FPS low on Core 2 Duo system

[OhpUldum]

I guess the Phenom II architecture just isn't anywhere near as good as the sandybridge chips.

You hit the nail on the head.

[Vantheus]

Already bought that 560Ti today, so no going back there :P

Not sure where you live but in U.S. you can return it b/c it's hardware, if it didnt help and you'd rather go cheaper route that is, solid gpu though just letting you know even after install you can return

[Tasandriel]

Not sure where you live but in U.S. you can return it b/c it's hardware, if it didnt help and you'd rather go cheaper route that is, solid gpu though just letting you know even after install you can return

I know that but I'll probably replace the whole thing anyway now. Been hearing enough from multiple ppl and I guess I'll just end up replacing my motherboard, cpu and RAM all together. It has been 5 years afterall :P

[gmike]

Sorry but the low FPS is from your CPU. I have a Core Duo 2.1Ghz and I get low FPS too, so ive set all the settings to low. There really is not way around it because WoW is more CPU based than GPU. You can do things like shut off background programs, turn off unneeded services, OC the CPU and reduce the settings. That's all you can do with your only other option being to buy a new computer (best to build it yourself).

---------- Post added 2011-12-07 at 09:02 PM ----------

What PSU do you have? If you can use the current PSU with new hardware then you can upgrade your system for a relatively small amount (You would have to recycle the rest of your computer into the new system too). Best you can get now is 2500K, a mobo for around 100$ (either P67 or Z68) and ram (this is so cheap right now, there are 8gig (2x4gig) 1333Mhz kits on newegg for around 40-45$. That's totally insane, ram has never been so cheap. Your total cost for everything would come to around 361$ +taxes+shipping. Not a bad deal at all because this would bring you up to par with current top of the line hardware. Your 560Ti GPU is good no need to upgrade that.

[Organoth]

Three paragraphs spent on random **vulgar content removed**, and it's even completely wrong.
Framerate in raids in WoW (and almost every other MMORPG) depends on CPU first and foremost.

Please know what you are talking about before you start insulting other people. Graphics and your FPS are most dependent on your GPU. Your CPU only comes into play if it's actually so underpowered that it can't handle the application or handling other demands on it (like other programs in the background) while you are playing the game. There are a few games that are actually made poorly (GTA IV like I mentioned) that are very CPU dependent but 99% of the games out there, including WoW, are built around the GPU, not the CPU.

The only thing that would cause issues with the OP's CPU being able to handle WoW is the OS the computer is on. If the OP is trying to run that system on Vista or Win7 then yes his CPU will be an issue because the CPU is weak for those operating systems, but then his RAM would be an issue also. Even with the release of Cata the min requirements for WoW is listed as a Pentium 4 and the recommend requirements are only a dual core Pentium D (the predecessor to the Core2Duo).

The Pentium D that Blizzard recommends is not even a real dual core processor like the Core2Duo. The Pentium D was just a single core Pentium 4 with Hyper-threading and it's second core was completely virtual. A Core2Duo is more then enough to handle WoW with good graphics settings so long as you are still on XP and so long as you don't have a bunch of useless stuff running in the background. That HD4870 is the issue and it technically can handle the game if the OP sets his video settings correctly. Installing the 560 will be a huge improvement and will more then handle WoW with medium/good settings.

To the OP:
When you start replacing a MOBO and CPU you need to be ready to just build a new system. There's no point in replacing the heart and brains of your system if you are going to pair it with your other outdated hardware. I strongly suggest seeing the big difference that 560 makes unless you know you have the money for a whole new system.

[BicycleMafioso]

Please know what you are talking about before you start insulting other people. Graphics and your FPS are most dependent on your GPU.

Let me stop you right there. In World of Warcraft, for anything related to not being cities or 10man raids and beyond, you are correct.
In regards to those things, ie, cities and 25mans or even 10mans, CPU is always and always the limiting point, even in resolutions like 1920x1080.

Dropping my GPU down to a GTX 460 wouldn't affect my framerates the slightest in raids. Dropping it down further to the GTX 260 or the 9800 GTX would not affect it much, provided I'd run it in DX9 to begin with. In raids.
Dropping my CPU down to an Athlon II x3 or a Core2Quad at stock settings would have a much bigger impact.
(Now sitting at an i5-760 @ 4200MHz, Radeon HD6970 @ 1000MHz core / 6100MHz memory)

Three paragraphs spent on random bullshit, and it's even completely wrong.

While right, you can be significantly nicer about it.

[Deleted]

So I bought myself a GeForce 560 Ti but the result is the same, still only around 20 FPS in combat.

