What is holding my FPS back in WoW?

[MX-5 Dave]

I wasnt sure where to post this, because I dont honestly know what the problem is.

I had heard that WoW isnt super dependant on the video card, more on Ram and Proc power.

Basically here is the situation

I get into an area with a lot of people, like a major city, or something like that, and my FPS falls on its face, Im talking from solid 60fps (never goes past that, seems to sit on it solid when I am relatively alone) to 20fps. In big battles with lots of spells and effects around me, it becomes a slideshow.

Ok so the computer stats

Vista 32bit home premium

E7200 C2D
4GB DDR3 1333
2 8800GTS 640s in SLI

26" LCD 1920X1200 (I think thats it, whatever the native res is)

I have tried making sure NOTHING is running in the background, this does nothing noticeable. I have tried turning the eye candy down from max to about middle of the road, with no big change in performance. So it seems like its not an issue of not enough graphics power.


Or is it?

If so, would a single 280GTX be faster than my 2 8800GTS 640s in SLI?


Im gonna try updating the video drivers tonight, and try turning off ALL add ons.




I am aware of the current issues in Dalaran, but the people reporting this, are saying they DONT have the problem in big raids.

I do. And my performance in Dalaran, funny enough, isnt THAT bad.

 

[Mr. Stryker]

Try disabling SLI and see how it runs on one card. I remember WoW doesn't scale well or play friendly with SLI.

EDIT: I would probably also suggest overclocking your CPU if it's still at stock.

 

[MrGuvernment]

WoW does not use SLI, never has

Also WoW is capped @ 60FPS.

overclock your processor as well if you can.

 

[shagvirus]

make sure you take off vsync, that input lag thing, watch addons there are a killer for fps.
if using quest helper tone down the workload to 20%

 

[MX-5 Dave]

If you turn VSync off, its not limited to 60fps, I see 220+ fps when I turn it off (reported by the game and fraps) But from what I hear, it also makes the wild FPS swings, more severe.

I checked to make sure I am running the PCIe slots at 16X. I am. (gpu-z)

Im going to turn SLI off tomorrow and see if that helps. I THINK I tried it with no add ons and it didnt help. I THINK. Ill try it again tomorrow. I am in fact running questhelper. Ill check its workload as well.

Am I right in thinking an 8800GTS 640 SC should be plenty to run this game with the eye candy relatively cranked? As in the video card not being the bottleneck I mean.

I have an upgrade budget that will allow one or the other as far as proc or video card. I want to make sure that I

1. Buy the one I need of the two I mean

2. Dont buy either if I dont need it.


I cant OC the proc. The machine wont take even a 1mhz OC. It just locks up. It was rock solid at 3.4 for a long time, then one day it started locking up. I cleaned everything, so its not overheating.

But the proc is 2.53ghz, dual core (C2D obviously), as is. Shouldnt that be enough?

 

[Zorachus]

I paly WoW on two systems in my house, one has a 27" 1920x1200res running a 8800GTX, with a QuadCore 6600 and 4gb DDR2...the other system has a 30" 2560x1600res running a GTX-280 with a QuadCore 9650 oc'd to 3.4ghz and 4gb DDR2.

The 2560x1600res system runs the game smooth as butter, all options maxed 4x Multisample, but my 1920x1200res system seems to bog down a lot in some areas of the game, it seems like the game is struggling to keep up at full res maxed graphics.

In my opinion, and I have read the CPU is king for WoW and most MMORPG's...get the fastest cpu available and oc the hell out of it, and also good amount of quality memory helps too...I think the VideoCard in WoW is not as important as would be a FPS.

 

[bahmirk]

I think i can help, i have a 280 and a core i7 and i run at 1920x1200 default multisampling (can't remember what it is) the rest is maxed and i have it in maximized windowed mode. but i turned shadows off completely and i get a insane fps boost and honestly i thought it would bother me but it doesn't, stuff that doesn't move (tree's buildings etc.) still has shadows so i don't feel like I'm missing anything it just turns off those really detailed player shadows. I really think its a problem with the game and not our hardware, i think they might have done the shadows not so efficiently, it's easy to blame them instead of hardware i find .

 

[MX-5 Dave]

So on a hunch, I disabled SLI.

No FPS change in some areas, IMPROVEMENT in others. Dal is still choppy in most places, but doesnt seem to drop as low, as often. Big WG battles dont seem really any different. Actually, maybe a hair better.

