World of Warcraft and a computer upgrade

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ok well i was wondering on how much faster my computer would go if i replaced my current machine with the T5226 with 2gb ram instead of 1 (2x 1024mb)
Current Machine
OS: Windows XP Home
CPU: Intel® Celeron® D Processor 340
(2.93GHz, 533MHz FSB, 256MB L2 cache)
Chipset: Intel® 865GV
RAM: 1 Gb (2x 512 Mb max 2Gb)
HDD: 100 Gb
Optical Drive: 40x CD Burner 16x DVD Burner
Media Manager: 8 in 1
Graphics: ATI Radeon 9250 (PCI) disabled Intel Extreme Graphics 2
Sound: AC '97 Audio
Monitor: Envision 19 inch (H191W)
AGP Slots: none
PCI Slots: 3 (1 used for graphics card and one used for wireless card)
PCI 1x Slots:
PCI 4x Slots:
PCI 16x Slots:
Manufacture: eMachines
Model Number: T4010

New computer:
CPU: Pentium D 925
OS: Vista Home Premium
Chipset: 945G
RAM: 2Gb (2x 1024 Mb
Optical Drive: DVD/CD burner 16x/40x
Media Manager: 15 in 1
HDD: 250 Gb
PCI slots: 2
PCI-e 1x: 1
PCI-e 16x: 1
Monitor: Envision 19 inch widescreen (H191W)
Mancufacture: eMachines
Model: T5226

I have run it on two differnt machine. The dual core AMD, twin 7900 Nvidias, I have what they tell me is "heat" issues, they're full of it. When I first start playing I can get 300+fps out of it, alittle over kill. 4k ram, the special stuff, which xp won't use all of anyway.

This one Amd 3200+ 2 and a half gigs ram, 7600gt nvidia, about 60 fps, depending on loc in game, 20 inch wide screen, everything maxed out on options, 8ms on the monitor, I've switched it with my 2ms monitor and it did improve the fps a little. No sound cards in either.



Your current machine:

You'll take some load off your cpu if you add a sound card.
Double your ram if you stick with this machine, it will show a big improvement.


Proposed system.

add more ram, double it.

get a good vid card and sound card.

Vista is a hog. I won't get it for this machine, but will when they get the bugs worked out for my other. I should have gone 64 bit with it from the gitgo.


The Wifes machine is lower then both of these, but runs it fine. WoW doesn't take a lot of power to run fairly well, you have to mess with the options to get your speed up sometimes. Ram and a good vid card seem to be the easiest to get it going smoothly. Nvidia users, well we have been having reaL PROBLEMS WITH bLIZZ OVER THIS, WE SEEM TO HAVE MORE OF THEM THEN, damn caps, ATI users. I still like nvidia given the choice. Both of my machines are home built, have control over motherboard and the like. Sorry I'm not more familer with Intel, but sure someone will know about it and can advise you better. I'm sure you know about shutting down back ground programs to max out power for gaming. I keep my system very clean, run CCleaner a lot, compress files, and run defrag often. If you get hard drive thrashing watch your page files, might neeed to get them up a bit. More ram will fix this however, one can not have to much, well mostly you can't

HORDE!! !!

this machine is actually a 64-bit machine. And the maxium amount of ram is 2 gb, and that is what i would of upgraded to. eMachines won't let it go any higher

Get this instead and build it yourself:

Athlon X2 4000+ 2.1GHz.
2GB Corsair DDR2 800 RAM.
eVGA 8600GTS 256MB.
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe.

eMachines is s**t and so is vista....

2gig is low for vista, I don't care what you read. yeah that's the problem with all in one store bought systems. I got one of those from newegg, but the difference was, the main componts were big time upgradeable, very often on sale and name brand parts. The one thing I did replace on it was the case, very cheaply made, the one I got much better airflow and contrustion.

