My daughter is continuing to play WOW. She has issues with flying anywhere or taking a boat without freezing. I have a computer with 4 GB of RAM, but the graphics card is built in ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphic card. I have updated driver software. Is it the RAM or graphics card? How can I upgrade the graphics since it is an onboard card?
Thank you in advance to all you computer whizzes since obviously I am computer illiterate :P
4GB is plenty of RAM for WoW, so I'm betting it's the on-board graphics card. You can't replace on-board cards, but you can buy and install a separate graphics card just the same way you would otherwise (If you're familiar with installing graphics cards. If not, best to get someone who is to do it.)
The only thing you MIGHT have to be sure to do (if the installation of the card doesn't do it automatically) is to go into your Control Panel --> System ---> Device Manager and ensure that the card is being used under Display Adapter, and not the on-board graphics.
Hope your daughter can continue to enjoy WoW. I haven't been able to log back in Live for a while, but I'm enjoying the hell out of testing the Beta. Lots of neat stuff coming down the pipe later this year.
I am not a hardware expert, but before you go buying a new graphics card and having someone install it you might want to go into WoW settings and make sure you do not have something as simple as a setting messed up.
Under the options menu > graphics check out the settings for all items like textures, graphics, shadows, etc.
If they are all on high, and the main graphics slider bar is set for ultra, you might be able to mess with those settings a bit to lower them slightly and improve performance without making the game look ugly.
Try that and if that does not help, then by all means get a new graphics card.
I could have sworn I responded to this, but here goes again.
Thanks guys for your ideas. I will try the graphics in game first then if that isn't successful look for someone who knows how to add a new graphics card.