I don't even know how i survive playing WoW...

[Galilei]

My computer isn't the greatest, but when you're a college student living alone on a strict salary, you tend to deal with what you have.

Currently my computer can only run WoW on the lowest settings with around 13-15 fps. Compared to other people, that's extremely ridiculous. I was gifted this computer by my parents when i moved into my dorm room, so i don't even know where it's from or how it was built.

I currently raid 10 man raids, with some frame rate drops. I rarely have lag, i guess my school has good connection.

Are any of you running WoW under similar circumstances?

Do any of you have any tips or tricks you use to get by and boost your gameplay?

Currently i use some programs that hide background processes and all that junk to increase performance.

[jmacphee9]

i did it for years till i built my pc...man that sucked....i used to just use the simplest of simple addons so i could play. it worked well enough that i could play at least.

[Eleytwun]

My computer was $400, so clearly it's not the greatest. It's a laptop. I play with no mouse. And I play sitting on the couch, laying down, on my side.. whatever is most comfortable. And yes, I raid, and I do pretty well if I do say so.

Edit: I try to use as few addons as possible. I run recount and DBM when I'm dpsing, and healbot when I'm healing. That's it. Tips... hmm.. if you have a laptop, set it on high performance. Might sound like a no-brainer, but for some reason mine was set to energy efficient and it killed my framerate. Once I switched to HP, I started raiding on "Good" settings.

[Holyshnikies]

You should be able to get a grant or loan of some type to buy a new laptop or desktop for college.

Even if its just $500 for a nice HP laptop. You can run wow at medium settings on most of those and get a decent frame rate.

Just look into it.

[Swingthang]

I got a cheapo dell from 2007 or so. core 2 duo. 2 gigs ram. intel integrated video card. I ran 10 mans with 10 fps, and 25mans with like 3 fps. still did heroic ICC like, 6/12 with 25 mans as main/off tank, depending on the day and who was around. it is completely doable.

[Synaxis]

When ICC was current, I raided 25s with usually no higher than 8fps - usually less - on my HP laptop. I couldn't do Sindragosa without dying, I'd get less than 1fps every time she did her Icy Grip. It was utterly impossible for me to get out of the range of the Blistering Cold. Addons didn't change it, I always had the visual settings on low. The only thing that made any real difference was changing the screen resolution from 1280x800 to 800x600. It looked horrible, but it was the only thing that made a difference.

When I got my new desktop, a prebuilt Dell, I could play with all settings maxed except shadows without a single stutter. My DPS jumped quite a bit and I was able to successfully get out of shit I could not before. It does make a difference, depending on how low your framerate gets..

[Galilei]

You should be able to get a grant or loan of some type to buy a new laptop or desktop for college.

Even if its just $500 for a nice HP laptop. You can run wow at medium settings on most of those and get a decent frame rate.

Just look into it.

Believe it or not, i've tried ;\

The only thing i was able to get out of them was a 200$ notebook. And those things can barely run Google Chrome, hah.

But i'm running around on like 100$ a month to myself. So there's literally no room for saving up to buy a custom made or a new computer.

I just find it kind of weird how i tell everyone that i can only raid 10 mans, then most of my friends are raiding 25 man on ultra settings. I feel like most people know a secret to computers that i don't!

[Shadocaster]

I just find it kind of weird how i tell everyone that i can only raid 10 mans, then most of my friends are raiding 25 man on ultra settings. I feel like most people know a secret to computers that i don't!

The secret is buying a new computer or building one yourself xD.

Not to derail the thread or anything, but you say you live on $100 bucks a month as a college student. I went to college for my A+ cert and I was never that poor. Do some courses give so much work that you don't have time for a little part time weekend/evening job? If so, shouldn't grants give you more living money?

[Deleted]

I played with 5 fps in 25 man raid whole WotLK expansion. I recall one time I tryed to tank Ignis myself and got 1-2 fps. In Cataclysm I started raiding 10 man only with about 10-15 FPS. Funny thing but I had pretty good raid performance as a part of a top guild of my server. So when I read about guys complaining the they DPS/HPS is low because they have crap PC with ONLY 25 FPS.... well... I don't belive it.

[Agent Mercury]

I used to. It played like a picture-book. I learned to play with it and still perform highly but it wasn't very fun.

[Sandraudiga]

I remember starting wow with 512 megs of ram and onboard graphics. I feel your pain.

[sadface]

why are you raiding with that pc? do you know there is 9 other players in that raid who depend on you to not FOOK UP and not have fps issues..

Leave that guild and do not be a selfish moron.. get a better pc then join a raiding guild..

OMG i hate these players blizz need a pc check b4 they let players into raids

The PC doesn't make the player. Please consider language and tone when posting. ~Uggor

[Mallish]

why are you raiding with that pc? do you know there is 9 other players in that raid who depend on you to not FOOK UP and not have fps issues..

Leave that guild and do not be a selfish moron.. get a better pc then join a raiding guild..

