Video Card for WOW

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Ok Guys...
So my friend is looking for a new Video Card
He does not want to spend more then $100, He has a 400Watt PSU, PCIE Card.
All he does is play WoW on a 22" LCD.
What is your thoughts?
 
For no more than $100 he is out of luck.. especially with a 22" if he wants to run at the monitor's native resolution and get good framerates with detail pretty high.. (Good framerate is 60fps pretty much anywhere except Dalaran).

What are the rest of the system specs?

CPU, RAM, specific brand and model of power supply. What version of Windows?

The 4850 that is linked normally specifies a MINIMUM of a 450w power supply.

"PCI Express based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
450 Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express power connector recommended (550 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode)
Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSUfor a list of Certified products
1GB of system memory
Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
DVD playback requires DVD drive
Blu-ray / HD DVD playback requires Blu-ray / HD DVD drive"

The 9800 GT that is linked specifies a MINIMUM of 400w power supply.. but with specific Amperage ratings.
"400-Watt PSU (with 12V current rating of 26A), One 6-pin PCIe Power Connector"
 
cyclone3d said:
For no more than $100 he is out of luck.. especially with a 22" if he wants to run at the monitor's native resolution.

What are the rest of the system specs?

CPU, RAM, specific brand and model of power supply. What version of Windows?
Click to expand...

not sure all the specs is a Dell Dimension E521, AM2 Processor I want to say 2GB of Ram, XP Home
 
I have my girlfriend's rig running an 8800GT that I got for $60 used in the FS/FT forum. It runs WoW with everything except for shadows at max quality at 1600x1200 resolution. But if you don't find anything in FS/FT, then the 4850 would be an even faster option.
 
Jebobek said:
I have a XFX 8800GT running WoW decently as well (sans Dalaran).

However, look at the Dell Dimension E521: http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfh/desktops/dimen_e521/pd.aspx?refid=dimen_e521&s=dfh&cs=22&~tab=specstab

As others reviewed on the site, the power supply is sub 400W and the PCI-Express area leaves little room for a modern video card. Might want to measure how much room you have back there.
Click to expand...

the psu has been changed since factory. I am not sure the brand he just told me it was 400W. I went with the sapphire card
 
Jebobek said:
I have a XFX 8800GT running WoW decently as well (sans Dalaran).

However, look at the Dell Dimension E521: http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfh/desktops/dimen_e521/pd.aspx?refid=dimen_e521&s=dfh&cs=22&~tab=specstab

As others reviewed on the site, the power supply is sub 400W and the PCI-Express area leaves little room for a modern video card. Might want to measure how much room you have back there.
Click to expand...

Exactly, there's a Hard review on the E521 (kind of surprised me) and it comments on the difficulty in finding a GPU upgrade that will fit thanks to the weird BTX setup.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM2MSw4LCxoY29uc3VtZXIurg==

Sounds like it better be single slot and short. If its just for WoW maybe one of these guys would work:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102820

Would be a huge upgrade from the 7300 LE that's in it (and about the same dimensions and fine with the 400W with no 6 pin needed).
 
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Jeffredo said:
Exactly, there's a Hard review on the E521 (kind of surprised me) and it comments on the difficulty in finding a GPU upgrade that will fit thanks to the weird BTX setup.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM2MSw4LCxoY29uc3VtZXIurg==

Sounds like it better be single slot and short. If its just for WoW maybe one of these guys would work:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102820

Would be a huge upgrade from the 7300 LE that's in it (and about the same dimensions and fine with the 400W with no 6 pin needed).
Click to expand...

He had a 8600GT but it took a crap on him. So i am hoping he will like this card
 
8800GTX, i would say its the 3rd or 4th most powerful single GPU card (nvidia) in the market. and its cheap even its kinda old. $150 brand new.
 
4850/4770 has no problem whatsoever with WoW, even with a full raid.
You'd probably be fine with a 4830 or 4670 for that matter.

*edit - 400W is more than enough to run any of these cards.
 
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I vote for 4770 considering the price and power requirement, but if your friend is considering on adding more HDD or RAM in the future then 4670 is the way to go... to give some breathing space for the PSU
 
zmhaha said:
8800GTX, i would say its the 3rd or 4th most powerful single GPU card (nvidia) in the market. and its cheap even its kinda old. $150 brand new.
Click to expand...

Given the fact that you suggested probably one of the more power-hungry cards made in the last few years, I guess you didn't read the earlier discussion about how the power-supply may not be sufficient?

As far as WoW goes, your videocard should probably be the least of your worries. It is very CPU dependent - you will literally never have a CPU that is too fast for this game and EVERY time you upgrade your CPU you WILL notice a difference in the game.

After that the next thing that can affect performance is RAM. Assuming you have at least 2gb that shouldn't be an issue. WoW can't actually use more than 2gb since it's a 32-bit program but it can get damn close and of course your OS will use ram too; so I'd suggest 2.5 as a minimum for RAM.

Finally, your hard drive makes a dramatic difference in gameplay, whether you're talking about load times on levels or just general jerkyness when it has to load a lot of models. This has been one of the few games over the years that is actually faster on 15k Enterprise SCSI drives tuned for webserver/database performance than it is on consumer drives (even including the raptor) just due to the fact that it is so frequently accessing so many different model files, etc from the disc. Moving to an SSD makes the game so fast it's almost funny.

Only after you have those three areas totally covered should you really worry about a videocard. I recently upgraded my friend's computer from an older P4 rig to a Core2Duo. We used his old X800XL since it was PCI-E, and upgraded pretty much everything else. The difference between how that and my other systems run WoW, even in raids, is not really earth-shattering.

Remember, when this game came out people were doing 40-man raids using Radeon 9800Pro's (if they were lucky). Sure the game's graphics have been updated a bit since then, but in the end it's still the same game.

Hell, ever since I upgraded my 6-year-old laptop with a Pentium-M 1.7, more RAM, and a bigger faster hard drive, it plays WoW pretty well despite only having an ATI mobility 9200.
 
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