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Upgrading GPU or CPU for WoW? Please read, need advice!

T

TheCyclist

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 5, 2008
Messages
72
I've been playing WoW for a while now and just recently I have noticed a huge decrease in FPS while in non-populated areas (Not Dalaran, just running around Icecrown). I just upgraded to 9.12 for my HD4870 last night and noticed a big drop yet again for WoW.

Anyone have a decent running setup for WoW?

Current Specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom X4 9850 BE (2500MHz)
GPU: HD 4870 512MB
RAM: 4GB of Corsair DDR2

Would I see a bigger increase improving my CPU or Graphic Card? If so, Which? i7? 5850?

Thanks!


Any advice would be great! Been trying to solve this low FPS for a while.
 
Did you turn off AI and set the AA sampling to multi-mode (the one all the way to the left)? I also set shadows to 1 click below the maximum and have found that it helps a lot.
 
wow framerates are primarily tied to the cpu.

there is a tweak floating around to set wow to use more than 2 cores by default, that should help you a bit. I don't know that phenom chip very well but i am going to say if not drivers than the cpu because i ran wow with a single 8800 and a q6700 at max and the only place i lagged is dalaran, which is due to the game architecture and memory leakage moreso than anyone's hardware.

no trouble in icecrown on my system
 
cnk said:
Did you turn off AI and set the AA sampling to multi-mode (the one all the way to the left)? I also set shadows to 1 click below the maximum and have found that it helps a lot.
Click to expand...

This is good advice. The shadows especially, if turned all the way up, will crush your performance. I set mine 1 tick below max as cnk does.

Also, if you want WoW to use all of your CPU cores, you need to go into your WTF folder, edit your config.wtf file, and where it says "SET processAffinityMask", change the value from "3" to "15".

WoW loves CPU cycles. Upgrading to a faster CPU always nets the biggest gains in performance.
 
yeah I was under the impression that a video card like a 4890 will run WoW like it's nothing.
 
Did WoW reset your vid options when you installed the new drivers? If so you may have put them not exactly where you had them last.
 
WoW does tend to chew up more CPU than most since the potentially large number of individuals on screen in busy areas.

The graphics also scale a bit funny, things like shadows/effects are per character, so the frame rate scales closely with the number of people on screen. The very last notch on a lot of the settings are quite harsh on even good machines, flora right at max back on some of my older rigs struggled a lot, I know the new shadows are killer.
 
Okay, to update this thread somewhat:

Graphics in WoW are turned down with Weather and Shadows and Particles.

I can't honestly think of anything else to do, today I overclocked my CPU by 10% and it seems to have improved my FPS by 5-10 at max.

Would posting a DXdiag help? =/

I'm trying to think of a reasonable upgrade to CPU or GPU even to help or would adding ram even help? I need to figure out something because these low FPS are killing me.

Also, I upgraded to 9.12 should I maybe do a clean install again?
 
Astral Abyss said:
This is good advice. The shadows especially, if turned all the way up, will crush your performance. I set mine 1 tick below max as cnk does.

Also, if you want WoW to use all of your CPU cores, you need to go into your WTF folder, edit your config.wtf file, and where it says "SET processAffinityMask", change the value from "3" to "15".

WoW loves CPU cycles. Upgrading to a faster CPU always nets the biggest gains in performance.
Click to expand...

Currently I have done the AffinityMask trick and even set it for 8 cores "255" to try but nothing really helped. It did even out the load of WoW to 4 cores but still hasn't improved FPS in low populated areas.
 
cnk said:
Did you turn off AI and set the AA sampling to multi-mode (the one all the way to the left)? I also set shadows to 1 click below the maximum and have found that it helps a lot.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about CCC settings?
If so, where at so I may find them exactly and double check. I try to not fiddle with those too much
 
TheCyclist said:
Currently I have done the AffinityMask trick and even set it for 8 cores "255" to try but nothing really helped. It did even out the load of WoW to 4 cores but still hasn't improved FPS in low populated areas.
Click to expand...

Actually, I believe if you set it to an invalid amount, which 8 would be for your CPU, it reverts back to default. You have to look at the "cores detected" value preceeding it to see the max number you can set AffinityMask to.

It's not going to help a ton, but every bit helps.
 
Either we have two different ideas of acceptable framerates, or something else is going on w/ your system. Your system should have no problem running that game at max settings, I ran it at max settings w/ an AMD BE 5000 at 3 GHz, 4GB RAM, and my 8800GT, at 1920 x 1200 rez.

Maybe its time for an OS reinstall, or maybe a virus, or some other process killing your performance.
 