I strongly suggest seeing the big difference that 560 makes unless you know you have the money for a whole new system.

*headscratch*
Make sure you read the original post properly. In nearly any other game you'd be right, but WoW is vastly CPU bound.

[Dch48]

Most MBP's use crappy 1366x768 resolution screens. It's easy to get high framerate on low resolution, but the same laptop would die on 1920x1080 if you'd try to run it on ultra settings.

I'm getting sick of hearing this nonsense. 1366 X 768 is plenty good enough resolution for any game on a normal sized monitor (up to 24") and is certainly not "crappy" or low. Just like with HD TV's , you only need 720 resolution up to 34" screens. It's only ones bigger than 34" that will show an improvement in 1080. 1920 X 1080 is , in almost every case, overkill and not necessary at all for PC gaming. Ultra settings in WoW also make the game look worse, not better, in my humble opinion.

In a 25 man raid, since you are having to load 25 other people's positions and actions on a constant basis, your connection speed and quality can be nearly as important as your CPU in determining your framerates. An HD 4870 is also still a very decent card and I wouldn't say that it was a problem at all with what the OP presented. 20 FPS in a 25 man raid is certainly still playable and actually not that bad if that's as low as it goes. Turning down things like the particle density can help a lot. I never run more than fair myself. You can also turn the draw distance down to fair since most raids are indoors and nothing far away needs to be rendered anyway. Water on low, which actually is the best looking option in my opinion also can help. I also see no benefit in enabling sunshafts so I don't do it. Anisotropic never goes higher than 2X and AA stays at 4X in the normal box mode.

A lot of people are under the misconception that a low framerate will hurt your dps. This is almost never true. Every button press is sent and executed whether you actually see it happening or not as long as you have a good connection to the game servers.

The DX 11 optimizations in WoW are nothing to write home about but I will say that I get slightly better fps in DX 11 than in 9 with the settings I use.

[BicycleMafioso]

Just like with HD TV's , you only need 720 resolution up to 34" screens. It's only ones bigger than 34" that will show an improvement in 1080.

Except that I find 1920x1080 too pixelly in a monitor as large as my 24", let alone my 42" HD-ready TV.
I've done some strutting about in my notebook in Wow (i5-2410M, GT550M so not really a notebook that makes games playable), and going from 1920x1080 resolution to a 1366x768 is horrible, trust me. I find the resolution more painful than the physical size of the monitor itself (14"), and unbearable in long stretches.

1366x768 is good for the same people that thinks music sounds the best from laptopspeakers, or for people with lower hardware.

[Dch48]

I'm sorry But I know for sure that the only difference you will see at 1920 over 1366 on a 14" screen is that your desktop icons will be so small you'll need a magnifier. In a game like WoW there is no visual difference at all except that again, the UI elements will shrink.

On laptop screens, and most other LCD monitor screens, everything will look the best at the native resolution of the screen. Going below, or above that (if even possible) will result in a poorer image. I highly doubt that the native resolution of a 14" screen would be 1920. I have seen the same 15.6" laptops in stores with default screen resolutions of 1366 X 768 and 1600 X 900 and when they are both set at the native resolution, they don't look any different to me. Now, if you would reduce the 1600 one to 1366, then yes it would look worse than even the one running that resolution natively.

I also don't get how you say that laptop is not suited to making games playable. I'm playing on an HP with the AMD A8-3500M APU with HD6620G graphics (1366 X 768 default resolution on a 15.6" screen) and every game currently available is playable on it. Skyrim plays flawlessly and so does DiRT3 but again I don't ever see or feel the need to use Ultra settings. Medium settings are just fine with me and if I can sneak in a few higher ones, I do so. The games default to High but then I turn a few things like shadows and AF down and they play better and look just as good.

[Vetali]

I'm getting sick of hearing this nonsense. 1366 X 768 is plenty good enough resolution for any game on a normal sized monitor (up to 24") and is certainly not "crappy" or low. Just like with HD TV's , you only need 720 resolution up to 34" screens. It's only ones bigger than 34" that will show an improvement in 1080. 1920 X 1080 is , in almost every case, overkill and not necessary at all for PC gaming. Ultra settings in WoW also make the game look worse, not better, in my humble opinion.

In a 25 man raid, since you are having to load 25 other people's positions and actions on a constant basis, your connection speed and quality can be nearly as important as your CPU in determining your framerates. An HD 4870 is also still a very decent card and I wouldn't say that it was a problem at all with what the OP presented. 20 FPS in a 25 man raid is certainly still playable and actually not that bad if that's as low as it goes. Turning down things like the particle density can help a lot. I never run more than fair myself. You can also turn the draw distance down to fair since most raids are indoors and nothing far away needs to be rendered anyway. Water on low, which actually is the best looking option in my opinion also can help. I also see no benefit in enabling sunshafts so I don't do it. Anisotropic never goes higher than 2X and AA stays at 4X in the normal box mode.

