Lich King kills GTX 280

The higher details of WoW Wrath of the Lich King set to the highest level are more than even a GTX 280 can handle. Comparative benchmarks say the same system that got more than 60 fps in The Burning Crusade only reaches 23.2 fps at the highest details in Wrath of the Lich King.

[bozobucketeer]

Maybe I'm blind, but I see no real difference.

[JsonHenry]

But the game still looks like it came out in the late 1990s...

[Mike Ox Big]

The only thing I noticed between the low and high quality Screen Shots was the High quality SS had more grass...not better looking grass, just more of it.
I'm afraid my 8800 is going to overheat just looking at the Screenshot....

[Kami]

WUT?! That card can run crysis but not WOW. just wow

[vdesai]

Requires more information like the resolution at very high crysis gets 27FPS in 1680*1050 resolution

[moses]

^ nope, my GTX 280 gets 28~35 on 1920x1200 very high o_o.

[j4gs14]

havent you read they are running it off windows vista?? im not hundred percent sure but ive read that vista craps all the performance. they should try runing it on xp.

[NMC2007]

PC Gaming for the win!!

[DaddyDC650]

I'm sure the game isn't optimized @ max settings. The game looks like str8 $hit and a card like the GTX 280 can't handle it @ max settings? LoL! Please.....

[mirroredderorrim]

This is crap.

[Petraeus]

Unoptimized code FTL.

PCgameshardware.com...anythin g to get webtraffic these days eh?

[vdesai]

Not optimized, Not realeased, No real description of the settings = Fail Total failure

[W S K]

OK.............so that means that WoW is a bad example for Optimization.......because this game is not on paar with Crysis (graphics wise)

and everyone is complaining about how awful Crysis is optimized.

But this is nothing new......back in the days when IL-2 STURMOVIK was released it almost crashed every high end PC on the market AT THAT TIME.
There was a mission where you Fly over BERLIN (it is the Capital City here in Germany) and EVERY building was in 3D.
Even a 2.8ghz CPU (single core of course) and a 256mb GFX card wouldnt run that game with more than 5FPS (and that system was TOP NOTCH 4 Years ago when the last IL2 add on was released)

but im not into WoW anyways........not my Type of game

[vdesai]

The problem with crysis is that it is optimized too about the best it can be but if you dont have the hardware too run it then it wont run well. WoW on the other hand is not finished most likely the cleaning up of the code will be done before release.

[Dpa]

This is wrong. Beta client runs ~35 fps full settings on my 7600GT.

[geda]

lolwut? it looks just fine for 2004

[innocentrebel]

If you mouse over the bottom picture on the page you can see that the shadows are different, especially the one in front of the character.

[vdesai]

Thats just because of the change in Shadow quality.

[highps3]

Really wish another MMORPG could emerge. :(

[EvilJoey]

Do you relize how much optimizing needs to be Done before its release?

The other problem is Like the guy above Said... Hes Using Vista!
Plus There is No telling what else hes got his Rig Running...

I mean... U can put the Best Card on the Market... Into A Crap COmputer.... Running a Beta! and Have it Look like crap...

This is a Stupid Article! Test Card.. and Cpu on a Finished Game!
Not one 3-5 Months Away from release!

[KRUSSIDULL]

LoL if this is true then shame just look at Guild Wars it has like 3 times better graphics and it takes kinda much the same specs that WoW has or even less than WoW man my GeForce 8500 runs Guild Wars 30-60 FPS and a 8500 is barely better than 6600.

[keeponjammin08]

Yes what a drastic change it is! What a joke. And if my 4870 couldn't max that out with about 25% GPU usage it's because Bliz sucks at optimization.

[zozol]

wow is dead for me :(