Would a better CPU help me here?

I've been playing wow for about a month now. Games ok, just waiting for Darkfall to come out.

Anyways....whenever I go to a city like Orgimmar or any place that is heavly populated, like a Alli city raid. My FPS drops to about 19. Plus I would also like to start taking some fraps movies and doing so drops my FPS a little bit too.

Any suggestions?

 

Is this on the computer in your sig?

 

Yeah sorry...this would be on the computer in my sig.

 

Well, in your system I think the bottleneck is definately your CPU but even with that you shouldnt be lagging at all in most games, especially wow.

I think you must have another problem, maybe drivers?

 

I doubt it will help much, the most beneficial boost for your WOW gaming experience might be a faster and more stable internet connection.

 

I don't normally get FPS like this. I usually get around 40-60 FPS, but when theres about 2-300 people on screen is when I lag. I know RTS games need a good CPU because of many units on the screen, that's why I'm thinking a CPU upgrade will help.

Also, I have used some console commands to make WoW look MUCH better. And I do use around 40 or so addons.

 

Well a better CPU will help, but not really much. You should try overclocking and save a few bucks. If you feel comfortable doing so that is.

 

Even 40-60 fps is really low for those specs you got mate...

I had a laptop which played wow at a similiar pace and it was really lame, 64MB GPU etc...
Im sure your solution could be drivers, how are other games?

 

Bloody hell.. if i had such FPS with your notebook, i'll commit suicide.. dude check your drivers. my brother with a Compaq and an intel x3100 get 21-25 FPS and thats on heavy Raids...

 

I play COD4 all maxed out 40-60 frames as well...intense fire I get around 30. I never see a stutter. Also WiC I always got above 30 except for the last level where they were coming at you from every side. I also have DX10 for that game.

Before the console commands I put in I was get a steady 70 fps...now its around 40-60 and about 19 in orgimmar...where like all horde likes to sit and chill. lol

It might be my interent connection like some one else says. I do have dsl, but my ping does go from 201 to 500.

 

Yeah maybe try some new drivers. And make sure your Power Settings in Vista are set to Balanced or High Performance. I had a T7250 in my M1530 (With a 8600M GT, and yout 8800GTS kicks it's butt). And even playing on my external 24" @ 1920x1200 with graphics settings pretty much maxed I would never drop down to that low of FPS.

Now does your FPS drop to 19fps and stay there? Or does it drop that low and then pop back up? Reason I ask that, is that I have noticed when going into a area where there are alot of new "dynamic" models (like other players), you will get alot of disk access while it is loading those models. Which of course will drop your FPS. But once those models are loaded, you should be good to go.

 

Oh and maybe run a 3dmark06. Not that I think that 3dmark is the end all of end alls or anything. But at least you can compare your results to others. And see if you are on par or below.

 

my original...which was about a couple of months ago was about 7500.

 

sounds like normal.. mind telling what driver version are you using?

 

I believe the 174 series...I'm not sure what exact number it is.

 

Have you tried to see what your FPS is like is no WoW addons running?

 

And are you sure the Powermizer is not enabled?

 

PowerMizer being enabled would have nothing to do with it. UNLESS PowerMizer is not working properly and downclocking his card during games. So that is something to look into.

 

As some people mentioned above, I think it's due to your internet connection, happened on me sometimes. Try to record your CPU usage during framerates drop to see if they are related.

 

That's what I mean, it could be that it doesn't work properly.

 

Ah ok very good DaMarcus

I have never personally seen my internet connection drop my FPS in WoW. I played for over 2 years. But with that being said, it is still possible I guess. It's just what I noticed when my pings would get higher, or say a server crash. My FPS would stay the same, everything else in the game would just stop working. Like getting Vael down to 1% for the first time, and our last MT goes running into the wall. Good times I tell you, good times!

 

SHAME! You people call yourselves experts?

In a game like WoW, having a significant increase in the number of visible or nearby character models will pull down your FPS because your system must load a bunch of new textures for each character model and all of their armor.

The drop shouldn't be significant unless you are seeing probably 20+ characters.

You don't see issues like this in CounterStrike Source because all of the models and texture data have been loaded up already. You don't suddenly see an Arctic Terrorist wearing a +20 Headpiece of Epicness with particle effects and reflections.

The best way to experience something like this is to go back and play the original Everquest: Ruins of Kunark. Hardware rates would suddenly drop through the floor in crowded areas.

Your FPS drop has to do with the load on your internect connection, the load on the texture cache in your GPU, the load on the data cache in your RAM, and data being read from your hard drive. If it sticks VERY low when there are only 10-20 people on screen, THEN try updating your drivers.

Also, make sure you have defragmented your hard drive. WoW is EXTREMELY sensitive to fragmented data files.

 

If I were you I would do as everyone said and check internet connection/drivers/power settings etc. But I don't think that anybody has mentioned to check your video settings in WoW. I do not have nearly as high end of a machine as you (2.2GHz single core AMD athlon, ati x1650 512mb gddr2, 1gb ram, windows xp to be exact), and I can get about 20 FPS in crowded areas. With that in mind I would adjust various video settings in WoW. For example, I turned off Vertical Sync & Triple Buffering on my machine and I my FPS was about 30% faster overall. Try all these different suggestions and you should solve your problem. (Unless of course you need to upgrade your internet or something...) Good luck with your troubleshooting.

 

That is what I was TRYING to say. But ah, you said it soooo much better then me Some Rep for you!

 

<3 Darkfall.

As for the WoW problem... even though the game is considered a super easy thing to run... It can still tax your system. If you play at WUXGA with all the AA up and all everything cranked up... It's going to get like that. the guy with the 64mb graphics card was not running with full graphics.

Hell, when I played at 1680x1050 with 2x AA and mostly high I got pretty hard dips into the 40's or even lower in orgrimmar.. And it would be like 50 people usually.

Try different drivers, but I don't think anything is wrong.

 

I like that idea. I'm gonna try that when I get home today.

Also, I'm usually just running through Orgimmar to get to the AH, Flight Master, or my Hunter Trainer. I never usually stay there for everyones character to load. Maybe I'll try that as well...see what happens when everyone is finally loaded.