Disappointed in WOW performance on ATI HD 4670 (studio xps 16)

I am the proud new owner of a (refurbished but new to me) XPS Studio 16 with the following specs:
Core 2 Duo 7530 @ 2.00 GHz
ATI HD 4670 w/ 1GB
4 GB of Ram
1920x1080 RGBLED screen
500 GB 7200 rpm hdd

In normal wow play and 10 man raids, I can keep the settings pretty high! I raided 10 mans all weekend and it was like a whole different game
I get 30-40 fps with these settings:
http://i37.tinypic.com/28slegm.jpg

25 man raids, on the other hand, are disappointing. I raided TOC 25 last week which can be hard on the video card - my old computer choked on Anub p3 - and I found myself constantly turning the settings down to obtain a playable FPS. I ended up with everything on low except particle density which I kept halfway turned up. The FPS still wasn't too great, around 10-20. With EVERYTHING on low. I am a tank so I erred on the side of caution with my settings - no one enjoys it when I disconnect, least of all me.

I'm pretty disappointed. I thought I could keep at least a few things on medium.... I have a new computer and I had to put everything on low

1) Is this the best I can expect considering I like to play with it at 1920x1080?

2) Is Vista hurting my performance? I would throw XP back on but I think I'm going to wait for Dell to ship my free 7 upgrade.

3) Anyone else have experience playing WOW on this or similar video cards?

4) I know there is stuff I can do to improve performance, I literally just got it and threw WOW on it so I could start raiding on it right away. I haven't done any tweaking or fixing so please direct me to guides to improve my performance if there are such things

This is my first new computer in like 4 years, and I find myself feeling like a huge noob. I know how to keep a computer clean, I decrapified my computer and such, but I don't know the first thing about improving gaming performance. I just copied over my WOW folder and expected it to play like a dream. Any help for this noob would be very much appreciated! Recommended settings would be great too.....

 

First of all, particle density is one of the most critical settings...its a lot of math for not so huge a visual payoff...keep it low, also try a lower res and just put AA on...it will help.

-latest drivers?
-tried OCing?

 

Hmm. I did upgrade the drivers including the video card driver, but I did it after I had raided in TOC. The computer came shortly before my raid, so I just threw wow on it and hopped online - I wanted to raid immediately and didn't have the time to mess with anything before I got in.

Maybe I will see better performance when I raid this week. I upgraded to the latest drivers on the ATI website, the Catalyst 9.10 drivers... will I get the best performance out of these or should I try some modded drivers?

I don't have the first idea how to overclock. Could you link me some guides? I am no idiot when it comes to computers, but I have never done this before so I would like to learn the basics.

Edit: The reason why I was determined to keep particle density up is because I am told that is one of the most vital settings to have turned up to see things on the ground (like poison, fire... anything I need to be kiting a boss out of ) Correct me if I'm wrong. I was having a MUCH easier time seeing s**t on the ground this week (that second boss in H AN - he throws poison on the ground! I never saw that before!) and I thought particle density was what affected that.

 

If you were using STOCK drivers in that raid, the ones the notebook came with, updating will make ahuge difference.

 

if you turn down settings but fps has not improved, it means your cpu is bottlenecking.

 

Your CPU is not enough for the 25 men raid. The more the players and the NPCs, the more CPU-intensive the game is becoming. Try to limit the background processes running while you play, or try to overclock the CPU if you can. Another thing to try is to uncheck the Mouse lag option because that is using CPU power.

 

I was disappointed in WOW..............period !

 

Wow is a very CPU dependant game, bearing in mind most 5 series cards can run it...

you cpu simply doesnt have enuf grunt to process all the info and get a decent fps for 25 mans

hell i have a Qx9300 (Quad 2,5ghz) and i only get 30 odd frames on anub maxed out

 

Oh wow - I didn't think the CPU would bottleneck anything... I always thought that things like video card and ram would determine gaming performance to a much larger extent. I never worried about the CPU and actually considered upgrades totally unneeded and money I could save.

