Member Avatar for finagel666

I have been playing world of warcraft and the game is choppy when I get into heavily crowded areas I run it on a Compaq Presario AMD Sempron Processor 3100+ 1.81 GHz, 384 RAM with sis 760 video card.


However the minimal requirements for WoW are

Intel Pentium® III 800 MHz or AMD Athlon 800 MHz
512 MB or more of RAM
32 MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as NVIDIA® GeForce™ 2 class card or above.


I cannot afford to buy both a graphics card and RAM at the same time so I was wondering which one do you think would make the gameplay less choppy. A graphics card or more ram?

  • 3 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 361 Views
  • 1 Month Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by w4hagen

Dani AI

Generated

Quick summary tied to the thread: is correct that lowering in-game graphics can produce an immediate improvement; is also right that a discrete card helps crowded, spell-heavy scenes. The practical choice depends on which resource is actually being starved — RAM (causing heavy paging) or the integrated SiS GPU (limited 3D performance). (us.support.blizzard.com)

A simple isolation test works best. Set World of Warcraft to the lowest graphics preset (reduce Texture Quality, View Distance, Shadow and Particle settings) and reproduce the “choppy in crowds” situation. If frame rate jumps up dramatically at low settings, the renderer (GPU) is the likely limiter. If stutter remains, check Task Manager’s Performance/“PF usage” (commit charge) while reproducing the problem — big spikes toward the limit indicate paging to disk and insufficient RAM. Microsoft documentation and Windows memory guidance explain how heavy paging produces the kind of stutter being described. (sevenforums.com)

About the SiS 760 platform: it’s an integrated Mirage-era engine (Direct3D 8.x generation) that shares system RAM and offers modest Direct3D support; it’s far weaker than even a low-end discrete card of the same era. A discrete GPU brings dedicated VRAM and much better 3D handling, but it won’t stop OS-level swapping if RAM is the root cause. Weigh upgrades by which test (above) indicates the bottleneck. (flylib.com)

Practical, budget-friendly plan: 1) Lower settings and close unnecessary background apps. 2) If Task Manager shows heavy paging, add memory first (moving toward ~1GB will make a big difference on XP-era systems). 3) If paging is not the issue and low settings help, get a compatible discrete card — first confirm whether the board uses AGP or PCIe and that the PSU can supply it. Identifying slot types and checking the motherboard spec avoids wasted purchases. (vdoc.pub)

Short, targeted testing will reveal whether RAM or a GPU will give the best value; the cheapest effective fix is usually the correct first step.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for eXceed69

Adjust your graphics/video on WOW.

Member Avatar for w4hagen

Hmm, Id personally go with the new Graphix card

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.