It is a shame to waste the 64 bit tech, I agree. How comfortable are you in at least picking out the parts? I found it fun, I then paid a local shop to put it all together. A draw back here is you end up buying your own version of Vista for a new machine. Some shops will help you out on this part if you get something for the system from them. But I know what i want when I do get vista. I won't as a rule buy a prepackaged system, it used to be in the old days cpu was the name of the game, it isn't anymore. The main board should be never skimped on (chip set), then pick the cpu that best fits it, actually both should be considered as more of a package. Keep your eye peeled on how much ram the board will handle. They still come out every opther year with how much is enough ram and you'll never ever need anymore, they've been doing it forever, easy lesson to that little peice of info. I went with a full tower with umpteen variable fans, armor series with option fanned door. I like the variables because I can control the temp better as well as the noise level. Hard drives I went with 2 raptors. probably should cool those as well, they say it isn't needed, but they say a lot of things. I'll probably still get rid of the stock fans on the vid cards and go Zelman. Power supply is a big one too, just make sure it deleievers what it really is suppose to and if you plan on adding very much that draws power go over what you need for the now. Vid card or cards, up to you and your needs, but the main board will be the decider on this route and again the power supply, the newer high end cards want their own rail. I have disliked soundblaster for a long time, but only because they like to throw everything else out and take over the system with their software, I'll probably go back to them as they still tend to be a standard that others use as the guide. I went over baord on the ram (Oz platnum series), but still stuck with the pc3200, the newer stuff wasn't that much of a boost to mess with, that may change very soon. This thing clocks at 1200 something on the green onion scale, well thats what the beaming techs that did the put together for me said, i don't really know what that means other then it's fast and they were happy campers to get to put it together. The vid cards I think are over clocked from eVga, they're sig series 7900's, but nothing else is, no need to. Not 100% happy with their support and would consider something else if I were to do this one again, but only for that reason. Probably go BFG's. I like the wide screen flats, though the tube kind are very very cheap now, you pay more for the mili second rate on them, but if you've got the machine that really pushes, don't skimp here either. I find the 8ms to be fine, but like I said before I have a normal size that does 2ms. I picked BenQ's for those, more then a good price for the features that come with them, not as well known as some brands, but they will be. New Egg for all the parts, when shopping wtach this place hard, they run sales a lot and i mean alot. Something you thought out of your price range will very often fall into it and even below what you had picked out before. Excellent service from them. Now this system can easily be beat, but for a brief moment I had a top of the line set up and I've always wanted such a thing before i go to where ever it is we go. My time isn't that far away, I hope you get to build many monsters

what ever, they actually said that you can get the bios upgrade, but you need to get it through intel

plus at that, can you build a computer for that price with those specs?!?!?! The answer is no

Yes you can,you're even more n00bish than i am,but i'm going to a doctors appointment later so i'll prove you wrong later.

oh yeah! try this:

CPU: Pentium D 925 $86
OS: Vista Home Premium $119
Chipset: 945G $75
RAM: 2Gb (2x 1024 Mb) $90
Optical Drive: DVD/CD burner 16x/40x $31
Media Manager: 15 in 1 $8
HDD: 250 Gb $60
Case: $40
FANS: $2
CPU FANS: $30
then you figure you are paying at least $5 a product for shipping, that adds AT LEAST $55 on it, so a total of around $500 and most of these products only come with a 30-90 day warrenty
so ha, take that unknown!

Okay you win but if you're getting vista get at least 2 gigs because vista is a RAM-hog and get a half decent video card like the eVGA 7600GT and even though Pentium D sucks its enough for WoW.

should i bring my old ATI Radeon 9250 over to replace it, or should i just use the IGMA 950 (just for a temp solution, when i get the money i will upgrade to a dx 10 card probally when ATI brings theirs out)

$100 7600GT

Is that too much cash? But between the 9250 and GMA 950,i would probably go with the GMA 950 and wait for HD 2600XT benchies and see if its better or worse than the 8600GTS.

I was wanting to wait till Dx 10 comes out, then i would upgrade! but till then i guess i will stick with the IGMA 950

Do you play WoW and ONLY WoW?

mainly wow, but i also play Star Wars: Best of PC, The Sims 2, and surf the internet sometimes... but mainly wow

My wife's a WoW junkie, and I just upgraded her system along similar lines (but NOT Vista, that would have seemed like a total step backwards).

The answer is: with a CPU of fairly similar speed, 1 GB of memory, and an nVidia 6600GT video card, running over high speed DSL, she used to experience some intermittent lagginess. Nothing frequent, but annoying when it happened.

Moving her to 2 GB of memory pretty much solved it. Moving her to a dual-CPU, 64-bit system with a $200 pcie card did nothing much, except to make her feel confident that she could max out every one of her graphics settings with impunity (which was true).

In your case, since you already have 2GB, I'd be looking at that 9250 graphics card (which I assume is 8x AGP with 128MB). Those are nice cards considering how very inexpensive they are, but they aren't going to handle newer, hoggy games very well. I recently picked up an nVidia 6200 with 256MB on it for like $45 or something. It's maybe 25%-50% faster than the 9250, and with twice the memory. With a little fiddling with card configuration and WoW graphics settings, I think that would probably help your frame rate quite a bit while you're thinking about what to buy next.

I agree with the suggestion that going to Vista would be a really bad idea. A lot of people have posted saying that it absolutely killed their framerates, including with really great 2-cpu, 64-bit systems with 2GB and posh video cards.

Oh, also... if you have anything like bittorrent running in the background -- anything which uses peer-to-peer networking -- don't use it while playing WoW. I can easily lag my wife's WoW-playing, despite the new system and double-speed DSL, just by running something like that. P2P stuff is terrible when it comes to sharing bandwidth.