I bought around March 2019 Dell G5 115, to play WoW.
This is the current hardware:
Processor: Intel(R) Core™ i5-8300H CPU @ 2.30GHz 2.30 GHz
Installed Ram: 8.00 GB (7.79 GB usable)
Display adapters: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with Max-Q Design
Hard drive: around 1 TB
OS: Windows 11
Recently, while I was on holidays, around 2-3 weeks ago, I’ve started to notice lag, while in Valdrakken and especially while running Amirdrassil LFR.
It got to a point, where I had to lower down the graphics to the bare minimum, just in order to be able to see, what I’m doing.
Meanwhile, during that period, my subscription ended and for 2 days, I leveled up a character, from 1 to 20. A NE Hunter and I didn’t noticed any issues, except the loading time for a dungeon in LFD.
Tried classic, on my BE DK level 59, for a couple of minutes in Thrall, throne room and noticed no issues, while walking.
I’ve never noticed this kind of lag and extreme loading times, since I played on this laptop during BFA.
For the moment, I try to avoid any area, where there’s other players like the plague. So I’ve been resorting to queue for dungeons and LFR on my garrisons, in WoD.
Is my Laptop outdated ?
Dragonflight zones require more power than the older zones which is why you’re seeing no issues in the lower level areas. Blizzard has added tech into the newest expansions like compute effects for example.
It does make me wonder if they’re going to add anything into the next expansion, or at least fix the FSR issue.
8GB of ram is kinda low these days, especially with Windows 11, also the CPU is a little slow, You are running 2.30GHz, the recommended minimum specs for Dragonflight is 3.0GHz Maybe thats the issue? GPU should be fine to run the game at moderate settings, 1060 is still a decent card, for 1080p at least.
Addons can make your fps erratic hogging up your memory, one of the worst offenders around is All The Things.
My PC is a decade old (pretty much only play WoW and World of Tanks on it, so no rush replacing it… play other games on my PS5), with a lot of addons it can be a iffy at times. Without addons the game runs 100+fps on graphics setting 5.
It is an older laptop but should run WoW no problem.
But there are a few things you can do to give it a little boost.
If your storage is a HDD, upgrading it to a SSD will surely do wonders for your loading times.
Your model seems to be using a 128gb sata SSD in the m.2 drive for the operating system and a regular 1tb hdd for for the main storage.
So you could upgrade the m.2 to one with more storage and higher speed or you could switch the HDD for a 2.5’’ sata SSD
You can also upgrade your ram to 16GB, your model seems to be using two 4GB sticks so you would need a kit of 2x8gb SODIMM DDR4 at least 2666mhz.
Check if your cpu is overheating a lot, it should boost up to 4GHz but if it’s too hot it will lower the clockspeed.
You should be able to check your CPU-speed in Task Manager in the Performance tab.
The GPU should not really have any problems with WoW, the lag is most likely caused by the CPU not keeping up with all the effects that is thrown at it in modern expansions.
So I recommend that you lower settings that affect cpu a lot, like shadows, particle density, view distance, clutter etc etc.
Your ram is low. Even though it’s a laptop you can change/upgrade it. Try getting 16 at least. The other parts should hold up okay for now, but that might change. Try playing around with settings if possible
That laptop is perfectly fine to play WOW.
The lag is usually caused by server overload. Valdraken is a busy place.
You might want to upgrade the Ram to 16GB though.
If your question is only about dated or outdated the answer is yes it is outdated , dont make the 2019 thing fool you it is even kinda outdated for 2019.
You should be able to play content like m+ with that but if you wanna participate higher sized group content i suggest you to get a new one. With 20 people or more pressing abilities , bosses doing their abilities you will encounter freezes 100% especially current tier is making people realize its time to upgrade their setup.
Wow is a cpu heavy game and that 8300H isnt even a good cpu for its own time.
Long story short if your aim is only doing old content / 5 player dungeons you should be fine with minimum settings but no matter what you do , you wont be able to get a decent performance out of it for new zones / raids.
