Problems with WoW wotlk FPS

[Cronos18]

Sup yo

I don't know a great deal about computers, but I do mess around with them and try to read up on what I can a lot. Nevertheless, when something goes run or doesn't work the way I want it to, I usually don't know why lol.

My problem is the fps I get in WoW wotlk with the specifications I got now really bother me.

This is my lolcheap computer that i bought
Gateway Support - Specifications

I installed some upgrades myself such as:

-8800Gt Alpha dog
-Took out two of the 512 ram sticks and inserted two 1gb sticks of ram at 667mhz speed to match the other 1gb sticks for 4gb total (actually somewhat confused because dxdiag and other reports say I only have 3gb yet pcwizard detects I have 4gb)
-Sound blaster xfi xtreme gamer card
-700 watt power supply (had the store tech install that)

Ive down the latest driver updates for all of those including my network, and tryed the previous drivers I was using as well.

I can play games like bioshock call of duty on highest settings with really good fps, as well as crysis medium, devil may cry is great, and assassins creed is a bit laggy not really it just feels slowed down.


My Thoughts:

1) I have a dual core intel duo 2.0ghz processor, I was just looking at the back cover of call of duty 5 and crysis warhead, and they both say enhanced for dual core, up until now I think I read single core > dual core for games that didnt take advantage of 2 cores. For instance, my old piece of garbage comp was a single core 3.2ghz comp, which with the same cores and clock speeds or whatever would have been an advantage over my dual core comp for WoW because I can only use 2 of the (4) with dual core solution in a game that is not enhanced for such.

2) Latency, I get around 120 ms in game, I use swifty hax
YouTube - The Best Trick of All Time by: Swifty
Im not entirely sure what it does but My guess is it offsets your ping to connect and recieve data a second ahead or so giving you a better faster connection with the server. It works great, It dropped my latency from 300 ms to 120ms. I noticed a lot of improvement from that atleast with lag. But my problem is no longer lag, it is fps, which might be resulting from lag lol.

WoW wotlk has just came out, and loads are probably huge from what I can imagine, even if the game doesnt require intense graphics, I turned the view distance down to nearly nothing and im still getting like an unconstant 25-30 shitty fps. But its not like I get 60 or anything when no one is on either, Ill get around 50 when im in an isolated instance or something. I sitll wonder, If I was to reduce my latency to say 60, would that mean twice as fast connections I have with the server then I do at 120ms? Id think that would make an amazing difference. Because the worst thing is when you turn quickly and notice a lot of lag/screen tearing almost.

3) the only other conclusion I have is my graphics card but it runs everything else fine. the settings in game are all set on high and ive played with them quite a bit, but i run the game in full screen at native 1440-900 resolution etc.


Anyways sorry this is a bit long, If there was something I should have posted to help make it more clear or come to a better decision, please I'd like to know. Thanks in advance

[Cronos18]

No replies yet

So I've Come to a few conclusions, My ram is fine, My graphics card is fine, my latency and net is fine, 120 ms in wow is fine. My computer runs more current games really well because it makes use of "dual core enhancement" but for wow where dual core is just compatible, my 2ghz processor just aint giving as much power as I'd like.

I did notice quite a noticeable amount of performance by disabling a few addons that I use regularly in game (yeah they were up to date so thats the last place I figured to check lol >.>) I've also repaired the folder with the blizzard repair tool, A clean reinstall may even help a bit who knows (had to move the folder around a bit since the private test realm moved my folders elsewhere.


Anywho: I've noticed that my cpu usage is really high when in WoW, especially when I'm getting bad unconsistant laggy frame rates within the 20 fps zone, the CPU usage will be at around 70-100 percent, more so when things get choppy.

