I don't understand why W.O.W. Graphic settings are not affecting my FPS?!

S

sohcugy

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 24, 2004
Messages
137
I just upgraded from an FX5500 to this 6600GT, my computer is an Athlon XP3200+, gig of ram, Coompaq motherboard(crap). In Astanaar I put the FPS counter and did some runs from the same spot to the same spot, after giving a few seconds for my computer to load everything(it gets jerky for the first few seconds after I log-in but it just has to put everything in RAM). Any way I changed the Pixel shaders, the terrain detail, highlights, gloweffect and even changed resolution from 1280X1024 to 800X600, AND forced Anti-aliasing through the driver settings and NO CHANGE AT ALL in FPS. The only settings that changed the FPS where the Terrain clip plane(going from farthest to nearest probably doulbled the FPS, made sense), the Object clip plane(big difference when brought in near, I understand this one too), and the vertex animation (slightly affected FPS) and that Details box(slightly, I think it compresses unused textures or something I don't know). Now with my old card I knew it was the bottle neck, could my Compaq motherboard(that downclocks my PC3200 to 333mhz) be creating this? I mean it dips to 19-mid 20's as I run through Astanaar, it increases as I leave to 35-up FPS. And it drops to mid 20's or so in Iron Forge by the AH. Any ideas?
 
Well usually no change in FPS after increasing IQ means that you are CPU limited, aka your fps are limited by your CPU whilst your video card is a yawning.

That doesn't sound like the case there though. I would say that you need to uninstall and reinstall your Forceware if you haven't already. Be sure to use Driver Cleaner to remove your old drivers in safe mode. It sounds like your drivers aren't applying the IQ settings.

Here is the link for uninstalling/reinstalling drivers: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=752253

Oh yeah, I don't play WoW (yet) but some MMORPGs limit the FPS to a default cap number, that might be an issue as well.
 
I did this when I first installed the card, but I did go threw some Forceware Beta Drivers and back to the Nvidia one. So, just to see I ran Driver cleaner again and the frame rates very marginally improved but I think it may have to do with less people being on right now than two hours ago. I had Riva-Tuner installed and had the card overclocked to 525core and 1100memory, 500core 900memory is stock on a Leadtek 6600GT AGP. So after all that with stock setiings, the game runs the same as it did with Riva-Tuner overclocked. BTW I do have a cable modem, and I have SP2 if that affects anything?
 
I know Star Wars Galaxies is capped at 30 FPS, is it possible so is WOW?
 
Nah, I get 30-45 fps regularly (sometimes lower in heavily populated areas) at the highest graphic settings (1280x960), and I have a 2.53GHz cpu w/ 6800GT (a little unbalanced I know). This is on an i845 chipset which is AGP 4x and has single channel ram. You are either cpu limited or you may want to consider reformatting.
 
I don't think its your cpu. My current system is a 2.4C o/ced to 2.8 on a 875 chipset motherboard with 1GB of ram and a 6800GT video card. I play WOW and I seem to be capped at 60fps(am gaming on an lcd at 1024 x 768). In Ironforge I get into the mid 40s. The only changes were increasing terrain texture and AA slightly. Im also using the 66.98 drivers.
 
But does your FPS go down when you increase the resolution? That's the one that's got me, I thought it might be the 128bit memory bandwidth, but Antialiasing, ansitropic and increasing resolution doesn't affect the FPS. I would really like to not reformat just to play a game, that would be a PITA for me. :)
 
Since I game on lcd, I can't increase my resolution, as they only have an optimal resolution, hence my 1024 x 768. Now should your fps drop as you increase resolution, the answer is yes. As you increase resolution, your video card has work harder to draw the extra pixels. My suggestion would be to go into your driver settings and set it back to normal, which is probably application controlled, then go into the game video options and click on the video setting default button. Play the game and see how it plays , then go back to game video settings and adjust the settings and see what effect it has. Don't woory about your system, its fine. You have a very nice cpu and video card. If you go to the WOW forums, peolple are playing with all sorts of equipment. We're talking P3 along with FX5200 entry level cards.
 
