Tips to increase my FPS?

In WoW, I'm getting 7-12 FPS constantly when doing instances. Is my PC not good enough? I made sure there is nothing running in the background except ventrilo and I do disk fragment regularly. I already have the video driver that was released last november.. I believe it's the latest version.

Does the fan has anything to do with it? My fan's really crappy.. it's making this very noisy sound when my pc's running.

Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 GHz
1.00 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS

 

Try turning down the graphic settings. If you see a noticable increase, it's most likely your video card. First try the resolution, then try shadows, because I think those are the most demanding.
I don't play, so I wouldn't know what range of video cards would work efficiently.

 

I'm already playing at the lowest setting and that's the FPS I'm getting. If I turn it down from Low to High, I lose about 3 FPS even more.

I'm really not sure what the problem is May it be the defragment?

http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/2833/defragwl2.jpg

That's the picture I took after I defrag.. as you can see, it seems it didnt help at all.

 

Defragging doesn't help framerate that much, if at all. I'm guessing you're not altering the contents of the hard drive that much (install/uninstall/add/remove). Defragging is most effective after you've been moving things around and adding/deleting things for a while. It's not primarily meant to help with other tasks, such as this.

You have it at the lowest resolution, too (and I'm guessing you mean from High to Low)? If you're turning the settings down and getting worse framerate...I'm out of advice. Your CPU and RAM are fine in terms of system requirements, and I'm pretty sure you'd be having worse and other problems if either was failing.
Do you have any other video cards you can compare to, to see whether yours is bad or whether you need an upgrade? Has the framerate changed drastically since installing the new drivers?

On a side note, are you just having low framerates just when lots of people are around? If so, I want to guess lag, but I'm not so sure how they handle lag.

 

Yeah, because there are 8 million people playing at any given time, so lag is not unheard of. Which Firewall and Anti-Virus are you using?

 

Not on the same server!

I'm curious if you are talking about Outlands...framerates for TBC are far worse than they are in the old world. A lot of times I get 30fps, and thats with a 7800GTX overclocked.

Also, are these raids? Don't forget about your addons, they can all cause your FPS to take a major hit. You can disable them from the character select screen to test.

 

'The GeForce 6800 Ultra has a new cooling system design, although it generates a similar amount of fan noise as the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. A notable exception is that the fan on the review board spins at a very high rate when the system boots up or restarts. However, the fan returns to its normal speed once Windows starts and even remains at that speed during gaming sessions. This is probably a result of the 2D and 3D clock speeds being the same, which is reported by clock frequency applet in the driver control panel.

The GeForce 6800 Ultra is outfitted with two molex connectors. NVIDIA recommends that a system be equipped with a high-quality 480-watt power supply when using a GeForce 6800 Ultra. NVIDIA provided us with a list of recommended power supplies that consisted of Antec's True550, True480, or NEO480 and Enermax's EG475P-VE SFMA. However, other reviewers have successfully used the GeForce 6800 Ultra with high quality 350W and 300W power supplies. Since NVIDIA plans to transition the GeForce 6 series to PCI-Express, a single molex connector may suffice as PCI-Express delivers more power to the graphics card compared to the AGP bus. Fortunately, the power requirements will be less stringent for the GeForce 6800 GT and GeForce 6800, which will both have a single molex connector.'

prolly want to read the entire thing here -
http://www.nvnews.net/previews/geforce_6800_ultra/

 

Drive is fairly full, run a check disk scan
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315265
use this option first: Manual steps to run Chkdsk from My Computer or Windows Explorer
and then defrag with Perfect Disk 8.0, free to use for one month.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/PerfectDisk_d268.html

 

Psst...its a 6800GS...

A 6800GS SHOULD be running that game no problem, unless your PSU isnt pumpint out enough juice for it to run to its full potential

as far as defragging goes, id get diskeeper lite. free and fast, i run it once or twice a week and it keeps things all nice and tidy

 

If your noisy fan is on the CPU that may be the problem. P4's will slow themselves down to protect from overheating.
Your system should handle WOW fine, if all else fails wipe the HD and install fresh WinXP as per the install instructions here at MG then install NOTHING but WOW. If WOW runs fine keep adding junk until you cannot stand the slow down.
Wifey had to upgrade her computer to run Vent, TS, Winamp and WOW with a ton of add ons even though it runs WOW alone very well. But she likes her music and chat too much to go without.

