What needs upgrading to increase fps?

[Tsunami]

Blizzard increased the minimum system requirements for wotlk. there is more detail now than with BC. so there is more information for your system to handle. My guess is you will need to turn down the detail on your alts. your system is ok. but I think your weakest link is your video cards. Is your main screen being run on one card and the 2 alts screens being run on the other cards? This would be the best set-up. but either way 3 big screen on those video cards is really pushing them, my best guess is the detail increase from wotlk on your already strained video cards is too much for them to handle. i think wotlk is the straw that is breaking your video cards back.

My advise would be to upgrade to 2 4850's. should be able to get them for under $170 each.

[Ellusionist]

Ok I am no computer expert and I need some advice. I am playing 5 wows on one machine using keyclone. In BC I never had any problem with lag. I use a small number of add ons and have my grahics settings very low. Leveling in wotlk was not too bad until I hit dalaran and other places that contained a ton of people Even a 10man raid sends my games into choppy sinclair mode. In order for me to continue playing this game I think there needs to be some upgrading.

Here is a list of my computers specs....

Intel Q6600 Processor
8gig Corsair Dominator DDR ram
Asus P5w dh deluxe mb (pretty old)
Vista 64
Seagate Barracuda 500g drive ( right now I use 1 wow directory located on this drive)
WD Raptor 150g drive ( this use to be my main drive until I changed from XP to vista 64)
2 ATI 3870 512meg video cards (not in crossfire)
3 LCD monitors ( 24 main and 2 20inch sides)


This setup worked fine in BC. However, its damn near impossible to play in some areas. In the bg's it can get pretty choppy making game play even more frustrating. If you tech guys know how I can improve my game performance let me know.

I have the same processor, overclocked to 3.2GHz on air, and it has proven to be VERY stable and stays cool at the same time. I'm using a huge heatsink/cooler on it, though.

8GiB of RAM should be fine. You're probably using just a little over 4GiB while running 5 WoW's, but who wants something like 6GiB RAM? 8 is a better number.

The motherboard should be irrelevant. As long as the computer isn't crashing or restarting spontaneously, I can't see the motherboard having anything to do with your FPS.

Vista x64, same operating system I'm running.

Seagate Barracuda + Western Digital Raptor: If you're using the Barracuda as your main drive, I'd have to say switch to the Raptor. That alone should fix the problem. Otherwise, if you don't want to do that, just run your main WoW from the Barracuda and the other 4 WoW's from the Raptor. I currently use three drives: Main on Drive1, Slave2+Slave3 on Drive2, Slave4+Slave5 on Drive3.

2xATI3870's: I don't have experience with how ATI's numbers compare with NVIDIA's, but I do know that a 9800GT (512MiB) can be bought for around $120+shipping. I'd say stick with what you have and try all video setting combinations possible until you find something that works. Turn ALL settings down on all clients, especially the slaves. Then set your MAXFPS and MAXFPSBK values. Lastly, you can increase your main's in-game video settings until it starts to chop. It really shouldn't chop at all on the main if you have one card dedicated to your main character.

That is all. Good luck!

[Coltimar]

My setup is like this

C: = slower drive for Windows. Having a 10k C: will just make you boot faster, lol.

E: = 2 Raid0 10k 74GB drives
- World of Warcraft
- WoW0
- WoW1 - /data, /cache, /interface folders are symlinked to e:\World of Warcraft
- WoW2 - /data, /cache, /interface folders are symlinked to e:\World of Warcraft
- WoW3 - /data, /cache, /interface folders are symlinked to e:\World of Warcraft
- WoW4 - /data, /cache, /interface folders are symlinked to e:\World of Warcraft

Symlink is basically a fancy shortcut. I symlink my Interface folder to make updating addons easier :/

I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 bit and I also use an ATI 3870, just one, and I have 0 lag now.

[Smahs]

I was a lil laggy running two WoW's but don't lag any more. I reset my modem and tuned vista down a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTxjwzMJXcU
guide to turn down vista, may help

[blast3r]

The only thing I can think of would be upgrading the video cards (outside of what others have already told you). I'm running the new i7 processor with 9 gigs of ram and am experiencing very little lag. The only thing I get that is noticable is in Dalarn it just feels slightly more sluggish (but it isn't chopy and laggy at all). My video cards are two nvidia GTS 8800 GTS with 640MB ram.

