Low frame rates

[Killer_kittens]

Hi there

i am having a lot of problems with a new rig i just got from a mate. i am running vista 64 ultimate on it and on games it has a very low frame rate, the odd thing is that lowering the settings on the games seems to make very little difference. the computer i have supposedly upgraded to should be a lot faster than my old one but it isn't at all on games. specs are as follows:

AMD athlon 64x3200

Ati Radion Sapphire x1950 gt

3gb (3x 1gb sticks) DDR400

200gb HDD

the games i am having problems with were running fine on the older computer with a frame rate on WoW averaging out at about 30-40 but now it averages out at 12-18, same with left 4 dead tho i don't have a FPS counter for that.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance

[kalniel]

Check that there aren't background processes getting in the way, and make sure drivers etc. are up to date. But I suspect your 'upgrade' to vista ultimate is actually your problem, as you have a very slow processor and vista is more demanding. The lack of effect from lowering settings also suggests you are being held back by the processor.

[DanceswithUnix]

Was that graphics card part of the upgrade?

What resolution are you running your monitor at?

I have seen people upgrade their graphics card before from an old DX7 or DX8 spec card to a low end DX9/10 one and see their frame rate drop unexpectedly. Each frame should be much prettier than with the old card as the graphics card is doing a lot more work, but overall the frame rate will have dropped.

Your 3x1GB sticks is rather suspiscious too, do you know which motherboard you have? A Socket 754 board may be quite slow with 3 dimms, a socket 939 or AM2 board will want memory in matched pairs. Either day, you might find the machine is faster with 2GB in it. 2GB is fine for WoW anyway.

To get a good comparison I would have to know where you are getting those frame rates as well, in Dalaran I often get under 10fps myself but that does rise to something decent when out and about.

[sammorris]

I would probably place the lag with the CPU, which will be why it doesn't matter very much that you lower the settings.

[dfour]

The x1950gt is an underclocked 1950 pro so you could use CCC on ati drivers to overclock that using overdrive. Also you can use ATI tray tool @ www.guru3d.com to get a frame rate counter on all games and tweak your system up as well.

The 3200+ if its a S939 chip is a cheap and easy upgrade (I know you probably dont want to hear this as you have just got the system) otherwise if your board allows it overclock it and see if that ups your frame rate.

Removing vista would also make a difference as XP is less of a system hog.

Agree dump the extra gig and stick with 2.

If you cold post the board and model of it that would be a great help to us as well.

[DanceswithUnix]

I would probably place the lag with the CPU, which will be why it doesn't matter very much that you lower the settings.

But the CPU is an upgrade from the OP's previous machine, and indeed my wife used to run a S754 3200+ with 1GB of ram and it ran WoW ok with a 6600GT graphics card on a 1280x1024 monitor.

Differences?

The Wife's PC ran XP home.
The Wife's PC had 1 stick of RAM in it.

If you add sticks of ram to a S754 CPU then it increases the load on the CPU bus, so the bus drives slower and slower. 3 sticks of DDR400 ram would run at something like DDR266 speeds.

Just looked it up, and the X1950GT is a bit slower than an 8600GT which is a little underpowered but I know people out there raiding with 8600GT cards and lower so it should be fine.

[shaithis]

But more RAM is almost always more beneficial then faster RAM.

By all means, try removing a stick of RAM but if you see no instant increase in performance, slap it right back in again.

[Killer_kittens]

as suggested above i have tried taking a stick of RAM out to run with only 2x 1Gb sticks. this made little to no difference in performance at all that i could see at least. with regards to the operating system perhaps i should try a version of vista that is not 64 bit? if this would help i have a copy otherwise i don't have a copy of XP so that would be difficult. the mother board details i have listed below using Everest. the g card is a new card yes in response to a question asked above, however my old card was on the way out unfortunately as i was rather attached to it. thanks to everyone for the resonce and i realy hope we can find the problem

CPU Type AMD Athlon 64, 2200 MHz (11 x 200) 3200+
CPU Stepping DH-CG
Package Type 754 Pin uOPGA

P.s. it is general in all places in wow, no specific place but is worst when there are more players around...makes seance but i would have thought the same would happen for mobs also.

[Jasp]

What specs were your other pc btw?

[DanceswithUnix]

Shame about the stick of ram, would have been an easy fix and it is a known problem in the platform (it was really only designed for 2 sticks).

Next test, instead of dropping graphics settings try dropping the graphics *resolution* right down.

This isn't a fix, I know you can't really play in 800x600, but I want to give the graphics card a really easy time to help isolate which part of the system is giving you grief.

Something WoW specific as well, make sure the shadow effect is turned right down. The new shadow code is a real performance killer, I run that one close to minimum.

[shaithis]

Yeah, turn shadows off. There are a lot of people complaining about WoW framerates with ATI/AMD cards, even the 4870(and x2)

[DanceswithUnix]

Yeah, turn shadows off. There are a lot of people complaining about WoW framerates with ATI/AMD cards, even the 4870(and x2)

In case you think Blizzard are biassed, it kills my Nvidia card too

[Killer_kittens]

hey again, i have now reinstalled windows vista 84x to see if that helps...it did, frame rate is averaging arround 30-40 now and with the advice from the others with no shaders it runs fine. same with left 4 dead so i can only presume that it was vista 64 bit taking too much out of the system for it to be able to do anything else. thanks alot for all the help, you lot rock