Please suggest the most useful system upgrade...

[wyofiddler]

I've seen a lot of people mention their machines and how they get 40+ fps in Dalaran, at peak times blah blah blah, but that's not the case from me. So I've been really disappointed with my 5 man team not being able to visit Dalaran, at all, ever. I might see 0.2fps (yes, that's zero point two) at peak times...my toons land from the flight path and it takes 10 minutes of run and stop, run and stop, hit follow, go back and pick up toons, run and stop, etc to get them to the portals. Not even do anything there, like the use the bank, or look for pug's for the weekly raids, or anything else.

Current computer setup:
5 accounts on 1 computer, ISBoxer running 1 big window with 4 slave windows along the bottom of the screen
CPU: Q6600 quad core
RAM: 4 x 1GB
Video Card: Radeon HD 5770, 1GB RAM (just got this - love it!)
OS: Windows Vista 32-bit -- Win7 64-bit has been ordered, hope to get an improvement from full use of my 4gb (+1gb video) RAM


So here's the question: What should I look at as the most bang for my very thinly stretched, student-budget dollar? Here's what I've been thinking about:

8GB of RAM - about $200 or so.
Intel 40gb SSD drive - about $125 or so. This would only be used for WoW folder and addons.
Second 40gb SSD drive -another $125 - running paired in RAID-0 for better performance.
Second monitor for my main toon - about $150-200 - moving the slave windows onto the second screen. not a performance addon, but huge for just nicely seeing what is happening instead of squinting at my 1/2 inch tall toons LOL

What would I see a bigger improvement from: the RAM increase, or the SSD (either 1 or 2 in RAID)?

I can run heroics etc just fine with the setup I have now, so I'm actually leaning to the monitor first, and seeing what 64bit Windows does for me as far as making all my current RAM usable.


Any thoughts? Please post suggestions or alternatives, I'd love to hear ideas and your personal experiences with upgrading your system.

[MiRai]

If Windows 7 x64 is already on the way then 4 more GB of RAM would be my suggestion.

[Catamer]

tough one, your on the border with only 4G of ram.
I would have to say the extra memory first, then the SSD drive.

[Iru]

Once you have win7 64bit, the memory upgrade will have the biggest affect on your FPS in dalaran.

One thing you don't mention though is your network connection spped. Having boxed on a laptop from numerous nets, I can confidently say most people underestimate the effect that net bandwidth has. In a place like dal, the server is sending quite a bit of data your way because of all the other toons NPCs etc around. Multiple that by 5, and it becomes a lot of data. Extra memory will help some by increasing the physical to virtual memory ratio each client is experiencing so that you VM system doesn't thrash but it can't fix everything.

[Sajuuk]

RAM then SSD

[mikekim]

8 GB ram would be the top priority.

as you are on a student budget, I would probably look at getting a cheap second HD (not SSD) and move wow to that drive. You will get the performance boost of wow being on a different drive to the OS and page files for the system. At a later date when funds allow you can upgrade to an SSD.

[Nighthawk38]

8 gb RAM first , then later you can upgrade to an SSD. The RAM alone will boost your performance significantly.

[David]

I agree with the RAM. I started with 4 as well and once I went into wotlk content while leveling I constantly lost follow, had screen freezes. Even with details off on all chars. I upgraded to 8 and the game ran great with 4 chars low details and 1 nearly full(shadows 50% but runs with full).

It`s funny because before that I ran 4 shamans on a singlecore2800+ (if I recall correct lol) with 2gig ddr1 266hz. I had all details low and view distance on all at around 50% and it ran better then 4gig ddr2 and a quadcore3gig. Pretty weird haha but anyway 8gig is the way to go, I use around 5,6gig of it in dalaran.

[d0z3rr]

I wouldn't bother with a SSD for WoW. For your OS? Absolutely. SSD for WoW is utterly pointless.

I have the same exact proc as you (stock 2.4 clock), no SSD, 8gb ram, and a gtx 260 and I get good FPS in Dalaran.

[Owltoid]

I wouldn't bother with a SSD for WoW. For your OS? Absolutely. SSD for WoW is utterly pointless.

I 100% believe the opposite. SSD is pointless for your OS and absolutely useful for WoW. Single boxers don't need an SSD, but multiboxers are constantly hitting their harddrive (unless you have it in a RAM disk) and an SSD is key.