I guess I should have done more research on how wow would perform before I purchased a computer. *sigh* All I could do was ask around... and I was told / thought that cpu wouldn't affect gaming performance at all. Well, now I know, and maybe I can upgrade the processor when I get some more spare cash (lol).

If it's a CPU issue, maybe I really should downgrade back to XP for the time being until Dell sends me my copy of 7. Vista seems to be a hog and maybe XP is easier on the CPU. IDK, this is my first real experience with Vista, I have always used XP

Pman thanks for mentioning how it runs on your computer. I have no experience with wow on anything other than my old m1210 so very little to compare it to.

Maybe that's why the m1210 used to choke - poor thing had only a 1.66 ghz Core Duo and actually handled most of wow just fine (nVidia Geforce Go 7400) but seriously had trouble in raids.

Hmmm. Well, on the plus side, maybe I can turn some video settings back up since I know the fps is going to be somewhat low on certain fights like Anub p3 no matter what I do

 

vista is mostly a hog in hard disk read write speed as far as my experiences have shown.

probably not worth it to switch to xp just to switch to 7 in a few days. i don't think you will see any performance improvement in game.

 

try turning off v-sync. works wonders for FPS

 

agreed. application performance is very similar, 7 may a small lead, but i think they are like within 1% of each other.
your cpu is fine for gaming, but the slow down in areas with lots of action is inevitable, as previous poster said, a qx9300 could barely handle it.

 

CPU is probably the secondary most important variable in performance. I say second because once you buy one that'll fit most things it'll last a long time.

While video cards could be great this year but could be outperformed the next.

 

I am going to test it tonight and turn the settings up bit by bit. I want to see what it can do (outside of the 25 man raids of course, where I will turn down)...

If anyone has this computer and plays wow, I would be curious to hear what settings you play with. I don't know much about what each setting actually does & how it affects performance other than what the tooltips tell me.

 

well i simply cant believe. i ran wow on my comp 5 years ago on single core and ati 9600pro on medium in 40man raids. is wow so poorly optimized or what?
it doesnt make sense that video card which can take almost all games med/high/max cant take game like wow

 

You need a better CPU, invest in that and you would see a decent boost.


They are not uber expensive. Try looking on eBay

 

I haven't done any raiding in wow yet, but everything is on high with shadows low. 40-60 fps. You should undervolt the cpu and get a notebook cooler and see if there is any difference. Also upgrade the gpu driver to the latest on amd.com, you have to use ati mobility modder to mod the driver.

 

Raiding is totally diffferent and he already has his drivers updated and the cooler won't make it run faster because it's not downclocking

 

I don't get how undervolting will make his CPU any faster. What he wants is overclocking (or even better a whole new CPU).

 

WOW isn't that same game it was before, a lot of people just relate to 5 year old game, there been updates to it, i can no longer run it fine on my old computer P4 3.0ghz and nvidia 6800, that used to run great even in MC/BWL even on 40mans. Still i don't consider it a stressful game, but its not the same old game as it was upon release. Also most relate the game to the usual 5man activities where the game is so light compared to 25man raids.

I seen WoW take my i7/gtx285 1920x1200 to 20fps in 25man raids, main reason i went for lower resolution in the laptop. Many people think WoW is just and old game but take 25 people + pets moving/interacting + environment etc. Even with my current laptop at 1366x768 i go down to 30s in anub, this with a T9600/gtx260, i doubt i would be able to raid comfortable at 1900x1080 with my current setup, or at least in some fights.

Try updating drivers, lowering screen res, lowering settings specially shadows, run less mods (some use a lot of cpu) as well as OCing. Monitor your temps, overheating might be also slowing you down.

 

When you go down in resolution it stresses your CPU even more higher resolution could be better ... ( no way to test )

 

Well I can tell you what you can not do.

- Overclock.


You could try to use some tweaking tool, or close background programmes though.

