Would a new video card help?

Hey guys,

I a noob here with a silly question. I am running

2.20 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
256 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. A8V-VM SE Rev 1.xx
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
2048 Megabytes Installed Memory
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE

I play WOW and my FPS was never great ~ 32 FPS average, with the expansion now it gets down in the single digits on occasion. Do you think that a newer video card would help out enough to verify the expense, or am I at the limit with CPU power, ram, etc..I am maxed out on board ram and do not want to replace just the board. Thanks for the help guys..and gals

Scott

A new graphic card will help you in WoW with your system. You'll still see low FPS (not as low as you have now) flying or in Dalaran, but overall performance should be pretty good. The Nvidia 7300LE is a very weak graphic card (locate it here in this handy graphic card hierarchy chart.)....way down on the left.
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 118-7.html

Your best bet is to use the HD4670 graphic card @$70, it uses very little power (only what your PCIex16 socket supplies) so no additional power from your power supply is required. (up on the right on the chart)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121274

Here's a review with benchmarks of different graphic cards including the HD4670 with recent games.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/for [...] rt-ii.html

hope this helps

Try overclocking your processor, up your memory to 4gb and go with a 4830 or 8800GT/9800GT

Thanks for the info guys.. i will be getting a new video card then...

i wish I could upgrade my CPU ram, but my MB can only take 2Gigs...

Let you know how it turned out.

Scott

Assuming that your system isn't bloated down with all sorts of programs/viruses/spyrware/bloatware running, 2 gigs should be plenty enough RAM for WoW, even in WotLK, and quite probably even if you're running Windows Vista rather than XP.

WoW is a pretty CPU-intensive game, but for now, a 2.2 GHz Athlon64 X2 should be sufficient. It likely means that getting a constant 60fps may be hard, but you shouldn't run into many places where, because of that, your performance goes to an utter, unplayable crawl.

The real culprit here, for once, is your video card; WoW's graphics are years from cutting-edge, but then again, the 7300LE is an extremely poor card; you could do with an upgrade. A high-end expensive card like a GeForce 8800/9800 or Radeon HD 4800 would be overkill, but something like a Radeon HD 4670 should let you play even at extremely high resolutions without worry. If you run at more modest resolutions like 1280x1024 or 1440x900, an even cheaper card would still do the job.