So occasionally, usually after a patch or UPDATE World of Warcraft will pop up a message before launch of the game that complains about the Video Card suggesting that the GPU is not powerful enough even though its plenty powerful to run the game on normal settings.

Both of us are getting in excess of 30 frames per second with graphics set to Normal ( middle setting ) where there is a slider bar under the system settings in the game to set it to Poor, Fair, Normal, High, Ultra. I told my wife to ignore it since once she is in the game she can clearly see that the game runs perfectly well on the hardware she has.

Her statement to me was "OH NO!!!, I am going to need a new computer?" And I was like...what?... Why? and she said WoW came up showing that the system doesnt meet the requirements. I was like "OH... That Message, just ignore it." Your system runs the game fine right? And she said yes. I said your system has NOTHING wrong with it speed wise right? And she said she is happy with her computer. I said so, just ignore it and play the game and use the system. The system is plenty powerful enough to run the games you run on it and netflix and everything else. There is no need to buy a new computer and waste money. So she agreed and went on to GAMING happy with the performance of her system which is a hand-me-down from my gaming needs so she always gets free upgrades of my hand me down hardware etc, and then the cycle doesnt end there, its then handed down after my wife to our daughter for her computer needs at which point the hardware is aged well and eventually gets pulled from service in our home.

Her system specs are:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz E6600
2 GB DDR2 667Mhz RAM
160GB IDE ATA 100 HDD ( 20GB free )
40GB OCZ SATA II SSD ( WoW & system swap file is on this SSD to boost system performance since the IDE drive is slow )
Windows 7 32-bit Home Premium
XFX nVidia GeForce 9500 GT Video Card with 1GB DDR2 memory

My system specs on system getting this message is:

AMD Athlon X2 4450B 2.3Ghz
4GB DDR2 800Mhz Corsair XMS2 RAM ( *Using 3GB due to 32-bit OS )
500GB SATA HDD ( 80GB free )
60GB Corsair SATA II SSD ( WoW is on this SSD to have quick load times in game )
Windows 7 32-bit Home Premium
ASUS ATI Radeon HD5450 video card with 512MB DDR2 memory

* This is probably nothing big, since after all the game runs fine on both of these systems. They probably detect that the cards cant run on Ultra settings well and thats why they are suggesting an upgrade.

However it also in the back of my mind makes me feel like Blizzard may be trying to get people to buy new hardware because they may have it in with nVidia or AMD to gain something behind the scenes by having their software suggest that the hardware doesnt meet their system requirements as a planned obsolescence blat since the high end at its time 9500GT has been around since July 2008 and the bargain performance video card the AMD Radeon HD5450 has been around since January 2010, and what better way to get people to throw away perfectly fine video cards for new ( or completely new computers as my wife had though she needed), than to suggest it in a game when its not necessary! Quote from: DaveLembke on September 04, 2013, 02:12:47 PM

However it also in the back of my mind makes me feel like Blizzard may be trying to get people to buy new hardware because they may have it in with nVidia or AMD to gain something behind the scenes by having their software suggest that the hardware doesnt meet their system requirements as a planned obsolescence blat since the high end at its time 9500GT has been around since July 2008 and the bargain performance video card the AMD Radeon HD5450 has been around since January 2010, and what better way to get people to throw away perfectly fine video cards for new ( or completely new computers as my wife had though she needed), than to suggest it in a game when its not necessary!