I was looking into my processor specs and I've got a intel E2180 dual core 2ghz processor, I was reading up on it and ppl were saying its got a pretty good range to be overclocked, the thing is, I have an intel model: D945GCF
Chipset: intel 82801GB (ICG7/R)

I think the Bios for it is locked (tryed restarting and hitting f2 to inspect the bios and all those settings were not selectable, nor was there an option for advanced motherboard options with ntune, but there was GPU overclocking. So I'm assuming its locked and from what i read there isnt many if any work arounds aside from just buying a better processor with higher factory clock speeds, if that will make a different and or mine is shitty from what ppl can tell from its specfications, and suggest that I buy something like a 2.4 or 2.8ghz dual core duo processor, works for me, I don't know enough about it yet to make a decision by myself, and I dont know if a processor like that named would be compatible with my mobo.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions and or comments.

[washe]

Have you tried disabling shadows to gain fps?

At 120 ms you are doing great I usually get a ping of 250ms on the wow servers.

On last note this new version of WoW is a bit more heavy than TBC.

[Cronos18]

Disabling shadows smoothed everything out quite a bit, seeing around 40fps flying around in sholazer basin looks smoothe enough to be happy with because its constant. 1/3 view distance as well. Still doesnt seem right to me, here about everyone else with their old computers and graphics cards running the game at max settings but the only real difference is their pentium 4's clocked at 3.2 ghz whereas im getting 2ghz, its the only variable I can think of really thats left.

Try my link btw YouTube - The Best Trick of All Time by: Swifty my latnecy was near 300 and was brought down to 120 through it, if you read all of my top post. I only noticed positive effects through doing so.

[asusfreak44]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cronos18

Disabling shadows smoothed everything out quite a bit, seeing around 40fps flying around in sholazer basin looks smoothe enough to be happy with because its constant. 1/3 view distance as well. Still doesnt seem right to me, here about everyone else with their old computers and graphics cards running the game at max settings but the only real difference is their pentium 4's clocked at 3.2 ghz whereas im getting 2ghz, its the only variable I can think of really thats left.

Try my link btw YouTube - The Best Trick of All Time by: Swifty my latnecy was near 300 and was brought down to 120 through it, if you read all of my top post. I only noticed positive effects through doing so.

Thanks for that tip.. never seen this before.

[lazyman4444]

I kind of have the same problem but my system is even better...

X2 6400+ @ 3.2GHz
ATI 4850
2GB DDR 800

I run the the game at like 1680x1050 at max settings or something like that and I have trouble reaching higher than 60 fps. In populated cities I get like 30-40...it just doesn't seem right since WoW is an old game and I've seen benchmarks getting much better fps on an older system than mine.

[Cronos18]

Ok I feel really dumb lol, The major problem was an addon I downloaded, Quest helper, it tracks quests and best possible routes in game, its supposed to be intensive on cpu and memory, I have the most recent version that is up to date with the most recent patch, I figured it was fine cause when i first installed i didnt notice much differnce. I was looking at it today and the other 2 addons i use for UI change and cast bars take up 1 mb each of "memory" whiles quest helper on my new character started around 10 mb and worked up to 20 so far slowly. Thats just an in game name i dont know but it sure kills my fps.

So: Turning off quest helper and down shadow detail (seems to be intense on graphics because it has to load shadows from everywhere and when you have view distance on full it looks like it would be hard on a computer despite the shitty sub par graphics) as well as turning down view distance to half, is leaving me at a low 40 fps, avg of 50 in a avg setting, and 60-75 in more desolated areas, with up to 100 in desolated instances etc

All i care about is a steady constant fps of above around 40 so that shit looks smoothe and i can handle the view distance and shadow detail down a bit but with quest helper fucking around I think it will killing my CPU alltogether so that probably is one of my problems, dual core 2ghz which WoW only makes use of one core I think atleast for all the main stuff, I read somewhere that sound was set on the second core but that doesnt matter because i got a dedicated sound card anyways lol.

