Hardware Question

[Greneuges 0]

So ive noticed that i have had to turn some of my settings down to be able to get acceptable fps.

In Cata i had everythign cranked to Ultra and all the best settings and i ran 30 to 50 fps.

now im down to the mid 20s dipping into the teens on occassion and that was even trunign the multisampling and a few of the other effects down.

I want to run everything wide open and im wondering if i do a grapics card upgrade if that will acheive it or is my system just too low on recources to accomplish this

I am running

Asus Pro 5ql mother board

6 gigs of ddr2 ram

Intel core 2 Quad 3 gig processor

Sapphire RAedon 48xx card....cant remember which one but itwas the bigges 48xx series at the time

100g HD

was thinking maybe if i went more ram and a better card I could jump over the edge but i don't wanna spend the cash unless im certain it wll work. Thoughts opinions?

thought about attempting to overclock the processor but i dont' have any evpericence in doing that and i don't wanna break something.

open to suggestions on ideas here.

[Damien 1,533]

It would be helpful to know the exact CPU model and the exact graphic card model.

[Greneuges 0]

It is a sapphire Raedon 4870 on the card

the CPU

Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q9650

[Damien 1,533]

It is a sapphire Raedon 4870 on the card

the CPU

Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q9650

This is decent stuff, I'm surprised that you're running into such FPS issues. I mean, you can't expect to play MoP in high settings, but still, it seems that you are dropping quite low. When does it happen? If it's in a 25-man raid or in a place with a lot of people, that is not surprising.

What NightShade said about the 6GB is definitely worth a look. Your motherboard has dual-channel memory, so you should have an even number of RAM stick for best performances. Also, you need to use a 64-bit system to make use of more than 4GB of RAM (just saying, as you haven't specified what you are using).

Also, you should download a benchmark, like 3d mark, run it. Then it should allow you to compare your results online and you will see what types of systems people with similar benchmark results are using (it may be a $10 feature, but it's still better than spend $300 to get a new card when you may not need to). That should give you some indications regarding the current performances of your installation.

[NightShade 14]

Yeah you can benchmark and compare. . . the passmark I referenced is free to use for a limited time and can import the information as well. They are really trying to expand and as you can look and see from the link they are getting a lot of info posted. Your system will also slow down over time due to general clutter of the OS. But you should have playable settings on low with no problem as well as fair but I don't see it running well at good or higher and you may have to turn down the multisampling and anti aliasing. Eye candy in any game costs money or sacrifices framerates.

As per the OS, even 4GB of ram is hard for a 32bit OS to fully address. Every device takes a part of that and if you have multiple drives and cards in the system that useable number will be less. My old comp was only able to address 3.27GB of ram with a 32bit OS.

[Greneuges 0]

Right now I have 3 2gb sticks.....so i would be better to take one of those out or get another 2 gig stick to add? I thought aout getting a smaller SSD to put in it. I have nothing on it right now other than WoW and the OS I use my macbook for EVERYTHING else.

I have the multisampling turned down to 1x and I have the water and shadow turned down or off. It runs pretty decent all around othr than in 40 mans. 25 mans i run pretty steadily at mid 20s not ideal but playable. Im just a little OCD about having everything maxxed. I turned everything down to the setting below ultra and i actually ran 40 to 50 fps lol so i guessfor a box i built in 09 im doing pretty good lol.

I think ill try another stick of RAM, and an SSD and see what happens....that should easily come in below the couple hundred bucks mark

[Greneuges 0]

oh i run 64bit windows 7

[NightShade 14]

In that board you should be putting memory in to the board in pairs only and they should all be the same speed of memory. Just grabbing what ever and tossing it in can be a performance loss as well.

Your board specs for ram are listed as Max. 16 GB, DDR2 1066/800/667 so I would run the 800 or the 1066 but you won't see leaps and bounds in performance gains with more memory unless you run stuff in the background by having more memory. Having it in dual channel will probably be more of a performance gain. A SSD will decrease loading times but will have little to no effect on framerates. Framerates are effected by your CPU and Video card then memory speed and amount to a point.

And I don't want to tell you what to do here but think about something for a second, you spend 30 on a stick of memory, 50 on a small SSD and eventually another 150 on a video card and in 12 to 18 months you will be back in the same place with the cpu being a bottleneck and the only option to get a motherboard, cpu, and memory. Should you cannibalize your old computer for the video card your still going to be throwing more money at the problem than need be. Drop your settings and save your cash for a full computer IMHO.

[Storm 427]

WoW is very CPU/Ram dependent. I think what is holding you back the most is probably your DDR2 ram. Also as stated above, you're not utilizing the boards dual channel capabilities if you have an odd number of ram sticks in the board.

The 4870 is still a pretty decent card. My girlfriends computer has an AMD Phenom x4, 8gb DDR3, and a Radeon 4890. She doesn't play at maxed out ultra settings but everything is turned up pretty high and she gets about 60fps.

By comparison I have almost an identical set up, but with a Radeon 7950. I play on ultra, but I still have to turn down shadows, multisample and a couple other things to keep my Frame rates above 60 during raids.

Edited March 18, 2013 by Storm

[NightShade 14]

It also depends on the resolution you are running the client at. If you are running 1024X768 your card will have much higher framerates than someone running 1920 X1080

All things being the same one will show 60FPS and the other might show 20FPS.