FPS drops in WoW, help appreciated

[Zethas]

My problem is in WoW my fps has recently dropped to 20-30 fps, and I used to play with 50-60 fps. I barely play with addons (other than Gladius, PowerAuras, Xperl unitframes). It's a Dell Laptop Studio 15.

My specs:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 M450 @ 2.40GHz
Motherboard: Dell Inc, Studio 1558 A11, Intel.
RAM: 4GB DDR3, 532 MHz (used CPU-Z to determine this)
Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1
Resolution: 1366x768 (the recommended)

WoW Settings:

Resolution on max (1366x768)
Multisampling on 1x
Vertical Sync is Enabled
Textures: Texture Resolution on Low

Texture Filtering on Bilinear
Pjojected Textures on Enabled

Environment: Everything on Low except View Distance which is Good
Effects: Everything on Low with Sunshafts Disabled
Triple Buffering is Enabled
Reduce Input Lag is Disabled
Graphics API is DirectX 9, (DirectX 11 is usable)

Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks in advance

[Rohiron]

Vertical Sync caps your FPS so I personally don't use it or Triple Buffering. I would probably hit the recommended button in your graphics settings first so it can put all your settings at what the game thinks is best then tweak them from there. Projected textures can cause lag while in combat so make sure that isn't on crazy levels if you're getting in combat lag. Also, right click WoW and hit "Run as Administrator" and then when you log in change your Graphics API to DirectX 11 (If you don't run as Admin it won't save and you have to reselect it everytime you play). If you are running 64-Bit windows download the 64-Bit WoW client to take advantage of everything your system has to offer. Also, make sure your graphics card settings itself are set for maximum performance. And lasty check your battery settings, sometimes my FPS drop on my laptop when I'm playing and I accidentally changed my battery settings and put it back to a non maximum performance setting.

[Zethas]

Wow thanks, I will definitely try all that. Though I need the projected textures to see AoE on the ground for PvP. Also, I read somewhere that running on DirectX 11 rather than DirectX 9 will slightly increase fps. But I will try with 11 for now.
Thanks a lot for your respond!

Edit: Do you know if different Display Mode settings will make any difference in fps?

[vesseblah]

DX11 will be slightly faster.

Also do not touch any driver settings, instead leave those to default "let game decide" as forcing options is known to cause problems and very low performance in WoW especially with Radeon GPUs.

[Zethas]

So as in driver setting you mean the Advanced setting under Options?

[freebaser]

...
Edit: Do you know if different Display Mode settings will make any difference in fps?

Playing in full-screen non-widowed mode is your best performance option.

[Zethas]

Good to know, thanks

[Zethas]

That might explain the sudden drop in fps

But to update: I have followed your instructions and it seems to have helped. I rarely get under 40 fps anymore, so it is a visable improvemnt, thanks a lot guys

[Deleted]

Why would you turn on Vsync if you have 50-60 FPS? Ofc you have FPS drops. Change the graphic settings to lowest and start from there. Vsync off, reduce input lag off.