Intergrated graphics and WoW

Anyone play World of Warcraft with a notebook with an intergrated graphics card? And if so, how does it fare?

 

what graphics card are you talking about?

 

It works fine, you may not be able to max out settings but it will certainly be playable. Both my Wow friends have integrated graphics and my graphics are WAY better and less choppy, but they maintain that theirs are just as good .

 

Its definitely playable. Blizzard is extremely smart. WoW is targeted to a WIDE range of audiences, not just the gaming community, so they made the hardware requirements reflect as such as to not drive off many potential customers. You will probably need to crank down most of the settings, but I have done it, and it still looks fine. The gameplay is what WoW is known for anyways, not the graphics.

 

ATI 1100 or 1150

I would be playing on my desktop at home, but at work on the weekends when its real slow I would be able to play some games.

 

Yes? Intel GMA 950

I should've lowered the settings on it.

 

Good post, should be helpful to the OP as they could play very comfortably at those settings with the slightly more powerful X1100/50.

Plus, I'm a fan of the avatar, have some rep!

 

I have an ati xpress 1150 on a dell inspiron 1501, it runs fine, when i first started the game it looked amazing. Then when i actually went outside it wasnt so great. It runs wow, but its a bit choppy. My friend has a Nvidia GeForce 7900GS, it runs wow amazingly. Id reccomend getting a non integrated graphics card, especially since directx 10 is coming out soon.

 

even a GMA945 will run WoW as my mate Samantha does exactly that! It looks fine on my x200m running at medium-full everything apart from draw distance (low-med) and of course no AA or AF. I get about 20fps. With the 1100/1150 you could expect slightly better. It's certainly very playable and you don't need a dedicated card at all, but it will of course look better on one.

 

You can't raid with an integrated graphics card. Try to go dedicated, atleast x1400/go7400 etc.

 

He's right about that, I wouldn't dare think about group raids on an integrated videocard, however, for the purpose of group quests, quests and leveling, I think integrated is fine. I leave the raids and battlegrounds to my tower .

 

Raiding, and Alterac Valley = LAG O RAMA for intergrated, as it lags at times when I do either in some cases, such as when the Horde turtles near Drek'Thar and its a whole chaotic mess. Or the Domo fight in MC, or even worse, the Razorgore Kiting parts.....so much units make me lag. Note I put everything on max settings on the poor x700!

 

With the 950, it should do fine. Just don't plan to put everything to high quality. I knew plenty of people playing on 3 year old mac ibooks. And those things don't compare to the 950s (at least, I don't think they do).
God, I miss WoW. So if your'e looking at playing it on a laptop with a gma950, don't worry, it's more than playable. Should do fine on raids, as long as you have a good connection.

 

Thanks for everyone's opinions. I wouldn't be doing any raiding on the notebook, just some casual gaming. Here is the notebook I was looking at:

Acer Aspire 5050
Turion 64 MK36 2.0Ghz
1GB DDR2
14.1" Widescreen LCD w/ CrystalBrite Technology
Radeon Xpress 1100
100GB HD
DVD-Super Multi double layer RAM Drive
wireless
s-video

http://global.acer.com/PRODUCTS/notebook/as5050.htm

Think it would fare ok?

 

whats the price? If there is a better laptop (better gfx card) I would go for that

 

It's $598 US

 

For those specifications, $598 is an excellent deal and if you don't want to spend more than that, then I would say go for it. The Radeon Xpress 1100 is considerably better at the GMA950 when it comes to running games, although keep in mind that you will still have some issues with getting playable performance.

 

I'd have to agree. It is very hard to beat those specs at that price.

 

I went ahead and got it. Seems to be working well. I will put a game on it later today and try it out.

 

Do you have a direct link to the $598 deal?

 

I got the laptop from Walmart after reading about the deal on another site. They don't have it listed on there site, but if you go to a store and look in the glass case where they keep there notebooks they might have it. Model is 5050-3242. 1st store I went to were sold out, 2nd had 3 in stock.

 

Newegg has a similar deal on a 15.4", Turion 64 1.6, 512MB, 60 GB, ATI 200, DVD+/- RW for $550 - 50 MIR + $13 S&H = $513. (Yes, its the NASCAR laptop, but the stickers do come off pretty easy)

I think you got the better deal, and I would have liked the 14.1 form factor bettertoo, oh well.

 

My friend has a notebook as follows:

Turion 64 X2 TL-52, 1.60GHz
1GB ram
Radeon Xpress 1100

And it runs wow horribly. It's not playable at all. It's choppy,laggy even on the lowest settings and resolution. He said when installing the game it even said the specs didn't meet the requirements.

It's on a wireless cable connection. While that could be the problem, I'm real confused when people say it can run integrated and in return he has had a horrible uplayable experience.

And even more so, it's making picking out a notebook hard for me. Is there any website that lists the preformance of wow on different gfx+cpu+ram combos? That would be awesome for all of us wanting wow notebooks.

 

If a game like WoW lags and chops it is most likely the connection. I run the laptop in the sig below, as you can see it's not exactly top end. It's certainly not as powerful as your friend's. As I have 1Gb system ram my x200m takes 128mb video ram and it runs WoW quite well. I get 20fps, never lower than 15 on 1024*768 with everything apart from draw distance on medium-high, with no AA or AF. The 1100 should run it better, say 25fps at 1280*800 with everything on medium-high, so there's definitly something wrong with your frend's.

It could well be the connection, if it's unreliable all games will be laggy. Does he have any other online games installed you can test? Otherwise try going into the 3d and opengl settings and turning off things like permanent AA and AF and setting them to application preference if not already done so. Move all sliders towards the performance end again if not already done so.

It's also worth checking if the user can allocate the ram taken by the xpress 1100. Try right-clicking on my computer and going to properties. If it displays as 896Mb ram then your xpress 1100 is taking 128Mb, if it says 960Mb ram then it's only taking 64Mb. If the latter try going into the bios and seeing if there's an option to change the graphics ram up to 128.

His setup should run WoW a lot better than it does. I'd put it down to incorrect gfx settings or just a bad connection!

To be garunteed good performance on WoW you should aim for a geforce go 7300 or X1300 or better.