Post by Neffi
All the previous posters made crucial mistakes: you can't blindly upgrade parts and expect them to be compatible with your other hardware. Here's some real advice:
For graphics, a
GeForce 9800 GT goes for around $125, and the
GTX+ version goes for around $165. They should both handle WoW at max settings very well. They both require a PCI-Express x16 slot though. If you don't have one, you'd need a new motherboard to run either.
Your CPU isn't great though. The entire CPU family, even the upgrade you mentioned, is old and slow. You might end up CPU-bound on framerates, especially in raids and large cities. Unfortunately, your CPU uses an old socket, so upgrading to something modern (like a
Q6600) would require a new motherboard.
I'm also willing to bet your RAM is DDR, not
DDR2 or
DDR3, making it slower. And if that's the case, you can't upgrade to DDR2 or DDR3 without a new motherboard.
If you've got the spare cash, your best bet is looking at a new computer. If not, then find the newest/best graphics card that will fit your motherboard and play at mid settings or lower.
Post by Neffi
Newegg is simply the best computer part store. And I think only single-core are available for socket 478, but I can't be sure. Any way, it would be a bottleneck to continue to use the old processors on that socket; it's been phased out twice over, first for socket LGA775, then for socket LGA1366 (which just came out months ago).
CPUs for socket LGA1366 and the motherboards to match are still very expensive and only recommended for high-end gaming machines. Socket LGA775 is still popular, and hosts the Q6600 CPU which is probably the best performance/price chip on the market right now.
Any way, if you can't afford it, I can't see much of a reason to upgrade your CPU. You will continue to be bottlenecked a bit, especially in places like Dalaran, but it should be perfectly playable at good (probably even max) settings with a 9800 GT. I know people that play on worse processors comfortably using an 8800 GTX. I'd recommend at least upgrading just the GPU for now and see how the game plays before spending money you probably don't need to.
EDIT: With the dual core. does having a slowing processor speed not neccessary mean a slower CPU all togethe? i.e. a 2ghz duel core would be faster then a 3ghz single core? (those are just rough numbers, but you get the idea)
It's hard to say. A 3 GHz single-core will perform better on a single process because of faster speed, but a dual-core can handle multiple processes at once, and most modern games (WoW including) are designed to split up their processes to utilize multiple cores. (And don't forget that the most modern computers actually use quad-core now.)
Also, pure speed isn't always the biggest factor. Things like FSB speed** and cache size also affect performance.
**--The
FSB (front-side bus) is a system LGA775 and older processors used to basically connect the CPU with the rest of the machine. It's been criticized as a speed bottleneck, and they removed it as part of a total redesign on the LGA1366 socket and matching architecture, which uses in place the
Quick Path Interconnect.