So my plan right now is upgrade the CPU, I am on a budget so I am looking at the E8500, which will take me from 2.53ghz to 3.16 (assuming no OC since for some reason I cant OC this system, not sure if its a cpu or mobo problem there)

If that helps, I am going to sell the 2 8800GTS 640s (actually Ill probably keep one, for a "just in case" card that can play games decently well) and pick up a single 280GTX.

Am I correct in assuming that a single 280GTX is a faster option than my 2 8800GTS 640s?

After that, if I still cant OC, Im going to replace the mobo in a few months and try for 3.5.

But in the meanwhile an over half a ghz jump should help a bit.

 

[Ladic]

upgrade video card first

you CPU should be more than enough for WOW

 

[Gillette]

What are your shadow settings at? Ditch those and you'll probably see a monumental improvement in FPS.

There's also an option called "Reduce Input Lag" in the Video section - disable it. My framerates nearly doubled when it was disabled.

 

[MX-5 Dave]

upgrade video card first

you CPU should be more than enough for WOW

That directly contradicts everything I have heard though, that its more CPU dependant than GPU.

 

[MX-5 Dave]

What are your shadow settings at? Ditch those and you'll probably see a monumental improvement in FPS.

There's also an option called "Reduce Input Lag" in the Video section - disable it. My framerates nearly doubled when it was disabled.

I can turn the shadows completely off/all the way down with almost no change.

 

[Gillette]

That directly contradicts everything I have heard though, that its more CPU dependant than GPU.

Your GPU is fine, I'm on a 512MB 8800GT and I can hold 30-40FPS in raids with medium settings (low shadows) @ 1920x1200.

Let me know the results with Reduce Input Lag being disabled.

 

[AVT]

Something's wrong with your system - people were getting max WoW settings on 6-series nVidia cards and P4s.

 

[HaMMerHeD]

1) Upgrade your CPU. An E8500 should do nicely, and is an inexpensive upgrade.

2) Yes, a GTX 280 will be faster than a pair of 8800 GTS's in SLI.

You should be fairly set then, but keep in mind that your framerate is also tied to your network performance. When you start seeing tons of other players, you are going to lag, no matter what, and that lag will translate into lower framerates. There is nothing you can do about that other than suck it up and drive on.

 

[Gillette]

Something's wrong with your system - people were getting max WoW settings on 6-series nVidia cards and P4s.

This was true at release, the graphics engine has had some extreme overhauls since then. My P4 3.4 with an x800xt was able to stay capped in raids, it now gets about 15FPS in outdoor locations at minimum settings.

 

[MX-5 Dave]

Your GPU is fine, I'm on a 512MB 8800GT and I can hold 30-40FPS in raids with medium settings (low shadows) @ 1920x1200.

Let me know the results with Reduce Input Lag being disabled.

Its already disabled. I should have mentioned it. Its never been enabled.

Something's wrong with your system - people were getting max WoW settings on 6-series nVidia cards and P4s.

Wotlk wasnt out when they played it on that gear. 40 man raids in zones with better graphics, and the fact that Dal is known to be a low fps area

You havent been able to play it anywhere near maxed on that stuff for ages.

1) Upgrade your CPU. An E8500 should do nicely, and is an inexpensive upgrade.

2) Yes, a GTX 280 will be faster than a pair of 8800 GTS's in SLI.

You should be fairly set then, but keep in mind that your framerate is also tied to your network performance. When you start seeing tons of other players, you are going to lag, no matter what, and that lag will translate into lower framerates. There is nothing you can do about that other than suck it up and drive on.

What about a single 260? I ask because I am not running SLI now, it actually seems to be a bit better on a single 8800GTS.

Which tells me a GPU upgrade isnt vital, but if I can do it cheaply, and sell my 8800s, then I may as well go for it as well as the E8500...

 

[Ranari]

You also need to take into consideration that you're using Windows Vista 32bit, which can only address a limited amount of memory. Video cards, too, require memory addressing, and that eats into the total system memory available to run Windows.

Out of ~3.5gb that Vista 32bit can address, you have ~1.2gb allocated to just your video cards, leaving you with 2.3gb left. Of that remaining memory, Vista is probably using, what, 700-900mb or so? I'd say that would have a huge effect on your WoW performance, which is a game that is heavily dependent on CPU/Memory over anything. Also, other things to consider:

-Addons in WoW, depending on the addon, can have a huge effect on your performance. Some are poorly coded and are total memory hogs. Tread carefully.
-As stated above, WoW doesn't utilize SLI.
-You can keep everything set to max (except shadows) and gain a huge improvement in your FPS by turning textures down to minimum. WoW's textures are actually pretty good even at minimum, so it's not a total visual abomination like some other games. Before I upgraded to 4gb, I had to set my textures to minimum just so WoW would be playable. LK uses a lot of memory.

