WoW and Other "Old" Games

[Shelf]

With all of the discounts after the holiday season, I've decided to get a less crappy desktop computer that I plan on using for multiple purposes, albeit not demanding ones. Mostly, it will involve schoolwork, browsing, and light gaming; I do not plan on creating movies or having a million and one photos on my hard drive.

Having only casual interests, I do not intend to "break the bank" with the purchase. I don't have a defined budget, but naturally, I'd rather settle for the status quo since I don't see myself going out and purchasing Crysis, Aion, and the like.

The following is an example of a desktop I've looked at and considered purchasing (I'm too much of a failure / too much of a sloth to build my own).

Intel® Pentium® processor E5300
6GB DDR2 memory
1TB hard drive
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X4500
Windows 7 Home Premium

and comes with a 20" monitor for $550

Let me note that I understand the video card is awful; therefore, I should feel awful, etc.

So here are the few questions I'd like to have answered, since a minute or so of your life has been wasted already.

1. Given those specific specs, how well could it run "older" games like WoW?
2. If the video card poses enough of an issue to be the main limiter among the parts, could I easily just purchase a decent one and override the other one (as this is a desktop)?
3. If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?

 

[tuesday0180]

I purchased a similar system a year ago to run wow at high settings. Without a better video card the game won't look/run good. I have a e5200 4gigs ddr2 ram.

I then purchased a nvidia 9500gt and a new psu and wow ran maxed for me at 1024x768.

Right now I'm on the same system +a gtx 260 and I'm running wow maxed at 1680x1050 on a 20" monitor.

 

[Shelf]

So as I understand it, the video card isn't going to be very amazing at all for WoW (enough to run it at >30 fps on medium settings?); therefore, I'll end up upgrading the card regardless.

If that statement is true, would there be any disadvantage in buying an almost identical computer for much less, with the only difference being 2GB less RAM (which I can expand to the 6GB for less than the cost deficit) and a 1.5" smaller monitor? Does monitor size "matter"?

 

[tuesday0180]

4gigs of memory is fine for wow. Monitor size is up to you.

Hey you should try to run wow without a new video card at first to see if the graphics and fps are acceptable to you. They weren't to me so I bought a new video card.

To tell you the truth, the graphics/fps wasn't too bad while I was using an onboard videocard. I just wanted the game to look better.

Look at the power supply when making your purchase. I had to shell out an extra $80.00 to buy a new powersupply when I wanted a new graphcis card since the power supply in my prebuilt e5200 computer was lousy.

 

[staalkoppie]

my gf had a similar gpu, and it avr between 15-20fps in towns/busy areas and per occasion hit 30fps. once you go to dalaran and "newer" places, you'll get even worse fps. I would reccomend nvidia 9600 upwards maybe even 4750 upwards if you can still find them, they are as cheap as mud, but much harder to come by.