11-05-2005, 11:51 PM
swirly,Nov 5 2005, 05:48 AM Wrote:I'll give you my computer specs: P3 800, 256 ram, GeForce4 MX graphics card. I'll admit I haven't tried it and so its possible that once the comp did manage to load everyone (which would take about 10 minutes heh) that it would then be at least good enough to move, but I really really doubt it. Usually when alot of people are around I am stuck not being able to move at all. Then if I get lucky enough to have any control it is just enough to hit a direction, run in a straight line, and hope I hit a wall instead of something that will kill me before I get some more control. I should probably give it a try sometime just to be absolutely sure, but there are other factors as well. Like that where I have 60's I don't really want to join the one raiding guild I know people in. I just hear too much drama and complaints. I have a good number of friends there that have always been trying to get me to join and so if I did leave my own personal guild then that would be the one probably, but I just can't see myself doing it for what I consider to be a very slim chance that I could operate at all in a 40 man raid. Oh and another thing that happens sometimes when there are too many peopel around, my game will freeze trying to load everything and then eventually it will jus tdisconnect me. My theory on this one is that my computer gets so far behind in processing things that it doesn't get a communication off to the server in enough time to keep me as logged into it. So yeah, its not just when the fireworks go off. In most cases its not a slideslow either, its just straight locking up for 5 minutes or so. So yeah, I've pretty much given up on 40 man raids.
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Your main problem there is probably just way not enough RAM. Someplace crowded like Orgrimmar, WoW (+Windows) uses almost 700 meg of RAM from my informal observations. If your drive activity LED is on steadily or blinking like mad when you encounter these slowdowns, then RAM shortage is the chief issue.
I have a pretty decent machine but it was chugging a bit in crowded areas with 512 MB RAM. Now that I'm at one gig, it's much smoother. Forcing virtual RAM usage (hence disk swapping) due to RAM shortage is the worst performance killer. CPU load and video processor load you can probably deal with by cutting way back on video settings.
I don't know if you have the option to install more RAM, I'm just throwing in my 2 c/ here. Having 512M total would probably be a vast improvement in playability.