upgrade question for

O

oratam

n00b
Joined
Mar 22, 2006
Messages
15
I know the easiest way to get wow to go faster is to drop it in the trash can but i still like the game. My problem is i feel my system is a little out of date and my FPS is crap right now. It gets annoying trying to go to the pvp stuff and being stuck any time alliance gets near.

My specs amd athlon x2 4200 939
foxconn 6150b board
4 gigs ddr ram (bios won't let me clock the ram faster than 333)
Sapphire 4850 512 meg card latest driver
Razer barracuda sound card.
Wd Black 1 gig drive.
Abit Airpace wireless G card.
winxp pro

I can play l4d and ut3 without any sign of lag at all and this gives me frame rates in wow form 30 and under unless i strip my video settings to the bare minimium. I've built pcs for friends that used frickin integrated video and half the ram and they blow my socks away. I used the 690g based boards in their builds. The only real difference i see is the use of the ddr2 800 modules. I would love to upgrade but i kinda sorta need to pay the rent as well right now. What suggestions would you guys/girls have for the least amount of cash to get me up to snuff.
 
WOW is very CPU intensive. There's really not much you can do since your key problem is the CPU, and by extension, the mobo and RAM as well. The cheapest upgrade in the CPU/mobo/RAM department would be this:

$125 - AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 CPu + BIOSTAR TA760G M2+ AM2+/AM2 AMD 760G mATX Motherboard
$47 - Corsair TWIN2X4096-6400C5 2 x 2GB DDR2 800 RAM
---
Total: $172 plus tax and shipping.

And more than likely the higher speed DDR2 800 RAM was not the cause of the supposed good performance out of your fdz' PCs.

Out of curiosity, what PSU do you have? Also, what resolution are you playing at?
 
id go with danny's suggestion.. the big problem is that your cpu bottlenecked with the HD4850.. so the x2 7750 should easily cure that issue..
 
I figured it was either the ram or the cpu.

I have a mushkin 650 watt psu.

i think its 1280 by (the widescreen number) sorry at work.

My buddy sprung for new pcs for his family. They are all

x2 5000
pcper 750 psu
4 gigs ram ddr2800
gigabyte atx 690g board.
1 seagate sata 320
God knows how many ide drives he has running.
xp pro

I've seen him doing 10 man and 25 man runs at the same 1280x1024 with most things enabled. and he never updates a driver.

his daughter has
x2 3600
el generico 450 watt psu
2 gigs corsair ddr2 800
gigabyte atx 690g board.
60 gig ide drive.
xp pro

Same thing. I've seen her doing almost the same exact things in wow. Frickin rogue.
 
i would check for spyware........enough of that shit can bog your system down. make sure nothing running in the background while your playing wow. are you playing wow on your wireless card or wired? only thing i do wireless is surf the web i never game on wireless im always wired.
 
My network is wireless. My house is built on 18th century oak and brick frame and on the historic preserved list which means i need approval to do anything. The heating is baseboard hot water. I am using my mythtv box to move tv signals around over the wireless, hell my phones are sip wif based just to avoid wiring anything. I have the qos setup to give priority first to the phones then to any gaming. I have found no coorelation between using the phone and not using the phones in relation to my latency in gaming.

My paging file usually starts at around a gig and usually can hit a gig and a half. No spyware its all legit stuff eating up pf space. for the printer, the wireless, the comcast mcafee, ati, the stupid tpm module, sound,
 
wireless + multiplayer + default wifi settings = hell..

the thing is with your friends system.. the x2 5000 is a much faster processor and better architecture then the 4200+.. and the other problem is that your 4850 is to fast for your processor.. but like danny said.. WoW is far more cpu demanding.. UT3 and L4D dont use that much of the cpu.. heck i dont even think ive seen L4D go over 20% cpu usage on my phenom II 940 once in game.. and i never bothered to reinstall UT3 after i got my 940..

also i see you are using mcafee.. just for shits and giggles.. try disabling that before running WoW and see if there is any difference.. AV scanners like norton and mcafee are a joke..
 
Wasn't there a lot of threads with WoW players having issues with high-end video cards a few months back? (well your 4850 was and is mid-high end and better then many cards out there still)
 
I tried disabling the mcafee and i can't see how to do it. Back in the day it was right click and disable. I knocked down shadows and my framerate improved some but it is still rather sad. I gotta see how well i am off on payday. thanks for the adivce.
 
Yeah but my friends daughter has the 3600+ x2 with integrated graphics so when i am looking at it my performance should have been in between point A and point B, but when point c is in the breakdown lane i know something is really off.
 
Turning off ALL your addons can help. Most just spin in the background parsing your combat log and burning CPU cycles. I've seen reports of people gaining 10+ fps just by turning off some of the heavy hitters.

I stopped playing a few months ago, but my system(see sig) could still manage 30-50fps (1280x1024) while solo questing in Northrend. Obviously performance was terrible in raids with all the flashy spell effects going off. I think most of my graphics settings were at medium.

Other things to try that eat at your CPU
Turn off virus scanners (already mentioned)
Close all your web browsers, particularly any that may be open to a page running flash or javascript - which is just about everything these days.

Oh, and make sure you have shadows turned completely off, it's the single most CPU intensive thing WoW does.
 
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