This Christmas, Gitr broke down and built a brand new system and got gift cards to buy a new LCD monitor. What transpired is nothing short of a gaming revolution. WoW is an all new experience now. If you are playing on an old computer, trust me, I feel you. I was running at 1024×768 resolution with the shortest vision and nearly everything turned off. Entering Ramparts, frame rates dropped to a measly 4fps, which makes both tanking and healing exceedingly difficult.
On Wednesday, the new computer got built with a fresh install of Windows XP on a new SATA drive and got all of the WoW patches loaded for some evening playtime. Here’s the current system build, resulting in 35-72fps (depending on the location and party size) with everything at max and my new 1680×1050 resolution:
- 2.66MHz Intel Core2 Duo with 1033FSB
- ASUS SLI-ready motherboard
- 2GB 800 DDR2 RAM
- 160GB Western Digital SATA HD
- ASUS Silent nVidia GeForce 8600GT 512MB
- Envision 22″ Widescreen LCD with DVI-D cable
I’ll move to SLI, 4GB RAM and additional hard drives when the time comes and then top out with a Core 2 Extreme when the prices match what I just paid for this chip. So… using my wife’s bonus, we got all of this stuff in time for my week off of work (don’t worry, I have money coming in this week to replenish her bonus), got a desk, rearranged the office, and took down all of the Christmas decorations. It’s been quite a week, so it’s time to start posting again. BTW, Ding 68!
Mate! You have a really clean desk!
Congrats on the new beastie. It’s always a time of joy when a new one arrives. I’m sure it will give you many years of gaming pleasure.
Thanks, Stropp. It needs to last forever, according to my wife, if you know how that goes. I promised to keep the majority of the parts for 5 years… I will simply be adding resources and power to them.
Gratz on the ding!
Thanks, Og. I think that 67 took me about 11 hours, so it looks like I have about 24 hours until 70.
You got pretty much the same thing I did this christmas, but I’m already SLI-ing the cards and am running a dual monitor setup. 22inch BEN-Q Widescreen LCD, and a 19in Hyundai L90D+. =D
I feel your pain with the old machine.
4 fps sucks. Bad. Real bad. REALLY REALLY bad.
But now, I can go do AV and run counter-strike on the second monitor with no lag whatsoever.. Not that I afk in BGs! =P
Thanks for stopping by, Milkshakes.
Yes, 4 fps is REALLY REALLY bad. Ever see someone drop from 38% health down to 5% in one refresh and not have enough time for tossing a bubble? Yeah, that was me.
No more! Fighting is infinitely easier now. Paladr even got some loving this weekend to see his AOE fighting with high frame rates. Beautiful. /cry.
Too clean! I can almost see my reflection in it!
Hey, whatever keeps the wife sending me e-mails at work saying:
“I just wanted to say thanks for keeping the desk so clean. It still looks great.”
I’m not a idiot! ๐ Clean desks 2008 FTW!
hmm i am looking at your desk and thinking I post my wowspace on mt blog I will look into. but trust me its not this nice
$130 from Office Depot, bro! Go grab it while you can. LOL. We picked up a clear desk protector later, so I think I’ll take another pic with me out of it and show my machine under the desk, too.