AGP card for WoW

[Tom B]

Gonna get my girlfriend a new graphics card for xmas. Fed up of her moaning that her PC's slow

Not sure what exact CPU it is at the moment but it's a ~2ghz celeron. it only got 1gb of ram (2x512 ddr400 and no extra slots) but it's currently got a 128mb GeForce 6200 agp.

The only game she plays is WoW and it's playable but in some areas it's under 10fps.

Would http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-113-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=403 be a significant upgrade? or is WoW too cpu limited for it to make much of a difference?

 

[cmndr_andi]

Pretty tough situation there. The graphics card is definitely many times faster than the 6200, but as you say a ~2GHz Celeron (guessing s478 northwood, check using cpu-z) is going to severely limit things, especially in a game like WoW. What resolution does she play at?

This is gonna cost a lot more money, but this would give her a massive upgrade, the onboard graphics will also kick the 6200 into the long grass:

 

[Hotwired]

To be honest the graphics card won't make the PC faster if it's being slow in other things but games.

But if you do decide on a graphics upgrade I have a surplus 1yr old Sapphire 3850 AGP currently in a box on my desk. £45 inc. postage if you're interested.

Comparison of how the best AGP cards line up.

 

[Tom B]

@cmndr_andi unfortunately that's way beyond my budget

The PCs fine in general, runs firefox, msn, spotify, etc just fine and to be honest that's about all it gets used for other than WoW which it struggles with in places.

She plays at 1280x1024 not particularly high but has almost everything on lowest. It's just general framerate issues really. Load times are long but bearable.

 

[BigBruiserAl]

IMO mate will be a waste of money. Save the money and buy her ball gag to stop moaning

 

[Owenb]

WoW is a pretty balanced game- it benefit's nicely from GPU/CPU and Ram improvements- which makes it expensive!

I am can't tell what sorta upgrade path is possible on the CPU front without knowing the motherboard. You might be able to get a nice boost on the CPU for £10-20. However you have to be very careful upgrading an old system like that as your power supply might not be up to the job.

PS: I hope, for your sake, that she really loves WoW!

 

[DIABLO]

The cpu will be a serious bottleneck, my 5 year old 9800 pro used to max out my 2Ghz Athlon XP which is a more powerful cpu then the Celeron playing vanilla wow. So i'd be willing to bet that the game won't run any better with a new card.

 

[Dauthi]

IMO mate will be a waste of money. Save the money and buy her ball gag to stop moaning

+1 its probably being slowed more by other things than the GPU and the computer will probably be kack again when the next expansion is out next year. Doesn't help WoW is more CPU dependant in general.

 

[benneh]

At the very least you'll need another 2 gig of ram and something like a 3850 AGP. I sold one for £45 a few days ago so Hotwired's up there^^ is keenly priced, add £20 for a few sticks of ram, should see an improvement, with some reg cleaning and defragging and whatnot.