 

Considering you're running at 1080p with max effects.......having 25 people on there at once battling it out is going to bog things down some probably. Even my friend's desktop 9600GT gets bogged down during battlegrounds play, and his computer is running on a 720p resolution max HDTV. There is already a butt load of stuff being rendered at once. Making the ROPs in your Radeon 4670 z-buffer that scene into a 1920 x 1080 image 40 or more times a second for smooth gameplay isn't exactly pie. The more stuff on screen at once, the more stuff the ROPs must translate or cut out to the 2D frame created to be put on your monitor. But it might not be that, the level of polygons, textures, particles, etc might just be too much for the GPU to handle at decent framerate before z-buffering even becomes an issue, though usually, the ROPs are among the initial graphical bottlenecks.

 

Plain and simple Resolution Setting. If you wanna play at such a high res you need a higher end card.

I think the problem isn't even in the specs of the laptop, instead more with the internet connection you have. Up the speed of the connection to handle the data of raids, theres way more data that needs to be processed in 25 man raids than 5-10 mans, and so the connection is the bottleneck.

 

Agree with Sewje setting are the key even my sons 1720 with a 8600GT 256 can play wow with meduim setting, and its stable.

 

Well, i think you should be able to play WoW at 1920x1080 at mediumish details one you get the latest ATI drivers and turn the shadow quality down.

My crappy notebook (see specs in signature) runs WoW stable at 1920x1200 at 30+ fps in Azeroth.
In Outlands or Northrend i gotta change the resolution to 1400x900 or lower.

Looks like my notebook will struggle once the Catalysm expansion pack gets released thanks to the new water effects and higher resolution textures in Azeroth part of the game.

 

On a 3670 i ran it everything maxed except for shadows and got an awesome framerate even in the most populated areas. I never raided but i got anywhere from 40+ but mainly got above 60

 

Yeah, this is the problem. Azeroth, as is, can still run decent on old hardware. TBC upped the ante a bit, but still could get by. WotlK and the overhauled engine and graphics really brought a lot of systems to their knees, especially at higher resolutions.

What resolution panel did you have with your notebook? Does that include Dalaran? Raiding is the system killer usually, not 5 man instances and outdoor farming/etc...

On a Studio 17 @ 1920x1200 on a RGBLED panel with a 3650 (mildly underclocked 3670) and T9900 shadows, particle to zero, Raiding and many areas in the WotlK Xpac were near unplayable. This was with a clean install, newest mod drivers and 4GB of ram. The frame rates were all over the map with spikes into the 40's then back into the 20's and then teens then back up.

From personal experience across many systems, I think, IMHO that Nvidia hardware provides a much better, smoother WoW play experience than ATI hardware on laptops.

In situations like both above, really dropping the resolution helps, especially with a better CPU since it takes the burden off the GPU and places it moreso on the CPU and the fact WoW is very CPU dependent.

I know with the revamped old world content on cataclysm, yowza....

 

a better cpu doesn't take the burden of a gpu, that not how things work.
cpu tells the gpu what to render, if the cpu issues 60 frames a second to the gpu and the gpu could do all of them, then you got the sweet sweet 60fps. if you have a gtx 280 which could render 100 frames in one second, but your cpu only tells it to render 20, then 20 it is.

 

Personally, I'm not really sure what it is about WoW that makes computers cry so much. It doesn't really look all that fantastic, but any Northrend-and-up location puts a significant amount of strain on my GPU.

 

*Sigh*

It does in the sense the load is lighter on the GPU and better frame rates at lower resolutions (which was the point I was trying to make). That is why even testing back and forth between decent CPUs of various speeds and architectures (C2D, i7), at ultra high resolutions (1920x1080 and higher), the fps will flatline across many different CPUs because the GPU is the bottleneck. Reduce the resolution and at a certain point, the CPU becomes the potential bottleneck as at that low of a resolution, the GPU will easily render for the most part as fast as the CPU can throw data at it.