 

Sounds like either that or maybe you got a bad video card driver. You playin' any other games besides World of Warcraft? If so, do they (the other games) have problems, too?

 

do you have all background programs off? that could be the problem if you have unwanted programs running in the background(I.e. AIM,Fraps,etc.).Plus cleaning your temp folder can help to.

 

just curious what sound card are you using?

 

My friend has a 7600. But wow graphics are garbage - no offence- The game doesnt need that much power. Counter-strike source,DOOM3,Battlefield 2 and Many games can still use the 6800. Hell the 6800 can blow through those games if im not mistaken.

6800 was the big boy when those games came out so with WOW.

processor = great
ram - I would go for 2
VIdeo card - meh not bad for now.

July 22nd will change everything man. Youll be able to buy a intel core 2 duo cessor for 266 at 3.0 ghz and easily overclock to 3.4-3.6.... Also, video cards so much cheaper now. You can get a 8800 for 280 now, 1950xt for 150 now. Great motherboards for 150, 2 gbs of DDR2 800 for 120 or 110. 500 watt PSU for 60-70.

 

As a note with WoW too, add-ons can be a drag on system memory, especially if they're out of date or just plain buggy. If you're running any mods I suggest you turn them off. Incidentally with the new patch you can see the amount of memory your mods take up by holding your cursor over the little latency bar in the bottom right. GL!

 

Hey mate, this is exactly whats occurring to me now. A lousy Intel P4 3.00GHz with 1GB of RAM, the only difference is I swapped out an old NVIDIA card for an ATI Radeon x1950pro.

The month or so I popped in the new video card (along with a new power supply nearly double the size of the old D: ) my WoW FPS soared from 5 to 60, and settled on 40 with maxed settings. For reference, that was back off in Azeroth.

However, over the months its steadily dropped to the point where it would not climb above 10 FPS sitting idle in Netherstorm. In a vain attempt to clear this up before the Shade of Aran made my poor video card erupt in to flames (besides my character, I mean) I scoured the internet for answers.

I'm happy (not really, but more so) to say that I'm currently averaging a 15-25 FPS idled in Shattrath, and during a non-combat stroll through Shadow Labs would not drop below 20 and averaged 30-40 FPS. This is what I did:
First off, I immediately downloaded the new catalyst control center for Radeon (drivers included). I changed my monitors refresh rate from 60 Hz to 75, set my video cards refresh rate to 75, and set WoWs refresh rate to 75.

Under my cards 3D settings, I've customized the anti-aliasing to use the application settings, dropped the adaptive anti-aliasing to the top node of performance over quality (I might turn off the adaptive anti-aliasing to see if that helps). I found lower settings of the anisotropic filtering also helped, and set it to 4X per-pixel samples over 8X or 16X. I have the Mipmap detail level set to performance over quality, and OpenGL settings to include triple buffering.
The last thing I did with my card was unlock the overdrive. Currently its requesting 587MHz for the graphics processor and 702MHz for graphics memory. Now, I'm not going to claim card genius because I know nothing of anything about it. What I did helped me a little; if somebody else can give me better settings or call me out on newbie moves, I'd lavish you and give you chocolate chip cookies.

I also read up on the settings that most affected WoWs framerate and changed my video options to suite those needs.
My resolution is 1152x864. Anisotropic filtering is set to the lowest option. Terrain distance is at 50%. I've also turned off the Vertical Sync and the Full-Screen Glow Effect.

Furthermore, my 20~ish FPS in Shattrath is including several programs running in the background, including but not limited to this FireFox browser, Trillian and an AVG virus scan (currently scanning).

If somebody could either A.) Crush my hopes and dreams violently or B.) help me out to further increase my games performance and frame rate, I have even more cookies in a cupboard somewhere.

 

i had a 7900 GS KO , and i was running wow on max settings and got a solid 60 FPS in azeroth and outlands , instances and not, sometimes it would go 50 then back up to 60, thats with a few addons as well , and my pc is intel core 2 duo e6300 @ 1.8ghz x2 and 2gb ram