Im happy with how things worked out mostly but I think Im going to make a post about my CPU in the forums and one that im thinking of replacing it with, etc. thanks for the posts and support/comments (sorry this is so poorly written too many logged hours on wow = bad habits lol)


The World of Warcraft Armory

Dats me rocking my S4 gear like a pro, gonna sit @ 80 lvling other characters waiting for S5 to release cause i cant be bothered to run lolheroics, gives me too much downssss. lol I wonder how ppl on the fourms will read and interupt this post tbh. WoW has like its own language and stuff as does RL and my friends and msn and all that junk, wonder how ppl are gonna take this post as odd as it sounds, I dont come here enough to ask questions or answer them for that matter, not that any of this really pertains to anything but yeah, interesting lol. I just have a wild guess that a lot of you think im fcked lol. anyways im outtttt. thanks again.

[PJK]

WoW's performance is impacted by four things:
1. Addons (like QH as you mention)
2. Overall PC Speed/resolution (i.e. are you using 2004 hardware to run 1920x1200)
3. Connection speed/latency/packet loss
4. What else your PC is doing.

The QH issue makes sense. Although you may think a single core CPU is all you need to run WoW well, this is not the case, especially with Vista. The reason for this is that Vista does tons of things in the background. Really, gaming in Vista requires a dual core, at a minimum. Otherwise, something occurs in the background and your game stutters.

With a Q6600 at 3693MHz I can run 2 instances of WoW and encode h264 video for my iPod at the same time. On the other hand, my notebook cannot run WoW and h264 encoding simultaneously, let alone two WoW instances.

For other games this is more acute as no core runs above 55-60% when running WoW, and with something like Supreme Commander, the quad core can get pegged 100%.

Since you do have a dual core, I would suggest that WoW slowdowns in the future are likely due to 1, 3, & 4 above.

[Bizkitkid2001]

WoW does support dual core processing. Blizzard added that into Patch 2.1 or 2.2 soon after TBC was released.


As for your frames, those are normal for that setup. Many of the zones in WoTLK have a lot more things to render on the screen than TBC or vanilla WoW.

As for your dual core 2ghz not being as fast as a P4 3.2ghz is false. The CPU architectures are completely different in how they process information. Even the slowest dual core processor runs laps around a P4, even if only running on one core.


Also, QH does bring down the frames. With it on I get 30-40 fps flying around Grizzly Hills at 1680x1050 with evverything on high, including shadows and 4x AA.


I have a C2D 2.66ghz, 2gb of ram, and an 8800GT. Turning off QH brings my FPS up about 10, but 30-40 is good enough for me, but that may change when my 40" LCD 1080p monitor gets delivered as I will be upping the resolution to 1920x1080.

[Cronos18]

A few things: The other day I was gaming and wow crashed, as did everything else thought I was still able to talk over vent, so I restarted my computer. I had to restart 5 times getting stuck at the vista green bar loading screen to go black before I decided to take over the cover and have a look, the fan or power supply seemed to be louder and would make a loud decelarting sound as I turned off the power each time. When I took out the CD, my computer told me to load a bootable device upon restarting it again. So I just thought well, if it isn't detecting any, maybe its my hard drive. I took the 2 pins off the hardrive and looked for dust or something then reconnected them. Sure enough it worked. restarted and was fine, then left my computer on for the night. The next time I went to use it, it had frozen again. So i restarted, it has been fine since then (been a few days onf continuious running) When I called the shop, they said it could be a bios error, or a low or near dead cmos battery, I think it was, briefly read about those before.

Anyways as for wow. I have 4 gigs of ram @ 667mhz, 8800 gt alpha dog card, and a creative xfi xtreme gamer card, all with the most current drivers.

What puzzles me is how I get better performance out of other games then I do with wow.

The only game that I seems to run a bit slow is assassins creed, which when I ran the test to see if my comp met the recomended settings, it failed, because my processor is 2.0ghz and not 2.4.

Crysis as well runs decently in medium, but id still say it was a bit choppy. I dont expect to play that game on full with what I got but im almost positive a new processor would let my ram and 8800 card be a bit closer to their full potential.


