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It's the graphics card. Get yourself a newer ATI or Nvidia card. THere are 2-3 other threads on the main board with discussions about video cards. Check those out for ideas.

Ok
My PC is store bought Emachines.

Intel Celeron CPU 2.66GHZ

248 MB of RAM(My Comps box says 256 but the system says its really only 248)

60GB HardDrive

Intel Extreme Graphics 3D (Intel 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV Graphics Control)

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The guy at EB said the reason it was choppy was my RAM and if I upgraded it would run fine. I am not sure if he was right so before spending $50-$100 bucks I was hoping someone could tell me what for sure I can do to make this game run smoothly. From what I have played I enjoy the game a hope to fix this problem so I can continue playing with out all these issues. Thanks

Ok now, if you were to spend money on enhancing your PC for WoW, how much would you spend? With this information we can provide suggestions of specific memory modules and/or video cards.

OK. Upgrade your RAM to at least 512 MB (1024 if you can afford it). I would definitely look into a new vid card, as yours isn't really supported (correct me if I'm wrong). There are several nice, mid-priced cards out there that will really help out. I am running a FX 5900 XT (NVidia), and it eats WoW for breakfast: just over 200 bucks. If you don't want to spend that kind of money, you can get a Radeon 9600 XT for just over $150. With today's games, I wouldn't recommend anything less than that. For a few 100 dollars, you will enjoy games in general a lot more on your system. At some point, you may want to replace your processor with a genuine P4 (I'm not partial to Intel, but that's the type of mobo you already have). Your Celeron is hurting in the level2 cache memory department.

There's a reason that you get chop immediately when you enter town, or exit out of an inn; it's loading the zone and all the information therein. I get a 2 second "hang" when I pop out of the inn in Thelsamar and I have a 6800GT, a gig of RAM and a 3200+. If your play is stuttering just walking around, it's obviously hardware.

For video, I'd recommend NOT getting an nVidia 5x00 series board. Personally they aren't a good line of boards, they work, but I've heard of many problems with improper rendering and trouble with drivers (from the "driver people" no less). I would say go with an ATI 9600PRO or 9600XT, which can be had for ~$100 and ~$140 respectively. I really like the market positioning of the Geforce 6600 and 6600GT, but sadly, they're PCI-Xpress and wouldn't work for you. You could jump up to a 6800 vanilla, but that's a $250+ investment. Note to those about to jump on my back, check my rig: not an nVidia hater, remember why everyone went out and bought 9700/9800s? Yeah, because the 5x00 line wasn't what it should have been.

As for RAM, you can get a decent stick of 256MB PC3200 for about $35: Corsair Value Select, Buffalo Tech, etc... I would at the very least get a stick of 256MB or your rig. If you want to drop on 512MB stick to add, you're looking at a $70 investment. If you're running XP, it might be in your best interest to bump up over 512MB, but that's up to your discretion. 512MB is the minimum I recommend for any WinXP(gaming) system, it's a bit of a hog.

So, for a $140 or there abouts you can put yourself right back into the mainstream of performance again. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask! =)

Edit: sentence fragment!

Edited, Thu Dec 2 16:25:00 2004 by KrycisTemp

I'd personally say vid card AND ram.. But i've never bought a system with less than 1gb of ram.. so i guess i'm kind of a ram *****. The celeron processor should probably be switched out for a true P4 (although if you wanted to get real into it, pick up a AMD series motherboard/processor if you want a whole new system AND to get the most bang for your buck).

Although I've been told by people at work that for some reason (unexplained, and with no hard evidence shown) Celeron processors outperform P4s when it comes to games (not apps tho).