from 800x600 to 1024x768 would be an increase in pixel area of about 164%. so, 450M of memory could turn into 738M if it was using system memory for graphics.

question... is your graphics card using dedicated or shared graphics memory?


also, the rule of thumb for vista... ~750M for the OS, and then 500-800M per wow. if you get over 80% of physical memory, windows will start to thrash on you as it needs memory (dropping your fps into the dirt).

these days, if you are on vista64... there is no reason not to have 8G of memory (fairly cheap for basic memory these days)

you might want to consider a solid state drive (SSD) for your main system/game drive. it transfers at about 320M/sec, up from 32M/sec on normal EIDE drives... and the seek time is nonexistent from what i have read (i don't have one yet... hoping santa will misplace one under my tree )