If you set your shadows and textures to minimum, and your fps problem goes away, then it's a sure sign that you were running out of memory.

Edit - I also have Vista32bit and run on a similar system as yours, but my WoW runs smooth as butter. Even if you disable the second video card, but still have it inside, Windows is still going to allocate the full 640mb to it. I guaranteeing you that your WoW performance issues are directly linked to your total available memory, which isn't that much despite having 4gb.

 

[HaMMerHeD]

What about a single 260? I ask because I am not running SLI now, it actually seems to be a bit better on a single 8800GTS.

Which tells me a GPU upgrade isnt vital, but if I can do it cheaply, and sell my 8800s, then I may as well go for it as well as the E8500...

GTX 260 will be faster as well. It has more memory, a wider memory bus, and the same number of shaders as 8800 GTS SLI, but doesn't require SLI scaling to use.

 

[phoderpants]

You obviously haven't tried this.

 

[MX-5 Dave]

Although I have always kinda wanted one of those, (only kinda) I seriously doubt that it would do anything to solve the problem.

ALTHOUGH, with offloading the network processing, the CPU would have a little more left for the game. But I dont think enough to matter.

 

[Dallows]

A lot of people say the recent releases "added a lot of graphical enhancements."

I stick more the "added a bunch of shit and didn't bother to code it correctly."

 

[MX-5 Dave]

Actually reading that link, which has a link to the [H] testing, which evidently showed big time results in WoW, maybe its worth a look. Depends how much these are. I am headed to Frys later today to return some laptop memory anyway (my laptop just didnt like it. Weird freezes, long boots...)

 

[Dallows]

Actually reading that link, which has a link to the [H] testing, which evidently showed big time results in WoW, maybe its worth a look. Depends how much these are. I am headed to Frys later today to return some laptop memory anyway (my laptop just didnt like it. Weird freezes, long boots...)

I really wouldn't waste $200 on that thing. Unless you have money to burn or something.

 

[KayossZero]

WoW is probably 90% or more capped by your CPU (unless you're using a Geforce4/2MX/Radeon 7500) this is real easy to prove to anyone with an analytical nature, simply run the game on old hardware and turn on 4/6 AA, if the FPS is similar during stressful moments then you know, even going from 640x480 to 1024x768 yielded almost identical FPS on my old rig.

I don't what these people are talking about saying that the game is capped at 60 FPS, because even my Radeon 9800 Pro / Geforce 7800GS and a AthlonXP 3200 Barton could do more than 60 FPS with nothing much on the screen, check and see if V-Sync is on if it is, that's why.

Basically to improve FPS you need a good CPU. To improve upon stuttering you'll receive when going into new zones with high view distance enabled etc. and loading new zones like a BG you need #1 Ram, but #2 a properly defragged hard drive with the WoW data preferable set to the outer tracks of the HD to further improve speeds.

 

[MX-5 Dave]

WoW is probably 90% or more capped by your CPU (unless you're using a Geforce4/2MX/Radeon 7500) this is real easy to prove to anyone with an analytical nature, simply run the game on old hardware and turn on 4/6 AA, if the FPS is similar during stressful moments then you know, even going from 640x480 to 1024x768 yielded almost identical FPS on my old rig.

I don't what these people are talking about saying that the game is capped at 60 FPS, because even my Radeon 9800 Pro / Geforce 7800GS and a AthlonXP 3200 Barton could do more than 60 FPS with nothing much on the screen, check and see if V-Sync is on if it is, that's why.

The people saying its capped at 60fps, 100% chance they are on an LCD and have verticle sync enabled. Turn that off (its on by default) and frame rates soar. In unpopulated areas I see over 200fps.

 

[gregnash]

At that resolution are you running it with all the eye candy on? You also may have a GPU driver issue that is causing you some problems. I would try completely uninstalling your drivers and getting the lastest WHQL release from your card manufacturer to see if that helps. Also, make sure to leave SLI off and V-Sync off. Try pulling the game up and then ALT+TAB out and look at your system performance, see if you can pull it down to RAM, CPU or GPU. Could also be your system having a hard time with what it is processing due to a failing PSU? Long shot but a thought.

 

[MX-5 Dave]

Hmmm.. PSU


Let me ask you this.

