World of Warcraft BC, 1280x1024 MAX, 1gb or 2gb ram?

[BigL]

Running WoW Burning Crusade at 1280x1024 max settings, will I see any increased performance with 2gb memory as opposed to 1gb?

 

[cafuddled]

No, you could have a couple of hamsters with about 3 brain cells between the 2 of them (work that one out) and it would still run faster than the pope after being caught with his pants down while being sucked off by a quire boy.

 

[MxM]

No, you could have a couple of hamsters with about 3 brain cells between the 2 of them (work that one out) and it would still run faster than the pope after being caught with his pants down while being sucked off by a quire boy.

Translation: The amount of memory has nothing to do with at witch resolution setting you can play...

 

[cafuddled]

My version was better

 

[guruofchem]

I beg to differ on the performance issue - memory does make a significant difference on the framerate of the game (and thus its performance) in highly populated areas, namely cities. Aside from that, WoW is not a terribly demanding game from a hardware perspective, but if you hate being bogged down in cities any more than strictly necessary as the data downloads to your client, I would splurge on the extra gig of memory. You will likely appreciate it when Vista rolls out as well - that promises to be a memory hog of the highest order if you enable some of the more demanding interface options.

Cafuddled certainly does have a flair for imagery, even though his spelling is a bit off... :lol:

 

[MxM]

I beg to differ on the performance issue - memory does make a significant difference on the framerate of the game (and thus its performance) in highly populated areas, namely cities. Aside from that, WoW is not a terribly demanding game from a hardware perspective, but if you hate being bogged down in cities any more than strictly necessary as the data downloads to your client, I would splurge on the extra gig of memory. You will likely appreciate it when Vista rolls out as well - that promises to be a memory hog of the highest order if you enable some of the more demanding interface options.

Cafuddled certainly does have a flair for imagery, even though his spelling is a bit off... :lol:

I repeat: The amount of memory has nothing to do with at witch RESOLUTION setting you can play...

The resolution setting is influenced by video card and video card memory, which is not the memory the OP was talking about.

More main memory will make your play smother in cites at any resolution and with any video card. And if the game sucks at particular resolution for particular video card, then no amount of main memory can fix that.

 

[guruofchem]

The OP asked if he would see any increase in performance at those settings by adding system memory, and he would in the areas we agreed on. You and I both know that playable resolution is determined by the vid card, but WoW caches significant amounts of data in system memory as well, so any increase in available RAM makes the game more playable and the framerate higher regardless of the video resolution.

 

[cafuddled]

regardless of the video resolution

As I said in not so many words, this game is very simple and basic and it will not make much of a difference going from 512MB to 1GB never mind to 2GB. Games like Battle Field are the ones you will notice a performance increase from having ram in the 2GB+ region.

You also have to remember that a memory upgrade very, very rarely gives you a noticeable increase in FPS performance. What it will do is give you a smoother performance and take out any juddering and texture/object loading that you sometimes see e.g. ‘popup’ (that’s why consoles get a lot of popup problems because of there low memory). This does not contribute to a FPS decrease however as loading textures and waiting for objects to load does not slow down the graphics card from rendering what is there.

This is why I don’t get why they measure ram testing benchmarks in FPS since it is completely irrelevant since even though 512MB of ram will run oblivion at 50FPS with the latest graphics card. In real world game play the game would be an unplayable juddering mess that would drive any sane man to smearing his own feces on the monitor to hide the horridly ugly performance.

 

[guruofchem]

I agree that your vid card is the bottleneck on higher end games like BattleField and Oblivion - WoW requires a relatively low-end video card to play adequately. I have played the game for a year using the same processor/mobo/video combination, but have increased RAM from 512MB to 768MB to 1.5 GB, and each increase has resulted in fewer slowdowns entering cities and during large battles. My peak frames/sec hasn't changed appreciably, which I attribute to the limitations of the video card, but the reduction in bog time has made the game considerably more pleasant to play, and improved the quality of the experience. I wouldn't expect adding system RAM to change the peak or average frames/sec much, but in my own experience it does make a difference in the quality of this particular game, and that is what I was communicating to the OP.

Besides, you can never have too much RAM in a machine - I assume of course that the OP does something besides play WoW... 8O

 

[MxM]

The OP asked if he would see any increase in performance at those settings by adding system memory, and he would in the areas we agreed on. You and I both know that playable resolution is determined by the vid card, but WoW caches significant amounts of data in system memory as well, so any increase in available RAM makes the game more playable and the framerate higher regardless of the video resolution.

The original question sounds like this:
"My monitor is of black color, will I see any increased performance with 2gb memory as opposed to 1gb?"
And of cause, any performance change which you get from upgrading memory has NOTHING to do with monitor color, nor with resolution That was my point, to which you initially replied that you disagree.

But I think we now agree on that point.

 

[guruofchem]

I figured the only reason he included the resolution was informational - seemed like he was already running the game at that res, and wanted to know if upping RAM would matter, which we agree it generally will not...

 

[Unearthly]

regardless of the video resolution

As I said in not so many words, this game is very simple and basic and it will not make much of a difference going from 512MB to 1GB never mind to 2GB. Games like Battle Field are the ones you will notice a performance increase from having ram in the 2GB+ region.

You also have to remember that a memory upgrade very, very rarely gives you a noticeable increase in FPS performance. What it will do is give you a smoother performance and take out any juddering and texture/object loading that you sometimes see e.g. ‘popup’ (that’s why consoles get a lot of popup problems because of there low memory). This does not contribute to a FPS decrease however as loading textures and waiting for objects to load does not slow down the graphics card from rendering what is there.

This is why I don’t get why they measure ram testing benchmarks in FPS since it is completely irrelevant since even though 512MB of ram will run oblivion at 50FPS with the latest graphics card. In real world game play the game would be an unplayable juddering mess that would drive any sane man to smearing his own feces on the monitor to hide the horridly ugly performance.

Emphasis mine. While the graphics in WoW are not particularly taxing, the game is RAM heavy. If you have actually played WoW on 512,1024, and 2048mb configurations you would absolutely notice a difference between each one.

I can personally attest that when my system had 768mb of RAM, entering cities and large populated areas as well as traveling (loading/unloading quickly) would cause considerable framerate drop. Upgrading to 1.5gb of RAM gave me an immediate and decisive increase in FPS while doing these same things.

If you can make any one computer upgrade as a WoW player, make it extra RAM.

 

[infornography42]

WOW, and most MMOs in general, are designed to be less taxing on the video card and processor and MUCH more memory intensive. I have a small gaming network at home and I had a faster system with less ram and a slower system with lots of ram, of these two, the slower system ran WOW better. Later I upgraded the ram on the faster system and now it is much smoother.

RAM makes a HUGE difference in WOW. Up to 2 Gigs would have a notable effect.

I seriously wonder where anyone is coming from by saying it would run well at 512 Meg, I had a system with that much and it chugged until the memory upgrade.

Now the resolution will be affected by the video card, but the framerate and smoothness are most CERTAINLY affected by the RAM.

 

[MxM]

I have 1.25GB of RAM and the only few frame drops I experience is when I fly into Ironforge. Once I on the ground the game is smooth as silk. So I would say that 1.25GB is sufficient and no need for more.

 

[Sugarcane]

I played this game for 2 years straight, didn't even play anything else. Glad I broke the addiction

2gb of ram will absolutely make a difference. I had a decent system with 1gb, and it was very laggy in Ironforge during peak hours. Bumped it up to 2gb, lag was gone.