Which GPU plays World of Warcraft without issue?

If you browse the tehcnical forums of Wow, you will see multiple threads on people with 4870'sx2 that get poor frame rates in game..
Supposedly the high end cards "overwork" themselves into a state where the fps is too low and performance is hindered.. This is also been posted about the new Nvida 260/280gtx series..
Much to my dismay..

It's the only game I pay to play - I need a 17" notebook/desktop replacement and I'd like to think i can find one that actually can handle raiding and battlegounds in WoW WotLK.

So I currently have an Asus G1s with a 6800m GT .. works great,, but its 2 years old.
What should I consider that is newer , fast and actually has playable framerates ?

thank in advance..

New laptop on hold for now. ---

 

Get as much ram as possible. Get an SSD. And just pray. Lots of problems that exist in WoW raiding and battlegrounds is just due to ping and the fact that the game has so much going on that it just lags out. Using insane graphics cards as overkill won't make much of a difference. WoW isn't a graphically-intense game, whether or not you think the amount of GPU speed/storage space makes a difference. I don't know anyone that can play every aspect of WoW without some lag.

 

What is your price range? For a DTR at a reasonable price the MSI GT725 would be at the top of my list. The 4850 mobility in it gets great performance, and it has decent looks, weight, and dimensions.

 

I run an 8800gts, 1440x900, 1 or 2xAA, All settings max except shadows (which are at min) and I never have frame rate issues. The only time I ever have any lag or dropped frames is server related or hdd related. I should mention that shadows do make a pretty big difference.

 

My latency is under 145 most always,, dedicated 5 mg line -

The issues I had on the Asus W90vp were related soley to the gpu and driver support.
11 fps sitting static in a city is unacceptable and 1 fps in a battleground is nonplayable. This was settings all on Minimum at native resolution - 1980x1060

Which is why I am asking if anyone can tell me which GPU they have had the best success with at this time..

I currently play WoW on a Asus G1s with a 6800mGT in it.. I get 24-30fps in Dalaran and 25-40 in 25 man Ulduar at min settings with distance at max -- native res of 1680x1050

Budget up to $2500 --
thanks for your advise and consideration.

 

I have a 9800M GT and I play at 1920x1080 with everything set to high (2xAA, 2xAF). I have draw distance set to Medium though - I get 32 FPS in Dalaran. I consider that the benchmark! I do have 8GB Ram and a Xeon Processor however.
I also have another notebook with 8600M GT, and that guy gets an average of 40 fps everywhere at 1440x900 with everything at medium.

 

either a 4850 or a 9800m gt as your lowest GPU's



just a FYI WoW usually doesn't like SLI ....but newer patchs may help it ...Xfire is usually to way to go for WoW

But the M17x from what i understand is doing well so maybe they have fixed the SLI issue .... maybe some one with SLI can comment

 

Well the 3870's are decent, my config raid is, everything at max apart from shadows (minimum) and the distance a click below max, with 2xAA. Always averages above 40+ fps in 25man raids and 35-45 in Dalaran (rendering an entire city with people is painful ).

WoW is not, i repeat, is not what people think. You actually require a good cpu and a gpu to actually run it properly, they made huge updates to their engine which requires a lot of power since TBC.

 

yea there's a big misconception about wow's graphics. yes, you can run the game on a low end machine but from what everyone says all of the time you would think that you can run it maxed out on an x3100 gpu.

wow will take advantage of sli -- in fullscreen mode only. i run it like the guy who posted above me...2xAA with everything maxed but shadows on minimum. on the "resolution" screen i only have hardware cursor checked.

 

Used to play WoW on ancient old ATI X700 128MB @1680x1050 with max details without problems. Later changed to dual 8800GTX 512MB and was playing WoW with only one card, always disabled the second as it was unnecessary for WoW. Ran smoothly @1920x1200 max details and full AA (except shadows, but not even SLI could handle them so i didn't bother) with around 40fps. This might sound low but it's smooth. There was/is some issue with 8800 and WoW, quite a few people are complaining about relatively low fps on official Blizz forums but don't think any solution has been found yet, been going for quite some time. 8800 should be able to comfortably push over 80fps in WoW, it's not very graphic heavy game, but steady 40fps is still ok.

