Help me help a friend (Warcraft)

kidscruff

kidscruff

kidscruff

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23 Feb 2003
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372
Hi, I hope the title isn't too misleading - I'm not trying to get a friend to give up WoW, just the opposite - I've started playing :p

BUT...

I built my computer about 3 years ago, speccing to play Half Life 2 at the time. The details are in my sig, and it runs WoW like a dream - at 1440x900, default graphics - Shimmering light on the sands, bloom effects, water effects, etc... ok it's not the best looking game ever but it's nice :)

Now, my friend has a Pentium 3GHz, 1GB Ram, nVidia GeForce 7300 SE... and it plays like a dog. A dead dog...

I've spent a while cleaning up his system from junk, but it's not had much of an effect. Is there anything I can try or would it just be the graphics card?

I've lost touch with what's good and what's not.

Thanks for the help, Chris
 
Hi

To be honest i dont think you can do much with a card as slow as the 7300 SE .
He would need a card of sim spec to your a 9800pro or higher to get half decent frames even in a game a old as WOW
 
I agree with the above posters, the CPU and RAM are fine. The graphics card though looks like it needs a good upgrade (I have been playing WoW for 2yrs).
 
Ati 9800 Pro, or Geforce 6800GT would be idea, both will handle WOW at any 'reasonable' resolution.. Infact I used to play wow in 1920x1200 on a 6800GT :) Could play with most settings near max, just keep FSAA at 1x, and dont bother too much with AF either.

Of course at lower resolutions you can turn up the AA/AF :)

Would have thought you could get either of these cards on the members market, or another second hand type place.

An EVGA 7900GT (£79+vat), or an ATI X1950 Pro (£99+vat) would both fit the bill perfectly. I guess the ATI's probably the better of the two, and the price difference isnt huge... (That is assuming its AGP), if its an early PCi Express system then there is a world of graphics cards to choose from, and pretty much anything over £70 is going to blow his 7300 away.

Anyway, 3Ghz P4, and 1Gb ram is quite sufficient for WOW.
 
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Crazy how my 128MB 9800 just stomps his 512MB 7300! Why did nVidia bother with all the ram? o_O

Thanks for the advice. Up to him if he wants to upgrade, but I'll suggest the X1950... Cheers!
 
Because nubs read the spec on their new computer and think OOH 512mb on the graphicsc card, thats impressive. Must be a good one...WRONG! :P

The ram used on high end graphics cards is very fast, and very expensive. However if you use cheap slow ram, you can slap on a ton of the stuff, and it costs peanuts, and it will fool inexperienced buyers very easily.

To be honest, your friend would probably have more like playing WOW on a Geforce Ti4600. Sure he would lose all the DX9 shaders, as the card only supports DX8... but Im willing to bet it would stop all over a 7300SE... (

Thing is the SE is a 'crippled' card. The 7300 'Standard' has 3 Vertex shaders, and 4 Pixel Shader and 4 texture units, the SE has just 2 of each!

The fill rate on a Geforce4 MX420, which was once considered one of the worse graphics cards of its day was 1000 MT/s. The 7300SE only manages 900! Its even slower than a very low budget card made in 2002. (The humble MX420 had 4 texture units!)

Basically the 7300 truely sucks, and pretty much the only place you find them is OEM. Retail versions generally being GT's(8 pixel pipelines) and GS's(4 pixel pipelies) which are still extremely low budget cards... but at least they are faster than 2002's flagship cards the Ti4800's. (Well the GS is borderline, the GT is faster)

Some good news though. Could be wrong, but according to Wikipedia the 7300SE was only released as PCI Express. While the GS and GT's were available with both. Of course that doesnt mean that an OEM didnt build their own card with a bridge chip.... BUT there is actually more than a fair chance that if your right about it being a 7300SE he may well have a PCI express 16 slot in his system. In which case the range of cards he could get just jumped up 50 times.

If all he wants to play is WOW, and assuming a resolution similar to your own, then even a £60+vat OCuK 8600GT would be sufficient to turn the eye candy up most the way... Thats what I have in my 'office' computer. However, sometimes on the graveyard shift, its possible to fire up warcraft and play a bit while waiting on phone calls etc... And it manages 1680x1050 with most of the eye candy turned up.
 
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