Display resolution.

[mrzhw]

Hello everyone,
I recently switched my old 17" CRT monitor running in 1024 x 768 to a new 22" LCD widescreen minitor running in 1680 x 1050. The new monitor worked flawlessly with Windows XP but the problem is with the game that I play, World of Warcraft. If I play this game with resolution of 1680 x 1050 the framerate would go down to as low as 5 fps which is unplayable.

Does anybody know what hardware I should upgrade to resolve the framerate issue? Video card? Memory? or CPU?

Another way I found to increase the framerate is to play this game at lower resolution. I tried couple widescreen resolutions available for this game. 1280 x 720 and 1280 x 768 are the only two widescreen resolutions that actually fill up the whole screen. Anybody know what's the difference between 1280 x 720 and 1280 x 768? Which is better resolution for my case?

Another question is about refresh rate. So the resolution of 1680 x 1050 only support refresh rate of 60hz, but if I run World of Warcraft in 1280 x 720 or 1280 x 768, can I increase the refresh rate or is it staying at 60hz? My monitor is Samsung 2220wm.

Thank you for reading this.

 

[rwillis]

This has nothing whatsoever to do with your monitor...the rest of your specs are needed to be able to explain your performance.

 

[cleeve]

Yep. Need to know your platform, CPU, memory, and videocard.

 

[rgeist554]

Most likely your GPU / CPU. What are you running, on-board video?

 

[mrzhw]

Ok my CPU is AMD Athlon 64 3000+ @ 1.8- 2Ghz. Video card is ATI Radeon 9600XT with 128mb of memory and 1g of RAM. I know it's not the problem with monitor but the higher resolution that decrease performance. So here're 3 of my questions:

1. What hardware should I upgrade to increase performance?

2. 1280 x 720 and 1280 x 768, which resolution is better for gaming with a monitor running 1680 x 1050 as native resolution?

3. If the native resolution of 1680 x 1050 only support 60hz, can I increase the refresh rate of the game by playing it with a lower resolution like 1280 x 720 or 1280 x 768? Or is it just gonna stay at 60hz?

 

[cleeve]

The reason you're having probles at 1650x1080 is your video card thoguh. The Radeon 9600 XT isn't powerful enough to handle that resolution, I reckon.

You're on AGP, so you're best bet is the $112 Radeon 2600 XT on newegg.

On a side note, 2 gigs of RAM might help out a bit in World of Warcraft. I know it helps in other online MMPORGs, although WoW is pretty easy to run compared to others.

 

[rgeist554]

*cleeve beat me to it!

Yeah, it's your CPU and GPU. Your Radeon only has 128MB of memory, which means it will perform very poorly above 1280x1024... Something like 512MB of GDDR3 on a card should be able to handle those higher resolutions.

If you want to play at those higher resolutions, you can try this (I'm assuming you're still using AGP) Radeon x1950 AGP 512MB.

 

[mrzhw]

Thanks for the reply.

So I am going to upgrade the video card, the RAM and the motherboard because my motherboard has 3 RAM slots and I can only use 1 slot, if I use 2-3 slots the game would freeze and crash.

Only part that concerns me now is the CPU. Is AMD Athlon 64 3000+ powerful enough to handle World of Warcraft at 1680 x 1050 resolution or is it on the edge of being outdated?

If I have to upgrade my CPU also I might as well just buy a new desktop because the video the RAM the motherboard with CPU upgrade would cost about $300 and a new desktop with AMD Athlon 64 x2 4000+ Dual Core with NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS 512MB memory and 2g of RAM only costs around $550.

Any suggestions if CPU should get upgraded?

 

[cleeve]

WoW is easy on CPUs, and the resolution has little to do with the CPU.

Resolution is all videocard.

 

[geofelt]

Unlike crt's, lcd monitors all have a 60hz refresh rate. They don't need more.

I would agree that a better vga card is in order, and that the cpu is ok. Do check that the psu you have has sufficient amps on the 12v rails to support the new vga card.

More ram is in order, 1gb is not enough. Pick a quality memory vendor like corsair, kingston, etc, and go to their memory configurator for your pc/mobo. It should tell you what memory is compatible. Run cpu-z to find out exactly what memory you now have in case it might be possible to match it. Many times a mobo can not handle mismatched sets of memory, so you might need to replace what you have.

 

[cleeve]

I'd upgrade the video card before upgrading the RAM, though. Might not need a ram upgrade. It's something to look at if the video card doesn't do what you'd hoped at that resolution, tho.

Also remember WoW performance will be reliant upion network performance and the WoW server lag. Even uber-high specd machines will show lag on a busy server, nothing you can do about it. But if that's the case, the resolution you set it at won't matter.