Improve your FPS and Latency!

Improve your FPS and Latency! Easy steps to get better at arena!

Facts: Every 10 extra frames per second are equal to 50 resilience. Every point of latency below 100 adds 2 spell damage and attack power.

Last year I bought a Trek 1500 road bicycle. I updated most my drivetrain components to Shimano Ultegra (Stands for Ultimate Integrity). The whole setup cost me about $1100. Why did I spend that much and why would I spend more on a top of the line Trek Madone 6.9 Pro, all carbon and top of the line components, retailing for about $9000? Well, other then the fact that I’m a sort of cycling nut, it’s because that both bicycles are power transfer components. My legs convert sweet glycogen stored in my muscles into raw pedaling power and make me go woosh down and up hills. The components in my bicycle are excellent power transfer tools allowing me to cycle with pride, speed and endurance.


Speaking of Power Transfer Components, your computer is the most important power transfer component that transfers your awesome brain power into instructions for your character. Let’s face it: human reaction time is about one quarter of a second. The internet lag makes events appear about one quarter of a second later then they actually do. The only two things left in the loop are your brain and your computer. Improving one’s brain means improving every little detail that separates the best from the improving players, and can’t be covered in one article. Improving one’s computer performance mostly can. Excellent performance will make identifying situations easier, and will make your responses smoother. In fact, the whole game will feel smother.

In terms of hierarchy, the two most important numbers you’re looking to improve are FPS (Frames per Second) and Latency. FPS can be viewed by pressing Ctrl+R.

Now, what is a good FPS? An airforce study showed that we’re capable of processing a change in a 220 hertz detail[1]. My policy is that more is better. What limits our FPS? First, it’s hardware. Second is our ingame and computer settings. I can not write a comprehensive article, but I can point you to this link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...cs,1786-8.html . Computers require finances and all I can say is that you need a videocard in one of the 15 rows as ordered at the list above, about 2 gigs of ram and preferably a dual core intel CPU.

However, you in game setting are something you can change. The beauty of WoW is that it’s based on the War3 engine, and zooming out improves the overall quality of the game. Even at the lowest settings a zoomed out WoW screenshot looks good.


Also, a basic concept of WoW PvP: You spend the majority of your time looking at:

Positioning, Debuffs, Spell Animations, Cast Bars, Health Bars, etc. WoW PvP is interface driven these days (Even with the default UI). In the olden days we use to watch for the white light in hands to counterspell people, now we have convenient cast bars. The texture resolution on the Blade’s Edge Arena bridge has nothing to do with success. Being able to stick on that druid because you’re playing with good FPS does.

First and foremost, open the Video Control Settings screen.

Change only the highlighted settings, experiment!

Starting from the bottom left, Uncheck Specular Lighting, Full-Screen Glow Effect and Death Effect. The game will actually look sharper and perform faster.

Uncheck Character Shadows and Check Level of Detail.

Set your Refresh rate to the highest number that works. Set your Spell Detail to Max. It’s worth the slight performance hit to be able to see Mana Tide totems and Blessings of Freedom.

I would recommend enabling Smooth Mouse setting. It does not give me an FPS drop but makes my mouth feel smoother and more precise. Your mileage may vary with this one.

All the sliders in the middle control depend on how good your hardware is. I am taking this screenshot from my laptop so they’re all lowered. On my desktop they’re mostly maximized. As a rule of thumb I don’t let my FPS drop below 80.

MAKE MULTISAMPLING 24 / 24 / X1

Restart your WoW and look at the improvements.


The last setting is UI scale. This has nothing to do with performance but what it does is free up space on your UI.



This is for PCs only, as I don’t have a mac.
If you’re still not looking good, look at your videocard drivers. I will assume everyone here uses a desktop and has an Nvidia or ATI card. The correct place to get drivers are here for Nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
And here for ATI: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

Be careful installing drivers and back up really important things. Follow the directions precisely. Be careful with third party utilities and drivers.

If downloading new drivers does not fix anything, go inside your appropriate control panel. This involves right clicking on your desktop, clicking Settings tab, clicking Advanced and navigating to the Nvidia or ATI control panel.

NVidia:

I would recommend only changing this setting. If you have configured your WoW video settings I would recommend leaving it at “Let the 3D application decide”. If you’re feeling adventurous you can venture into the 3D settings and tweak those. I would suggest googling for an optimization guide.

The ATI control panel should have a similar setting. I don’t have an ATI based computer nearby yet.

Finally, playing WoW with 20 mozilla windows, an antivirus, a music player, ventrilo, a movie and other clutter in the background won’t help performance.


Use tools like Adaware, Spybot Search And Destroy or as a final resort Hijackthis to get rid of crap. Be careful not to ufck up your computer.

Download JKdefrag (http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/ ) and run it[might take a while]. Never hurts.

Everyone should do the optimization described here to decrease your latency: (Scroll down).

http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/World-...istry-Changes/


Similarly, downloading via filesharing software … I mean buying your software online won’t help your ping.

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