2gig vs 4gig on wow...

i have a laptop that is running 2.4 dual core, and i have an nvidia 8600gt 512mb card running it.. I only play wow on this thing, and running around 80fps with everything on high, when i turn the shadows up all the way, it takes it down to around 49 - 60.. I know you can only see 60fps and its a little overkill. I have 2gb 667mhz, the laptop is capable of holding 4gb, will i see any improvement in performance with 4gb, instead of 2gb?

your performance is predominantly limited by your video card, so increasing the RAM probably won't help... especially if you're not running Vista 64 bit.

Shadows brings even the system in my sig to its knees (bottoms out at 20fps). Then again, my rig is very cpu dependent @ 1440x900

wow that is amazing i took the vertical sync off and everything went up a little bit, but the shadows are still pretty fun to look at...

BigBadBiologist said:

your performance is predominantly limited by your video card, so increasing the RAM probably won't help... especially if you're not running Vista 64 bit.

Click to expand...

Baloney, That video card will run WoW fine. WoW loves memory, especially if you are running Vista 64 bit.

I'd make the move from 2 to 4, maybe not so much for WoW but general system lovin'

What kind of laptop do you have? If it's an XPS or something like that try a small OC. I personally don't play WoW, but I hear it is also quite CPU intensive.

MSI ms-163a, got it from a friend about to be deployed, i'm running wow right now depending on the areas... low 40s... to mid 150s with vertical sync off... I'm running 32bit windows xp...

Operation system support Support Windows Vista®/XP
Processor Support Intel® Merom 65nm & Penryn 45nm socket P mobile processor
Chipset Intel® PM965 + ICH8-M
Graphics & Video Module NVIDIA® 8600M-GT 512MB
Main Memory DDR2 533/667 SO-DIMM x 2 slots, MAX: 4GB
Display 15.4" WXGA ( 1280 x 800 )

PC Cards Slot None
Card Reader SD/MMC/MS/MS-Pro 4-in-1 Card Reader
Hard Disk Drive Supports SATA HDD
Optical Drive Built-in Super-Multi Drive (supports DVD RAM)
LAN/Modem Realtek Gigabit LAN + 56K Modem
Wireless LAN Supports Intel® Mini PCI-E 4965 & 3945

Bluetooth Built-in MS-6837D Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR USB Module
Built-in CMOS Camera 1.3 Mega Pixels
TPM Not available
Security Feature None
I/O Ports • Express Card : 1
• eSATA X 1
• Monitor ( VGA ) : 15 pin D-Sub x 1
• HDMI : 1
• USB 2.0 : 4
• IEEE 1394 : 1
• MIC-in : 1
• Headphone out : 1
• RJ11 : 1
• RJ45 : 1
• TV-Out : S-Video

Audio Realtek ALC 888
Short-Cut Keys Power on, Email, Internet, Wireless LAN, Personal Setting
Battery Pack & Life Li-ion 6 cells battery (4400mAh)
AC Adapter 19V DC, 120W/Input: 100~240V AC, 50/60Hz universal
Dimension
Weight 5.85 lbs ( full system with 6 cell battery )

BigBadBiologist said:

your performance is predominantly limited by your video card, so increasing the RAM probably won't help... especially if you're not running Vista 64 bit.

Click to expand...

yeah that is horse crap. WoW is severely limited by cpu and memory constraints not gpu.

I called up the tech guys at MSI and asked what memory they recommended, They told me to go with 4gb of the kingston hyperx memory, said it would treat me good 4gb, 667, ddr2, i have 2 gigs in my computer right now, i can definately tell a difference in game play, just wondering if i could get anymore results off 2 more gigs...

Remember that WoW is such an old game, that 2GB RAM was abnormal at its release. Granted the game may have been upgraded a bit, but 2GB RAM and virtually any CPU/GPU combo these days above a 2.0GHz single core and a 7600 series and up can run it great.

WoW is getting more GPU limited, especially with the new patch that was released this Tuesday. Before the patch, I could turn everything all the way up at 1280x1024 and still get 60fps no matter where I was. This was with my GPU at stock speeds.

Now with the "upgraded" eye candy, if I turn the Shadows up above the 2nd notch, it drops into the 40s.. all the way up drops into the 30's. (GPU at stock speeds)

a 3.76Ghz Quad and 6GB of RAM on Vista x64 is not being limited by the CPU or RAM.

I haven't seen how much my normal overclock for my vid card helps with the new patch.. but I will say that it is a lot more GPU intensive (bad coding?) than it was before.

It seems like every high end system i end up getting i wanna run xp on it, i know you can tone down vista a bit but i'm just not set on it yet...

Tested it with 840/1320 on the vid card and i is still GPU limited... I can turn up the shadows a little bit more and still have 60fps.. and even turn up the view distance all the way and leave the shadows on the second notch and have 60fps...

And this is with 8x AA.

It is definitely a lot more vid car limited then it was before... a 4850 or 4870 or better should play it just fine though.. I would think at least up to 1600x1200.. above that, you would prolly need a 4870x2.

gameradio said:

i have a laptop that is running 2.4 dual core, and i have an nvidia 8600gt 512mb card running it.. I only play wow on this thing, and running around 80fps with everything on high, when i turn the shadows up all the way, it takes it down to around 49 - 60.. I know you can only see 60fps and its a little overkill. I have 2gb 667mhz, the laptop is capable of holding 4gb, will i see any improvement in performance with 4gb, instead of 2gb?

Click to expand...

Shadows in games are 100% cpu bound. There are no video cards to my knowledge, let alone games, that allow shadow calculations on the gpu. Don't confuse rendering with calculations, it's different. The cpu does the work of where the shadows are and the gpu draws them. Calculating them is more more process intensive than drawing them. You would think that hardware shadow support would exist, but it doesn't yet.

What memory does for you is help with loading times. Disk activity (reading/computing/writing to memory) causes a hit on cpu ticks which in turns lowers the rest of the systems performance. If you have more memory, in some applications, it can help overall performance because there's less disk reading involved. A good rule of thumb is more memory will improve your average frame rate, but never your highest frame rate. There are cases where people run games on extremely low settings, like 640x480 or 800x600, in order to test memory and motherboard throughput, and in that case, more memory and faster memory shows improvement, but it's artificial benchmarks, like 3dmark.

awesome man, thanks for the killer review, i was wondering im not real into the numbers game when it comes to laptop specs, but i was wondering about what was more cpu needy, or video card...