RAM's Impact on World of Warcraft: Upgrade?

[10pn2s]

Hi all:

I just picked up an ASUS G73 (i7-740QM, 4 GB DDR3, GTX 460M, 1920 x 1080, etc.).

I've loaded WoW Cataclysm and set DirectX 11 support. The result is WoW recommends "High" settings and I achieve fps between 30-60.

When I bought this system I knew the RAM was low and I'm considering upgrading to 8GB - the max this chipset can take.

Just wondering if that will make a difference in my graphics settings and fps; I've never heard that RAM makes a difference to WoW, only GPU and CPU.

Does anyone know whether upgrading from 4 to 8 will have the impact I'm looking for?

Thanks all!

 

[rolli59]

I do not think it is going to help with WOW unless you are doing other stuff in the background.

 

[zherlthsh]

Hi all:

I just picked up an ASUS G73 (i7-740QM, 4 GB DDR3, GTX 460M, 1920 x 1080, etc.).

I've loaded WoW Cataclysm and set DirectX 11 support. The result is WoW recommends "High" settings and I achieve fps between 30-60.

When I bought this system I knew the RAM was low and I'm considering upgrading to 8GB - the max this chipset can take.

Just wondering if that will make a difference in my graphics settings and fps; I've never heard that RAM makes a difference to WoW, only GPU and CPU.

Does anyone know whether upgrading from 4 to 8 will have the impact I'm looking for?

Thanks all!

Unless your frame rate drastically dropped from what it was before i wouldnt be concerned. If you want more FPS you may need a better CPU, they have a great deal of impact on how many FPS can be put out in games given that it's not limited by your graphic card. Since it looks like youre running on a laptop (from the cpu info i pulled up) i would say if you want better frame rates, might want to invest in a desktop since you can switch out the CPU's and graphic cards and a laptop you cannot. More ram than what you have is more for milti-tasking and may only affect your wow slightly if youre lagging not due to a bad internet connection.

Just my opinion.

 

[ntcosa]

4gb ddr3 wont bottleneck WoW, you don't need that.. I ran flawlessly on 2gb DDR2 with a terrible video card - WoW is not heavily dependent such as games like Crysis 1/2 or big graphic FPS games are. You can tweak WoW to work wonderfully. and Honestly, your CPU makes the biggest difference, you can run WoW on onboard graphics medium settings without getting choppy frames.

A post I made for my guild that might help you, and you can structure your settings to improve distance/etc, but its worth a shot. all of your settings will get reset if you just go into Video and select a preset setting and apply them.

Just in case anyone is struggling with raid lag, getting low FPS and choppy play scenarios during boss encounters or general WoW game play, I want to list a few macros a friend and I came across a while back.

The technical explanation is long, so I will keep this short.

Before Cataclysm, I would sit around 20FPS in Dalaran, and like 14-15FPS during raid encounters. After establishing these macros, FPS jumped to 50-60.. sometimes close to 100 during idle. This was all done on a mediocre graphics card as well.

This is designed so you can see majority of the important content and animations yet still be a viable raider mechanically.

Instructions are simple.

Step 1) Make the macros.

You will need 3. I named mine FPS1, FPS2, and FPS3.

Step 2) Filling out the macros. (do not put FPS1/2/3 in the macro itself)

FPS1 -
/console ffx 0
/console hwPCF 1
/console shadowlod 0
/console timingmethod 1
/console showshadow 0
/console showfootprints 0
/console showfootprintparticles 0

FPS2-
/console overridefarclip 0
/console farclip 177
/console horizonfarclip 1305
/console detailDoodadAlpha 0
/console groundeffectdensity 16

FPS3-
/console groundeffectdist 1
/console smallcull 1
/console skycloudlod 1
/console characterAmbient 1
/console extshadowquality 0
/console environmentDetail 0.5

Step 3) Now you just need to put the macros on a hidden bar or any bar for that matter, and try it out. The way it works is you have to hit the macros once each in order. So when you log into WoW you hit FPS1, then FPS2, then FPS3.

Hope this helps, it is not verified to work with everyone, I have seen some people see little or no improvement, but have also had a lot of others see good changes.

 

[10pn2s]

Best answer selected by 10pn2s.