Seeking help of all sifus here..

My gf and I plays wow and she is getting horrible fps in 25mans (up to 6fps and below). Her specs are

CPU: Pentium4 2.4Aghz
RAM: 2x 512mb DDR400
GFX: X1650pro AGP
Sound: Onboard sound
MOBO: MSI PM8M-V
Monitor: 17" Widescreen @ 1440x900 native res.

She runs with all settings set to the lowest and she still gets 6fps and lower in gruuls and ssc.
Is there a way to work around this? If there is a bottleneck here, please let me know which is it.

Thank you so much in advance!

The resolution abit wierd..17 inch monitor should be 1280x1024..why ur can go higher?

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Added on September 29, 2007, 5:12 pmAnd also X1650 paired with P42.4,maybe also got abit bottleneck.But i think still can use togther,becuz i saw people use it with 6600GT works fine also.


This post has been edited by minghao: Sep 29 2007, 05:12 PM

CPU seems to bottleneck a little. 2GB of ram helps a lot in WoW. Make sure the Multisampling is set to 1x

That's a widescreen reso.

Ic, so is it best to upgrade her ram to 2x 1gb? because if she has to change, she is going to change her mobo plus cpu, which i think will be kinda costly. And ya, her multisampling is already set to the lowest possible. 24x24, 1x

It seems to me and her that 1440x900 is the best she can go, any lower in widescreen res. will cause her wow to appear real blurry.

Is there any other possible work-around ?

AFAIK, when she is running wow, only her msn, yim and avg are running. However i do not think that those should account to the low fps...or does it ?

Are your addons updated? Although was the low FPS before or after the major patch 2.2 which is currently making everyones' life miserable atm.

http://elitistjerks.com/466896-post1709.html

Have a read of this. I know a guildie who had 8800GT and a 22" monitor and his FPS drop from 60 to 5 in Magtheridon due to syncing with a DoTimer with one other person. They stop the syncing with DoTimer and it was fine.

yeah, her addons are up to date.
I do know that in patch 2.2, its the sound that is causing the lag somewhat. They did some changes in the sounds in WoW.

Given my gf's system spec, what would your fps be like on average?
greater or lesser than 20fps?

maybe turning off most of the sound might help a little.

My old com was a similar spec to the above and when in fights i get the same fps as that.

Be a man and let her use your computer. I know mine would bump me off my comp and i have to use the lesser computer all the time.

then she'd have to come all the way to malacca o.O

@Kurei
bummer dude..no way to work around that i guess : (

you need a dual core cpu and maybe 2gb ram on dual channel mode but if ur on stripped down XP without any background programs and not heavy usage of 3rd party addons, 1gb ram should be fine. also, your graphic card should be upgraded a wee bit.

bottom line? new computer time.

as for myself... /flex to:
ALL video options maxed out, 8x multisampling

130-150 FPS

I have been plagued by DirectX, I have to stick to use OpenGL to workaround those shitty graphic problem. Low FPS is 1 of them.

Try a search in WoW tech forum, try the keyword OpenGL.
What it do is set your WoW config to run graphic using OpenGL instead of the default DirectX.

My problems with DirectX:
- Missing ground or wall textures, some time ago. Now not -yet- hitting them.
- Screen went blank. have to reboot
- Game freeze\hang. have to reboot
- suddenly SLOW, LOW FPS.

Everytime WoW released a new patch, or I updated latest driver from Nvidia, I will try the game using default mode DirectX. But it never stay good and stable for 1 whole game after starting some patches ago.

I have to use OpenGL. The only thing with this not so good, is when alt-tab out, its slow. But its STABLE.

hth

This post has been edited by Kravo: Oct 1 2007, 11:21 AM

err ya..ok thats quite a pretty big jump from what she has now lol
ok so for now, i guess 2sticks of 1gb ram is her best choice ?

