Nvidia 480 & WoW

[arc@css]

Just about any online game will be more cpu dependent.

 

[pastymuncher]

I can't see it being the Q6600. I Had my E8500 in my second rig running at stock along with 2Gb of ram and a ATI 4650 512mb with a screen res of 1920x1200 and was seeing fps in the mid 30's most of the time. On the odd occasion it dropped to 28fps but that was rare. Overclocking the E8500 to 3.8Ghz has eliminated the occasional drops and got me into the mid 40's.

Is'nt there a trick to get WoW to use all four cores of a quad?

 

[nalla]

i read in a review somewhere that tesselation is turned to on in the control panel as standard, which gives a big performance hit, have you tried to turn tesselation off to see if this makes any difference, other than that i have played wow on a q6600 with a 4870 and got better fps than that, but i admit i wasnt on a genuine wow server, so wasnt as busy as the wow servers can be.

 

[Dark_Angel]

It's not the problem with the GTX480...it's the Q6600 not being fast enough running single/dual thread.

People that say Q6600 at 3.0GHz is not a problem with WOW...have you actually used one to play the game?

Most mmorpg is either single or dual-threaded, so a faster dual-core would deliver better frame rate than a slower Quad core.

There's a mmorpg I'm playing (not WOW) which my minimum frame rate would drop to 15fps at 1024x168 when there are many players on screen, even though my GPU usage is only around 20% max. I have a friend who got a Phenom II 965BE at stock speed 3.4GHz and with a 5850 playing the same game as me, and his minium frame rate is also lower than 20fps.

This is why i5 750 or i7 920 overclocked to around 4.0GHz will deliver higher frame rate in most mmorpg, because they are the fastest running single or dual-thread operation.

mmorpgs are always tend to be more CPU dependent than GPU.

Why yes, I'm using one. I don't get that drop in performance, at all.

The only time I get similar problems are if my shadows are on pure max. Even in Dalaran my FPS is higher than the OP's, and I'm using a 4850.

Try messing around with the shadows, they're *NOT* optimized in the game, even stupidly high end systems render them badly. Try dropping them off completely, if that fixes it then try about half way up. Just FYI, it's an issue that Cata is addressing.

 

[Robert]

It's not the problem with the GTX480...it's the Q6600 not being fast enough running single/dual thread.

People that say Q6600 at 3.0GHz is not a problem with WOW...have you actually used one to play the game?

Most mmorpg is either single or dual-threaded, so a faster dual-core would deliver better frame rate than a slower Quad core.

There's a mmorpg I'm playing (not WOW) which my minimum frame rate would drop to 15fps at 1024x168 when there are many players on screen, even though my GPU usage is only around 20% max. I have a friend who got a Phenom II 965BE at stock speed 3.4GHz and with a 5850 playing the same game as me, and his minium frame rate is also lower than 20fps.

This is why i5 750 or i7 920 overclocked to around 4.0GHz will deliver higher frame rate in most mmorpg, because they are the fastest running single or dual-thread operation.

mmorpgs are always tend to be more CPU dependent than GPU.

Yes I have.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Yes I have.

Sorry Robert, I was refering to those that say Q6600 at 3.0GHz would not a limiting factor for WOW.

I think you friends should probably have a check at the graphic settings he's running the game at.

15-40fp with a GTX480...it should be quite logical to assume the CPU is bottlenecking the graphic card. And yes disabling shadow could help in mmorpgs.

 

[Zitron]

I've read quite a few threads with people having issues with framerates on WoW using the GTX 470 & 480s, a lot of them having worse framerates than they did with their older cards (GTX 260, 275, etc) so whilst I do agree that the 3GHz Q6660 will be the limiting factor, I don't think it's the cause of the problem here.

 

[Dark_Angel]

Sorry Robert, I was refering to those that say Q6600 at 3.0GHz would not a limiting factor for WOW.

I think you friends should probably have a check at the graphic settings he's running the game at.

15-40fp with a GTX480...it should be quite logical to assume the CPU is bottlenecking the graphic card. And yes disabling shadow could help in mmorpgs.

It could be something else - for example addons.

I was running an addon which became out of date in a patch, and then literally every pull after an enemy died my FPS dropped to like 2 or something. Disabled the addon, and guess what? It went back to normals.

 

[Daaaveee]

WoW is just a badly optimised game, the shadows even more so. Try knocking them down a notch or two and the AA too, I have to with my machine spec in sig to maintain 60+fps at 1920x1080, ping of 25-50.

 

[Marine-RX179]

WoW is just a badly optimised game, the shadows even more so.

I don't think it's just WOW alone, but most mmorpgs in general would have similiar problems.

 

[Sycho]

Also if he uses Quest Helper, disable it, it can massively effect framerates.

