Requesting help - screenshots

[sunglass]

I'm most likely making the plunge and building a new computer in the next couple of months. I've never done it before but some of my friends are helping me out, and I'm trying to decide how high-end I want to go - mainly which processor and graphics I'm going to get

Comments

[penguinsane]

I took some comparison pictures and then a couple fun ones with the settings on ultra. For reference, I have an overclocked Nvidia GTX 460 SE - which the ladies here recommended to me! :)

Low Settings:




Ultra Settings:




Misc screenies on Ultra:

[sunglass]

Omg, thank you for those ultra screenies! Screenshots like that really motivate me to get started on building a new comp. I've really been missing out on the full experience of WoW, lol!

[penguinsane]

The Cataclysm zones especially, and since the overall revamp of areas, things have been absolutely gooooorgeous. I had a decent card before, but I'm so glad I got a new card for Cataclysm to make it even more beautiful.

[sunglass]

Do you normally play on ultra? Including 25 man raids?

[penguinsane]

Yep! For fights with a lot of shit all over the place (like Omnitron), I'll dip to about 10-25fps, but that's because my processor bottlenecks my graphics. With a better processor, I could probably get 60fps everywhere, including 25s.

[sunglass]

Oooh, I see. My friend who is a lot more knowledgeable about this stuff than me made a list of everything I'm going to get based on how I want to run WoW. He picked out the same GFX card that you have - however, I listed the specs to a couple of my other friends and they said that the difference between high and ultra isn't significant and I could save money with a worse GFX card. Now I'm trying to decide what to do! lol

[penguinsane]

Don't settle for less, to be honest. There *is* a visible difference, in my opinion, especially concerning overall smoothness. Plus, no telling when you may want to pick up another game to play... it would be a damn shame if the card didn't run it very well!

This graphics card is absolutely fantastic for it's price point - it's one of the cheaper, but better, cards on the market currently. I definitely recommend it! I got it for $140 all told, through it being on sale, with a rebate, and with free shipping on Newegg.com. (This one is the 1GB version, not the 768mb.) They're always having sales, stalk them for a little while and you'll get a great deal!

[sunglass]

Thanks for the advice! Yeah, from the beginning I wanted something that could play on ultra without a problem. However, as always, money is an issue, and I'm trying to figure out a balance between what I want and what I want to PAY. :P May I ask what processor you have?

[penguinsane]

It's an AMD Athlon 64 2x 5200 2.8ghz processor that I have overclocked to 3ghz. I don't really recommend it since it's a bit outdated and I experience some bottlenecking issues when it comes to computer speed. Of course, I have shitty RAM too (4gigs of 800mhz - I definitely DO NOT recommend 800mhz RAM if you like to multitask a lot :P).