Upgrade Help - Low FPS in Heroic 25 Raids

[dcwarcraft]

Ok, I'll try and keep this simple. I am in a progression based 25 Man Warcraft guild. We are currently working on Yorshaj and I am experiencing terrible FPS on this fight. Some examples. When in Org (Raid Formed) FPS = 60. When Clearing Trash FPS=30, When on Boss Fight FPS Varies between 8-16.
This is WAY to low. I have already disabled all add ons I don't need (In game Add On memory usage is about 9MB) and made sure no programs are running in the background while I raid (MSConfig etc). Note, I also reduced video settings to GOOD in game.

Current PC Specs:
OS - Windows 7 64-bit SP1
CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66GHz - Yorkfield 45nm Technology
RAM - 8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 533MHz
Motherboard - ASUSP5Q3
Video Card: XFX GX260NADBF GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3
Link to Video Card Specs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150330

I have about $250 MAX to spend on upgrades and I am torn about what to buy. $250 is not enough to get a high end video card, but it should allow me to purchase a GeForce GTX 560, GeForce GTX 560 Ti, or a Radeon HD 6950 2GB (This one pushes my budget).

The question is this...
Is the Video card the problem here or is my CPU the culprit? Unfortunately replacing the CPU, Motherboard, and RAM is not an option right now, but I do not want to buy a new video card and find out it doesn't fix my FPS problems. Any suggestions? Please back anything you post with some facts. I do computer work for a living, but I am not a hardware expert. I can however understand/research what you post so please feel free to be as technical as you want.

Thanks for helping...
- Raider with low FPS

[Savedwow]

It's your processor. WoW isn't graphically driven, it's the processing power required to parse the combat log events.

[BicycleMafioso]

Well. 9MiB of addons are still plenty (I use <0.5). Make sure they are all updated and aren't what's dragging you down.
What resolution are you running?

Have you tried doing a clean install of your World of Warcraft? Fragmented your harddrive?

The ways I see it as far as throwing money at the problem goes, either get a better-than-stock heatsink and overclock the CPU, or replace the CPU/Motherboard (RAM is more than fine).
Sorry.
Graphics card is fine here.

[heatrage]

Save abit more money and upgrade to a 2500k cpu + motherboard, That would be your best bet.

Upgrading the GPU could bottleneck the system.

[Deleted]

i used to get 14 fps on my pentium 4 O_o now i got 60 on my i5

[dcwarcraft]

That is what I was afraid to hear... The question I have is this... Our guild did MANY Heroic Ragnaros kills before we finally got him down. I consider that fight a major strain on hardware, but I never experienced FPS issues like this. I always stayed over 20 unless the adds were exploding. That was only 2 months ago. inside Dragonsoul just seems to be a problem.... I think it's because so many of these fights require stacking and rotation heavy raid CD's which tends to put the biggest strain on hardware.

@tetris - 0.5MB is just not possible in a Heroic Progression guild. Bigwigs uses more than that alone. Last tier I raided with over 20MB of add on memory.

Running 1920x1600 Resolution
As for the UI It's AsphyxiaUI which is an edited version of TukUI. - http://www.tukui.org/forums/forum.php?id=165
My add ons are always up to date as well as my PC drivers.

By the way, does anyone have any facts about why my video card is ok, but the CPU isn't enough?

[Wromthrax]

Don't think 9 MB of addons is something scary, I get the same FPS in 25 man with far worse computer and ~50MB of addon usage.