 

[jorzeh]

my old E5200 @ 3.7Ghz gave me the same performance on mw2 as my i7 @ 4Ghz but warcraft being such a CPU intensive game i saw triple the frame rate because of the CPU thats how CPU intensive WOW is it's a very old game engine sadly.

 

[Bodom]

Hey I have been playing WoW for years and have found especacaly with Nvidia cards they tend to run better in WoW with everything controlled from your drivers rather than leaveing it all on aplictaion controlled

try going to your Nvidia Controll panle find your WoW profile and try messing aound with these settings

heres what i have mine set to if i havent listed it i left it on auto

Everything in game maxed @2560x1600 except shadows which is on the seconed highest setting

Nvidia Drivers 257.15

Ambiant Occlusion: Quality
Anisotropic Filtering: x16
Antialiasing- Gamma Corection: on
Antialiasing- Mode: Override Any Aplication Setting
Antialiasing- Setting: x8
Antialiasing- Transparacy: off
Power Mangment Mode: Prafer Maximum Performance
Textuer Filtering- Negetive LOD Bias: Clamp
Textuer Filtering- Quality: High Quality
Threaded Optimisation: on
Textuer Filtering- Trilinear Optimsation: on
Vertical Sync: Force on

My PC

C2Q @3ghz stock (not overclocked due to crapy Nforce 7 Mobo)
4 gig ddr2 ram
GTX280 OC to GTX285 clocks
W7 64bit
2560x1600 screen res

I get roughly 30/40 fps in Dalaran
25 man boss fights normaly dosent drop below 30/35 on fights with lots of effects going on

Allso when your raiding any addons you dont need on switch them off like GS or any gathering or Auction house addons

 

[Thiassi]

It could be something else - for example addons.

I was running an addon which became out of date in a patch, and then literally every pull after an enemy died my FPS dropped to like 2 or something. Disabled the addon, and guess what? It went back to normals.

This.

Disable all addons and see if it stills occurs. Some out-of-date addons are a nightmare.

 

[ubersonic]

I had a similar problem when I first got a 6800GT, it was over 6 month before Nvidia addressed the issue in a driver update hopefully you wont have to wait as long.

the Q6600 shouldn't be having any trouble in northrend (except dalaran at peak times ofc) as WoW is optimized to use 3 cores. Is the HDD old or fragmented? as that can bring a WoW system to its knees regardless of CPU/GPU.

Try launching WoW in OpenGL mode and see if it makes any difference:

"C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Launcher.exe" -opengl

 

[Corasik]

A quad 3ghz is perfectly ample.

He shouldn't be getting performance like that.

65nm quad, 3ghz Dalaran, 15fps may be a bit low (depends on server), but on hellscream you would be lucky to get more than 25-40fps with a 3Ghz Q6xxx. WOW is a huge cpu bottleneck, bearly supports more than 2 cores properly either. Loves the shared cache (so anything less than an i7 and as windows bounces the graphics engine between cores you get a slight slowdown). Wow is not optimizes for 3 cores. Its graphics engine runs on 1 very intensive thread. Remaining cores are used for sound, networking, addons etc, but realy are not heavily used. Sure windows schedules the threads between all available cores, but this only helps to balance the CPU's temperature, it doesnt give any additional performance. Less in fact if you dont have a CPU with a cache that is common to all cores.

One thing that is easily noticeable in WOW, it doesnt matter if your resolution is 800x600 with most eye candy turned off or 2560x1600 with everything maxed out... The game will look prettier with the high res and eye candy, but the min / max framerates are more cpu bound.

 

[Corasik]

my old E5200 @ 3.7Ghz gave me the same performance on mw2 as my i7 @ 4Ghz but warcraft being such a CPU intensive game i saw triple the frame rate because of the CPU thats how CPU intensive WOW is it's a very old game engine sadly.

This is right. CPU, and Memory performance is top priority in wow. Anything above an Nvidia 8800GTX will run 1920x1200 pretty much maxed out, and hit the same framerates, due to CPU limitations.

 

[ColEx]

Im pretty sure the frame rates are normal for the spec the OP stated. Graphic cards almost do nothing in wow. I went from a Nvidia 9600 GT to a ati 5770 vapor-x, and i didnt see any fps increase at all. Wow is just a old engine, and even on the most high end systems i think you wont see a solid fps going. I wish Blizzard would optimize wow for quad cores, as atm its only done for dual cores i think?

 

[ubersonic]

its optimized (badly) for single/dual/tri-core cpus atm but will be getting quad support in the next expansion as well as a lot of sparkly new DX visuals.

Up until a few months ago SLi didn't work in WoW lol

 

[queamin]

People saying the Q6600 is killing his syetm are just plane wrong, it's still a great cpu and fast enough for todays games.

Agreed

edit:- as was going to say the same about ram but wasn't sure as not played wow in a long time