Forged Alliance

I'm thinking about upgrading my desktop, along with a new widescreen monitor.  Has anybody recently upgraded and found the game looks a lot better than before?  Looking at Dell's right now, not feeling like spending the money on a XPS, but customizing a Dimension E520.  Has anybody bought a new graphics card and found amazing results?  Was looking for some reviews specific to WoW, was hoping for more info but found the beginning of this article interesting: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6164252/index.html For reference I currently have P4 3.0Ghz, 1G RAM, and a crappy 256MB 9600 Radeon card  that's a couple years old and never that great to begin with.  I also am using a 19" CRT that I've had since like 2000...so it's time to get a flat screen, prob 22" widescreen and then the video card -> PCI Express Motherboard, Processor to drive the graphics. Thanks for any advice!

Wow is not a  video card hog at all. Anything more than a 6800gt is over kill. I run at 1920x1200 and I really didnt notice a difference when i went from  a 6800gt to 7900gt.Post the sample build of the e520 if u can. Building your own gets you the best bang for your money, and ensures the best quality parts. Dell motherboards in general are built for economy and stability sake, sacrificing performance and flexibility. Same with the power supplies, they suck and replacing them is a pain, since generally they are not atx compatible.

I would have to agree on the video card issue, I upgraded my video card recently and didnt notice a performance difference.  Then I tossed in an extra gig of RAM and noticed a huge difference.  I have never run widescreen though.  I can even run WoW fine on my work laptop which is a Pentium M 2GHz with the standard intel 915 mobile graphics controller.  Also, I wholeheartedly agree on the power supply issue.  I have gone through so many 20 dollar power supplies, especially living in older homes with less reliable electric wiring.  Dips in power during summer seem to cook my cheapo power supplies, so the last time it happened (3 years ago now) I bought an AlienWare power supply for like $60 and it has been trouble free since. 

Yesterday i purchased a new vid card mainly because i love my FPS shooters as well as WOW, yes there are still games besides wow. And the new rainbow 6 - Vegas basicaly made me upgrade my already decent card to a mid-level uber card. I was using an ATI x800GT and it was a fantastic card with more then enough jazz for any game i played including wow.  But the new R6 only supports Shader 3.0 and my card only went up to 2.0. Yesterday i picked up a Saphire x1650 Pro OC with 512 DDR3 memory for only 150$ CDN. Half of what i paid 2 years ago for my X800 GT. The really ghey thing about it is on WOW i notice no difference whatsoever ( my X800 was doing the job just fine) and the new R6 is also a procesor hog and my old Athalon 64 Bit 3200+ just isnt cuting it. But i am planning on a whole new system in the very near future. Looked at the Dual and Quad core pentiums yesterday and plan on going with something like 2 8900GT in SLI I was told to build my own Uber system like i want to expect anywhere between 2 to 3000$ LOL might be tough to sneak that one past the wife