Specs to play WoW at Ultra with minimal lag?

[Araniis]

Been wanting to get a new computer for a while know and I've been saving up for it. As it is, though, I'm going to hold up actually buying anything until I'm sure I can get something good out of it. So what I ask is can you guys give me a general idea in terms of computer specs and possibly price range on what a computer that could run WoW at the maximum settings and hopefully at a respectable frame rate (like around 30 FPS if at all possible0. I'd be very greatful for the help, since the sooner I know what to buy, the sooner I know when I'll have enough to get a computer that can run more then the lowest settings and still only get a 10 FPS.

[MaximumOverdrive]

Dell Studio XPS Desktop 435T/9000 is my computer, tho it's still pretty new. Got it back in...Aug I think. Big upgrade to my Dell XPS Gen 2 laptop that I've had for 5.5 years, but that sucker lasted...and still works today! I just have to really lower the vid settings in wow now to play it on the laptop...my new comp, I have no lag issues. I also like Dell cause I always had good service from them, and, as said earlier, their stuff lasts a while (most laptops are only supposed to last 2 years when those were made). I play on ultra settings on my new desktop with no problems.

Just copy pasting my spec when I ordered it.

Studio XPS 9000
Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit,
English
Studio XPS 9000 Intel® Core™ i7-920 processor(8MB L3 Cache, 2.66GHz)
Memory 12GB Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 6 DIMMs
Keyboard Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
Monitor 24.0" Dell ST2410 Full HD Monitor with VGA cable
Video Card ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 1GB GDDR5
Hard Drives 1.28TB Performance RAID 0 (2x640GB SATA 7200 RPM HDDs)
Modem No Modem Option
Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9.0 Multi-Language
Optical Drives 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
Sound Card Soundblaster® X-Fi™ Xtreme Audio
Network Dell 1525 Wireless-N PCIe Card

Works great, and it looks pretty too....it's rrreeeeddddd... I didn't get all the upgrades one could've gotten for this, but that was ok. Could've gotten like a blue-ray player in it, but I have a PS3 so that's not a big deal.

[fatman]

My PC has a 512MB 4870 video card and it pretty much plays ok at ultra, before Cataclysm anyway. Nowadays, I put it at "good high". For some reason, the action will just "jerk" while you turn or if you're riding fast. Get something better than that and you'll be fine. I'll insert a link later to Tom's Hardware.

[Mr. Perfect]

It sounds like your buying a pre-assembled system? Are you interested in a desktop or laptop?

Here are just some general rules of thumb, without being too specific as to lock you down. For the current market: A Core i5 would be great, i7s are naturally top shelf if you've got the money. AMD's Phenom x4s offer a better value per dollar if you must keep costs down. 4GB of ram is standard fare now, with anything over that being gravy. As far as a nice video card, you'd want at least a Radeon 5750 or GeForce GTX460. Keep in mind that the video card is largely what separates a typical PC from a gaming PC, so you'd want to push that as high as your budget allows. Definitely no Intel graphics. Any 64 bit version of Windows 7 is preferable to 32bit ones. You could get a solid PC somewhere around the $1000 mark, depending on how many of those specs you push around.

[fatman]

That link below sends you to the January 2011 reviews. At the end of the reviews is the hierarchy chart that you can use to compare the cards, so that you can see which Nvidia card is equivalent to which Ati card, as well as equivalences of older product lines with the new ones.

I think my 4870 card would have performed better at "ultra" if it had 1GB memory instead of just 512MB. The 4870 seems to be phased out so just get the equivalent or better.

Mr. Perfect is right that you would want to have at least 4GB of computer RAM to run well at "ultra". I think this is because at 2GB, you will have a performance bottleneck when the game continually loads information from your hard disc into the memory while playing WoW.

Other than that I can't say. I'm not familiar enough with the difference in performance between the different kinds of processors to make any suggestions.

Tom's Hardware Best Graphics Cards for the Money (January 2011)

[Araniis]

Thanks a lot guys, this will be sure to help me out (Once I actually have the time to look it all up, dang job) and hopefully this will get me playing the game at higher then minimal quality. XD

[Kauqilla]

The difference is amazing. My old gaming laptop is a Dell xps m1710 with 4gb ram core 2 duo 2.26ghz the 7950 GTX video card 512mb dedicated and i can only play wow on fair

my desktop is the following

Core 2 Quad at 2.66ghz
8gb DDR 2
Dual Nvidia 8800 GT 512MB cards running in SLI

my monitor is a 1440x900 lcd screen and i drop below 40FPS only once in a while