So I decided now would be a good time to futz around with the computer hardware.
First up: Mrs. Fungus, when she moved here, brought with her an old computer, vintage 2005, which has the same style case as my desktop, Cephiro. I thought, "Why not see how its memory would work?" We don't use it, anyway, and I reasoned that I could put the spare 512 MB I'd have left over and put it into that machine, rendering it still usable, if a bit slow.
So off I went to the races, and once the memory was in I was dismayed to see that I had only gained a gigabyte, rather than the two I had been expecting: they were 512 MB DIMMs, not 1024 MB DIMMs.
Also, they were running at 533 MHz rather than 667 MHz, which slowed down the entire memory bus to 533 MHz.
That was enough to convince me that more was not better and return both computers to their former memory configurations. (If it had worked, the computer that's collecting dust would have had 512 MB in it--but its memory was too slow, so F it.)
Then I thought, "Now is the time to try one of those video cars my friend sent me." So I did that.
It took me entirely too much time to get the drivers installed, but once they were, I didn't even have to rearrange my desktop icons. Holy crap, a video card driver which defaults to the monitor's native resolution? Who could possibly have imagined that?
The cards in question are, it turns out, both examples of the nVidia GT240, but in OEM form. When I ran Windows Experience, it turned in a solid 5.9 rating on both desktop and gaming performance, leaving me with a 4.8...because the processor only rates that high. Everything else on the system is 5.9 except the processor. Whee!
WoW runs nicely, and for a wonder the computer even seems to boot faster.
Now I'm working on cleaning up my list of installed programs, because there's a ton of junk in there I don't use and won't, and I might as well not have it cluttering up my system.
Guess today turned into PC maintenance day. Whee!