Sound Advice On This Small But Irritating Problem

[AudereEstFacere]

Hi all,

I am really hoping someone can give me some sound advice on this small but irritating problem. I played WoW solid for roughly 6 years right up to Cataclysm. I bought Cataclysm but stop playing shortly after. I have always played WoW at Max settings. This was my set-up.

Acer V243HBD 24" TFT Monitor1920x1080 40000:1 300cd/m2 2ms 16:9 VGA/DVI Black
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Mid Tower Case - With 500W EarthWatts PSU

ASUS P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache
Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P Freezer 7 Pro Socket 775 Processor Cooler
Crucial 4GB (2X2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Ballistix Memory CL4 2.0V
EVGA 8800GT Superclocked 512MB GDDR3 DVI HDCP HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card
Western Digital WD3200AAKS 320GB SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache

Microsoft Windows x64-bit 7 Home Premium Complete package.

I have now decided along with a couple of mates that we are going to come back to WoW in the near future (No comments about its not worth coming back etc...etc..).

Sadly about 7 months ago my graphics card (in above list) died...I had to replace it with something and as I was short on cash at the time and I bought a:-

Asus GeForce GT 610 Nvidia Graphics Card (1GB DDR3, PCI Express 2.0, Low Profile, HDMI, DVI-I, VGA, DirectX 11.0, OpenGL 4.2
(A cheap £30 job from Amazon)

I have just booted up the starter edition to play until I'm ready to come back and I now can no longer run it on max settings....I put it on max settings and when WoW started up and it runs like a sack of crap. So I have a few questions to put out to you guys in the hope you can point me in the right direction.

1. Has WoW changed that much graphically?
2. Is it that crappy graphics card that's letting me down?
3. To remedy the situation...??
3a. A new rig?
3b. Or just maybe a few choice parts to add/replace for example. (Found on Amazon)

Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II OC Graphics Card (2GB, GDDR5, PCI Express 3.0, HDMI, DVI-I, DVI-D. and a
Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5 inch SATA Solid State Drive.

Sorry for the essay guys and girls just wanted to make things clear.

Many thanks

AudereEstFacere (Simon)

[n0cturnal]

1. yes
2. yes
3a. if you have the funds, you current CPU will limit your performance in 25man raiding.
3b. getting a new GPU like the 660Ti will help you get nice performance in outdoor zones and in 10man raiding to a certain degree.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

The GT 610 is a lot worse than your 8800GT

What would your budget for any upgrades be?

[AudereEstFacere]

I know the 610 is worse than my 8800GT but when the 8800GT broke I was skint so I just went for the cheapest thing I could get at the time however I hadn't made the decision to come back to WoW at that point so any GPU was ok for me at that point.

Would my CPU really hinder me that much in 25man raiding? I raided 25man in Lich King on full settings and the game played sweetly (I didn't realize WoW had moved on that much graphically)

I don't really have a budget of sorts its a case of if I need a new rig I'll attempt to get 1...if I can get away with replacing/adding parts I will do that instead.

Like I said would:-

Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II OC Graphics Card (2GB, GDDR5, PCI Express 3.0, HDMI, DVI-I, DVI-D. and a
Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5 inch SATA Solid State Drive.

give me back my max setting or do I need to push further into a new rig to get max settings (Am I looking at a whole rig replacement)

Thanks for taking the time to reply guys I really aprecciate it. Just want to get things clear in my head

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

To be raiding on max settings at 1080p resolution you are looking at a more or less complete overhaul of the system. If you are happy with lower settings then getting a GTX 660ti or HD 7870XT would likely be enough.

[n0cturnal]

I would suggest you just order the GPU and SSD now and try it out, if you aren't happy with the performance then you can upgrade the rest.