low Rise g/cards and wow, advice needed!

Hi al,

Its been a while since ive been online but needed some friendly advice and figured this would be the best place to turn!

So yesterday i bought a Dell OptiPlex 745 for next to nothing with the perspective to upgrading it to run World of Warcraft effortlessly at high to ultra graphics settings.

Heres the base spec as is:

Home Vista Basic
Dell OptiPlex 745
Intel Pentium D 3.40ghz (2 cpus)
2044mb ram
directx 10

Ati Radeon x1300/x1550 series
Internal DAC (400mhz)
Aprrox total mem 1021mb
current display mode 1024 x 768 (32bit) (60h)

No i know this is an old system, but it has potential from what im aware, it can run up to 8gb ram, its small and compact and its dual core which would be sufficient to run wow nicely.
I plan on a terra hdd over the coming days and a fresh install of 64bit 7 to run the 8gb.
The problem as you can see is the graphics card, and as im mostly a laptop user my knowledge is very limited when it comes to them.

What i need to know is what 'low rise' graphics cards will fit, and whats the maximum i could use?
As its a 'small form' desktop', im finding it difficult to find a card that will fit, as most have their own cooling units etc.

Can anyone advise me on what is the most i can do to this system, what g/card or whatever can i do to make it run the game effortlessly with nice graphics?

Im sure theres some fellow wow heads out there that feel my pain

If pics or more info is needed please ask!

Big thanks in advance!

bump!

Hi there,

Can you provide what wattage is your power supply?
Gaming cards are out of the question unless you pay for a 350-400 wattage power supply or more.
Also if you plan on upgrading memory, HDD, etc getting a new power supply without the card is perfectly fine.

Incase your wondering i would recommend NVIDIA's 450 GTS as i have first hand experience and plentiful for world of warcraft.

Also note that 1GB of memory you will experience lag cause you don't have the processing power for large amount of users in one area. I would strongly recommend you upgrade to 2GB or more.

Thanks ineedhelp

From what im aware the small form optiplex is 275w power supply,

Details taken from here: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/optix/en/opti_745techspecs.pdf

Question i have is will the nvidia 450 gts fit inside the small form box?

Or any 2gb card for that matter?

Cheers for the reply, dont seem to be finding much info out anywhere tbh

2GB are out of the question as they are massive cards and suffocate in a system like that. On the other hand the GTS 450 fits in the case but problem is if the hard drive will get in the way of the card or not.I advise that you get a better power supply and some memory.

Last edited by INeedHelp on 3rd November 2011, 3:13 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : extra info)