FPS low on Core 2 Duo system

[ITGuy]

Wow doesn't really hook directly in to your hardware, that is the responsibility of the operating system guys. If you are running XP games will suck vs running games on Windows 7. Sorry I hate it when wrong information is given.

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

[vesseblah]

Wow doesn't really hook directly in to your hardware, that is the responsibility of the operating system guys. If you are running XP games will suck vs running games on Windows 7. Sorry I hate it when wrong information is given.

Speaking of wrong information...

Windows XP will run all old DirectX9 games faster than Vista or 7, there's about 5% difference. Windows 7 just is required today to get DX10/DX11 support in new games.

Also to clarify the first sentence: No games use hardware directly in Windows, all programs go through various layers of APIs and drivers. Games usually talk to DirectX which talks to GPU drivers which talks to the actual graphics card.

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

No, WoW uses GPU for graphics just like all other games. In addition to average first person shooter WoW has to track hundreds of players around you in cities unlike just one or maybe 16/32 in multiplayer, that is what requires the CPU power.

[Organoth]

Speaking of wrong information...

Windows XP will run all old DirectX9 games faster than Vista or 7, there's about 5% difference. Windows 7 just is required today to get DX10/DX11 support in new games.

Also to clarify the first sentence: No games use hardware directly in Windows, all programs go through various layers of APIs and drivers. Games usually talk to DirectX which talks to GPU drivers which talks to the actual graphics card.




No, WoW uses GPU for graphics just like all other games. In addition to average first person shooter WoW has to track hundreds of players around you in cities unlike just one or maybe 16/32 in multiplayer, that is what requires the CPU power.

Finally a correct answer. Just as I said, graphics are dependent on your GPU, not your CPU.

@OP:
Your computer is not being sent information on hundreds of people during a raid so your frame rates during a raid have very little to do with your CPU. If you have low frame rates in a raid or dungeon a GPU upgrade will do far more then a CPU upgrade. Your performance in a raid/dungeon/pvp should be your main focus. In all of those situations there is a lot less data on play position for your CPU to process compared to being in a city. And again in those situations your GPU will be more important.

As I said before I strongly suggest you see what your performance is like with the 560 as it should be a huge improvement.

[Dch48]

The 560 is rated better than the HD 4870 but not really by that much. The 4870 is more than sufficient for WoW. It's just a fact of life in the WoW universe that you will get graphics lag in 25 man raids or in highly populated areas like the major cities. Like I said before, turning down particle density to fair but leaving projected textures on can make a substantial difference. It is also a fact that a more powerful GPU will help more than a CPU though. Even in WoW. You will see improvement either way but moreso for the GPU.

I started playing the game back in 2005 on a machine with an Athlon64 3500+ CPU (very good at the time) and Radeon Xpress 200 Integrated graphics. It played okay while soloing and leveling, getting a low of like 23-25 fps running through the old Silverpines. I slapped in a Radeon X700 Pro card with 128 mb of video RAM and my framerates on the same low settings nearly tripled. I was able to turn settings up considerably and still get double what I had been. This was with the same CPU and RAM. I highly doubt that a faster CPU would have made that much of a difference even if I would have gone dual core over the single core I had.

[vesseblah]

Silverpines ... and my framerates on the same low settings nearly tripled

In solo content when there's no other players around the game depends on graphics card like all other single player games. Like for example questing in Silverpine.

In cities or raids with lots of players around the game depends mostly on CPU.