Gamespot's got a great performance tutorial for all the World of Warcraft fans out there who want to get the best-looking and fastest Burning Crusade gameplay on their current system. If you've just grabbed a copy of Blizzard's epic MMO or its expansion, then you should probably read up on what you'll need, so you can get the most out of your purchase.

Now, Gamespot's guide talks about four different aspects that you'll need to look at on your current set-up (Game Settings, Graphics Card, Processor, and Memory), but we know not everyone likes reading through all of that. Here are three things you ought to know about getting the most out of your hardware from Gamespot's notes, as well as our own.

Tip One:

If you're using mid-range hardware, such as GeForce 7-series and a 2-gig Athlon with 1 GB of memory, then you can actually run WoW with most of the max settings intact. When you experience some in-game slowdown, your best bet to increase performance is to put your Draw Distance settings at minimum, followed by disabling shader detail. Those two settings have the greatest impact on the game's ability to run, but also manage to take a good chunk out of your image quality as seen above.

Tip Two:

On the chance that your computer isn't really doing the job you want it to with your current hardware setup, your best bet is to upgrade your RAM. World of Warcraft's ability to run well is impacted less by processing speed as the amount of memory you use. While their guide shows no appreciable difference between using 1 Gig and 2 Gigs of RAM, you'll have more leeway with your video settings with the additional memory.

The full article awaits after the jump!