Anything with nVidia 9600M or higher (or ATI equivalent) should yield you satisfactory results. If you plan on buying 17" notebook with high res screen, then going for 8700/8800/9700/9800/GT260/GT280 or equivalent ATI should be more than enough. Don't think going for SLI is worth it for WOW, it's not fully optimized for it and gains aren't that high from my experience, at least not for single 8800GTX vs dual 8800GTX. But then again, i stopped playing before 3.1 patch (Ulduar) came out so not sure if they added official SLI/Xfire support meanwhile.

Best upgrade for WoW you can do is invest in SSD (loading times in instances/arenas/BGs are almost instant) and a lot of RAM.

 

I run it with 4xaa and full everything at 1920x1080 on my M17

wouldnt have it any other way

only below 30fps in dalaran

 

Here's the opposite end of the spectrum. I play on a T60 with an X1300 (see sig for specs). I run at 1024x768 and everything set to minimum except viewing distance at half. I get about 30-40 FPS in all zones and 10 man content; 20-30 in 25 man content. I get about 10-20 in Dalaran and I get about 0 FPS in WG fort with 15 seconds left to go (just like everyone else).

Surprisingly enough, this game is still very enjoyable with this setup. Although not as visually spectacular as someone with a maxed out system the game actually looks pretty decent on its lowest settings (in comparison to other games). I attribute this to the ground-up design Blizzard put into this game designing it to run on almost any system.

 

oh geesh,, The Tech support forums of Wow are horrid !!
I just got ran through the ringer there asking about "what laptop you use " -- LOL.. omg....

Anyway,, one nice man posted that WoW is having more issues with quad core CPU's and that any GPU, unless it's integrated will be ok ..- Also,, as you all have mentioned no dual cards or SLI .. another issue playing Wow..

He claims that at this present time, I should get the highest speed Duo processor and the GPU doesn't matter as much - so like a 9800mGt is fine.

p.s. Have i mentioned the Wow forums are awful?
....still licking my virtual wounds...

 

Precision M4400 (details see signature)

My Setup:
1440x900x32bit
Quality Medium

Dalaran ~50 FPS
Raid 25 ~40 FPS
solo on LVL80 regions: 20-100FPS, depending on sightrange
1000winters BG usually ~35+FPS, except in the known lags, which is server issue

 

I want what you have but that is so far over my budget of $2500.. The specific ATI cards must be good ones because the 4870x2 was a disaster with WOW and the Asus w90.
Did you have GPU driver support from ATI or alienware ?

I see your pretty techie and I am not as much!
-- Did your M17 run that way straight out of the box?

 

we have modified drivers in the AW section that you can just run adn there is no need to flash or anything

i reccomend a single 260/280 for a GPU

like the m17x you can get a single 260m gtx and high res screen for 2000 even


or SLI for 2400

...maybe i am just bias

the sager is a good choice to.... the AW is even as far as performance and the AW has the looks

 

I have to say,,, I love the looks of the AW. It's just plain wicked nice. Grats on your new machine /hugs

 

i unno when my order will be here but ... it has a EDD of july 16 .. should be here next week though....Then ill contiune to help you via PM's if you want

 

I just want to thank everyone who posted. Great information and I also will be checking into SSD's to learn more about their performance.

I'm really confused on what to go with at this point.

 

i have a SSD to

OCZ vertex is what i have.

if you want me to bench stuff....

 

Could I expect to get similar perfomance with this laptop? http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/product/519340/ACER-AS6930G-744G32/tab/specification

 

Doubtful, you should see much worse results. The GPU in that system is about 1/2 has powerful as one 3870, and his system has 2x 3870's. This is due to the 128 bit bus on the 9600m vs the 256 bit bus on the 3870.

 

What GamingACU said. You cant really compare a £500 notebook with a £2000 one

 

lololololollololololololololol.............lol

What he said