more once and your computer will serve you well for years.
You don't have to get the $600 monster but don't rush to the bargain bin for a video card either. I've always preferred nVidia cards. I've tried others, had some problems with either them or game compatability. Tried a GeForce card, no compatabilty issues... games tend to look like they're supposed to and not get weird splotchy green shit where someone's face is supposed to be, etc. There's usually several versions available to match needs and price range... I'm not sure what the current model numbers are up to but getting one somewhat in a shooting range of the highest number you see works... there's usually different VRAM options... you don't have to get the highest.
Likely you'll want to look at what the cheapest cards have to offer, look at what the z0mg cutting edge cards have to offer and then focus on the ones somewhere between them... find one in your price range. haha Those are usually going to be the cards for the casual gamer that doesn't want his system to be obsolete in a year. Others can give you the specifics for what to look at now, the above is just a rule of thumb. The "middle ground" cards can easily handle WoW and will handle games for at least 4 or so years, possibly longer. That's been my experience.
<.< Anyway...
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Post by McClebby on Mar 10, 2009 6:43:47 GMT -5
NOt just graphic card that help ur FPS. CPU, ram and hard disk size sometimes helps too. Try to buy those middle end stuff since Computer standard changes pretty fast that is if u budget is low And lol@intergrated Graphic accelerator >.> and if ur not too sure what ur slot is go check ur manual As for XP vs Vista Vista is more of a memory eater the XP, Aero-view, sidebar etc.But then again XP mircosoft have stopped support on it since Jan last year if i recall correctly. I bet sosa can give more! A good site to test if your System can run WoW is www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtestgo look for World of Warcraft:Wrath of the Lich king |
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Post by Sosa on Mar 10, 2009 12:31:22 GMT -5
To cut to the chase, you're all basically right in that the major bottleneck here is your GPU. So, here's a good card to start out with: XFX PVT98GYDLU GeForce 9800 GT 512MB - $129.99, $110 with $20 rebate included.) XFX is one of the top brands for video cards and the 9800 GT is a decent Nvidia workhorse card at a good price-point. There are two problems with this card, however - and I bring this up now because it's relevant to any card you upgrade. Number one is its physical size: modern gaming cards can be much larger than expected, so check the physical dimensions of the card and see if they'll fit in your system! It's entirely possible to get a card that you don't have room for or need to re-organize cabling in order to fit. How likely this is to happen depends mostly on your case size and motherboard layout. The other major factor to consider is power output. Modern graphics cards can be power-hungry monsters and not having enough to satisfy them can cause more a lot of problems. In order to meet this requirement, we need a little more information about your computer. How many other PCI expansion cards do you have installed? (ie: sound card, internal modem or network card, ect.) How many hard drives and optical drives (CD-ROM, DVD, ect.) do you have installed? Do you know the current size of your power supply? If you're comfortable cracking your system case, you can usually find it printed on the unit itself... how big its capacity is depends a lot on who built it and how much they planned on your ability to upgrade. Low-end could be ~150w, high end could be ~550w. Do you have any of those cables dangling free, or are they all in use? 2GB+ system RAM is sufficient for most gamers with XP. 2GB+ is virtually required for running Vista, but this shouldn't be your bottleneck if you're running XP. Having more RAM than your system can actually use won't result in any kind of speed increase, but not having enough can be crippling: unless you're also doing very extensive video editing, audio production or graphic rendering work - stick with 2GB. The type of memory you have can impact performance as well. Memory comes in different speeds but you are restricted by the types that your motherboard supports, so this is generally not a major factor when considering an upgrade. Processor is another major bottleneck; you are running a Prescott-based Celeron D processor with a 2.93 GHz clock speed. This is a single-core processor that operates at a relatively fast clock speed. Dual-core processing has become the new effective standard over the last few years, providing performance up to twice as fast as single core processors... but in order to take advantage of dual core processors, individual programs need to be written to thread individual processes through each individual core. This means programs