• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Asus 4850 512mb & WoW?

Associate
Joined
7 Oct 2008
Posts
1,372
Location
Herefordshire
Hi

I might be purchasing this card, but I play some World of Warcraft (Among other games, Cod4, Crysis etc.) and I've read that quite a lot of people have had issues on WoW with it, just want to clear things up.

Has anyone else had these problems and which one of these do you think it is related to, the Card, Drivers or WoW.

Thanks!
 
I've got that card and have no issues with WoW at all, I did change the cooler as it was slightly loud but apart from that it's 100% stable.
 
Hmm, ok, it's just that people have been having issues where they go to the centre of a major city, and their fps goes down to 20, and sometimes Wow would crash.
 
That happens on loads of crap systems. It's not necessarily that specific card to blame.

I would however recommend you look at cards that use a better cooling solution.
I have an original Asus 4850 and while it has no issues it gets too hot, in my opinion.
 
Thats got one of the Asus Coolers (Glaciator heatsink) on it, people have been saying that theres about a 10C temprature drop.
 
I'd have no probs with that card tbh. Good performance, fan and price.

Only limitation is the 512Mb ram cuts you back to 2x FSAA at higher resolutions.
Given the amount of text in WoW using FSAA can be a hindrance anyway.
 
Hmm, ok, it's just that people have been having issues where they go to the centre of a major city, and their fps goes down to 20, and sometimes Wow would crash.

Wow is a CPU intensive game mate. As said the crashes are prob due to people poor spec pc's..2gb is almost unplayble now in cities. I have 4gb Dominators and a GTX280 and with GFX ALL set to ultra i get about 30-35fps in Dalaran at screen res of 1900x1200 which will also effect fps at higher res. 4850 will play it fine if your not on 1900x1200 :p
 
WoW is still generally not a high specc game, the code itself is 3 years old.
I know people with way lower specc than mine and get more fps,
Ive also heard wow has problems with the current high end graphics cards, especially ati.

With my specc in dalran i get 30-40, then up to 45 in northerend, and a full static 60 in azeroth, the servers may also be slightly to blame.
 
Ive also heard wow has problems with the current high end graphics cards, especially ati.

Untrue.

My rig below runs WoW at 100+ FPS most of the time (except Dalaran where I get around 50 odd and raids where I get around 40-50) and have never had a problem running it with my 4890, this is with all video settings maxed.

As people have said, bad performance is more thatn likely due to the processor not being up to the job, rather than the GPU.
 
Yea due to a bad a processor, but a quad @ 3.4?
Not the best but not crap.

I know people with half of the system of me and getting more fps.

In BC it was fine never had a problem, northerend is just terribly utilised.
 
Yea due to a bad a processor, but a quad @ 3.4?
Not the best but not crap.

I know people with half of the system of me and getting more fps.

In BC it was fine never had a problem, northerend is just terribly utilised.

The bad processor was a broad statement, yours shouldn't be a problem.

I agree, Northrend is very badly done, mainly due to the aweful idea that is Wintergrasp.
 
I run wow on mostly high settings except shadows on my old X1950XT. It runs fine for most of the time. After about a week or so I dont know what happens but performance drops hugely and i get constant slow downs (mainly in WSG). I dont run any addons with it either. All I do is run the wow repair utility with all options ticked and then start wow again and up the setiings high again and then it starts to work with good performance again. Really strange.
 
Yea due to a bad a processor, but a quad @ 3.4?
Not the best but not crap.

I know people with half of the system of me and getting more fps.

In BC it was fine never had a problem, northerend is just terribly utilised.

If you're playing ultra graphics settings, knock the shadow level down *1* notch, very little change in appearance but about 1/3-1/2 additional FPS.
WoW is an excessively CPU orientated game due to the age of the coding [the core engine is from approximately 2001-2004], especially at higher resolution or when involved in higher group number instances/areas.

