New rig - poor fps even with one client

I finally got a system for multiboxing (used an old 2GB laptop 1-70 on both teams). Although it's a massive improvement, the performance is still not as good as I had hoped. I tested things out with a single client and with full settings I can't get much better than abotu 30fps. Without shadows and a few other settings toned done, I get 40-50 fps, which is still pretty bad.

I have been running all 5 clients with graphics settings on about half. Main client frame rate fluctuates between 20-40 fps. Shattrath isn't bad, but I was under the impression that's more a RAM/HD issue than video card.

Here's the specs:

Intel Quad Core 2.4Ghz
8GB RAM
ATI Radeon 3650 HD 512MB
22" LCD on DVI, 19" LCD on VGA
640GB SATA @ 7200rpm
Vista SP1 64-bit


I tried turning off the vista theme, and I run the slaves at about 10fps in the background. Video card is using latest drivers from the ATI site. I swear I got a better fps on my laptop with an Nvidia 7900 GS when running a single clien. Could it be a issue with video RAM? I have the option to allocate up to 3GB for the video card from the main RAM.

Just off the top of my head it may be the $50 video card on an otherwise nice system. I'm running a similar set up with a HD4870 and have very few issues running five clients on one machine.

Yeah that card isn't exactly stellar, but from the reviews I've read it's not bad either. I guess what confuses me is this is WoW, not a brand new game. The single client test is disappointing because I remember getting 70-80fps on an Nvidia 7900 GS in a laptop a few years ago. I turned off shadows and the newer effects, and a video card 2 generations ahead can't get half the rate. It's strange. Is it just a particularly slow card? I thought about throwing in an Nvidia 9800 GT, which I can get for about $140.

i run in my new phenom x4 BE 9400 and i get upwards of 60 fps with everything turned up, i have noticed in certain areas where shadows/smoke are heavy that it does dip down into the 20s and 30s. Im fine with 24 to 30 frames as that seems fine for any game i play.

on my slave machines they use d a 8800 gt and get around 12 fps (maxfps Set limit) on each of the 4 slave windows, i do notice/watch my CPU while doing this, as my tempature and processing overtime gets heavy, my frames will dip down, but thats due to a number of reason.

So in other words, try your 9800 :-)