WoW stuttering issues

[soccerballtux]

I'm not sure why WoW is running so slowly on my computer. Any time I enter a city (especially in Outlands; Shattrath so far is the worst) I get HUGE framerate drops; from 45 down to 5-10fps. My question...is this due to my graphics card being AGP and having to spend time reading data from the RAM and write it to the card's Vram? Or is my problem the harddrive being Pata?

 

[Matthias99]

Check the memory usage maximums in Task Manager; if you're going over 1GB of peak usage, you need more RAM. In a big Outland area with tons of other players around, you might easily be going over 1GB, especially if you have lots of other stuff running in the background.

SATA hard drives aren't much faster than PATA ones, so that won't help. If you're hitting the swap file on disk, you need more RAM.

A 6800GT should be plenty to run WoW unless you have all the settings cranked up (AA/AF, etc.) and you're trying to play it at a very high resolution.

 

[soccerballtux]

Well it seems to me the problem would be fixed if the game would just think ahead a bit and start loading the stuff before the graphics card asks for it. As it is now it's like I ride into Shattrath and my system goes "oh ******! I don't have the data to display this guy!" so then the system hangs until it finds what it needs. If it has to do this for 45 different characters, I'm thinking having the NCQ would be a perfect fix.

 

[oynaz]

Your processor is a bit on the light side as well. WoW is quite CPU intensive.

 

[yh125d]

That's right, my o/c'ed 4000 is at 100% utilization all the time

 

[cdmccool]

A 6800GT is plenty for WoW, my brother plays on a Radeon 7000.

I would say the problem is caused by your cpu first, then ram.

 

[Matthias99]

Well it seems to me the problem would be fixed if the game would just think ahead a bit and start loading the stuff before the graphics card asks for it. As it is now it's like I ride into Shattrath and my system goes "oh ******! I don't have the data to display this guy!" so then the system hangs until it finds what it needs. If it has to do this for 45 different characters, I'm thinking having the NCQ would be a perfect fix.

WoW has many many gigabytes of texture and model data. It can't preload every possible thing that every person could be wearing. They do preload geometry for the area, which is about all they can reasonably do. And if you have extra RAM the model data will be stored in the filesystem cache after it has been loaded once.

If you're not actually hitting your RAM ceiling, a faster hard drive might reduce initial stuttering/loading times somewhat. But it's not going to be dramatic unless your current drive is very old/slow.

 

[Frintin]

The 2 computers I play WoW on have AMD 2500+ and 2600+ CPU's. I use a 7800GS and a 6600GT video card respectively. Both computers have 1G of memory.

I do not have graphic options maxed but never notice any lag in Shattrah City. I do notice some hitching during peak times (Friday night.) Nothing real bothersome though.

Might want to investigate some of your video options to eliminate your problem. I certainly enjoy my game with the options I have to choose.

 

[oynaz]

Your CPUs are more powerful than the OP's, this is probably the main difference.

I have a P4 2,4 Ghz, Radeon 9800 Pro and 1,5 Gb RAM. I have all graphics options maxed, but play at a quite low resolution. 1024x720 I believe. I rarely go below 30 fps.

 

[SexyK]

Sounds like you could use more RAM to me... I'm running with higher settings, but during intense scenes I've seen memory usage go well over 1GB.

 

[Frintin]

WoW will use huge amounts of RAM. Blizzard's network and graphic caching technology requires it.

 

[styrafoam]

I would also reccomend you check your video detail levels, specificly your multisampling and AF level. Turn multisampling down to 24bit color 24bit depth 1x multisampling, and set your AF slider at about 3/4 to max and see if you get any change in performance(assuming you had them set higher in the first place). I play on a 9800 pro, and shattrath lags for me, especially getting off the windrider. Its not unbearable, but it isn't smooth at all either. I also only have 128megs vram, and quite a bit older of a gpu so something deffinitly sounds off in your situation.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: styrafoam
I would also reccomend you check your video detail levels, specificly your multisampling and AF level. Turn multisampling down to 24bit color 24bit depth 1x multisampling, and set your AF slider at about 3/4 to max and see if you get any change in performance(assuming you had them set higher in the first place). I play on a 9800 pro, and shattrath lags for me, especially getting off the windrider. Its not unbearable, but it isn't smooth at all either. I also only have 128megs vram, and quite a bit older of a gpu so something deffinitly sounds off in your situation.

Yep, excellent, turn the settings down. Your CPU is very capable as is your graphics card, WoW is by no means a very demanding game therefore a sempy should be fine.

Your hard drive being PATA means nothing, your graphics card being AGP also means nothing, those are not the problems.

 

[Zap]

I've heard of other people solving their city lag with more RAM.