Any tips to make WoW run smoother?

[Tricen]

I'm having framerate and connectivity issues that bother me. I can't get more than like 20fps in 25mans and I'm not sure why. My PC is ab it old but it's still pretty good. Anyone know of anything that can help smooth out WoW for me? I downloaded a TCP Optimizer and a Latency Fixer thingy, I'm not even sure how to check if they are still working. Is there a way to check to seeif my drivers are up to date?

[Onorgul]

What kind of connectivity issues are you having? My latency tends to flutter between 100 and 200 ms (server in Boston, player in Ohio), which is at the high end of what obsessive neurotics will accept, but it doesn't seem to affect me unduly.

As for framerate, assuming your hardware is good, I'd bet that it is related to an addon or two. What's your framerate playing with all your addons turned off, can you find out? AV or Wintergrasp would probably be the best approximation without being a dead weight in a 25man raid.

[Tricen]

I only use Recount and sometimes grid, and of course deadly boss mods. It just seems like my game is really choppy. I have a bunch of settings turned down too.
EDIT: Oh and some rune display thing for DK

[Onorgul]

Recount is a serious resource whore. I'd suggest looking into Skada.

[Tricen]

I'll give Skada a go. Thanks

[[Cookies]]

25 man raid lag is usually a CPU issue. I'm running 25 mans at 15~20 fps no matter what my graphics settings are on because my CPU isn't all that great.

[Correction]

The e-j forums have a pretty informative thread on how to boost performance, 'disable addons' and 'update your video drivers' notwithstanding.

The stuff relevant to people post 3.3 starts here: http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t40955-w...weaks_etc/p25/

Edit: I wouldn't post there though, just browse for info.

[Tricen]

Skada is kinda weird. How do I check to see how much my abilities are doing by themselves :<

[Gulkeeva]

If you got... decent amount of system ram 2Gb+ winXP 4GB+ vista/7 recount really shouldn't be doing anything to your fps (and I got a super old Intel core Duo E6850)

I've ran recount well over 100MB... into the 150-200MB range (it "reloads itself" if you exit the game btw at 100MB, error about excessive memory flush blah blah) with no fps drop/loading problems.

If you have those ranges of memory you cna always put in your config.wtf
SET textureCacheSize "536870912"

makes wow use more memory for texture cahe (default is like 32-64MB, above will set it to 512MB)

and if ya notice in my videos I have everything max cept shadows (cpu intensive!) while recording with fraps (also cpu intensive!) at 15-25+ fps (good enough to do stuff)

Just make sure your video drivers up to date

[Norellicus]

I don't understand why someone can't make a version of recount that just runs off your combatlog locally, it would cut down on so much of the performance problems for both cpu/memory cycles and the atrocious amounts of bandwidth it hogs.

Most people will say "but you can use WOL for that" to which I respond that I don't want to have to upload global logs every time I run a 5 man and want to know my dps just for idle curiosity, or to see how terribad my VOA dps are doing to know whether or not they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting loot.

[Lucavi]

Yeah, upgrade your rig with more ram and watch those max shadows. I have a literal beast, and will be upgrading into a GX285 in about 2 days, but I wouldn't be surprised if I still couldn't run WoW with max shadows without dalaran lag.

Since I've come back, though, the game seems much smoother. I've only had maybe one instance of a slight hitch while in Dalaran, with maxed everything and shadows at halfway, plus with the "overclocking" options, like ground effect density, clutter, and character ambient, ect.

The game has certainly aged well -- better than many MMOs -- because of that wierd smooth-style graphics engine they use. Slapping a few textures on it doesn't seem to cause a shit-storm of jagged edges like in FFXI or even AoC.

[Tricen]

My system is 3.40ghz, 2gb RAM. I don't know to to check to see if my drivers are up to date though, anyone know of anything for that?

[Lucavi]

What's your card and board brand? Best thing to do is check for drivers in the BIOS for your motherboard, and on the card's website for your actual card.

[Tricen]

How do I check that, my dad gave me the PC, I don't know much about PCs lol <_<. I remember someone having me DL some program that told me my system specs or somethin.

[Correction]

either run 'dxdiag' from the Run... prompt or right click your desktop and choose Properties->Settings->Advanced->Adapter

[Tricen]

RADEON X700 Series 256mgb and for board brand you mean the proccessor?

[Correction]

well, the Radeon tells you that in order to update your drivers you need to go to ati.com and download the correct driver. You don't need the fancy package, whatever download link says 'driver only' should be enough to update you to the latest. Your motherboard's make/model should show up under "System Manufacturer," "System Model" and "BIOS" when you run dxdiag. Getting updates for that is specific to the manufacturer and you'd have to check their website for it. I wouldn't really expect BIOS updates to yield a large performance gain, however.

[Norellicus]

Any gains from updating your BIOS/chipset will relate more to the system playing nice with new graphics drivers. Still should do both in tandem, but it's more of an improvement by proxy than a direct benefit.