9800 GS & WoW

I just installed WoW WotLK on my new Asus G71G-Q1 and set my 9800gs to the highest settings possible with out overclocking anything. Anisotropic filtering is set at 16x and Antialising is set at 16xQ. The rest of the settings are also high. I used the high settings macro inside the game to maximize quality. My problem is that I'm not getting a very good FPS most of the time, with some areas being slightly choppy. I know that 9800gs does not hold the king crown within all the new cards out, but it's still a high end card. I've seen people saying they are able to crank up 60+ fps in WoW with that card on all settings at high. My resolution is set at 1920 by 1200. I'm also playing on AC power with power settings set on standard mode. Please offer me some kind of assistance, as it seems to me that my graphics are underachieving. Thanks.

 

Is the default max settings putting AA at 16x? If not then dont jack it up more than needed, thats a major power killer and at such high resolutions AA isnt needed as bad though if you can handle it 2x or more does nicen up the edges on things.

Also DOX drivers are win, running DOX 182.05 and it put my 3dmarks up 200 to 500 more depending. DOOM3 in 1280x1024 ULTRA with 16xAA went from 27 fps to 88 though that was a leap my 1024x768 with 8xAA went from 58 to 91 fps.

Installing the dox drivers takes a certain set of steps to work and be effective. Install driver sweeper and boot into safe mode do a sweep on display drivers (nvidia) then reboot. After rebooting install the dox drivers (set performance or balanced) and then reboot again. GPU will run a few degree's hotter but the peformance is outstanding most of the time. One trouble spot i hit is crysis high was better but medium was slightly worse.

 

The 9800GS is good, but not 1920x1200, 16xAA&AF good.

 

You are running 1920x1200, highest resolution possible, at all high settings, etc. You already know your card isn't the best, so tone it down.

 

No the default max setting I think was at 4x, I just wanted to check it out on max that's why I set it at 16x. I'm currently running the default Nvidia mobile driver of their site, I believe 179.48. Can you please post a link of the driver you think would suit me best? I'm pretty familiar with installing new driver the correct way, but want to be sure I'm using the correct driver. Out of curiousity when you say it runs a little hotter with DOX, how much hotter would that be? I been seeing 71-72 degrees on an average while playing at those settings. Another things is I installed Nvidia System Tools because eventually I want to do the GTS mod but first wanted to see what the card can handle without the mod. What speeds do you recommend me trying without the mod in place? Thank you for your help.

 

Im avoiding the GTS bios due to potential ram killing lol, I have to update my sig. I got my instructions and downloads from the GTS Bios Thread though.

I quite literally mean 5 degree's hotter at the most. I used to run 79 Max now i see like 84.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=357807

 

Thanks for your answers Chango99 and Madmook but that still does not answer my question. I want to run the game at best possible settings at that resolution. What do you suggest I set AA & AF to and what about the rest of the settings like AA Transparency and Texture Filtering?

 

Jesus... "My dog-sled team can't pull my RV with my family in it, what's wrong?"

I have the same card as you, and while it is good, it can't handle massive overkill like that. For WoW, 4xAA and 8xAF should be good enough. I run 2xAA in most games and it looks fine.

 

Ouch, in that case I don't think I'd want to screw anything up myself lol. Thanks for the link tho, I will look into in regardless. First step is to take DOX for a spin.

 

Aiigt 4xAA and 8xAF it is then lol, thanks.

 

hmmm isn't there a 182.20 already? ..Kinda avoided the 182.05 because of the GTS issue ...since I have a GTS...

 

I'm kind of wondering what would you need 16x AA for with that kind of resolution. Do you actually see the difference between 16x and, say, 4x?

 

Try turning down shadows. Shadows are IMO a useless piece of eyecandy(as I rarely notice them) and in WoW, they're really FPS killers compared to anything else.

 

What processor are you using? WoW can be very processor intense with a lot of people/mobs around and max graphics/resolution and shadows.

 

I have Q9000 in my laptop. I'll try tuning down shadows and see if it helps. I already lowered AA and Anisotropic filtering to 4x but still getting about 20 FPS max in cities which doesn't sound right. Next I'm going to change the driver to 185.68 by Dox.

 

at 1920x1200 i would run AA & AF at 2x or 4x. anything more, is kinda wasted.

as the resolution goes higher, then the need for AA/AF goes lower. at least, that is from my experience.

also, turn shadows down.

it will still look great, and give good FPS.

 

WoW has gotten progressively more demanding and taxing on systems. Original release could be maxed out on anything with dedicated GPU. With the release of WotLK (and much higher resolution monitors) there are less and less systems that can "max" this game out. Blizzard has added more graphical features and improvements (more textures and shadows) for people who have higher end gaming systems, so even if you ran it at max settings in original and BC, that won't be the case in WotLK.

