After seeing my Shammies in action, a friend has upgraded his PC to start 5-boxing.

However, he's having FPS issues just running 1 WoW

His PC spec is:
  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Energy Efficient 95W edition Socket 775 (2.40GHz) G0 Stepping L2 8MB Cache - running at stock settings
  • ABIT IP35 Pro iP35 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
  • 8GB RAM (4 x 2GB OCZ DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Reaper Memory HPC Edition Dual Channel)
  • 512MB Inno3D GeForce 8800GT
  • Coolermaster Silent Pro 700W Modular PSU
  • Samsung HD502IJ SpinPoint F1 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache
  • Creative Soundblaster X-Fi
  • Dell 24" TFT @ 1920x1200
  • VIsta 64

It's a fresh install of Vista64 and the latest nVidia drivers for Vista 64 (release 175.19 from 23 June) running a single WoW in windowed mode 1920x1200.

I have a worse spec PC (E6600 / 4GB RAM / XP32 / 640mb 8800GTS) and he was seeing huge stuttering during a dungeon run with me yesterday when, for example, 4 fire nova totems went off simultaneously).

We'd compare FPS looking at the same part of the dungeon and I'd be wavering around the 57-62fps and he'd be down at 29-32fps!

Things already tried:
  • completely disable all addons - made no difference
  • check the config file for rogue maxfps settings - none found
  • enabled hardware sound in WoW - probably added 2-3 fps

He's very disillusioned that, after building such a high spec PC, it's having such problems running a single WoW... he's not even going to activate 4 new accounts until it's sorted.

So... does anyone have any ideas what could be causing the problems?

Any help very gratefully received from a potential new 5-boxer.