A lot of people are under the misconception that a low framerate will hurt your dps. This is almost never true. Every button press is sent and executed whether you actually see it happening or not as long as you have a good connection to the game servers.

The DX 11 optimizations in WoW are nothing to write home about but I will say that I get slightly better fps in DX 11 than in 9 with the settings I use.

TV's generally are designed for a view distance of about 10-15 feet away compared to 2-3 feet away with a computer monitor. Ever try playing a console game on a computer monitor sitting where you normally do while gaming on a PC? It looks like shit because developers take view distance into account while optimizing a game.

Now with that said, CPU lag does cause input lag also.

[Nellah]

I'm sorry But I know for sure that the only difference you will see at 1920 over 1366 on a 14" screen is that your desktop icons will be so small you'll need a magnifier. In a game like WoW there is no visual difference at all except that again, the UI elements will shrink.

Depends on how good/bad your eyes are. Higher resolution also makes smaller text readable, giving more real estate for other things.

Also, OP: as has been stated many times, your CPU is 100% the culprit here. I upgraded from my E6600 to an E8400, then an i5-750, then my 2500K, and saw noticeable improvements each time. The E6600 is no slacker... for when it came out, it holds up very well, but in 25-mans it does bog down. Especially in Cataclysm. Each successive expansion brings on steeper hardware requirements. I can remember doing 40-man raids on a 2.66GHz Pentium 4 single core... I had to use that computer when my rig broke just before getting my 2500K, and I was getting 15fps soloing in Uldum with the details on Low/Fair.

GPU-wise, WoW is one of the least GPU-dependent modern games in existence. My HD 6950, GTX275, and 9800GT run the game nearly identically, though my 8400GS sure chugs.

EDIT: I looked at the post title and seriously thought of coming in here and posting "And your problem is...?" based on the title alone .

Please know what you are talking about before you start insulting other people. Graphics and your FPS are most dependent on your GPU. Your CPU only comes into play if it's actually so underpowered that it can't handle the application or handling other demands on it (like other programs in the background) while you are playing the game. There are a few games that are actually made poorly (GTA IV like I mentioned) that are very CPU dependent but 99% of the games out there, including WoW, are built around the GPU, not the CPU.
<snip>

The Pentium D that Blizzard recommends is not even a real dual core processor like the Core2Duo. The Pentium D was just a single core Pentium 4 with Hyper-threading and it's second core was completely virtual. A Core2Duo is more then enough to handle WoW with good graphics settings so long as you are still on XP and so long as you don't have a bunch of useless stuff running in the background. That HD4870 is the issue and it technically can handle the game if the OP sets his video settings correctly. Installing the 560 will be a huge improvement and will more then handle WoW with medium/good settings.

<snip>

Oh god, the irony.

[Sephiracle]

While right, you can be significantly nicer about it.

I'm sure he(and plenty others) is tired of debunking this "bettah gpu for wow, cpu not important at all" theory that people seem to randomly come up with.

[Wries]

It's been a long proven fact that running the game in SLI will actually cause a FPS loss (I can confirm that from first hand experience and disable my own SLI when playing WOW).

Not true. Check again. I definitly do see a positive impact from having SLI enabled in WoW in GPU-limited situations (Flying in uldum is my bench for this). IIRC Synthaxx does too with his 580 SLI.

SLI's necessity for WoW is a different matter. I'm not disagreeing with anyone saying it's mostly CPU-limited where it counts.

And there are plenty of articles discussing required changes to the game files in order to get WoW to use multi-core CPUs to their correct/full potential.

And none of those articles should be followed since the (rather poor) multi-core support the game has, it handles that best on its own. The point of getting a new CPU for better performance in WoW isn't (always) about getting more cores, but about getting a CPU with a more efficient architecture (higher IPC and clock speed).

[Deleted]

Most MBP's use crappy 1366x768 resolution screens. It's easy to get high framerate on low resolution, but the same laptop would die on 1920x1080 if you'd try to run it on ultra settings.

That's only the 13'' tbh The 15'' is 1440x900 (1680x1050 if you improve it) and i believe the 17'' is 1680x1050.