[pinotnoir]

I changed to the raptor and will see how it does. I have my big screen and 1 side plugged into my main card. I didnt think about plugging my two side monitors into my second card. I will give this a shot. My game runs pretty smooth until a bunch of stuff is going on. For instance, wintersgrasp can get very choppy when there are a lot of people fighting at the base. All my characters have their video settings turned down to the minimum. I was thinking my weakest link was the video cards too. These cards were great when I purchased them. It was before they came out with the new stuff. I could overclock the cpu but I am not clear on how thats done. My heatsink is a very nice zalman and Ishould be fine overclocking. I just dont know what to change in the bios to do it.

[pengwynman]

I changed to the raptor and will see how it does. I have my big screen and 1 side plugged into my main card. I didnt think about plugging my two side monitors into my second card. I will give this a shot. My game runs pretty smooth until a bunch of stuff is going on. For instance, wintersgrasp can get very choppy when there are a lot of people fighting at the base. All my characters have their video settings turned down to the minimum. I was thinking my weakest link was the video cards too. These cards were great when I purchased them. It was before they came out with the new stuff. I could overclock the cpu but I am not clear on how thats done. My heatsink is a very nice zalman and Ishould be fine overclocking. I just dont know what to change in the bios to do it.

if you want to oc it, just google "overclocking guide" and you'll get a bunch of helpful guides you can follow. there's kind of an art to it, i really enjoy trying to get that extra performance boost out of my system.. and oc'ing my q9550 really improved my fps in most areas. pre-oc my main would sit around 40 fps while questing in northrend, now the only place it drops below 50 is in dalaran. i agree though that the video cards could be a weak link, not necessarily just the performance of the cards themselves, but issues with running 2 of them separately with different instance of wow *shrug*

[Tsunami]

I think you will see some improvement when you put your 24in on one card and your 2x20 on the other. this will help even out the work load. try it with the 24in on video card 1, note the fps, than switch the set up to see if it works better on video card 2.

If i remember right, the main video card does all the rendering or shading and then passes that information to the other card. so reducing the load on the main card should help you.

i don't think overclocking will solve your problem, it may help a little, but I don't think you have a problem with your processor running 5 instances of wow.

these are from the spec sheet on those ati 3870's:
Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)2

my guess is your 24 in. display is close to the 1900x1200 single display limit. adding a 20in on top of that is running the card at max. output. than add the extra detail rendering needed to run wotlk and you have bottleneck.

let me know if this works.

[pinotnoir]

I think you will see some improvement when you put your 24in on one card and your 2x20 on the other. this will help even out the work load. try it with the 24in on video card 1, note the fps, than switch the set up to see if it works better on video card 2.

If i remember right, the main video card does all the rendering or shading and then passes that information to the other card. so reducing the load on the main card should help you.

i don't think overclocking will solve your problem, it may help a little, but I don't think you have a problem with your processor running 5 instances of wow.

these are from the spec sheet on those ati 3870's:
Two integrated dual-link DVI display outputs
Each supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)2

my guess is your 24 in. display is close to the 1900x1200 single display limit. adding a 20in on top of that is running the card at max. output. than add the extra detail rendering needed to run wotlk and you have bottleneck.

let me know if this works.

I plugged in my 20 inch that was in the main card into the second card. Then I spent 30 mins trying to get the settings right in ati's control pannel. I couldnt get them setup right so I went back to the 24 and 20 in 1st card 20 in second. I dont know what the deal is but it would not setup my screens to pass the mouse to each. One monitor was just there and you couldnt access it via the mouse. I will try again but after this last wintersgrasp lag fest I am about ready to bite the bullet and buy a new pc. I cant take this choppy play any longer.

I was reading up on the 4870 1gig ddr5 cards. I dont want to waste the money on two 4870x2 cards. Another option would be to get the 4850's. Would changing my desktop res on the 24inch to a lower setting help? I have it at the 1920x 1200 now.

[pinotnoir]

Could this be the card for me? 4 DVI outputs! http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/produ...gpid=265&grp=3

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102809