 

Make sure you didn't force anything in the drivers, only mess with the settings in the game itself.

As everyone else has said, decrease AA to 2x or 4x and AF to something like 8x. Both of these settings have diminishing returns. From 0x to 2x is a huge improvement in jagged edges/sharpness, from 2x to 4x is also a fairly large jump, but from 4x to 8x, you don't see even as much improvement as you see from 2x to 4x, and from 8x to 16x, it is very difficult to see a difference. In the case of AA, every time you increase the setting, you at least DOUBLE the amount of work your GPU has to do to render the scene. So be careful with AA, and until 2012, I don't recommend EVER going above 8x AA, especially because it doesn't noticeably any better.

You are playing at a very high resolution, so the newest version of the WoW engine will be fairly taxing. The best way to reclaim performance is to turn down shadows a notch and decrease draw distance a tiny bit.

 

Sad when a game that has such horrible-looking graphics (the glowy neon hello-kitty armor FTL!) cannot be played well on such a capable GPU.

 

Sometimes it's not so much the hardware as it is the bandwidth. I'll admit ahead of time that "bandwidth" is probably the wrong word, but Dalaran occasionally causes even my 6 month old desktop (4870) to slow down a bit.

I think in some cases it's more a matter of what other crap is going on around you rather than just rendering the environment. When you're in a populated city or an area full of people, there's a lot more for the engine to handle, so it bogs down easily. When you're flying casually through Howling Fjord, stopping occasionally to pick a flower, there's less the video card and engine have to handle all at once.

They did add some graphical improvements in 3.0/3.1, but I think the game's engine needs an overhaul from the ground up.

 

9800M GS does a lot of things great, but it's not a card for running 16xAA

 

he is running at 1920x1200, with maxed everything. the card is capable, but dont expect miracles. especially at such a high resolution

its not that the card isnt capable. the high resolution + the amount of textures in the game etc. the card just cannot handle it. be realistic with the settings, and you will have decent FPS, just like in any other game.

word.

 

Turn down AA just because wow is old dosent mean you can do obserd settings and expect it to fly. On my 8800gt in my desktop i could do maxxed out 1920 x 1200 with x8 but only got around 30fps - 60fps.

 

I max WoW now at 1920x1200 on an 8600mGT and I get 35-60fps depending on where I am in the world....of warcraft.

As for your settings I set my nvidia control panel to 'application controlled' and it works just fine. Id say try that.

 

Use 2x AA and no AF.

Reduce shadows.

That's it.

 

are you running 16xAA and 16xAF?

 

My settings in nvidia control panel are all set to application controlled, so what ever the vanilla settings in WoW stand for when all the way to the right is what I have.

 

Kill AA and your experience will be sublime.

 

right.

he set that setting in wow to MAX. then went higher then that setting with 16xAA and 16xAF... much too much for that card. as stated previously, he should lower the settings and he will see better FPS.


/thread

 

I'd always max out every other setting first before applying any AA, and you really only need 2x at 1920 x 1200. As for playing games at that resolution, I played FEAR 2 at max settings with 2x AA on my 1080p set, as well as Titan Quest (which is an older game though) as well as some other titles. However for newer games, you'll need to tone down some settings, especially the AA most importantly.

 

Thanks for the input. I didn't have time to mess with yet other then install DOX driver but should be on it later in the day. I'll keep posted.

 

Ok so after some testing and tweaking I'm able to get on an average 30 FPS on 1920 by 1200 with all settings set on highest possible with AA and AF set to 4x. I'm currently looking into doing a bios flash to GTS speeds but wanted to figure out how high I can go with driver side OC first.

I'm running in to some issues, for one ATITool is failing to install correctly due to some OS driver incompatibility error that's popping up. And for two Rivatuner v2.24 is calculating completely wrong speeds of my 9800GS. Perhaps it's not fully compatable with DOX Forceware 185.68?

 

its wow video settings you need to get it right, not your gpu .
9800gs is fine for hd res and highest video quality.
turn off vertical sync and ui scale.
wintergrasp is the most gpu demanding area.

 

Yea I haven't got that high in lvl yet, just got back from taking 8 months off.. damn warcrack. But I did notice a huge boost in FPS from taking shadows from setting 5 back to setting 2. I'll keep in mind vertical sync and ui scale if I need more FPS thanks.

 

jump down to 1440x900 you will have pretty good frames then

 

i thought of that option too but i really like it at high res..

 

30 fps with settings on high at 1920x1200 and aa, af set to highest, thats about normal for a 9800gs i presume..
I knew people that played WoW with a single core cpu and sli 7900gs and played everything up on 1920x1200 without aa and af..got around 20fps