Will my computer run WoW?

[bobbia]

I was thinking of getting the free trial of World Of Warcraft and then buying it afterwards but sinse the free trial install is 22 hours on this computer i would like to know how much lag i will experience when playing on these specs (graphics turned down to the lowest of coarse)

Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Pentium 4 1.4 Ghz
256 MB RAM
20 GB HardDrive
2 Mb/Sec Internet Speed
NVIDIA TNT2 Model 64 (With 32 MB of Video Memory)


THE MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR WORLD OF WARCRAFT ARE:

Windows® System 98/ME/2000/XP OS:

* 800 MHz or higher CPU.
* 256 MB or more of RAM.
* 32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware Transform and Lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better.
* 4 GB or more of available hard drive space.
* DirectX® 9.0c or above.
* A 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection.



P . S . When i run the CAN I RUN WoW TEST i matched up with everything (barely) except the video card section said i was fine in memory but it couldn't handle the transform lighting. Is there a way i can turn it off or a a program that exists that can turn down the graphics by alot???

[Kalos]

You have a quater of the ram needed to effectively run this game. That only gives your horrible performance. But a seven year old graphics card, a TNT series; absolutely no way. Some of the lower end Geforce's can't handle this, there's no way a long out of production card will, they stopped making those in 2001/2, two years before the game came out. A general rule with graphics cards is to buy one thats within 12 months release of the game you want to play. Right now, for you WoW is physically impossible, it'll refuse to boot.

[Stigg]

Can you run in? Yes.

Will you want to play it? No. Your going to lag out everywhere...matched with really poor graphics.

[Kalos]

I must diagree Stigg. There's no way a TNT 2 will even engage the game. It's just too obsolete, it won't be able without hardware T&L effects, and the TNT2, while existing in a time where the effect existed, was too low grade then to have it included. The Geforce 2, the absolute bottom grade card for WoW, has hardware T&L. It's necessary for the shadow and lighting effects, and Blizzard didn't code the game without a reliance on T&L because every card manufactured two years before the game's release, even on the none-gaming low end, had Transform and Light generation from the hardware itself. It lacks the capabilities for WoW on a funamental level.

If the lacking of a necessary feature isn't convincing, personal trial and error has exposed this to be a reality, Hardware T&L in the card is a necessary feature to which the game won't float without.

[bobbia]

If i were to get a decent video card like a Geforce 3 or 4, but keep my RAM then how would i do? The reason i can't update RAM is because my mother board was made by some random taiwan company and The company that made the RAM card (some company that is out of business i think) doesn't produce that kind of RAM or something like that (Someone told me this not 100 % sure)

[Kalos]

The very early Pentium 4's didn't use DDR like most computers did, or AMD did during that time. Instead, they used RAMBUS Ram. However, it was unpopular, too pricy, and didn't work as well as DDR for the cost; it was a consumer failure. You've got a very rare and unlucky computer.

It's an eight year old peice of junk. Putting in a new graphics card into eight year old technology isn't going to make it run any faster, it can only go as fast as the slowest parts, and you are deperately short on Ram, you'd need 4 times that for decent performance. It still wouldn't boot. The early Pentium 4 series were worse than the 3s, and you have neither enough Ram, nor is it a regular type, to properly boot the game. The whole machine is aweful from one end to another, it'd be only slightly more expensive to buy the lowest priced wholesale computer available. Even a celeron is going to smoke that rig. It's too far gone to be worth considering.