OMG i hate these players blizz need a pc check b4 they let players into raids

Tbh there is nothing wrong with raiding on the pc he has now in 10 mans... when I first started wow I was using a computer with 448mb ram and integrated graphics, I then used a laptop which wasn't much better during wotlk and was in a 10 man raiding guild. the laptop was single core 512mb ram and integrated graphics on lowest settings ofc, yet I still managed to raid as a holy paladin and was the best healer in the guild. After that I got a dual core HP 2GB ram but still integrated graphics but it was a lot better and didn't have many lag problems in 10 mans. Just saying if people cant afford decent computers its still possible to raid and be good.

to the OP: I know how you feel from my past experiences with low end pcs, as long as your not wiping the raid then I don't see it as too much of a problem, I was still the best healer playing on integrated graphics with around 15-20fps. I'm at university now and luckily got a grant of £500 so built a gaming pc, no more low fps for me. Anyway not sure what specs your pc is but maybe you could get a graphics card for it? doesn't need to be anything expensive if its just for WoW.

[Galilei]

Tbh there is nothing wrong with raiding on the pc he has now in 10 mans... when I first started wow I was using a computer with 448mb ram and integrated graphics, I then used a laptop which wasn't much better during wotlk and was in a 10 man raiding guild. the laptop was single core 512mb ram and integrated graphics on lowest settings ofc, yet I still managed to raid as a holy paladin and was the best healer in the guild. After that I got a dual core HP 2GB ram but still integrated graphics but it was a lot better and didn't have many lag problems in 10 mans. Just saying if people cant afford decent computers its still possible to raid and be good.

to the OP: I know how you feel from my past experiences with low end pcs, as long as your not wiping the raid then I don't see it as too much of a problem, I was still the best healer playing on integrated graphics with around 15-20fps. I'm at university now and luckily got a grant of £500 so built a gaming pc, no more low fps for me. Anyway not sure what specs your pc is but maybe you could get a graphics card for it? doesn't need to be anything expensive if its just for WoW.

I've been told i can't replace the graphics card on my computer or something like that. I know it's bought in-store. Not sure which store, though. Something along the lines of a retail store like Wal-mart or Staples.

why are you raiding with that pc? do you know there is 9 other players in that raid who depend on you to not FOOK UP and not have fps issues..

Leave that guild and do not be a selfish moron.. get a better pc then join a raiding guild..

OMG i hate these players blizz need a pc check b4 they let players into raids

My PC runs 10 mans perfectly fine, and I'm actually 5/8H and top DPS in my raids as a hunter. I don't see a problem.

The secret is buying a new computer or building one yourself xD.

Not to derail the thread or anything, but you say you live on $100 bucks a month as a college student. I went to college for my A+ cert and I was never that poor. Do some courses give so much work that you don't have time for a little part time weekend/evening job? If so, shouldn't grants give you more living money?

I've been given grants and what not, but i use whatever money that comes my way for things i actually deeply need. Grants are tricky. I've actually had some failed written grants for things i actually need, and I'm running out of people to ask. So I'm just going to deal with my computer. Plus, i feel asking for 400+ dollars for a school computer is a little ridiculous, and i may just get denied anyways.

[Nellah]

What type of computer do you have? Dell, HP, etc? What model is it?

We might be able to recommend a super cheap upgrade to boost FPS.

EDIT: Also, what programs to "hide background processes" per original post?

[Against the Modern World]

I got a cheapo dell from 2007 or so. core 2 duo. 2 gigs ram. intel integrated video card. I ran 10 mans with 10 fps, and 25mans with like 3 fps. still did heroic ICC like, 6/12 with 25 mans as main/off tank, depending on the day and who was around. it is completely doable.

Is it on Ultra with full shadows on a giant monitor? Because I managed to have reasonable 35-40 FPS in 10 man raids, and 50-60 soloing on Dual Core E 5200 with 2gb RAM and Nvidia 9600 GT. With everything maxed but disabled shadows. Win XP as OS.

[KLPath]

I'm still using an Athlon 64 3000+ with an AMD HD 4350. On lowest settings in 10 man I get around 10-15 fps. In 25 man I pretty much get 1-3 fps during boss fights which is why I only do LFR on 25 . One thing that helps boost my fps, especially in 25 man, is to play with sound disabled in the options menu. I can actually get 5-10 fps in LFR and 15-20 fps in 10 man when I disable sound.

[ebah]

Make these three lines of commands into macros and click them in 1,2,3 order ingame.
These macros should give you some FPS boost + make sure you use dx9, it gives you 10~ fps boost aswell.

lagfix1
/console ffx 0
/console hwPCF 1
/console shadowlod 0
/console timingmethod 1
/console showshadow 0
/console showfootprints 0
/console showfootprintparticles 0
/console m2Faster 1 ! <--- 3=cpu with 4cores, 2 = cpu with 3 cores and 1 = cpu with 2 cores. --> !

lagfix2
/console overridefarclip 0
/console farclip 177
/console horizonfarclip 1305
/console detailDoodadAlpha 0
/console groundeffectdensity 16

lagifix3
/console groundeffectdist 1
/console smallcull 1
/console skycloudlod 1
/console characterAmbient 1
/console extshadowquality 0
/console environmentDetail 0.5

[Deleted]

I have a friend that plays with a computer that's so old, it's quite normal he's raiding with 1 fps. He can't afford anything better but has to make do. Somehow he manages, I don't know!

[Deleted]

why are you raiding with that pc? do you know there is 9 other players in that raid who depend on you to not FOOK UP and not have fps issues..

Leave that guild and do not be a selfish moron.. get a better pc then join a raiding guild..

OMG i hate these players blizz need a pc check b4 they let players into raids

The PC doesn't make the player. Please consider language and tone when posting. ~Uggor

lololol sure he said he raids with "friends" you should try it, adds alot of enjoyment.