Authors CurseForge

Quote from break19 »

Video cards process the graphics. Features aside, a video card with more onboard RAM, and a faster GPU will most certainly increase your FPS lot more than upgrading your CPU will, for the same amount of money spent.

I know it seems logical that low FPS = slow video card, but the fact is that games do a TON of processing on the CPU that affects the rendering speed.

I won't argue that a video card upgrade is less hassle (although not really much cheaper these days, especially if you don't change the motherboard or RAM along with the CPU), but make no mistake: WoW definitely hits a CPU performance cap much earlier than it does a GPU cap. In other words, if you're experiencing low FPS in WoW and:
- your system is less than 2 years old
- you're running any kind of decent PCIe video card already
- you're using a dual-core system

Then it's very, very likely that you're CPU bound and will see much less (if any) benefit from a video card upgrade.

There are no features past the nVidia 6xxx series that WoW takes any special advantage of, so other than raw fill-rate you're not going to see any benefit from upgrading - especially if you're CPU-bound.

There's a thread on EJ here: http://elitistjerks.com/f33/t9461-wow_performance_cpu_gpu_bound/

Also, as a personal testimonial:

I have a dual-core 2.2GHz AMD system with 2GB RAM. My video cards are two nVidia 7800GTX 256MB PCIe in SLI. I run at 1920x1200 (my LCD monitor's native resolution) and get anywhere from 7 FPS (raid combat) to 60 FPS (monitor refresh rate; when looking at the sky). There is no significant FPS difference for me between minimum and maximum graphics settings (even lowering resolution makes no difference) because my WoW performance is almost entirely limited by my CPUs rather than my video cards.

Laptop graphic cards are a bit different compared to Desktop cards....

Also, as a personal testimonial:

I have a dual-core 2.2GHz AMD system with 2GB RAM. My video cards are two nVidia 7800GTX 256MB PCIe in SLI. I run at 1920x1200 (my LCD monitor's native resolution) and get anywhere from 7 FPS (raid combat) to 60 FPS (monitor refresh rate; when looking at the sky). There is no significant FPS difference for me between minimum and maximum graphics settings (even lowering resolution makes no difference) because my WoW performance is almost entirely limited by my CPUs rather than my video cards.

On my current System (Q6600,GF8800GTS(640MB), 4GB DDR2) its the same for me lowering graphic settings to zero has hardly any performance impact in lower fps situations (Hyjal Trash for example).
Ofc your graphic cards will be a limiting factor if its a 50? card with 1GB memory that you just bought because it had a cool name and alot memory. But every more serious card is totally bored with WoW.
The bottleneck is mainly the CPU for me, because i got 1,5gb memory free when WoW is running.
Best situation to notice that is when Auctioneer is doing its calculations after a AH scan using loads of CPU dropping my fps to ~8 in IF where i normally got 80+

Here are my specs:
AMD 64 3400 + (2.4GHz) - 1GB ram (I do max that out at times, but that's with music, with wow, with browser( about 20 tabs lol) and notepad++) - ATI 1650Pro (or X800GTO, don't know which to pick, so I change everynow and then).

So I have an older pc, bad ram, crappy vid card. I play on 1280*1024 all the time, and graphic settings had little or no impact, so I play on fairly high. In raids I drop to 2FPS though, but meh. One of these days ;) Other then that, my ping is my main issue (European connecting to US realms does that to you)

Quote from phyber »

Still runs like shit too. You'd get more bang for your buck if instead of buying that new graphics card, you went and bought a bat and wrapped it around the head of the guy responsible for the graphics engine in WoW.
My hardware has been upgraded considerably since starting to play WoW all those years ago. I went to Molten Core the other day with 20 people, I still only got 15-20FPS.
I don't think Molten Core has received anything new and fancy, so surely with a much better CPU and GPU than I had 3 years ago, I should have seen a big improvement going there with half the people.

I think it actually ran at great speeds for a short while after TBC came out, then they added that "feature" where you could no longer target mobs behind walls.