What I have is a E2180 dual core (not duo) I think its labelled as a pentium D. On a Intel D945GCF gateway bios locked motherboard, the FSB is 800, and the socket is 775, the size i think was 65mm, not entirely sure about that part.

Ive read that wow does now support dual core, but it probably isnt so true to what it does, it probably offloads like sound to the second core and maybe some other things not sure if it can split an entire task in half, but still. Sound would not matter because I have a dedicated sound card.

Also looking at ntune whiles in game, the cpu usage gets really high when my fps sinks and things start to get pretty choppy. Or slowed down. I can only imagine that means my 2.0ghz processor is slacking, at this point. Im no tech and only have only read up what others have said in forums and on sites etc, but I'm pretty sure my 8800 card and 4 gigs of ram surpass the recomended settings for wow, and the only thing low end is my processor, which never really occured to me until lately. I can't overclock it because my bios is locked, I wouldnt mind buying a whole new mobo + processor, but for now I think I'm just going to find a processor to socket into my shitty locked mobo.

The guy at a local store over the phone was searching online to see what he could socket into it, probably checking from the stores suplier or something, he said the best he could get was like a 2.5ghz E5200 or something, I just know it was clocked at 2.5ghz, and i asked if it was socket 775 and 65mm at 800fsb, and he said yes, as if it was a stupid qiuestion lol.

He said I can't go with the dual core duo solution because they are all clocked at 1000 or 1333 fsb or whatever. and now looking at those this is true, aside from two of them

E47002 MB L22.60 GHz800 MHz E46002 MB L22.40 GHz800 MHz

not sure if they are bad or anything but thats what I got from the intel processor site.

heres what the 5200 he was talking about that I found on the intel site.

45 nmE52002 MB L22.50 GHz800 MHz

Notice its 45 mn size, not sure if you can get that in varying size, but if mine as is listed on the site for the e2180


65 nm
E21801 MB L22.00 GHz800 MHz

actually im not sure if that is even size, i figured nm was a measurement of it though, it does not say.



All in all, I wouldnt mind buying a new mobo eventually which will be costly and a good processor for it, but if upgrading this one to a 2.5-3.0 ghz will give me that extra power that I need, then I'd rather do that. Most of the games I have i noticed the requirements say, 3.2ghz pentium 4 or d or something, and then say 2.2ghz dual core duo. or 2.4 for assassins creed and 2.2 for crysis. So even there I do not meet the requirements, yet for my graphics card and ram, im well over the minimum.

Id like the advice though of many people and what their opinion on the matter is, would upgrading to a 2.5-3.0ghz fsb 800, socket 775 65nm processor help and be a possible upgrade? Or should I just go buy a whole new mobo/ processor because mine is junk and I can't upgrade, Or do I just need to shut up because my full settings in wow with a 1440-900 widescreen reso (native reso as well) refresh rate set at 75h in and out of game. runs at like 25 fps and looks choppy as fucking hell, whiles i look at my cpu usage on my g15 keyboard lcd being around 90 percent when things start to get intense.

Turning down shadow quality and view distance helps a lot, as well as taking off quest helper, but, I think it has to do with my processor power, not my 8800 card or 4 gigs of ram.


This may be a solution right here: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0GHz 2MB Cache 800 FSB Socket 775 Dual-Core Processor with Fan BX80551PG3000FN in Canada at TigerDirect.ca

I live in Canada too, and have a paypal account as well. plus ive searched tiger direct before, and have talked to a few ppl personally that say they have bought a few items from that store and newegg as well.

Thanks again for any input.


also heres the 5200 Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 Processor BX80571E5200 - 2.50GHz, 2MB Cache, 800MHz FSB, Wolfdale, Dual Core, Retail, Socket 775, Processor with Fan in Canada at TigerDirect.ca not sure what shipping is but its 110 before that, and the guy at the store told me it would be 150 from them.