For those who claim you can play WoW on a potato...
For those who claim you can play WoW on a potato...
Your opinion? If you attempt to play any game on a potato, you won’t be using 1440P with high-res textures or top settings. You’re content as long as you achieve more than 30 FPS *Cries on intel 3520M iGPU*.
Some say it works on a potato since it's a highly scalable title. Slide the performance control down to 1 and it might run smoothly on a calculator. Not everyone requires high-end graphics—many console players are content with around 30 frames per second. (And wow doesn’t really gain much from higher FPS either. The recent update only improved performance slightly, making 10 frames per second seem reasonable now.) Judging a game’s demand mainly depends on many factors, so it’s not as straightforward as checking car noise to estimate speed.
WoW launched in 2004 and was built for older systems, so it could work on a potato.
I can play Witcher 3 on ultra with better frame rates than in World of Warcraft, but the engine is quite old and there aren't many options to improve it. If you play WoW on low settings, yes it works well on most systems, and honestly even at ultra it still feels pretty rough.
I attempted to launch it on a Sempron 2.8GHz with 16GB RAM and a 240GB SSD GTX 1080. At 1280x720 resolution, it ran below 10 frames per second. That’s quite different from what I expect. You’ll likely need at least a Core 2 Quad or newer Pentium to handle anything playable. Nearly all systems from the last five years would suffice.
Original World of Warcraft specs (to enable the game): P3 800MHz, 32MB graphics, 4GB storage, 256MB RAM.
Current recommendations (medium settings): Intel Core I5-3330 or AMD FX-6300 with 4GB RAM and a GTX 750 Ti/RT7 260X.
Based on past experience, a GTX 1050 at 1080p works around 6 out of 10 settings before performance drops significantly.