I do know is that she doesnt really use much addons. Just the core ones for raiding..swstats, omen, the stuff

best way to determine if she needs ram upgrades or not, is to check your task manager while running WoW.

on performance tab, over physical memory, is it very low? or still got a lot of rams left, and also check ur ram usage %, is it always under 80%?
and is the HDD having a lot of activity and game freezes time to time? does she lag during alt tabbing? (heavy HDD activity during alt tab)

if yes to more than one or all of the above, then yes you need ram upgrade)

another obvious cause is your processor/3D card as mentioned earlier.

bear in mind TBC have its graphic engine upgraded. so while you may not lag in molten core/BWL/AQ40 etc etc in the old days, chances are even with 25man raid (15 man less than 4), you'll lag a lot more than before (SSC/TK above)

Alright thanks man!

Using the mod that myremi mentioned in the earlier posts, it seems that swstats uses the most memory..but oh well, its the mod that synchs and most wanted by guilds lol

Bro... 6fps for x1650? that is way way tooo low... i had a similar specs of ur com last time. i get around 30~40 fps.. very smooth gaming.. even when i go Pvping also no prob... above medium settings.

I have two friends still using 9600pro for the game... still running smooth.. stable at 20fps+ and again P4 2.4ghz only old skool machine..

Maybe your girlfriend did not update her driver, not using the correct driver or maybe she is not using any driver at all? hmm...

interesting, may i know what your cpu and ram was ? also were you running wow at 1440x900?
Am certainly sure she is using an updated ati driver. I am really interested to know how you can get 30-40fps. Hopefully this will help my gf out a little.

Thanks

widescreen/normal screen resolutions dont matter. the only thing that does is ur graphic card able to support said resolutions or not (coupled with graphic detail settings)

for example:
you run at 1440x900, all low, 20 fps
but if you run it at perhaps 640x480, you may set everything max/high and you'd still get maybe around 20fps (for example)

the larger the resolution (pixels), the more processing power your graphic card will need.

btw i run on 1680x1050 native resolution on my samsung 226bw

Me lieky your monitor ..

yes, its a sexy thing. but do wait for 226CW, much better.

MY cpu was a P4 2.8ghz, ram was 1gb only. running on a X1650 pro, and 19 inch running on 1280 x 1024. Did u try running on a lower resolution? have u tried playing other games? like counterstrike? go try 1.6 counter strike and look at the fps, if the fps is too low, it's mostly ur gf have a faulty graphic card. but yet, there are a lot of other factors.. u can also try lowering the graphic settings, or reformat the computer.

Wah. Like that my 512 ram laptop with integrated gfx mah die right. o_O

Nuke your sw_stats date as often as possible to free up the memory used. That helps tonnes.

my monitor only big enough for 1280x1024

Since patch 2.3, my fps has been suffering horribly. I'm not sure if it's due to the patch, or my computer dying.

In Mt Hyjal first 3 bosses, the waves are disconnecting me from game. As a tank, I buried myself deep in a fray of mobs, aoe tanking, while spells, npcs and players filled my screen. My fps then dips to around 14-17, my latency increases from 500ms average to 700-1000ms. Then my screen freezes and I'm booted to login screen.

Logging back in doesn't work unless I get kicked out from the raid - due to UI load times out. Getting kicked out of the raid often lets me back into the instance where i can continue the fight after a raid invite. If my screen doesn't load fast enough, I'd miss the invite and auto port out.

I've tried:

i. disabling some high mem usage uis like recount, assessment, auctioneer,
ii. totally removed bartender, defaulting back to blizzard UI,
iii kept only essential UIs still used like scl, prat, deadlybossmod.
iv. tried lowering my video settings, except spell details.
v. updated nvidia video drivers
vi. updated windows vista.

I'm running out of ideas.

My spec:
intel dual core 2.13
Nvidia 8800 GTS
2gig mem
80gig hdd
streamyx 1mb via router.
24" Dell widescreen running max resolution window mode.