I call either BS or you ran it like this a couple years ago before they upped the shader capacity of the engine.
 
This the one thing people forget about troubleshooting performance in WoW....
MODS!
Check your mods, disable all of them then see if you are having any performance issues. WIth the OP's particular setup it should run at the default max settings smoothly, even at 1920x1200. If not then there may be issue with your hardware. If it does run smoothly with all mods disabled, then it's a mod that's degrading performance, which means the mod is bad, or you need a faster cpu.
 
Tried the wtf core fix listed above? Also if you're running w7 you can use the core parking fix too. Worked wonders on my i7.
 
Standpoint said:
Either we have two different ideas of acceptable framerates, or something else is going on w/ your system. Your system should have no problem running that game at max settings, I ran it at max settings w/ an AMD BE 5000 at 3 GHz, 4GB RAM, and my 8800GT, at 1920 x 1200 rez.

Maybe its time for an OS reinstall, or maybe a virus, or some other process killing your performance.
Click to expand...

I have checked Viruses with Norton and Spybot, nothing. Also, I am running Windows 7 Ultimate.
 
Keiichi said:
This the one thing people forget about troubleshooting performance in WoW....
MODS!
Check your mods, disable all of them then see if you are having any performance issues. WIth the OP's particular setup it should run at the default max settings smoothly, even at 1920x1200. If not then there may be issue with your hardware. If it does run smoothly with all mods disabled, then it's a mod that's degrading performance, which means the mod is bad, or you need a faster cpu.
Click to expand...

I run very minimal mods and also they are all very up to date. =/
I disabled all of them and receiving the same FPS.
 
2nd for try disabling mods. Quest Helper has been notorious for killing performance for my guild. Disabling mods plus making sure other stuff isn't running rampant in the normal environment background helps WoW quite a bit.
 
Omegas said:
I call either BS or you ran it like this a couple years ago before they upped the shader capacity of the engine.
Click to expand...

No BS, this was a few weeks ago when I was sent an email for 7 days free game time. I had everything set to max settings, didn't measure the framerate, but I doubt I dropped much below 25 at times, usually I can see anything under about 26 FPS.
 
TheCyclist said:
Are you talking about CCC settings?
If so, where at so I may find them exactly and double check. I try to not fiddle with those too much
Click to expand...

Yes, the CCC settings. It's in the 3D gaming section. I turn off AI, set the AA setting to the left and make sure to click off all boxes that say to allow the application to control the setting. When I upgraded my drivers to 9.12 hotfix version, it had reset my original settings and I lost a lot of FPS. Once I made the changes, I'm back to normal FPS.
 
A good CPU will be the best upgrade for WoW.

WoW might not seem like it takes much hardware to run well and you always have these people popping in who think because they ran WoW years ago on a P4 with a radeon 9600 that you can basically run it on anything.

And it's true that you will spend a good deal of the game pegged at max fps, but there are plenty of times when you will be able to put that extra computer power to use. Ever try to pull all the whelps while doing Onyxia? It's almost comical watching people's computers lag so badly that they are disconnecting from the game while I never dipped below 45fps. Things like massive PvP city raids are also very intense, and even much of the higher-end raid content can be fairly demanding on hardware. It's important to have good performance not just when you are staring at a wall but when it actually matters.

With a 512mb card you will start to run out of Video memory at 1920x1200 at near max settings. You would see an increase going to a 1GB card, or you can simply turn down the view distance.

You might also explore using the edge-detect custom AA filter if you usually use Box instead. It will offload some of the AA burden from your cards memory and use extra stream processors for AA calculations instead.
 
That's because they didn't bother to really optimize, imo. One of the big draws was that the game ran really well on a wide range of hardware. Now, not so much. I used to 40 man raid all the time with the settings jacked up and no issues. Now my gf has a computer that's 10x better than what I used to run and she lags hard in 25 man raids. It's just not right.
 
I dunno whats up with WOW and Dalaran - I've noticed I shoot down to 15 fps as soon as I port in.

It sucks because of all the games I've ran on this system which are far more modern - WOW has been the first to bring it to its knees.
 
polydiol said:
I dunno whats up with WOW and Dalaran - I've noticed I shoot down to 15 fps as soon as I port in.

It sucks because of all the games I've ran on this system which are far more modern - WOW has been the first to bring it to its knees.
Click to expand...

Dalaran has bugs due to a few issues.

main one is that the engine isn't designed to have a city float like that so high above a zone, so shit gets rendered in the background. I think having so much so high on the Z axis freaks something in the engine out causing a memory leak as well.
 
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