Best mid range card for Warcrafting

[hobo28]

Hi all

I'm planning to build a new PC. My current aging 3.2Ghz P4 combined with a AGP GeForce 7600GS isn't cutting it anymore whilst raiding. Often my framerate drops to 9FPS!

So am gonna upgrade to a Core2Duo but have hit a dilemma with graphics cards. Which one is better for me? I don't want to spend more than $200.

My choices seem to be:

256MB 8600GT
256MB X1950Pro
256MB 2600XT

I've no idea which is better

Any advice or even better if someone has that sort of setup, please let me know what frame rate they usually get inside WoW, I would be very grateful.

Thanks

 

[Kamrooz]

x1950 pro for sure. For the price range it's the best choice. The current midrange dx10 cards aren't up to par. Nab a x1950 pro and enjoy ^_^.

It really doesn't matter between these cards though. the x1950 pro will whoop them in almost every game. For WoW your best bet and best performance would be the x1950pro.

 

[Maziar]

x1950pro and dont look back, it destroys the other 2 cards

 

[lunyone]

x1950pro/xt is the best bet for what your doing. 8600gt/x2600xt doesn't do as well as the x1950pro on warcraft.

 

[ethel]

Get the X1950XT if you can - it's significantly better than the PRO.

If you can stretch to a little more cash and don't mind waiting, there is talk of a 2900PRO coming out soon which might be an interesting option in the mid range.

 

[linkrift]

I used an x1650 pro and I get 30-40 fps at 1920x1200.

Specs:

AMD 64 FX 55
2gb ddr400
x1650 256mb
2x 74gb wd raptors in RAID 0

How much RAM do you have? WoW isnt as GPU intensive as it is RAM intensive.

 

[Kamrooz]

the x1950 XT has become very difficult to get. Especially around the old newegg price of 170...then go up to around 185-195 on other sites. For just a few FPS boosts averaging 2-10 I don't think it's worth it atm. Don't get me wrong..the x1950XT is a great card but 50 extra dollars for just 2-10 frames is a bit much imo...

 

[KyleSTL]

Your old system is exactly what I have right now, lol.

 

[Kamrooz]

lol..I have a 3.2 prescott as well. A pentium 540 processor with a x700 pro...::sighs::..I need a new rig but I'm broke >_<.

 

[cleeve]

WoW is super easy on the videocard. Your raiding performance drop might be due to network lag, and no videocard in the world can prevent that, unfortunately...

 

[hobo28]

Lag isn't a big concern, i am getting about 100ms on average. Problems start when there's a lot happening. Eg. lots of chars running around IF or in for example Gruul's.

It could be the fact I've "upgraded" to Vista. I might try a spare hard drive with XP on it before I part with some hard earned cash.

 

[Kamrooz]

XP will give you a performance boost for sure. Vista is too resource hungry even though it is getting better. But yea...a x1950 pro would make your life much easier. I don't consider World of Warcraft THAT demanding...If you want to see demanding try playing Lineage 2 during a massive castle siege...that thing was a damn PC KILLER...I don't know about now-a-days though with current hardware...When the game came out it would literally rape every computer during those sieges...

 

[Anoobis]

How much RAM does you system have? WOW is one of the few games that runs better on 2GB. The rest of your system should handle that game with no problem.

 

[hobo28]

It has 2GB RAM.

 

[cleeve]

Lag isn't a big concern, i am getting about 100ms on average. Problems start when there's a lot happening. Eg. lots of chars running around IF or in for example Gruul's.

Well... alot of other players in the same area is when the server will chug, regardless of your personal network latency.

I'm just saying, a 7600 GS shouldn't have a problem with WOW unless you're running at a very high resolution. WoW has a real primitive graphic engine, the impact of the graphic card should be minimal.

What resolution you running with your 7600 GS?

 

[jaywalker256]

any of those cards should handle WoW more than flawlessly, im currently running:

athlon 64 3700+ @ 2.76ghz
2gb ram
agp 6600gt

and my framerate NEVER bogs down, even when orgrimmar is packed with people. WoW is much more dependant on cpu + memory than the graphics card.

 

[shadowmaster625]

right, listen to these ppl hobo, a 7600GS is more than enough for wow. And so is a P4 3.2

If you lack dual channel ram that might cause some issues... on Vista it is probably a death sentence!

 

[cleeve]

The difference between single and dual channel RAM would be impossible for a person to percieve, shadowmaster.

We're talking in the 5% area on average, if memory serves.

 

[mactronix]

When i first saw this post i had already thought whats this person running then, and had decided to recomend a 7600gs/gt.
Seriously i doubt its the card. like you say put it back on xp/ could be the way that vista handles the memory.
What you are describing does sound like the kind of thing you would get if the cpu wasnt up to it but yours is or lag as cleeve says but you say no so i would point at Vista.
Macrtonix

 

[cleeve]

Yep.

Network lag and server lag are two different things, too.
Just because the network connection is speedy doesn't mean the WoW server isn't overloaded...