First of all, with even a decent mid level C2D (let alone an i7), the GPU is the bottleneck most times even with a 280M.

Second, here is a quote from the WoW tech team:

"World of Warcraft is much more dependent on the CPU. "

This is especially so in Raid/PvP and heavily player congested areas. I've tested/played WoW across many systems and verified that it doesn't utilize SLI. In addition, the faster the CPU the better the handling of multi-player scenarios with heavy traffic (IE Raids, PvP, Dalaran). That is why I was initially amazed at the improved performance on my D900F in raids, cities and PvP and rebuilt my desktop to an i7.

In addition, WoW is , at best, mildly dual core utilized so you will especially enjoy the single or occasional dual core turbo mode/binning of the mobile i7.

But if you're using what is really a mid grade card (4670), you can shift/lessen the burden on the card by lowering your resolution from 1920x1200/1920x1080 to 1440x900 or similar. One reason many benchmark sites lower the screen resolution of game benchmarking to see how strong the CPUs perform and to remove potential GPU bottlenecking.

 

Im just curious how would the spec in my sig do for wow? i'm looking at playing it Maxed and was wondering what kind of performance i'd get.

 

That spec should play WoW nicely, especially at 1680x1050 w/ a P9700. Just turn off shadows and particle to low. With AA/AS, YMMV.

 

damn that's disappointing. I thought the system would be able to handle max. blah.

 

what i'm saying is reducing settings won't make the cpu do more work, which is what you imply by ' shifting burden off gpu'.

 

Yes it will.

At higher resolutions, the GPU is usually the bottleneck regardless of the CPU being used assuming a decent grade C2D or higher. That is why in benchmarking, you will see at higher resolutions the frames per second flatline and stay the same regardless of the CPU increase in power (via faster C2D, architecture upgrade via i7, etc...) in many cases.

At lower resolutions, the CPU becomes the potential bottleneck as the lower resolution diminishes the burden on the GPU and you suddenly see varying increases or decreases in frames per second depending on the CPU being used.

That is why, again, we see benchmark sites will specifically lower the resolution of their gaming benchmarking tests so they can specifically see the potential gains in performance testing various CPUs.

Here is an example:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-core-i7,2443-10.html

Tom's purposely set their resolution to 1024x768 specifically to note the differences in CPU performance, since that is what is being tested (in this case QX9300 vs. 920xm).

And I quote:

"Here again we see Core i7-920XM unfettered by graphics bottlenecks shooting into a commanding lead over the previous flagship. "

Why does he say this? Because the resolution is specifically lowered to such a point that the CPU becomes the bottleneck, not the GPU versus at higher resolutions where the CPU waits on the GPU.

In short, the burden of performance shifts to the CPU from the GPU as the resolution is lowered.

You also see, at that low resolution, performance difference narrow between the two CPUs when 4xAA is enabled. Why? Because you suddenly demand more of the GPU and it introduces a mild GPU bottleneck while testing the CPUs. Increase the resolution and settings more and more and the CPU becomes less and less a factor as the GPU mires down deeper into a wicked bottleneck moat.

Now to what degree and to what constitutes the perfect GPU:CPU performance point? That depends on your game (some are more CPU dependent than others regardless of the resolution), your settings and other factors, but the fact remains.

 

wow is just poorly optimized. it has very undemanding graphics a yet the most powerfull machines have problem with it while at the same time they could max out crysis or aion/AoC if we r talking about mmos and number off ppl on the screen. doesnt not make much sense.

 

by saying shifting, you're implying that the cpu is now doing some of the gpu's work, rendering which it can't. turning down settings lowers the gpu load so the cpu becomes the bottleneck.
i think we are arguing semantics.

 

Actually, I think we are arguing semantics too, since you take shifting to mean the GPUs work being done by the CPU whereas I am using the word as to mean the entire workload, which component (GPU or CPU) is carrying the workload, and which component is being taxed to near max (bottleneck) and how and overall performance as a result thereof.

