Only as strong as the weakest link, my comp specs, what needs upgraded?

[Chaosomega]

e6750 stock 2.66ghz, oc'd to 3.2ghz.
gigabyte ga-x38-dq6 1600mhz top end/ddr2 ram
2gb ddr2 corsair basilik 1066 (forgot timings)
Vista 32bit ( downgrading to xp 32bit, vista is driving me nuts)
7600rpm 160gb western digital .
8800gt superclocked 512mb.

Blizz said that wrath was the same specs as wrath but the new specular lightings and massive amount of fine detail in northrend is making my computer start to crawl.

Now i only 3box and not planning to move to 5 anytime soon. What is the fundamental part of my computer that is leaving me behind. I am thinking my ram that tis only 2gb but then again, its only 32bit what more can i pump into it.

Please i would love to hear you insight about what i shold think about upgrading.

[Notes]

I think the last possible extra ram is worth it. My 5 WoW's were running on a 4 gb system, using 3.5 gb fulltime .... Then I added 4 gb more, now most of the times totall usage of the 5 wow's (and vista itself) is 5.5GB...
So, I don't know how stuff like this works, but it seems like the operating system capped my mem usage to a certain point ...

I run Vista 64 bit, and I would say go for that aswell, but I don't want to be a smartass ;

[not5150]

What's your performance like if you turn all your graphics settings to low?

Have you looked at your memory usage while playing? You'll definitely need more ram if you 5 box because Windows takes a decent chunk of memory to run.

[Chaosomega]

please remeber i have NO desire to 5 box right now, just 3.

I have not seen what my memory usage is, i figure i should just do ctrl alt del and see that, ill get around to it some time, (lazines...)

As i do absouletly hate vista now and all the problem it caused me is there a 64 bit xp that i could still purchase and i asume it will let me to go all the lengths vista would except the crappy ui.

[Notes]

Just a tip incase you missed it: set shadow quality as low as it goes in your video settings. It really is a huge drain both on whats need to be loaded and calculated by your pc.
Viewing distance also takes alot of mem(just tested it 2 days ago, was a difference of as much as 150 mb per wow sometimes, in dalaran .. well .... even way more)

I got all the other settings on max, wich works great. Just stay away from the 2 mentioned above

[not5150]

Ahh crap sorry... I was a bit too quick on the reading.

Have you done a Control-R during gameplay to see your framerates? Your graphics card seems adequate for everything. I'm guessing you've got the graphics cranked up. Crank them down and see what happens.

You can also see if your CPU is the bottleneck (although I doubt this is the case), by running task manager while playing. Yes, the very act of running task manager will use CPU cycles, but it will give you a somewhat close view of things.

Do you have the same problem in Shatt or other cities?

[not5150]

That shadow quality is evil on performance... I think for some reason it was enabled after I patched. Maybe happened on some other machines too.

[puppychow]

your memory is a huge problem, Vista in itself generally eats up 1GB so you are basically running 1GB. Add 1-2GB of memory and you will be much happier, except while in dalaran

[Chaosomega]

does vista 64 bit and windows XP 64bit have the same overall capabilities?

Such as do both 64 bit systems allow the the same amount of max ram, any specific functions that are better in the vista flavor?

If thats the case then i think i am going to try to buy myself a xp 64bit while its still on the market,

[not5150]

Just off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure Windows Xp 64-bit supports 16 GB of RAM.

Edit - Pop in two more sticks of DDR2... so cheap these days.