Any help here greatly appreciated.

based on this it still could be UI mods affecting you, try to run without ANY mods. because you shouldnt lag at all with your computer specs.

also check if ur running multisampling (WoW video settings)/AA (external settings eg: video card settings itself to force AA aka multisampling)

also check what other background apps ur running beside WoW (vista is known to have a lot of apps/services running in the background)

also based on your description, is your HDD activity high during your low FPS? if yes, it could be:
- background apps producing heavy HDD load
- RAM low, and accessing vram swap (80-90% ram usage = low of ram and VRAMs will be heavily ultilize, aka disk R/W aka lag)

also check if your temperature during your lag is high (since you are using a 8800, chances are your card could be overheating and wierd symptoms will surface such as lagging, or even hang, or even system slowness and the list goes on, and thats just video card, ur cpu or rams or even HDD could also be overheating)

perform step-by-step troubleshootings to isolate issues so you can pinpoint the cause accurately and proceed from there.

It is normal that when you step into Hyjal, your fps decreases significantly when the trash waves appear and even more so when your hunters kite a mob to bring in other npcs like jaina or thrall/taurens. However it's of course not normal to be disconnected. Quaza above has already mentioned some stuff which you could look through, but one thing that you can look into is your network card configuration. That was the one that made me disconnect tonnes whenever I had an overload of information and after making the change as posted in blizz's forum, it was solved.

This is what I have gathered from the blizzard technical support. I was using an Asus Mobo, so the settings might be a lil different but this is pretty much the gist of it:

1. Go to "Start" > "Control Panel".
2. Double click to open "Network Connections".
3. Right click on your network adapter and go to properties (should be labeled as "NVIDIA nForce Ethernet Controller").
4. Click on "Configure" and go to the "Advanced" tab.
5. Select "Checksum Offload" or "Hardware Checksum" and choose disable in the window to the right.
6. Select "Speed and Duplex" or "Media Type" and select "Force 100 full duplex" (Note: if you lose internet connectivity, select "Force 10 full duplex")
7. Click on Ok.

You may also need to delete your entire WDB folder (located in the World of Warcraft directory) and test the game. The cached files in this folder are occasionally known to cause this issue, and their deletion may immediately fix the problem. However, unless totally necessary, dont do this coz you will have to redo your macros/keybindings and all which might take some time.

Last but not least, dont play in windows mode unless really necessary. Your fps will increase significantly with your full-screen play.

to add in to that, perhaps update your nforce drivers or even back date your nforce drivers (assuming if you are using nforce based platforms) because nforce platforms are known to cause all kinds of issues as opposed to intel platforms. and the above solution is being addressed to nforce.

also as for for your WDB, you CAN back up your macro/keybinding caches by opening the files with notepad etc and copying the texts thats resemblence to your macro listings or keybinding configurations. or, just screenshot/manually back up them from WoW.

my fx5200 & 512mb ram very bad when spamming in vandar's headquarters. usually i dont enter else will dc.stay outside only

thx. I'll try these when i get home.

A note the all, vista itself consumes lots of memory. Turning off a lot of its eye-candy features would help alot as well. Even more so if you switch to classic theme.

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Added on November 21, 2007, 8:29 pmAgree with flush that sometimes, the onboard sound controller can also take up significant amount of processing power/time.

This post has been edited by viper_1129: Nov 21 2007, 08:29 PM

8600 gts enough or not ?

hmm im using vista so that little network setting is a little confusing to me.

As for WDB, WDB doesn't do anything noticeable. Did you mean WTF?

WTF are interface files where as WDB are in game cache files, such as tooltips, item descriptions, player's name/guilds/models etc etc

Hmm...hey guys. I'm having FPS issues as well. In some areas I have 75-80fps. Then others I can drop to 29fps or lower even in shattrath. I dont know what seems to be the problem.

I'm running @ 1024x768 resolution with the settings on mid-level and some on low.

PC Specs:
Win xp
3.2ghz dual core intel
2gb ram
160gb hdd
winfast 8600GT x 256mb (just upgraded from 7300LE)
19" dell LCD

My nvidia drivers are the latest from the website.