have to be written to utilize both cores on a dual core, or all four cores on quad-cores. In layman's terms, this is a potential bottleneck but you're only going to see it with newer games that have come out in the last 2-3 years. WoW does not fully utilize multi-core CPU architecture, so your single core processor will do fine. Hard drive access speed and cache can be an issue as well, but assuming you're running a normal desktop system you more than likely have a conventional 7200 RPM hard drive with ~8MB cache. These have been the industry standard for quite a while now. Is it possible to get a faster drive? Yes, you can find drives upwards of 15,000 RPM and with much higher cache sizes. Are you going to notice a difference? Probably not. We could get into RAID configuration and other things that could squeeze out a performance boost here, but you're probably not going to notice a huge difference and since the system is several years old, transporting all your old data could be more trouble than it's worth. |
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Post by Jonathan on Mar 11, 2009 4:00:50 GMT -5
Watts: Card Requires 400, my PSU (which was replaced 1.5yr ago) is 400. Size: PCI slots are at the bottom left of my Mobo, with nothing impeding it from back to front (so about 18 inches or so) and if it was too deep (>6 inches) I could I suppose leave my sidepanel off lol... PCI Slot hosting 2 unused USB Ports I imagine could be removed for additional space if necessary (height-wise) but that shouldn't be at all needed from looking @ the pics. No dimensions are given though, but in any case there really is a lot of room in there so I'm not worried. Additional Fixtures: 2 PCI slots, one empty, one hosting 2 unused Usb Ports. One drive for CD/DVD. PSU Cables: 2 Cables are free, each with 3 plugs. Vcard has 6pin listed as its power connector, I don't have any 6pin plugs, but:  something like this might do the trick? I have 3 types of plugs: 4pin molex, 4pin fdd and the third one looks like a 15pin sa1sa2 (http://www.highpowersupply.com/accessories/PCIX2.jpg) www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812887001 converts two 4-pin molex into a 6=pin I do have two 4-pin molex on the same cable, so this looks like it'd resolve that issue? - Do I pass the test? And I fail Cleb's test for min. Video Card >.> For 'Recommended' I also failed Processor, where it recommended Dual-Cores, which is interesting as per Sosa's comment about those requiring specific coding to fully shine. |
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Post by Sosa on Mar 11, 2009 14:32:58 GMT -5
The card I recommended has a maximum power draw of 105w. To be frank, it's doubtful WoW will tax the card to the point where it requires this much. The average power draw will typically be a little lower. Depending on how many additional hard drives, optical drives, expansion cards, USB devices, the type of CPU, ect... the amount of used power in a system fluctuates pretty wildly. From the basic information you've given, you should be fine.
The adapter you pictured should work fine for your card. Some cards require so much power that they actually require input from multiple plugs but this card isn't one of them, so just one should be fine. Cards that require them (PCI-E cards, typically) will usually come with one in the box. The recommended card comes with a "Power Cable" included in the box, which is very unspecific but should be a converter similar to the one you linked. You may want to order the card without one; if it doesn't show up, you can usually get them for a few bucks at any local computer store.
As long as the card doesn't clip your RAM, CPU or cause wiring/airflow problems, it should be fine. Motherboard/case combination either tend to accommodate large cards or not. Yours seems to be one that does, so you should be fine on room.
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Post by Jonathan on Mar 11, 2009 20:12:25 GMT -5
Found the same articles on Newegg.ca, price becomes 162.99$ but with 21.73$ for handling and 14.63$ for Shipping, which seems high but ah well. Comes out to 203.84$ which is still a little less than I had expected to spend, and it should actually work - which is more than I can say for the card my brother tried buying last time ^^
My brother will probably enjoy CoD WaW as well, which is just a complete and total random bonus, haha.
Thanks for all help ^^
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Post by plague on Mar 26, 2009 10:39:09 GMT -5
The Geforece is a nice video card. I think I bought the 8600GT last year and it works really well. I have 2gigs running with windows xp and that video card and I had no issues whatsoever running vent/browser/wow at the same time. That card should cost about half of the one you were looking at and it should do your system justice. Just make sure the vid card is at least a 512MB and you should be fine.
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