Running WoW in Windowed mode takes severe performance hit?

[Hachoo]

Yeah I have my alts set to 10 background FPS and my main is set to max 50 foreground.

Looks like my CPU is the biggest issue now and is limited my FPS/performance in Dalaran. Thinking I'm going to upgrade to a 3.1GHz dual core Athlon X2 6000. Right now I'm using an X2 4200+ overclocked to 2.53GHz so I think that will be a decent performance upgrade considering the processor is only $73. Too bad I have to buy a new motherboard too which will run another $60 :\

[Bloodcloud]

Yeah I have my alts set to 10 background FPS and my main is set to max 50 foreground.

Looks like my CPU is the biggest issue now and is limited my FPS/performance in Dalaran. Thinking I'm going to upgrade to a 3.1GHz dual core Athlon X2 6000. Right now I'm using an X2 4200+ overclocked to 2.53GHz so I think that will be a decent performance upgrade considering the processor is only $73. Too bad I have to buy a new motherboard too which will run another $60 :\

Don't forget the memory m8. MEM speed is far more important than cpu speed.
check out my build

[Hachoo]

I just upgraded my memory, and I do not agree that memory speed is far more important. I have DDR2-800 and no plans to increase that anytime soon. My CPU is definitely the bottleneck at this point since both cores are pegged at 100% when I'm anywhere with other people. This also explains my FPS limitation while single boxing as CPU clock speed affects max FPS (oddly enough). When I overclocked my CPU from 2.2GHz to 2.53GHz I gained over 15 FPS, so I would imagine going up to 3.1GHz from there would give me quite a significant boost, and hopefully ease up the lag in Dalaran as well.

Plus upgrading to a dual core 3.1GHz athlon is actually fairly cheap $73 - whereas any intel processor near that same clock speed is >$200.

[Catamer]

I use Vista x64 on all of my machines and I use multiple PC's so I never have lag.
I take an extream hit when running more than one copy of wow on this laptop, at beast I get 30 fps on each copy when running two copies of wow.

I have a desktop that has a 8800gtx and I can run two copies of wow and usually get 60 fps on each copy outside of a city.

It just depends on your video card sometimes.

I usually setup keyclone maximizer to limit FPS on side copies of wow.

[Petturik]

Check your multisampling in video settings (wow)

turn em down from 24-bit 8x to 24-bit 1x, that might improve loads.
Also, Viewing distance and Shadow Quality are resource chompers .. turn those down aswell.

lemme know it it worked

[Hachoo]

My clones already have view distance to minimum, shadow to minimum, and 24bit 1x multisampling.

My main window has view distance 1/3 or so, shadow min, and 24bit 2x. I've tested dropping the main window to 1x and going back to 2x and running various stress tests and I can say I get literally the exact same FPS whether its 1x or 2x multisampling on the main window so I like to leave it at 2x for less jaggies.

[d0z3rr]

Yeah I have my alts set to 10 background FPS and my main is set to max 50 foreground.

Looks like my CPU is the biggest issue now and is limited my FPS/performance in Dalaran. Thinking I'm going to upgrade to a 3.1GHz dual core Athlon X2 6000. Right now I'm using an X2 4200+ overclocked to 2.53GHz so I think that will be a decent performance upgrade considering the processor is only $73. Too bad I have to buy a new motherboard too which will run another $60 :\

OMG a 4200+? That's still on DDR right?! Jeez, upgrade that mofo fast dude, I remember my x2 and it was horrible for multiboxing. I got a phenom quad core and that thing frickin rules. Get the phenom quad, they're cheap.

[Hachoo]

Nah the 4200+ uses DDR2-800 which is what I would continue to use if I got a new processor.

I thought about a phenom but the clock speeds on the phenom are a LOT slower than the current X2s which limits framerates and ALL non multiboxing activities. Also the phenom is still more than twice as expensive as the X2 6000+.

[Hachoo]

Good news, I 5 boxed for quite awhile this evening and the new sound driver has completely removed any crackling and popping noises. I have no idea where I got the driver from but I still have the rar file so I am uploading it to my webserver right now and I will make a new thread and post the link in here with a description of what it does when its done uploading in an hour or so (its 70mb and my upload speed sucks).

[d0z3rr]

Nah the 4200+ uses DDR2-800 which is what I would continue to use if I got a new processor.

I thought about a phenom but the clock speeds on the phenom are a LOT slower than the current X2s which limits framerates and ALL non multiboxing activities. Also the phenom is still more than twice as expensive as the X2 6000+.

Ummm...ok. Nevermind that it has 2 more cores, and a completely different architecture, and also overclockable (if the "low" clocks bother you that much). And the fact that you can use keyclone (or another program) to run WoW on each core.....enjoy the x2 6000.