By lowering resolution and/or settings, you relieve some of the burden from the GPU and the CPU comes more into play. As you keep reducing resolution and/or settings, there is a GPU:CPU performance point where the burden of increased performance shifts to the CPU from the GPU.

Ah well.


And I agree WoW's 5yr old codebase is a Frankenstein at this point.

 

Shadows are what really kill performance. I had everything maxed at 1920x1200 on my dell and the difference between 40-60fps and 1-10 was where my shadow quality was.

 

Thats at 1920 x 1080. Its in my sig. Idk why but thats the performance i got. That was in dalaran running around. I got the rare occasion were the framerate dropped below 20 but it went right back up

 

This is true, but its not black n white, when you lower the res the load will start shifting (not about rendering but complete setup), but doesnt mean the bottleneck is the cpu yet, here a none technical ilustration,



He just needs to lower his resolutions/lower settings, to relief the gpu a little.

 

Which is what I was basically saying and providing links, lol.

You would need to go 1280x1024 and lower to really start entering CPU-is-the-bottleneck territory.

I'm digging the supply/demand'esque graph.

It was just a interpretive error on word usage. I'm sure Tianxta understands.

 

Wow thank you all so much for all the replies. I have to say, all this information sure would have been useful back when I was shopping for a computer. I thought I did months of research, but I now feel totally stupid. I just assumed that a nice expensive computer with a video card that fell into the "performance" category would perform at least decently even in 25 man raids.

My resolution -- yes, I lowered it, but I really really like 1650x1080 and would rather not go lower. I use a viewport mod to letterbox the rendered area within even further, but IDK if this improves performance at all, I do it for aesthetic reasons.

25 man raids -- still a huge problem.

I turn all my settings down for raids, but when we went to 25 TOC last night I decided to notch one or two of them one notch up just to see if I noticed a performance hit. I sure did. I must have turned the wrong ones up because my FPS dropped to 15ish on Valkyries, and I soon disconnected, wiping the raid.

To say I was frustrated that my computer's inability to handle the raid caused a wipe on the ***ing Valkyries would be.... an understatement. I was exceptionally irritated that we wiped to something as stupid as a tank whose graphics failed hard (me).

Needless to say I am not turning a single thing up from now on. I'm still pissed off at myself about it.

future proofing - I am not feeling great about this computer's ability to handle raiding in future content patches. If I have to turn everything down now, will I even be able to raid when Cataclysm comes out?

Edit: By the way, for everyone posting about performance in Azeroth or 5 mans or even 10 mans -- I know, I know, it's great! I max EVERYTHING! I play with settings at Ultra, no joke. It looks lovely. My problem is with raiding....

 

I tried to warn you about raiding with a high res back when you were looking for a computer, even posted my experiences with my desktop ( Immediate need for 15" cheap computer, WoW), I really tried to steer you out of the high res computer, and pointed to a more capable computer for wow and raids inside your budget, but you had you mind set on high res.

Cataclysm rumored to have upgraded graphics in most places in Azeroth, including new water rendering etc. So expect it to be a little more stressful even in the outside world.

This is hard to predict as the game beta isn't out, but one thing remains constant, each new expansion my old computer struggled more, P4 3.0 / Nvidia 6800
WOW release: Could play everywhere with 1600x1200 CRT monitor, even 40man raids.
Burning Crusade: Had to lower res couldnt raid confortable anymore.
Wrath of the Lich King: Had to lower to 1024x768, until upgraded again to i7 / GTX285 again going up to 1920x1200.
Cataclysm: I expect ill need to upgrade the video card to remain 1920x1200 or lower res/settings while raiding.

 

Unfortunately I was not looking for a computer just for wow and raids, I was looking for a computer with a high resolution for work which was also capable of raiding I had my mind set on high res because (as I posted in the thread) high res was my #1 priority for work. And work was my first priority for the computer - wow is just the most stressful thing I do with it. I was never going to sacrifice something I needed for work to make the computer play games better.