[Evil Inside]

Hi everyone,

I built this PC 5 years ago when Burning Crusade was about to come out.
The setup is as follows:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz
Asus P5B Deluxe Motherboard
4 GB DDRII Corsair
ATI Radeon HD4870 (512 MB)

My game runs from an SSD.

Basicly, over the years my performance has been dropping hugely. With Cataclysm being the drop that floods the bucket.
Now I'm at 18-20 FPS in 25 man raids in combat.

So I thought, hey why not replace the graphics card and see where that goes.
So I bought myself a GeForce 560 Ti but the result is the same, still only around 20 FPS in combat.

I'm starting to think my CPU is the culprit but I really don't want to replace it atm, cause I was kind of waiting for the Ivy Bridge that's coming early 2012

The reason you're still getting low FPS is because WoW mostly uses you cpu for processing graphics rather than the gpu.

[vesseblah]

Hurray for another four paragraphs of myths to debunk, now in nice mode since it was requested :P

I'm getting sick of hearing this nonsense. 1366 X 768 is plenty good enough resolution for any game on a normal sized monitor (up to 24") and is certainly not "crappy" or low.

While 1366x768 is good enough for most games, it's useless for actually working on a computer. If you're doing any kind of photo editing for example you can see almost twice the number of pixels on 1920x1080 monitor, which means you can zoom in tighter and still see more of the big picture. Same goes for any modern compiler IDE. All the menu bars and sidebars takes so much screenspace you don't actually have much left for the code editor or the GUI designer.

Since people often buy a monitor to work and play, you have to get high resolution screen and run games at native resolution of the said screen.

Just like with HD TV's , you only need 720 resolution up to 34" screens. It's only ones bigger than 34" that will show an improvement in 1080.

That's because TVs have insane amounts of blur added so that you wont see the pixels. If you had that much blur on a windows desktop you could not read the program names under icons at 1366x768 resolution.

1920 X 1080 is , in almost every case, overkill and not necessary at all for PC gaming. Ultra settings in WoW also make the game look worse, not better, in my humble opinion.

That's your opinion. I would not want to play WoW on settings so low that it's indistinguishable from Minecraft.

In a 25 man raid, since you are having to load 25 other people's positions and actions on a constant basis, your connection speed and quality can be nearly as important as your CPU in determining your framerates.

Not really. Internet connection speed requirement is about 10kbytes/s during raiding. That's 1/10th of a 1mbits/s broadband.

A lot of people are under the misconception that a low framerate will hurt your dps. This is almost never true. Every button press is sent and executed whether you actually see it happening or not as long as you have a good connection to the game servers.

Lower framerate makes you unable to see correctly where in the gameworld you actually are. Even if you push buttons at the right time, you have hard time to move out of fire, or for example position behind boss for classes that require it. Low FPS will absolutely hurt your dps.

The DX 11 optimizations in WoW are nothing to write home about but I will say that I get slightly better fps in DX 11 than in 9 with the settings I use.

Difference is about 15-20% in open world where the game is GPU capped. I'd call that significant.

[Cityfella]

I have this computer atm, and it give me 20 fps in SW and about 5-10 in DS 25 man....

Processor Intel Core i5-2430M
- 2.4GHz with Turbo Boost up to 3GHz
- 1333MHz
- 3MB L3 cache memory
RAM 6GB DDR3
Graphics card Intel HD3000

http://pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspir...18181-pdt.html <--- it's a £500 laptopwhich obv can't handle a 7 year old game... or it might just be that everything is broke in it when i bought it...

[Wries]

I have this computer atm, and it give me 20 fps in SW and about 5-10 in DS 25 man....

Processor Intel Core i5-2430M
- 2.4GHz with Turbo Boost up to 3GHz
- 1333MHz
- 3MB L3 cache memory
RAM 6GB DDR3
Graphics card Intel HD3000

http://pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspir...18181-pdt.html <--- it's a £500 laptopwhich obv can't handle a 7 year old game... or it might just be that everything is broke in it when i bought it...

The game engine has been built upon numerous times during those 7 years and probably not so often in a very optimized way, just look at how much just the shadows option (not present pre-wotlk) brings performance down. Textures have become higher-resolution and our screens are often of higher resolution as well. "7 year old game" just doesn't hold, things have changed.

In your case, lack of a proper graphics chip (HD 3000 is just an IGP on the CPU, performs like crap) will make it perform pretty bad in most games, WoW included. The CPU itself is fine and will do its part. Settle with low graphical settings or get a laptop with a discrete graphics chip of lower-mid end or upwards.

[Cityfella]

yeah you are right, i'm looking for a new one as we speak.. it should be said that it actually is the fps i have when everything is on lor/disabled, and the game looks like shit!