Blizzard have added more and more coding onto the original engine and since WotLK it has been heavily showing it's age; and the game itself is only really optimised for 2 cores, with the 1st being pummelled, even on a 3.4Ghz Q6600, as Cores 3/4 aren't used.
Addons which take up CPU runtime, like QuestHelper (BIG fps loss from this one when active!) just make this worse and worse.
There are also reputedly issues with the games hardware efficiency/scaling, especially with new systems (and both ATI/NV cards), whereby the game is NOT making the most out of various aspects of the system (less than 100% GPU usage for example), the underlying problem here really is Blizz's coding, before the next expansion, they really could do with a large scale overhaul or optimisation focus on the existing code, above and beyond new content, because as it is, the game is performing worse and worse for the majority of the playergroup, except those who have excessively high machine specs, or fiddle around with a lot of graphics settings and resolutions to find the best setting for thier own hardware.

Servers theoretically shouldn't affect game performance either, but people have reported changing to different servers in different locations again also affect the game; which again points back to an issue with the coding of the game (which to be fair is likely very, very, very complicated).
 
Last edited:
If you're playing ultra graphics settings, knock the shadow level down *1* notch, very little change in appearance but about 1/3-1/2 additional FPS.
WoW is an excessively CPU orientated game due to the age of the coding [the core engine is from approximately 2001-2004], especially at higher resolution or when involved in higher group number instances/areas.

Blizzard have added more and more coding onto the original engine and since WotLK it has been heavily showing it's age; and the game itself is only really optimised for 2 cores, with the 1st being pummelled, even on a 3.4Ghz Q6600, as Cores 3/4 aren't used.
Addons which take up CPU runtime, like QuestHelper (BIG fps loss from this one when active!) just make this worse and worse.
There are also reputedly issues with the games hardware efficiency/scaling, especially with new systems (and both ATI/NV cards), whereby the game is NOT making the most out of various aspects of the system (less than 100% GPU usage for example), the underlying problem here really is Blizz's coding, before the next expansion, they really could do with a large scale overhaul or optimisation focus on the existing code, above and beyond new content, because as it is, the game is performing worse and worse for the majority of the playergroup, except those who have excessively high machine specs, or fiddle around with a lot of graphics settings and resolutions to find the best setting for thier own hardware.

Servers theoretically shouldn't affect game performance either, but people have reported changing to different servers in different locations again also affect the game; which again points back to an issue with the coding of the game (which to be fair is likely very, very, very complicated).

+1

There supposed to be doing a graphics overhaul sometime this expasion, which should come with a definate overhaul of coding etc.

I can run the game perfect with 1 notch down of the shadows, which tbh does othing the shadow engine on WoW is terrible. and the rest full.

Although im not a fan, warhammer online's shadows really did make a difference.

Atleast wow supports CF.!
 
Ok, just thought Id clear that up, anyway, it wasn't about if it could run it, I knew it would no probs as I used to have an old Radeon X1600Pro 512mb and that ran it smooth on 1280x1024 with everything set high, coupled with an Amd Sempron 2800+ and 767mb of DDR ram. :)
 
I've never had a problem with WOW except when I had triple buffering enabled. Without that I can run everything at its highest at 1440 by 900.

My specs are:
Intel Core2Duo E8400 @ 4.00
4Gb DDR2 at 1069: 5:5:5:15
HD4850 512MB @ 690:1120
 
WoW craves RAM and CPU cycles. Anything above a 4850 and you start to get really diminishing returns in terms of FPS.

Take the PCs I have here, for example. This one is an E8400 with 4GB RAM. The other half's is a Phenom cored Athlon X2 7750BE with 2GB RAM.

As it stands, mine eats hers alive for both FPS and loading times. But if I take 2GB out of mine, suddenly she beats me in terms of loading and FPS. Admittedly she runs a lower resolution but the difference is quite simply shocking.

I think the best upgrade for WoW is some more RAM.
 
I would agree with this, current rig has a 8800GTS 512 and i average 40-50 fps but just had to RMA 2 gig of ram and now Dalaran is unplayable, huge pagefile usage causes major stuttering and drops to 0 fps.
 
Back
Top Bottom