Maybe I should mention that in general I am exceptionally pleased with it, especially the resolution, which is everything I ever wanted. And except for the 9 hours a week when I am raiding, I am just so pleased with it playing wow too. Wow at maxed or close-to-maxed settings is a really beautiful game, a whole different experience.

I am just surprised. I expected to turn a lot of things down for raids, but "a lot of stuff turned down and FPS is just OK" and "everything at the absolute rock bottom lowest and FPS still sucks so much I worry about staying online" are very different.

If it's really a processor bottleneck, then I'll just upgrade the processor later on when I have some spare cash on hand.

 

Let me put it this way. I am disappointed because the raiding performance of these computers is not that different:

• Studio XPS 16 - 1650x1080 resolution powered by a Radeon HD 4670 & a Core 2 Duo @ 2.00 GHz
• XPS m1210 - 1280x800 resolution powered by a Geforce Go 7400 & a Core Duo @ 1.66 GHz, almost 4 years old & suffering from crippling heat problems.

With the upgrade I have changed no video settings, I gained ~60% more resolution, and I get 15-30 fps instead of 5-15. Something about that just seems wrong to me. The ATI 4670 might be a midrange card but it represents an enormous, enormous upgrade over the crappy card in my dying, overheating old 12" computer. And it performs so beautifully in anything BUT raiding.

I guess my experience makes it clear -- the gfx card is a big upgrade; the CPU is not a big upgrade. In fact my new CPU isn't much faster than my old one. Fits right into what I am being told all over this thread about the importance of the CPU.

Sigh... I mean, maybe it's my internet connection. Could be unrelated to the computer at all.

Edit:
This is a lot of posting for one afternoon but I want to take another sec to thank everyone who has posted in this thread about their own experiences playing wow on different sorts of hardware. I am learning.....

And again, I am really really pleased with the XPS 16 in general. It's amazing and I love it. The resolution is the best part but the whole computer is just phenomenal. I think what I am mostly unhappy about is wow and what people are saying about its poor optimization, hahaa.

 

Graphics cards are mostly unimportant when it comes to WoW. My old desktop was a C2D OC'd to 4ghz with an ATI 4870x2 and I would get around 30 fps in dalaran with settings maxed out except shadows. I upgraded to i7 920 OCed to 4ghz keeping the 4870x2 and now I get between 45-60 fps in dalaran at prime time.

 

ive got hp dv6
p7450 2.16ghz
4gb ddr3 1066mhz
hd 4650 gddr3
hdd 7200rpm
and a 1366 x 768 resolution

what can i expect. have better cpu and much lower res then topic starter.. maybe a better performance in raids?

 

I recently reinstalled my desktop (e8400/8800GTS/4GB), replaced Vista with Win7. My first amazement was that I got totally unplayable under 5fps in Dalaran. I tried several different sets of drivers, nothing helped. Game worked playable outside Dalaran however.

Then I found out the cause, about year ago I replaced internal audio chip with pci Audigy2 because I thought the microphone plug was faulty. Actual reason was faulty mic and I replaced it later. So I took out the Audigy as it was unnecessary, or so I thought.

The sounds in WoW have huge impact on fps! With normal sound settings, I indeed got 5fps at best in Dalaran. Then I lowered them to minimum and I got ~15fps. Next step I reinstalled the Audigy2 and my fps went up to 30-40 range. Last thing I did, I disabled the Death Knight sounds and got little bit more performance boost.

I play 1440x900 windowed, all graphic details on full except shadows on minimum and view distance step or two from the max. The same settings actually work on my laptop (8510w) that has T9300 and fx570m, game was totally playable even in Dalaran. I did lower the graphic settings a little bit later

In my opinion it's definitely worth trying if lowering the sound quality helps. It did help for me. Perhaps even disabling sounds like some of my guildies do, but I didn't like it myself.