8800GTX or 9800GTX for Wow @2560x1600?

K

Kugar

Weaksauce
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Mar 28, 2002
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The game I mostly play these days is World of Warcraft. I have a single 8800GTX in my gaming/file server PC with two Opteron 285's. It plays WoW very well at 1920x1200.

My wife also plays WoW. It is the only game she plays. But her machine is getting old in the tooth. Its a P4 2.4GHz with an AGP 6800. So I will soon start to build a new PC for her. I bought a Q6700 (after the recent price drop) and some gskill DDR2-1066 ram, with plans to get an Asus Rampage Formula, and possibly a 9800GTX. I am also considering buying a 30" widescreen monitor for her new PC.

So here is my question:
Will a single 9800GTX be enough to play WoW @2560x1600? Could my existing 8800GTX run that res better due to the extra memory & wider memory bus?
I have little interest in SLI or a GX2. So if a single GPU card won't cut it, then I might buy another 1920x1200 monitor instead of a 2560x1600 monitor.
If anybody runs WoW @2560x1600 with a single GPU, I'd like to hear of your results.
Thanks
 
Heck an 8800 GS 340 is enough to run that resolution, unless your planning on playing something like COD4, UT3, or Crysis you shouldn't need to worry about anything else higher than this card.
 
+1 to an 88GTS512(bfg/evga/xfx/msi), save yourself $60+ or more, fast enough for......WoW :/
 
WoW is really not all that graphic intensive. The thing that makes WoW lag is the number of people in one area. +1 8800GTS
 
The intensity of the game depends on how you play. A 25 man raid with AOE going off like crazy is certainly a different story from doing a 5 man.
 
I played WoW for well over a year (on raids too) on my Dell 30" and 8800GTX, never had any issues even with 40 man raids and people casting.

The only downside to the 8800GTX is it produces more heat / uses more power. At higher resolutions w/ AA/AF you'll get better performance out of the 8800GTX wider memory bus and increased memory capacity.

If you're a heat freak, and don't care about losing some fps, get the 9800GTX.
 
One other thing to consider is driver support. The 9000 series cards are brand new and have all the focus and attention of the folks at nvidia right now. A trend I've noticed with nvidia over the years is even if a driver problem is found in an old product it usually doesnt get fixed after a certain point b/c it's an old product and they dont care about it anymore as its not making them any money right now. They put all their folks behind the current product and new development, and it's a smart move honestly.

I personally would opt for the 9800gtx as it's only ~$285 right now at various online locations. I game at 1920x1200 on a 26" monitor so I understand where you're coming from. Having all the eye candy turned on makes for a much more enjoyable gaming experience of course, better to give yourself a little breathing room for when the Lich King expansion hits, no telling what they may do to the game at that point but so far WoW seems to be one of the better coded games out there

Looking at the reviews of the 9800gtx here @ [H] should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect, card looks really solid, power consumption is really low considering performance, and SLI operation is pretty sweet.

I don't know if you plan on doing any sort of fraps work for what you do in WoW but its something to think about as while recording you'll see some pretty heavy framerate drop, but you should be able to record full screen video at 30+fps w/o issue
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. Sounds like a single card, 8800 or 9800, should work well for this game on a 30". Thats the info I was looking for.

Re. Fraps, yeah my wife occasionally runs FRAPs to record WOW video to make movies. She has put together 5 machinima WOW music vids, posted on youtube and yahoo. But we drop the res way down to 800x600 when recording. Otherwise the files are too big to work with.
 
To be quite honest, any 88xx series card is overkill for WoW. While it still looks good, it's a rather dated graphics engine compared to what's out now. I still run an eVGA 8800GT Superclocked 512MB and it does excellent on all the new games at 1440x900 w/ max details. The only exception of course is Crysis but I finished that long ago and don't even play it anymore.


NewEgg has the eVGA 8800GT SC 512MB for $209.99. One of the best cards I've owned since the Radeon 9800 Pro.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130319
 
Heh, my nephew plays WoW on a ECS K7S6A, with 1G of 266Mhz ddr, a 2.0Ghz Athlon, and a 9800pro at 1600x1200 and it works fine.

I think a 8800GT could play 4 instances of WoW on 24" LCD's and still not break a sweat.
 
Tantrix said:
To be quite honest, any 88xx series card is overkill for WoW. While it still looks good, it's a rather dated graphics engine compared to what's out now. I still run an eVGA 8800GT Superclocked 512MB and it does excellent on all the new games at 1440x900 w/ max details. The only exception of course is Crysis but I finished that long ago and don't even play it anymore.


NewEgg has the eVGA 8800GT SC 512MB for $209.99. One of the best cards I've owned since the Radeon 9800 Pro.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130319
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it depends what ur doing. WoW in general may not be graphics demanding but in big towns you will still have alot of trouble. 8800GT running at 1600x1050 will dip down to like 14-15 fps in Shat
 
WhiteGuardian said:
it depends what ur doing. WoW in general may not be graphics demanding but in big towns you will still have alot of trouble. 8800GT running at 1600x1050 will dip down to like 14-15 fps in Shat
Click to expand...

I get 30fps in shatt with my rig at 1920x1200. I am sure the 8800GT will do much better.
 
turn everything to max and stand by the arena master.. you'll dip in to 20's at 19x12, 8x sampling, and max everything. (8800GT SC)

Wow may not be state of the art graphic engine but the sheer number of poligons required to draw can bring alot of graphic cards to it's knees. but it's only really by the arena master
 
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