I just have to avoid all gas clouds.

My duo partner locks up whenever we go near a manaforge. I think it's the sky causing it. We had a great time trying to finish Netherstorm this week...

my specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66 ghz
Geforce 8700
2GB RAM
80GB 7200 RPM hard drive

Having a Notebook already explains quite alot :P

CPU is your Bottleneck here and the slow harddrive and the slow memory.
And is it really a Core 2 Duo (T5/6/7/8/8XXX) or a Intel Core Duo (T26XX). The Core Duo is compared to the Core 2 Duo quite slow, which perfectly explains constant low FPS.

The graphics card SHOULD have no problem at all with WoW as its already a "highend" notebook chip.


But i would check your Energy Settings and set all to high performance or 100% when playing WoW with the power plug connected. Try defragmenting your Harddrive aswell(takes some minutes-hours depending on the fragmentation) and if you are using Vista play in Fullscreen NOT Windowed/Maximized(important if you are using Aero).
And i would check the PC for Spyware/Malware that might use CPU power aswell (www.spybot.info www.lavasoft.com or even the Windows Defender) and a Virus check cant hurt aswell especially if you are using one of those "I CAN PROGRAM ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE(without decent detection updates and support but i needz money)!!!!" (good ones are Kaspersky, AntiVir, GData AntiVirus, F-Secure and some others)

Quote from Funkydude »

The main reason for low fps on a laptop is background software. For example skype (during a call, also remember to never host) will kill your fps. ;p

I killed everything but my av and firewall from loading, even they are minimal usage (eset).

Usual background tasks consist of eset and X-Chat (most minimal irc client I could find)

You made me remember to go get my NOD32 again :P

Quote from Funkydude »

The main reason for low fps on a laptop is background software. For example skype (during a call, also remember to never host) will kill your fps. ;p

I killed everything but my av and firewall from loading, even they are minimal usage (eset).

Usual background tasks consist of eset and X-Chat (most minimal irc client I could find)

eset.. nice idea.

instead of x-chat i'm using miranda.. cause icq, msn, whatever also miranda... dunno how much it used but .. yeah ~30-100 fps in wow is enough i think.

Astra's looking good, but it's suffering from the classic Trillian problem... now that we can IM on each network, LET'S ADD FEATURES MORE MORE MORE!

If you're just after SIMPLE IM like me, and use IRC already, I highly recommend Bitlbee. I switched over from Trill because I didn't want to load all that other bullshit, all I want to do is send and receive BASIC TEXT.

I love Trillian. It is the only program I know that has docking and auto-hide. And I tried astra and it was amazing. Still waiting for my account to clear so I can use it.

Anyway

My AMD Athalon 64 4000+ and ATI Radeon 850 GT run WoW windowed at a constant 50+ fps (including raids). It only drops when I let Auctioneer do its thing.

My suggestion is to take a look at background processes. i know in my Windows it shipped with about 50+ running processes and after a full install of all the software I needed it jumped to about 70. After I re-examined what I needed, made an nLite cd of windows and stripped all unnessecary services I got it to around 31 with only 2 programs on startup and about 12 services. Cut down on total CPU usage by ~40%

Trillian's a beautiful program, but it suffers feature creep even more than the "official" IM progs do anymore. I'd still use it if they had a minimal version that only did say, text exchange and buddy icons. Fuck emoticons, the heavy skinning engine, profiles (never work), voice, video, images, file transfers (nice idea but I've yet to see it ever work without heavy router config, and UPnP has been around how many years now?)...

All I need is to send text! Why do you need to complicate that?

Is it obvious that I grew up on IRC?

First two years in the net I was always in IRC, too, tekkub ... ;)

Quote from Funkydude »

I'm still waiting for Trillian Astra for msn/calls and such, hoping it doesn't suck. :)

About ~4 months ago I saw many screenshots of Astra and said to me, "TEST IT WHEN ITS OUT" but yeah... still not out.