GPU for WOW?

G

galdoes16

Gawd
Joined
Jan 19, 2005
Messages
736
Well my 7900GTX beat the dust after 2.5 years, and my main pc is now used soley for WOW use.

What would be the cheapest card for just WOW?
 
pretty much anything will run WoW maxed that's a ATI 3850 or better

ATI
you can get a 3850 for about $150-160 AR if youre lucky, but generally they run between $170-200. i would suggest getting the 512mb model if you go that route.

however, for a few dollars more you can get a 3870...generally run from $199-230, but theres a sapphire single slot model on newegg for $189 atm.

Nvidia
just released the 9600gt that gives the 3870 a run for its money according to early benches. etailers dont seem to have the card for sale yet, but best buy has it for $229 i believe. id assume etailers will have it going for about $200, maybe a bit less.

for a bit more you could get yourself a stock 8800gt, which is faster than anything i've mentioned so far. can be found for under $200AR depending on brand (ex: galaxy). cheapest evga is currently $237.99 on newegg with a $10 MIR you could get it for $227 if you really wanted to bother with a $10 MIR...

above that there is always the option of the 8800gts (g92)...currently they are being seen for as low as $260AR for major brands. the gts would provide you with about a 15% performance increase over an 8800gt.



as you can see, theres a pretty good variety of choices within about $60 of each other. anything i mentioned here should max out WoW, depending on the resolution you play at, with no problems. imo, the best bang for your buck is going to be an 8800gt, but if you just want the cheapest thing, look into the 3850 512mb or wait to see the pricing on the 9600gt.
 
You probably can play WOW on an Nvidia 7300LE video card or ATI X1050 video card. These are pretty cheap at $20-$30 online. The minimum and even the recommended system requirements for WOW is pretty low with only a 32-64mb video card.
 
OP can you tell us what resolution you play at and what settings you want to use? that would help us point you in the right direction.

if not, youre going to keep getting a huge variety of responses...youre currently getting cards listed that range from $50-260, and offer WAY different gameplay experiences.
 
firebane said:
Just pick up a 7600 or a 8400.

WoW is not graphic intensive by any means.
Click to expand...
Aye, it ran fine on my 9700 pro. To run it at a high resolution with all the goodies turned on, you need at least an X800 or 7600 GT with 256mb ram.
 
j3ff86 said:
Aye, it ran fine on my 9700 pro. To run it at a high resolution with all the goodies turned on, you need at least an X800 or 7600 GT with 256mb ram.
Click to expand...

This is not nessecarily true. I had an X800pro 256meg that couldn't run the game well.

Playing wow outside of a raid is a lot different than in a raid. In a raid my x800 couldn't take it.

My 8800gt at 1680x1050 8x AA sometime drops down into the low 20's when there is a lot going on in the screen. As was said earlier to OP, if you can tell us what res you want to play at and such, it would help recommend a card.
 
It would be silly in my opinion not to go with a 8000GT
best bang for the buck at the moment by far...
 
Remember that WoW is also CPU restrictive (due to the way it is programed), so having a decent (Pentium 4 or better) is almost as important as the video card.

As far as cards go, an 8500GT for lower resolutions and an 8600GT or better for higher resolutions.
 
Vashypooh said:
This is not nessecarily true. I had an X800pro 256meg that couldn't run the game well.

Playing wow outside of a raid is a lot different than in a raid. In a raid my x800 couldn't take it.
Click to expand...
Well I had an X800 and played for a year and raided (AQ, BWL, onyxia, etc.) and it ran fine. Although I didn't use any AA.
 
If you're experiencing lagginess with raids, that's your CPU, not your graphics card. It's not the character models that are slowing it down, but the massive amount of character interactions that just suddenly flooded in.
 
Ya resolution is the only real issue to WoW. For reference with an 8800GTS 640MB it ran at 60fps solid in pretty much every situation, even in cities at 1920x1200 with all detail maxed, 2xAA 16xAnIso. When I last visited my folks I dropped WoW on their computer which has a 7300GT. It ran perfectly ok at 1280x1024. Don't remember the detail settings but they were medium at least and frame rate was plenty fast.

So what rez you run at and just how smooth you want it affects a lot. If you have a 1920x1200 monitor, err on the side of caution and get an 8800 either GT or GTS. That'll give you smoking WoW performance at full rez. If you are talking something like a 1280x1024 monitor, an 8600 GT should do the trick nicely.

An 8600 GT would probably work fine for a 1920x1200 monitor, you might just find that frame rates get a little lower at times, and maybe knock back the detail a bit, but I still expect it'd do well.

If money is really tight, well then just get what you can afford. The good news is there really isn't any modern card that CAN'T run WoW. You may have to knock the detail and rez down, but I've seen people run it on an Intel GMA 950. It wasn't pretty and it wasn't fast, but it ran.
 
i did some pretty hardcore raiding pre-TBC on a laptop running a athlon 64 3500+, 1gb ram, and a ati x200 mobile....settings pretty much all on low, but it still ran well enough for me to clear naxx with my guild.
 
Well if you look at my main pc, the CPU is more then enough. The resolution is 1440x900 also.

Just doing this because the wife is addicted to WOW, and I have my new laptop to play stuff on.
 
If you don't need something brand new, you could always look in the classifieds section for used cards as well.

I have an X1950Pro that would probably fit the bill and would be under 100 bucks, others have good cards up as well that would save you quite a bit of money if it's just going to be used for one game ;)

-Chris
 
I would say the 8800gt, you'll have no problems running the game at 16xQ AA and 16x AF through the nVidia contro panel, makes the game look much better.
 
The OP Used a 7900 GTX, and you're all telling him to get like a 7600GT? I don't think he's looking to downgrade!?!? Why would he want his game to play worse? Go with some of the original suggestions, if you have the cash i'd go with the 8800 GT. During raids you'll never even begin to notice any graphical slow down during the most intense times. I think it would be the same for just about all the other cards, but for max AA and AF during raids i'd take the 8800 GT over anything. 3870 would be good as would the 3850... but the GTS 512 is probably a waste of money and overkill for a game like that unless you're running at super high res.
 
Running wow with an XFX 8800gts 512MB (g92), e8400 clocked at 4ghz at 1920x1080 with all settings maxed with full AA frames never dip below 40 even when raiding, w/o vsync on can get over 100fps while not doing something intensive like raiding.
 
Built my sister a PC with a 7300gt for WoW. Runs at max settings, 2xAA, 1440x900 with very decent framerates.
 
Just get a 8800gt or an HD3870 or even the new 9600gt lol if your going to play wow @ 1440x900 plenty of power to push it and just about any other game.
 
I've played wow with a Radeon 9200 at 1440x900. Sure, it was slow, but it worked. You would be hard pressed to buy a new video card that couldn't play WoW. It all depends on how much your wife cares about framerate and image quality.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top