Optimal low budget PC for Warhammer Online
November 21, 2008 by Ruibo
My free newegg t-shirt
Most of you are playing Warhammer today are already probably running a duo core 2.0ghz+ with 2gbs of ram and a 512mb video card. That is practically the bare minimum in my opinion. That would get you through all the grinding and scenarios without any or much lag issues at all. But once the heavy open field RvR action and seige warfare kicks in, you’re probably going to need something better.
Every second of lag may be the difference between getting killed or making a kill. It is the difference between a player running out of line of sight on your final cast. A foot difference from continuously slashing and hacking at your enemy before he runs back into heal range or to his allies. We all know gaming PCs can get quite expensive but I’m about to show you a similar setup to what I have that is very cost effecient and will make every penny worth it.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Brisbane 2.8GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core black edition
$77 – $5 savings + free shipping = final price of $72.
MSI KA780G AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard – $94.99 – $10 rebate = $84.99 + shipping.
If you buy these 2 together, there’s a $30 discount making it a total of $126.99 with shipping for just the motherboard.
Now that you have ur mobo and chip, time for some ram.
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit $49.99 – $5 instant savings – $30 mail in rebate + free shipping = $14.99 Final price. Buy 2 of these babies, get 1 shipped to a friends, $30 for 4gb of high quality branded ram.
Next stop, the video card.
EVGA 512-P3-N860-TR GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP & SLI $104.99 – $20 rebate + free shipping = final price of $84.99. If the video is still too much, you can try this.
EVGA 512-P3-N944-LR GeForce 9400 GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP $59.99 – $20 rebate + free shipping = final priceof $39.99
Last but not least, the case and power supply for your new pc.
RAIDMAX Scorpio ATX-868WGP Green Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 420W Power Supply – $57.99 – $8 instant savings – $15 rebate + free shipping = final price of $34.99. The color of this case is lime green, not something I can or would rock. They have it in purple, yellow and silver as well but only the green and purple has the rebate. I got the silver 1 about a month ago which it had the $15 rebate. Lucky me I guess.
Well, there goes your new sexy PC for under $277 or $233 depending on which video card you’re going with. Either way, this setup should help you plow through every RvR action with even 200 players (provided your connection speed is good) zerging around in a keep.
If as of today you still don’t have a gaming mouse or keyboard then… I don’t know what to say. It makes me rather speechless. I myself am using the logitech G5 with the razor tarantula keyboard. But if a decent price you can pick up the Logitech MX518 for $29.99 after $10 rebate and free shipping. It has 8 buttons and 1800 dpi. As for a keyboard, I can’t really say I have any good suggestions in terms of budget. It’s also a really big matter of preference and there’s really that much of a variety when it comes to ergonomic gaming keyboards. But what you should keep an eye for is something compact, finger accessible, macro / modification software and most importantly, make sure the keys do not jam. Have you ever tried moving forward, strafing and pressing 1 2 or 3 key?
And last but not least, if you’re looking to upgrade your monitor, I am using this.
ASUS VW222U Black 22″ 2ms(GTG) Widescreen LCD Monitor with HDCP support, $249.99 – $50 instant savings – $20 rebate + free shipping = final price of $179.99. It’s not the best but it is VERY good for its price. Don’t expect much from the speakers though.
Well that’s that. Hope you enjoy the parts I’ve gathered and it fits right for you. I just wanted to note that I am not in any affiliated with Newegg and that I’m simply creating this list just to help others and my friend Srfto who is looking to upgrade his ghetto dell laptop for gaming. It just so happens that Newegg is one of my most favorite places to shop for PCs cause they have good price, fast shipping as well as customer service. I’ve spent nearly 10k with them over the last 3 years and all they gave me was an xtra large tshirt with their logo and a newegg sticker Ptfff! Well, the PC itself came out to less than $280 which I’m sure most of you can afford in a weeks work. I spent about an hour gathering these components, your rating and comments would be most appreciated. If you really enjoy this post just let me know and maybe I can do a monthly tech talk for low budget and high end gaming PCs.
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whoops, I 4got to add a harddrive
but thats cheap, $20-30
9400GT? Are you insane? Warhammer would eat that video card alive!
I vote for the 9800. That might stand a chance.
I quoted 2 video cards, 9600 GT would be the option which is very comparable to the low end 9800s but at a more affordable price. And I don’t believe Warhammer is really too intense on graphics considering most of the lag issues is due to insufficient ram from loading 200 players in a small zone.
Your criticism is welcome and thanks for sharing Mike.
What kinda settings is this on? Medium?
I was at Costco earlier today and they can’t compete with this price nor Dell/HP.
So that being said, I agree with you on the Video card part.
I ran Warhammer Online with a Geforce 6800 ultra 256mb. Medium settings ran pretty smooth except for in RvR. 2 gigs of ram, paging file turned off.
Can you confirm this with FPS screen shot or anything though, that much money still makes me wonder.
btw that IS my real email address ruibo
In RvR the most intensive thing is your memory, thats where 4gb of ram will be most effective. I don’t have any screenshots or anything to confirm at this point but when I get a chance I’ll do so. I’m playing on default settings, didn’t really mess with it too much since I’m only a casual player really. But again, I have no video lag issues and once I upgraded from 2gb ram to 4gb ram, I was able to play decently with 100 players in keep sieges.
Thanks, I’ve actually linked your article there to quite a few different tech sites now, AND I’ve been studying the black friday bargains and none of them are even coming close to matching what you’ve proposed in making on your own. Very GJ.
either get a 9800gt or get TWO 9600gt’s and SLI them.
thats IF you want to run the game on HIGH settings.
Just a heads up. You wont get usage of that 4g unless you are running a 64bit OS. all 32bit OSes utilize 4megs TOTAL. That does include your video memory. So as a ruff estimate your only getting 3.4ish…and if ur running vista it eats like a gig its self. Id really love to know what people do to beat the lag in RvR situations. Im running a 5800 Oced to 3.1 4g 8800 gts 640meg fastest internet comcast can get me, updated router with proitized packets for war and i still get bogged down big time in large scale fights. Id love to see the specs on a rig that gets minimual lag in lag scale fights…if one exists. The biggest down fall to MMOs is crappy coding graphics wise. I can run any single player game….IE fallout 3 with everything maxed antiscaling maxed and not a hicup. Beats me though….just this system seems it might struggle thats all.
And to Crew’s comment…..SLI isnt supported by warhammer so i dont think it can take the full usage of dual GPUs.
You make a good point Keelia, my total ram usage is 3.4gb so I’ve lost out on .6 but if I were to use vista I would’ve lost the whole 1gb. Also the fact that I haven’t bought myself a copy of vista yet, perhaps on my next upgrade, if and when that should ever be.
I think a major factor in endgame rvr lag is client side, Mythic has released a recent patch to fix this but I’ve yet to run into a fight that big.
If u get Vista get 64bit if u can…..all i gotta say. Wish i had now im out like 100$ cause i have to buy yet again another copy. I just heard to many horror stories with 64bit OS so i avoided it, sadly now i neeed it.
I feel bad for those people running SLI in vista…….Basicly dropping ur system memory down to 2 gigs.
And please PLease dont be the guy that thinks buying a 6,000 alienware computer is worth it. If you want pay me 4k and ill build you one 2x as good.