Help me

This post has been edited by julia88: Nov 23 2007, 10:34 AM

Some other things I do during 25-man raids :

1. Nag guildies who have Recount syncing option to turn it off. You can check using a FuBar addon called "AddonSpam" that will give you a list of addons that pulls data from you.

2. Turn off sound.

3. Tone down my graphic settings.

4. Turn off Scrolling Combat Text feature/addon.

5. Turn off names of NPC + my names + others + guild names.

6. Turn off addons that take up huge memory resource e.g. Cartographer, Group Calendar, Gatherer, Auctioneer. Basically addons that I don't use for a raid, it gets turn off.

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Added on November 23, 2007, 11:22 amprobably what i need to do now though is to buy a new modem.

This post has been edited by myremi: Nov 23 2007, 11:22 AM

Is there an addon, where you can suspend addons in game without logging off?

yes , there is. called ACP, get from wowaceupdater.

btw, im having this problem.



before the screen appears like SS, there were HEAVY screen tearing, .
updated drivers, cleaned the gfx from dust etc, done reverting old drivers, but no luck,.
when alt-tab, the screen return to normal for about 30secs, then it happens again.

any idea?

im using ati 9600xt.

post bc graphic engine/enviroments has been upgraded pretty drastically. places like shatt with its complex decos and fancy effects will bog down systems that isnt really high end.

and your 8600GT upgrade over the 7300LE is not a very huge upgrade, the only main upgrade you did was enabling DX10 games/applications. other than that not too much of an upgrade when it comes to graphic performance.

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Added on November 23, 2007, 2:43 pmgo download the ATI tools thingy from ATI and run the tests to check for artifacts. not to mention check your temperature too. chances are its getting overheated and producing artifacts (fan/cooler faulty etc), or, memory chip (stores textures) being faulty etc

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Nov 23 2007, 02:43 PM

hmm...in that case, what should I change in order to make the FPS less jumpy. If i get 60fps constant I'm happy already. Don't need FPS in the 100s

try the previously mentioned troubleshooting methods and see if it helps.

imho your specs should be able to play WoW on all medium or even high settings.
so it may be other issues such as addons, or sounds or your background applications.

When checking your addons,

1. Turn them off one at a time to find the culprit.
2. If that doesn't work, delete addon folder in WorldofWarcraft/Interface/Addons.
3. If that doesn't work, delete the *.lua file (e.g. for Decursive it's going to be Decursive.lua). It's in the WoW/WTF and WoW/WTF/CharacterName . Best is to use the Windows Search function to look for *.lua files to be deleted.

You can cut it short by deleting the WTF folders but you'll also lose your macro file (usually macros*.txt files, there's alot of them).

4. If that doesn't work, it's probably an incompatibility with another addon or one of the libraries isn't updated. If you're using Ace2-based addon (e.g Cartographer, Omen, BigWigs), use a software named WoWAceUpdater.exe to update these files with Externals option on.

5. If it's already too much of a hassle, delete the entire WTF and Interface/Addons folder and start from scratch. Some of the older addons do not delete the older files which in turn can interfer with the addon that you want on.

Note : The biggest headache whenever a new patch comes out is any addon that makes changes to the UI (User Interface). Example was when patch 2.1 (or was it patch 2.2) came out, it crippled all Bongos and XPerl users. Either the entire WoW interface look weird or there are bizarre buttons popping up here and there.

Note2 : Try to find out where the addon author updates regularly. Example : ItemRack is updated at WoWinterface.com and not regularly at WoW.Curse.com. Although Curse.com is huge, it doesn't mean that it gets the latest updates.

correction: turning ALL the addons off, THEN turning them on 1 by 1 to check for problematic addons is a better method

ok my prob solved by downclock the core speed.

but no moar tearing!

thanks quaza for pointing amd tools!

np, if its solved by downclocking the GPU core speed then its prolly overheating issues. can consider 3rd party cooling if you wanna get the core speed back up