4870 and WoW = no go.

J

jobbigvolvo

n00b
Joined
Jan 13, 2009
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5
So i've finally given up on my 4870-1gb.
Unfortunatly i belived all the amazing reviews this card got, mostly from sites that forgot entirelly to test anything but the very latest games and benchmarks.
Thing is i pretty much only play WoW and got the card in time for the last exp-pac cause my old 8800GT had a hard time with max settings in the new content.

At first the game barelly started, FPS was so low i actually had to do file editing to lower settings enough not to get timeouts.
Fortunatly ATI released updated drivers pretty fast wich fixed that problem (in-game shadows was the culprit).
So now it was possible to turn back setting to normal (1920*1200, and everything max in game), or so i thought.
Soon it became clear that the FSAA settings barelly did anything (CCC settings or in-game), sure the game slowed down but there was still lots of ugly jaggies.
Also whatever filtering setting i choose there was still loads of mirage effects, and not just on textures "far away", but fairly close aswell.

And now after 3 generations of drivers i just had to let it go, gotta wonder why a card that ships with a game bundled can perform so damn bad in it.

Now i know the main citys in WoW can bring even the fastest computers to its knees, but explain to me why my new card (GTX-285) plays it really smooth in said max settings ? =/.

Now I understand that developers dont wanna spend time in optimizing drivers for old games, but WoW has over 10 million active players, and im sure atleast a few at ATI know about it, perhaps even plays it.
 
ATI might be trying to save the consumer from being able to get addicted to 'Warcrack' by making it run so bad with it. Had it worked in your case you would be sending them a thank-you letter for preventing 'loss of life'.
 
May I ask what resolution and settings you guys use ?

I'm at 1920*1200 and the 285 runs that with every slider to max without even the sligthest slowdowns.
I also used 1920*1200 with the 4870, but couldnt use "multisampling" (the in-game AA) past the 2x (max is 8) without getting huge FPS drops when turning or even flying over busy areas. Setting it to 8x made the game pretty much unplayable.

Rest of my system may not be top-of-the-line anymore, but still X58 chipset with a [email protected] and 4gb ram.
Plenty for wow im sure.
 
silent-circuit said:
Probably running a bad add-on / mod.
Click to expand...

Could very well be, exept for the fact that apart from the GC's everything is the same.
Also i keep my addons updated and error free.

And spare me the "crack" metaphores, im a long time player but its more of a hobby to me then a full time job ;)
 
Quite a few people are having issues with WoW and 4800 series of cards, that includes me with a 4870x2 and I've done a lot of changes to try and resolve it my next hope is for the next driver if that fails then I'll be sending it back because I've had other issues as well.
 
I'm completing my AMD retail training just so I can get the 4850 and x3 (and sell my old 8800gts 640mb). I hope it's worth it. Since really all I play is WoW and Stalker
 
Thats weird, did you try forcing filtering and AA through the control panel? That will cause some issues in games, especially in wow. I run with all settings to the max with AA at 4x @1920/1200 and only inside of Dalaran and sometimes IF will it ever suffer, but you get lag too from all the players as well.
 
I also have WoW performance problems with my HD 4870 X2. I run my 8.12 CCC settings at

- 4x Edge Detect AA
- 16x AF Anisotropic Filering
- Catalyst A.I. - Advanced
- Mipmap Detail Level - High Quality
- V-Sync : Quality
- Adaptive AA – Quality

Core 2 Q9450 [email protected] 1750
4GB OCZ DDR3 1600@1750 7-7-7-20 1T
EVGA 790I Ultra SLi
150GB Raptor
Sapphire HD 4870 X2
X-FI Extreme sound card
Corsair 1000HX Power Management PSU
Vista Ultimate 64bit

In game I run it at my native res 22'' 1680x1050 with all details maxed out. With my AA set in CCC the games AA modes don't work at all. The game runs pretty good other then dalaran which i dont understand. I got the same performance out of my old 8800 GTX. I set the CCC AA to App pref, and then WoW runs with AA. Certain areas run crappy, espically Dalaran. I hope to god that the 9.1 drivers fix this problem, because my 8800 GTX is walking all over this card in WoW. : Note: - I ran my setttings in game at 8X AA max detail with my 8800 GTX, and in windows 8xQ MSAA/16xAF.

I believe its just bad driver optimization. I can run Crysis ultra detail with 4x and its perfect but i would like a little boost. Left 4 Dead runs perfect at 8x AA max detail, Far Cry 2 runs awesome with 8x AA max detail. I still hoping the CAT 9.1's will bring more life to this card.
 
I use app preferences in CCC and 2xAA in WoW at 1680*1050.

I noticed significant FPS drops running 4xAA & 8xAA in certain areas so play at 2xAA to be safe. I play WoW with a 4870 512 & E8500 @ 4.2 GHz.
 
Udgnim said:
I use app preferences in CCC and 2xAA in WoW at 1680*1050.

I noticed significant FPS drops running 4xAA & 8xAA in certain areas so play at 2xAA to be safe. I play WoW with a 4870 512 & E8500 @ 4.2 GHz.
Click to expand...

I am really pissed off with my cards performance in WoW. My 8800 GTX runs game much better then this 4870 X2. I ran the game at 8X, drivers are 8X and 16X AF.

I could even run supersampling AA and still runs better then the 4870 X2. Really sad, because other games run awesome. 9.1's better fix this and bring a boost in performance in all games.
 
Zero problems here, even while raiding. WoW plays smooth as butter.

