Acer aspire Radeon HD 3200 good for $450 for WoW

[shaddrak]

Here isthe link to it.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...Sku=A180-15650

Ok here's the deal. This laptop costs $450 at walmart and I'm wondering if it's good enough to play World of warcraft at least on medium settings. So let's say, can it play Cataclysm on medium settings? I know the i5 1Gig Nvidia laptop is the ideal and best possible choice but for $450 bucks can this laptop handle cataclysm on medium settings with no shades on? I really would love some input from you all here, thanks for any suggestions. I know it's a Dual Core and lots of people say that's the bottle neck but i'm not exactly sure what bottle neck means from previous postings i've read. I haven't had a laptop computer for about 6 months now so it would be awesome to buy this one if it's a good deal to play World of Warcraft only, and probably try Aion online. I want to get ready for the new expansion coming out.

Here's a quick copy and paste from teh website tigerdirect:

Acer AS5517 Laptop w/4GB RAM, 320GB HD & Win7 Home

Display Type: HD Widescreen Acer CineCrystal™ LCD Display

Screen Size: 15.6"

Maximum Resolution: 1366 x 768

Memory Type: DDR2

Memory Size: 4GB

Memory Speed: DDR2 667

Memory Slots (Total): 2

Memory Slots (Filled): 2

Memory Slots (Available): 0

Maximum Memory Supported: 4GB (Requires 64-bit Operating System)

Capacity: 320GB

Drive Types: Hard Drive

Hard Drive Speed: 5400 RPM

Processor Brand: AMD

Processor Class: Athlon 64

Processor Type: Dual-Core

Processor Speed: 1.6GHz

Processor Number: TK-42

Lifestyle: Home & Student

Condition: New

Operating Systems: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

Startup Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

Platform: Laptop

Graphics Description: Dedicated Graphics

GPU/VPU: ATI Radeon™ HD 3200 Graphics

Video Memory: up to 1919MB of HyperMemory™ (256MB dedicated and 1663MB shared system memory)

Video Interface: VGA

Optical Drive Type: DVD Super-Multi Dual Layer

Capacity: 5-in-1

Supplemental Drive Type: Media Reader

Media Types: Memory Stick
xD
Memory Stick PRO
Multi Media Card
Secure Digital

Audio Description: Integrated Audio

Audio Chipset: Hi-Definition (HD) Audio Support

Audio Channels: Built-in Stereo Speakers

Audio Input: 1- Microphone input port

Audio Output: 1 - Headphone output port

PS/2 Mouse Connectors: N/A

PS/2 Keyboard Connectors: N/A

Serial Communication Ports: N/A

Parallel Ports: N/A

USB Ports (Total): 2

FireWire Ports: N/A

Fast Infrared Ports (FIR): N/A

LAN Ports: 1

Modem Ports: N/A

Audio Out Jacks: 1

Line In Jacks: N/A

Microphone Jacks: 1

VGA Ports: 1

DVI Video: N/A

HDMI Ports: N/A

S-Video Connectors: N/A

Port Replicator/Connector: N/A

eSATA Ports: N/A

Communications Description: Integrated LAN
Integrated Wireless LAN

Interface Type: RJ-45 Ethernet Connector
Acer InviLink 802.11b/g wireless LAN

Data Transfer Rate: 10/100Mbps NIC
54 Mbps

Protocols: WIFI
802.11b
802.11g

Width: 14.4"

Height: 1.1" - 1.5"

Depth: 10.8"

Weight: 6 lbs

Mouse Type: Touch Pad

Battery Type: 6-Cell Lithium-ion

Battery Life: Up to 2.5 hours

Biometrics: Kensington Security Lock Slot

Integrated Webcam: Yes

Specification Notes: [6] To provide the most accurate specifications, the specifications listed are base upon information provided by the vendor.

[Cilraaz]

It really depends on what you want to do in WoW. I think it might be stretching it to play anything more than 5-man content (and even that might lag some) on that 1.6GHz Athlon 64. Add in the integrated video chip and you have a recipe for poor framerates.

[shaddrak]

The graphics can be shared up to 1.9Gig of memory I believe. I know it has 256MB built in but wouldn't the 1.9gig of needed graphics help out?

---------- Post added 2010-10-08 at 11:49 PM ----------

Video Memory: up to 1919MB of HyperMemory™ (256MB dedicated and 1663MB shared system memory)

I know 1.6ghz is slow but I just want to play Wow, I think it should be able to run it better than my 4 year old toshiba laptop that had 2gig of ram and crap graphics that burned out on me 6 months ago.

[Cilraaz]

As I said, it will probably play up to 5-man dungeons. I can't say how well it will handle Cataclysm's updated graphics, though. The CPU is really weak, so any type of raiding would undoubtedly bring you to a crawl. The integrated graphics chip (regardless of the amount of memory) is slow, so pretty much anything graphical would need to be turned down.

My overall guess is that solo questing will be passable, 5-man dungeons will have some noticeable lag, and raiding will bring that system to a stand still.

[shaddrak]

Well i wanted to start out on Medium settigns no shades, how much more would i probably have to turn it down?

[Dethh]

Well i wanted to start out on Medium settigns no shades, how much more would i probably have to turn it down?

Probably not possible.

[Moobious]

Building a desktop (no OS or Monitor) that will play wow well for $450 is tough.

Getting any kind of pre configured computer for that amount will get you a porn box and not much else.

[vesseblah]

You probably can get 10-man raids playable at medium settings and 25-mans with everything turnedd off except spell details since the resolution is low. But the Radeon 3200 is just too weak to run raids with medium settings no matter what. And playing on external high res monitor or FullHD TV will be impossible due to low performance of the laptop.

[Zeriphal]

Near as I can tell this is the exact laptop I play on. I strongly recommend that you wait until you can afford something a bit more powerful.

With all graphics settings on the lowest that you can set them using the options menu, (afaik you can turn them down further by editing the config.wtf), except projected textures is left on so that I can see fire/consecrate/etc, I drop to ~5fps in 10 mans on boss fights, if I'm lucky. 5 mans are quite doable though (for reference: I mostly play a prot/holy paladin, a prot/fury warrior, and an arcane mage), and I don't usually have much trouble in AB/EOTS/WSG either.

That's with no addons running, btw.

Wrote this in a bit of a rush (it's Thanksgiving in Canada, and I've got to head out shortly), so if you've got any questions I'll try to get back to you asap.

EDIT: Just checked the box, it IS the same model.

[Lilcheeks]

You probably can get 10-man raids playable at medium settings and 25-mans with everything turnedd off except spell details since the resolution is low. But the Radeon 3200 is just too weak to run raids with medium settings no matter what. And playing on external high res monitor or FullHD TV will be impossible due to low performance of the laptop.

I'd love to see that. I'm no expert and you always seem to give good advice that I agree with, but I doubt it would even be playable on low settings. I've occasionally fired up wow on my laptop(2ghz dual core, 3 gb ram) that has slightly better specs and while I've joined 10 man raids, everything from HPS to DPS suffers intensely because there is input lag and you can't squeeze as many gcds into the fight(and is that fair to the other people in the raid group?). Besides all that, if you are used to playing on a real machine it is just so hard to see what is going on with settings that low and playing that choppy. Questing on medium, 5 mans on low, imo.