Time for a new computer or just upgrade V-card?

tallgeeze

Hello H/A


I'm debating on whether I should get a new computer or just get a new video card. Currently I'm using a HP I bought about 3-4 years ago and it has served me well. However, I'm having lots of load time issues and frame rate issue when playing games and stuff.


My game of choice right now is WoW. It plays ok, but sometime my framerate just goes to hell when in a raid. I turn down all the settings and have all unnecessary programs closed but still get horrible fps(like 3-4 range sometimes).

my computer specs are in the link below:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00255702&lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=432781&dlc=en


The only thing I have changed is the ram. I currently have 3 gigs of ram.

I also got a link to my motherboard to if you have a good suggestion for a video card

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00208497&lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=432781&dlc=en

TychoCelchuuu

If all you want to play is WoW you can get away with a pretty crapp upgrade. Do you plan on playing other stuff, or just the Warcrack?

tallgeeze

I do want to play the newer stuff, but sometimes it's just frustrating. When the CoD 4 demo first came out I tried it and I had to turn down a lot of settings to make that run smoothly. After that, I have avoided much of the newer graphic intensive stuff.

Beyond just graphics my computer as a whole is just slower than it used to be. Some programs take longer than usual to load and when I have to shut down/restart my computer for updates it doesn't even completely do that. I have to pull the plug and plug it back in.

AtomBomb

Have you ever reformatted the machine and reinstalled Windows?

tallgeeze

yea, I have done that a couple of times. Everything runs smoothly for a while, but eventually I end up back in my current situation.

Andrew Ryan

A new videocard will do nothing for the load time issues, but it might help with the slowdown during raids.

.kbf?

Well seeing as the motherboard is LGA775 check to see if there are any recent bios updates. If there is you way be able to update to a newer c2d. That CPU will probably be a bottleneck, even if you do get a new video card.

ApexMirage

If you're just gonna play wow go for a vid card. I used to play on a rig with 512 ram and a 256mb geforce card and I still managed to raid fine, and that was with 40 people back then.