I did set everything back to normal, the anti-aliasing is application controlled, uninstalled riva tuner and put the clocks back to normal, I messed with everything and there is no difference. But it is a huge difference over my FX5500, so I'll be content just curious if others had this similar problems and if they solved them somehow.
 
sohcugy said:
Any way I changed the Pixel shaders, the terrain detail, highlights, gloweffect and even changed resolution from 1280X1024 to 800X600, AND forced Anti-aliasing through the driver settings and NO CHANGE AT ALL in FPS.
Click to expand...

Wait, you dropped the resolution, then forced AA? Forced it to 2x? 4x? off?

In WoW, did you change all those graphics options then completely exit the game and reload to see how performance changed?

Do you have any other games you can give us some performance numbers from?

Please do not even consider reformating. That is an idiotic way to solve a problem like this.

Edit: I dont know how much, if anything, has changed between open beta and now, but I do know I had better than your performance on an AthlonXP 2.2Ghz, 1GB RAM, and a 6800GT. So it probably isnt the CPU. I just dont remember my numbers.
 
I have a P4 3.0GHz, 1GB RAM, and a 6800 card. My FPS will vary depending on where I am and how much detail is on the screen. The biggest FPS hit you'll take is having the terrian distance set to maximum. (Viewing distance)

My FPS can be anywhere from 100FPS, down to 20FPS in heavily detailed enviroments with max detail turned on.
 
It would seem weird that increasing resolution does not decrease FPS .. but really why complain =)

First off tho ... Anti-Aliasing has to be forced through the drivers to work. In my experience 6x does not work either. 4x seems to be the max on my 6800 ... when I choose 6x there is no anti-aliasing for some reason.

Another tidbit ... when you turn on glow effect you are turning off anti-aliasing ... no way around it. Since the glow effect softens the edges and allows edges to act as secondary light sources, anti-aliasing would not work. So it could be a case of the glow effect with no anti-aliasing = same frame rate as anti-aliasing and no glow effect.

I would suggest it has something to do with the drivers. I have noticed weird things happen when changing resolution in WoW.

Also be sure to completely restart after changing graphic effect options, because some changes do not take effect until restart.

Also if you have wait for vertical sync on or forced through the drivers, that is going to limit the FPS to match the refresh rate. I always find it much smoother and prettier to play if I knock down resolution from 1280 one step and turn up the refresh rate.

Hope this helps =)

Great Game tho

Bonk
Level 35 Dwarf Hunter
Eonar
 
I totally didn't know glow effect negates AA. Thanks for that..

I have been running at 16x12, 4AA/8AF with the machine in my sig. It's running very nicely. Now, I wouldn't be playing the game at those settings if it were a FPS, but WoW doesn't really need 60+FPS constantly. It's not that sort of a twitch game. It can drop to 30 or so and be just fine. It feels like it's above 50 almost all of the time..

I was having some problems with some anomolies and some crashing, but I switched the rendering mode to opengl and it seems better.
 
Yup it does negate AA.... although at the resolution you are playing at, the effect will be hardly noticeable. You can really see it tho if you try droping down to 640x480 or 800x600.

But who plays at thoose resolutions anyway =)

Personally at the resolution I play at .... I will take 4x AA over glow effect, any day.
 
I did exit the game on the options that specified that you must restart the game to work, the anti-aliasing I tried it all through the drivers, 2X, 2XQ, 4X, 8X. But I might have had the Glow effect on, too. I didn't realize that would negate it. Yeah the clip plane I totally understand, but not the lowering my resolution and getting the same FPS thing.

Oh also I do have Far Cry but don't know how to get any Standardized numbers off of it. I ran 3dmark2003-2005 and got a bit over 7000 on 2003 and 3000 on 2005.
 
I do believe that World of warcraft does turn on Vsync by default, as I can never get very far above 75 fps, which is my refresh.
 
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