WoW Compatible with Dual Core?

It's certainly compatible and will take advantage of multiple cores by offloading some tasks to the additional core/s. I believe the sound system is one of those tasks (if you don't check the "hardware sound" option). You're probably not going to see an FPS difference either way, but having your second core processing the sound is of course much much faster than any on-board or add-in sound card could.

Q u o t e:
WoW initially didn't support dual core, but now it is simply compatible. FPS on dual core systems is capped at 60-64fps.

I believe this is only true for processors that run asynchronous clock cycles. I don't believe any currently produced processors do this, mostly first-gen dual cores. I could be wrong. The processor's refresh rate is what would dictate any possible FPS cap in this case, which can vary quite a bit from processor type to processor type.

Q u o t e:


blizzard completely broke all hardware sound a couple patches ago. Your $100-300 sound card is providing the exact same quality as the $5 onboard chip that joe-shmoe's dell has in it.

There was a 200+ page thread about it. Mostly blizzard giving people the run around.


p.s. You don't have surround sound anymore either, just 2.1.

I know this isn't my forum but you didn't check patch 2.3.0, did you? Hardware DirectSound acceleration was re-enabled.

Surround sound is also possible on both software mode and hardware mode using the new sound engine. It was not possible for software sound users in 2.1.x.