SO a couple months ago, my system got real unstable. Went from holding 3.4ghz rock solid stable, video cards OCd well, to cant OC even 1mhz on the Proc, and random crashes.

I thought it was a glitchy mobo, or a processor problem. Although since at stock speeds it seems pretty solid, I didnt bother replacing anything.

Does all this point to PSU issues? How can I test it?

 

[InvisiBill]

You also need to take into consideration that you're using Windows Vista 32bit, which can only address a limited amount of memory. Video cards, too, require memory addressing, and that eats into the total system memory available to run Windows.

Out of ~3.5gb that Vista 32bit can address, you have ~1.2gb allocated to just your video cards, leaving you with 2.3gb left. Of that remaining memory, Vista is probably using, what, 700-900mb or so? I'd say that would have a huge effect on your WoW performance, which is a game that is heavily dependent on CPU/Memory over anything.

Address memory is not directly correlated to the amount of video memory on the card. My 9800GT 512MB uses 560MB of address space, while my GTX285 1GB uses about 304MB. Yes, modern video cards with more memory will generally use up more address space, but it's not directly equal to the size of the video RAM. It's not limited to high end systems with monster video cards either.

Even systems with as little as 2GB can be prevented from having all their memory usable under 32-bit Windows because of chipsets that aggressively reserve memory regions for devices. Our shared family computer, which we purchased only a few months ago from a major OEM, reports that only 1.97GB of the 2GB installed is available:

The physical address range from 7E700000 to FFFFFFFF is reserved by the PCI bus and devices, which leaves a theoretical maximum of 7E700000 bytes (1.976GB) of physical address space, but even some of that is reserved for device memory, which explains why Windows reports 1.97GB.

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspx

Am I correct in assuming that a single 280GTX is a faster option than my 2 8800GTS 640s?

As others have said, a single GTX280 should be faster than SLI 8800GTS 640s. Especially in this case, since WoW doesn't seem to be taking advantage of the SLI much or at all. A GTX280 is definitely much faster than a single 8800GTS 640. I've read conflicting reports on whether WoW uses SLI or not, though when I tested it quite a while ago, it didn't help at all.

If you're looking at a high-end video card, the GTX275 has almost the same numbers as the 280, but is about 25% cheaper.

 

[MX-5 Dave]

How does the 260 stack up? Looking at my budget I may be able to swing the E8500 and the 260 if thats still a worthy upgrade over a single 8800GTS.

 

[HaMMerHeD]

How does the 260 stack up? Looking at my budget I may be able to swing the E8500 and the 260 if thats still a worthy upgrade over a single 8800GTS.

GTX 260 will be faster as well. It has more memory, a wider memory bus, and the same number of shaders as 8800 GTS SLI, but doesn't require SLI scaling to use.

Correction: I always think about the first GTX 260 which had 192 shaders. But the newer, and currently available GTX 260 has 216 shaders, giving it 24 more than a pair of 8800 GTS video cards in SLI (assuming you are talking about the original 96-shader GTS, and not the newer 128 shader GTS that replaced it, with 512MB of video memory.)

Either way, a GTX 260 is a good upgrade over 8800GTS and 2x8800 GTS SLI.

Good lord I wish NVIDIA wouldn't make it so f@&$ing hard.

 

[gregnash]

Hmmm.. PSU


Let me ask you this.

SO a couple months ago, my system got real unstable. Went from holding 3.4ghz rock solid stable, video cards OCd well, to cant OC even 1mhz on the Proc, and random crashes.

I thought it was a glitchy mobo, or a processor problem. Although since at stock speeds it seems pretty solid, I didnt bother replacing anything.

Does all this point to PSU issues? How can I test it?

Yeah sounds like your PSU may be having power issues. Do you happen to have a tester that can tell you what your rails are at? Also, was there a sudden drop in your voltage? I am assuming so since you said that you had everything overclocked one day to suddenly not being able to OC at all. I am thinking that you are having major PSU issues and that is the reason for the horrible frame rates. Seems like your system is having a hard time pulling enough power.

 

[MX-5 Dave]

If that is the case, would entirely removing my second 8800GTS possibly help the situation? It isnt doing anything right now since I am not running 2 monitors and SLI is turned off.

 

[HaMMerHeD]

If that is the case, would entirely removing my second 8800GTS possibly help the situation? It isnt doing anything right now since I am not running 2 monitors and SLI is turned off.

It probably wouldn't hurt to take it out as a troubleshooting step.