Is my computer WoW-able?

Joined
Dec 3, 2006
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37
I have been looking WoW for a while, and looking it's minimum requirements. For WoW it saids this: Pentium III 800 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 3D acceleration, 56k Modem.
And I have this: Celeron 1GHz, 512 MB SDR RAM, 3D acceleration, 56k Modem. (yes i'm dial-up :( )
So i'm asking you: is it possible for me to play a WoW, or it's still staying a dream?
 
What sort of "3D-acceleration" do you have. My girlfriends brother plays that game on a dual Katmai P3-550, 1gb of ram, and a Geforce 2 GTS 64mb.
 
no offense but you will shoot yourself trying to play a mmo on 56k. not just because of the lag you will encounter but b/c of the phone bill you will run up when you get addicted and play 4 hours a day
 
no offense but you will shoot yourself trying to play a mmo on 56k. not just because of the lag you will encounter but b/c of the phone bill you will run up when you get addicted and play 4 hours a day

none taken. so, that means no, right?
 
Phone bill? Who pays phone charges for dial up internet? I never did :confused:

Anyways, yes it will run it, but with 7mb cable I am bitching about the lag in places like IF, I couldn't imagine playing on dial up.
 
Phone bill? Who pays phone charges for dial up internet? I never did :confused:

Anyways, yes it will run it, but with 7mb cable I am bitching about the lag in places like IF, I couldn't imagine playing on dial up.

Can you say slide show FTL!!!!

Yes you can play on your machine, the question is should you? No, machines is a bit on the slow side and with dial-up anytime you get near a slightly populated area you will go into epileptic seizures.
 
You'll be laggy but you could play. You could never raid on dial up, and you probably won't be reliable enough to develop instancing relationships with people.

I had a p3 800, 384 mem, GF2 GTS 64 and it ran at 20-30 fps at 1024x786 with everything on medium or low. Unless you have a GF1 32 meg graphics card or something, you should be able to get similar performance, just don't expect anything great.

Honestly at this point you could get a huge upgrade in computer performance for $400-600 and I think it would be worth it even for everyday applications, studying, and writing papers... based on your handle.
 
Also, and i dont mean this in any demeaning way, if you cant handle walking away from a game maybe WoW isn't the best choice for you right now. Once again, based on your handle. ;)
 
You'll be laggy but you could play. You could never raid on dial up, and you probably won't be reliable enough to develop instancing relationships with people.

I had a p3 800, 384 mem, GF2 GTS 64 and it ran at 20-30 fps at 1024x786 with everything on medium or low. Unless you have a GF1 32 meg graphics card or something, you should be able to get similar performance, just don't expect anything great.

Honestly at this point you could get a huge upgrade in computer performance for $400-600 and I think it would be worth it even for everyday applications, studying, and writing papers... based on your handle.

Also, and i dont mean this in any demeaning way, if you cant handle walking away from a game maybe WoW isn't the best choice for you right now. Once again, based on your handle. ;)

just to add to these two fine posts, if you were to upgrade your systems ram to 1 gig you'd get a much better wow experience..

I'd be looking at a new box, if its in your budget.. For example, $105 motherboard + cpu would offer a massive upgrade for you. You could use the integrated graphics for basic WOW gaming now. Possibly, even your ram could be reused if you have DDR right now. Also, its got a pci-e slot, so you could upgrade your graphics card later. Also, that motherboard supports a dual core cpu, like the AMD Opteron 165 for $153.

So, for $105 you can get a new single core processor and motherboard. Or for $200 you can get a dual core motherboard and processor.

Video card can be whatever you want. The 7600's are a great value choice. Also look at the 6600's if you are on a really tight budget.
 
Do not forget power supply, case, etc. Probably looking more at around 400 dollars for a major upgrade.
 
Do not forget power supply, case, etc. Probably looking more at around 400 dollars for a major upgrade.
yes, that's true. in my example he'd reuse a lot of his existing hardware thought... 100 to 200 is reasonable.
 
yes, that's true. in my example he'd reuse a lot of his existing hardware thought... 100 to 200 is reasonable.

Yes it is, but if he has a computer this old, he may not have much experience in the computer building field. While it is easy, I would not buy cheap brands out of the gate.
 
...and with dial-up anytime you get near a slightly populated area you will go into epileptic seizures.

Does WoW actually send packets large/frequent enough to choke the bandwidth of a 56K connection? Lag is usually the result of poor latencies, not low bandwidth because most games don't need to send alot of data.

I haven't had dial up or know of anyone that has it for years, but I do recall back in the AC days, a friend with dial up had better latencies with the Turbine servers and therefore less lag than any of us that had cable or DSL. It's dependent on ISP.
 
Does WoW actually send packets large/frequent enough to choke the bandwidth of a 56K connection? Lag is usually the result of poor latencies, not low bandwidth because most games don't need to send alot of data.

I haven't had dial up or know of anyone that has it for years, but I do recall back in the AC days, a friend with dial up had better latencies with the Turbine servers and therefore less lag than any of us that had cable or DSL. It's dependent on ISP.

when you first log on, on when raiding, there can be some rather heavy traffic.


for his computer, more ram. wow ought to list 1 gig as the minimum.
 
Lag in WoW is more lack of server throughput and not enough ram to process all the people in high populated areas. IF, SW etc.

I noticed a huge increase going from 1gb of ram to 2gb.
 
I've been playing on 56k this weeek -- WoW for me transfers around 2MB of data in an hour, and I get latencies of 500-700ms. No real noticeable lag, except when my modem decides all of a sudden to renegotiate.

Perfectly playable on dialup, only issue (non-issue if you have a cellphone and SMS) is that people can't ring.
 
I've played WoW on dial-up quite a bit and it is really quite bearable. When I'm lucky, pings will hover around 400, maxing out at 700 or so. The only time it ever bogs down is in the heat of the action in AV, and occasionally in a 40-person raid instance. The rest is smooth sailing.

To the OP, I have a 10-day trial key that you're welcome to if you'd like to give it a go--just send me a PM. The best way to find out if it will run is just to try it, especially since it is free.
 
To the OP, I have a 10-day trial key that you're welcome to if you'd like to give it a go--just send me a PM. The best way to find out if it will run is just to try it, especially since it is free.

56k + trial download = :eek:

Sorry, just had to add it..

As far as playing, I used to play it on a P4 2.4 with 768MB RAM and 64MB Integrated graphics.. Upping to 1gb of RAM will improve performance ten times. 512->768 was a decent performance jump as well..
 
I played Everquest using dialup, and even during raids with 70+ people I rarely suffered from debilitating lag. But, does WoW have server side filtering? If I recall correctly that was the key factor in reducing bandwidth for eq players on dialup.
 
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