Radeon 4850 512mb - 1680x1050, 4x FSAA, Everything set to Maximum (No Glow lighting on cause it hurts my eyes. Even Dalaran is smooth.

And I'd hope your Geforce 285 played WoW fast enough for how expensive it is lol.
 
we're having the same problem with someone's 295 in the other forum. from what member's here have told me, and what i have found out on the WoW forums, and emailing blizzard, WoW doesn't support multi-gpu. that is why a 8800, 9800, 260, 280...etc runs everything without a hiccup. so anything "x2" or same with the GX2, WoW looks and plays like crap. for me and my 295 it works, i dunno why.
 
Zuriick said:
we're having the same problem with someone's 295 in the other forum. from what member's here have told me, and what i have found out on the WoW forums, and emailing blizzard, WoW doesn't support multi-gpu. that is why a 8800, 9800, 260, 280...etc runs everything without a hiccup. so anything "x2" or same with the GX2, WoW looks and plays like crap. for me and my 295 it works, i dunno why.
Click to expand...
Well if it doesn't support multi-GPU, then the game will only utilize one GPU.
Even so, the 295 should still be slightly faster than the 260, since it's like a 260/280 hybrid.
 
UtopiA said:
Well if it doesn't support multi-GPU, then the game will only utilize one GPU.
Even so, the 295 should still be slightly faster than the 260, since it's like a 260/280 hybrid.
Click to expand...

ya mate, i agree. OP though, i don't understand why a single 4870 would be having a problem with WoW since it is only one gpu. my thoughts are that the existing nvidia drivers are acting up with the corresponding ati drivers.
 
No problems here. I'm using a 30" monitor and 2 4870x2s crossfire in one system and a 4870x2 with a 24" monitor in another. One of my systems is on Windows 7 beta and that one seems a bit slow but I think tha'ts because of networking issues maybe a driver.
 
i also get crap performance with wow and the 4870x2. other much harder to run games run great but wow is just poop. if the 9.1s dont fix it ima sell it and buy a 280/285 at a loss =(
 
285's are around $350 if you look properly.
There's no way a used 4870X2 is going to sell for less than that.
 
My 4850 512MB card runs WoW fine.

I run will all detail all the way up (even shadows and view distance) with edge detect 4xAA at 1280x1024. Only ever drop below 60fps (v-sync and triple buffer enabled) in largely populated areas.

If you were getting jaggies with FSAA turned on.. even at 4x, there was something wrong with your setup.
 
i was running 4870 512 with wow @ 1920x1200 with 2-4x CFAA, no probs for me.
 
All this "I have problems" and "I have no problems" gibberish 90% of the time stems from the fact that different people have very different expectations of performance.

I was able to play Crysis at 17fps...seemed ok, if a tiny bit choppy...a friend of mine can't handle anything below 85fps.
 
Sorry, 4870x2, 1920x1200 16xAF, 60fps with vsync, if it does move.. still above 55fps.
 
Dont know if you guys have noticed this but most of the people that seem to be having problems with the 48xx series cards in this thread seem to also have Q9xxx series Intel processors. Might just be a coincidence but could be something to look into... Dont know about the guy with the 295 having problems but maybe there is some sort of new Intel quad-core bug that is showing itself in WoW for some odd reason. Just a thought
 
I heard that the newest patch really screwed some stuff up. A friend has a 3870 and plays at 1240 x 1024; he had absolutely no problems until this new patch. All of a sudden, alt-tabbing completely hardlocks the system.

Could be a problem on Blizzard's end. Have you tried playing in windowed mode? It's not as pretty, but I've heard it proffered as an effective solution to quite a few graphics problems.
 
Sounds like a problem on WoWs end, not the card or the driver's end.
 
I personally tend to get slightly annoyed, years ago we have paper releases where graphics cards used to appear in reviews but were then taking forever to get to the actual market and now we have hardware/software that is as flamable as the paper releases of old. The problem for me personally is it doesn't matter how great the hardware/software is since it is utterly useless without the proper driver and software support, there seems to be a total lack of realization that releasing great hardware and then shooting yourself in the foot with crud drivers is rather damaging for the graphics card market as a whole....this also applies to other areas in terms of hardware.
 
Could be a problem on Blizzard's end.
Click to expand...

i dont think so. when i went to blizzcon all the systems that were running starcraft 2 diablo 3 and WOTLK were using 4870's and some of them at the booths were using 4870x2's and all were flawless. so i dont think its something on blizzards end i think its a setting your over looking. like with most new card purchases i do i just format the windows drive and reinstall to make sure that the card is working w/o older drivers screwing with it.
 
My 4870x2 ran like crap in WoW at first, and it would crash to desktop if I had the shadows turned on at all. Then I ran the Riva system monitor and found that the card was not clocking up from the default 2d settings of 500/500 because I was running the game in a window. For some reason WoW is not acknowledged as a 3d application when it is run in a window. As soon as I changed the settings to full screen the card would clock back up to 750/900 and things smoothed out completely.

Might want to give that a try.
 
ruu said:
I heard that the newest patch really screwed some stuff up. A friend has a 3870 and plays at 1240 x 1024; he had absolutely no problems until this new patch. All of a sudden, alt-tabbing completely hardlocks the system.

Could be a problem on Blizzard's end. Have you tried playing in windowed mode? It's not as pretty, but I've heard it proffered as an effective solution to quite a few graphics problems.
Click to expand...


+1 to that, my alienware M17 has CF 3870's and its impossible to run in windowed mode since it hard locks my system. definatly on wow's end, there's a thread on it in the WoW tech support forum
 
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