I’m playing with such a pc and I get dcs sometimes and just wondering if there’s anything short of upgrading my pc or buying a new one that could help. I guess on average I get about 1 dc per bg but it can be more or sometimes less.
I may buy a new pc fairly soon but until then just wondering if there’s anything I can do that could help, as I say.
Disconnections are not usually caused by low system specs, even if not meeting the requirements. So there is probably something else. Obviously it could be faulty or buggy network hardware/drivers in the computer.
It’d have to come down to how far below minimum specs we’re talking here, but a disconnection is actually possible if the computer takes too long to process data and thus fails to respond to the server in time (essentially causing a connection time-out).
Usual culprits for such time-outs would be bottlenecks in the available system memory/RAM, CPU clockspeed, and sometimes harddrive read/write speeds (really old HDDs may fail to deliver data in good enough time to be handled).
Sorry I might actually have misinformed you quite badly here. It may not be dcs that the pc gets. What happens is the screen freezes and when I double click, I get the the box which as 2 options: ‘Close the program’ and ‘Wait for the application to respond’ which I think means the app has stopped responding.
Ok here are those specs, or what I guess are 3 of the most important details:
Processor - AMD FX™-8120 Eight-Core Processor, 3100 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
GPU - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650
OS Name - Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Also it has a one terabyte SDD! (Probably a mistake to have had this installed on a pc with such an old CPU and GPU I guess)
To me the ‘gotcha’ is the GPU I’m afraid. The processor isn’t stellar but I don’t think is wildly behind the one listed by Blizzard.
In your shoes I would look at a new CPU and GPU and - realistically - that might well mean a new PC given you’ll likely want a new motherboard too. But I accept that for a lot of people funds are tight right now. It might be worth looking at a GPU you can take with you a bit further down the line and investing a little here. The new Intel GPU’s look good but you need a modern processor and motherboard to take full advantage of them so be aware of that.
Upgrading that computer piece by piece is not worth it unless you get nearly free parts. Depending on your budget I’d like for either used computer or parts to build one or entirely new computer.
SSD is actually one of few easy upgrades to do to such an old computer.
Your CPU is slightly below the min spec, but both are really bad for WoW so you probably would not even notice the difference.
The GTX 650 is quite a bit slower than the 760 though.
Depending on your budget i would either try to get a cheap used GPU upgrade (plz post here before buying if you are not sure if it’s an upgrade or a good deal).
I did a quick check on ebay and a GTX 970 which is a huge upgrade over your 650 (and should be enough for 1080P medium settings) can be bought for under 50€.
That might be an option. Altough you would need a good quality 450W PSU or better.
Edit: I forgot to mention that even with the 970 you would be severly CPU limited most of the time.
If your budget allows it, obviously i would recommend building a new PC from scratch (you can keep the SSD and maybe the PSU if it’s still good enough).
Ok thanks a lot. I actually saw pcs which meet the minimum specs for sale online for £156, so might just get one of them. Not sure how to tell if something’s a con tho. I recently got a laptop for my Dad which said it came with Office and it did but it had like 3 days left on the license
I’d like to but when I try to it says ‘Sorry, you can’t include link in your posts’, so the best I have been able to do is the following, in which there should be dots instead of spaces between computers, co and uk and no spaces around the ‘/’ characters:
bedrock-computers co uk / product / hp-i7-7th-gen /
I couldn’t see the GPU spec, but I contacted the owner and they said it met the minimum requirements for Overwatch, which I guess would also be good enough for WoW.
You fundamentally need to look at a machine with a dedicated and distinct GPU. Anything integrated is really just not enough. Unfortunately, this means you are going to have to spend some money - £156 isn’t going to cut it !
I’d spend some time researching this. If you are able to build it yourself, some of your existing setup you can continue to use - the case as one example, possibly the PSU as another. The SSD you would definitely be able to re-use.
The sky really is the limit with building gaming PC’s - you can spend thousands of £’s on it - so perhaps draw up a shortlist of what you want to do, the games you want to play and how long you’d like the PC to last you without having to change things. You also need a budget of course. Once you’ve got that you’re in a position to start shopping around.
I was laughing at the image you pasted Saneko, but Blizzard have made my forums experience awkward by disallowing me from posting media, so couldn’t include it.
Hmm this is most interesting and a lot to take in, but one thing I wanted to say immediately is that I believe the PSU on my current PC is only 200W! Had wondered if that might be a problem but repair guy who is a gamer said he thought it was ok.
What about this one? What sort of an experience would I have playing WoW on this, would you say?
bedrock-computers co uk / product / hp-gaming-pc /
If you are looking for an upgrade you should also keep in mind that the next expansion Dragonflight will be released next month and the minimum requirements are a lot higher than for Shadowlands. So make sure that you are definitely above these requirements, otherwise if you spend money on upgrades now they may not be enough any more at the end of November when Dragonflight is released.
The PC you linked in your last post meets all the requirements (if you keep your SSD and put it in that PC), but even with that you will most likely only be able to play with low to lowest settings.
I hardly doubt that since your CPU is notorious for high heat and wattage (125 watts, more than most current CPUs).
Your GPU is up to 60 Watts, which is pretty low but overall no way your components would run on 200Watts stable.
Is he playing Tetris or what?
He seems to have no idea what a game like WoW requires.
This does not link to a product, but like i said… keep away from premade PCs, especially HP!
Sorry but you forgot about the GPU, the HP Office PC only has an Intel HD 630… which is below the Dragonlight Intel® Iris® Xe.
Good that you mention it. A fast CPU would be recommended then.
Could you give us your budget? Seems like we are not getting anywhere here
It’s lower power and only UHD 605. That office PC has a way better CPU but still, it won’t be a “good” experience.
If you are CPU limited from combat state with multiple players then no. If you are getting pixel fill rate limited on the GPU due to mass particle effects then yes. The FX CPU is quite low so likely it will be the limiting factor although GTX 650 may also not like mass particle effects so you can tone down those in the settings.
Can we have a benchmark mode in WoW, or at least on PTR… where you talk to an NPC and one of the selected scenarios plays out? Especially for hardware reviewers that aren’t active players
For GPU side it needs a widefield static view of a modern zone (like Ardenweald and Bastion), for raid/BG combat benchmark it needs for example a lot of mobs attacking for zero damage while the player character stands still and frame times are collected For RAM and SSD - loops around Oribos and Legion Dalaran
Right now for repeatable (and quicker than LFR) mass combat benchmarks I have to use old Dalaran mobs (results are repeatable to less than 1 FPS accuracy and in modern raids it represents worst case scenario, like say mass swirlies and ads on Denathrius).
This tests the combat single core bottleneck and for iGPU/weak dGPU - particle effects if the preset is medium/high.
It will “run” somehow, sure. But it’s not really playable imho, also DF requirements are higher than shadowlands.
Sorry, not even close to worst case.
It’s 1 player combat vs 10, 20 or even 30.
Thus multiplying all the combatlog entries and addons calculations going on by an extreme amount.
For example, with the motes affix on sylvanas last id in mythic, with nameplates shown, i was dropping to 15 FPS for a second while aoeing.
Normal combat FPS are around 70-80 or 144+ when nothing is happening.
This is on a 3900x Ryzen with CL14 3200Mhz RAM.
Others in the raid with better CPUs like newer Intels or a 5800X had also drops to below 30, while people with slower CPUs and RAM had freeze frames.
This is obviously an extreme case and does only happen with a large amount of adds in raid fights, but still it’s very annoying and i plan to upgrade to a 5800x3D these days for DF release