It's a decent card, but if you're going to go for a budget 2 series card, the GTS 260 black edition is the best bang for the buck. It has higher clock speeds than the other 260s, and most of the standard ones can't even be overclocked to the standard settings on the black edition.

No, just purchase the 4850, 4870 1GB (Sale on newegg with one for $125 AR!), or just wait a few more months for the next gen of cards.

If you must buy nvidia, GTX 260 Core 216 would likely be the best around that price point.

Anyone having the issue of the whole UI hiding when a menu pops up when WoW is windowed? For example, right-clicking on something in the taskbar, the menu pops up and in turn, my whole UI either hides (or the screen gets distorted with a mix of random textures that I assume are from the memory

I'm trying to cast a wider net on disconnect issues that have cropped up for 25-man raiders over the last few weeks.

For reference, see this tech forum post where people are discussing the scope of the problem.

Folks with this problem:

1) Experience consistent disconnects during lag intensive encounters (i.e., boss fights) in 25-man raids as of the last few weeks usually during prime time hours.
2) Do not experience disconnects in less intensive situations (5-man, 10-man encounters).
3) Prior to a few weeks ago, Have had little/no problems with disconnects in 25-man raids.
4) Do not experience similar lag with other internet applications or online games.
4) Have tried the standard fixes for disconnects (graphic settings, addons, hardoware, etc.) to no available.

My guess is that the root problem is similar to the problem (and solutions) described in this EJ post. However, since the problem for most folk has cropped up as of a few weeks ago (many people claim as of the last major server maintenance to fix the instancing issues), I have a feeling (hope?) that the catalyst for this change is somewhere on Blizzard's side (either in the servers or the client).

Is anyone else experiencing these issues or have a raid/guild-mate going through similar problems? I'm trying to get a feel for how widespread these issues are. Hopefully more information will help shed some light on some short and long term fixes we can take to get back to raiding.

I'm absolutely having these errors, and it's obviously been a very aggravating issue. I hadn't seen Cadfael's blog on the issue, so thanks for linking that. Maybe it will help some.

I have a very, very low end PC. I'm used to getting <10 FPS on boss fights, but aside from occasionally lingering in fire or dying to WWs it's never been an issue. Since 3.2, though, I've been disconnecting only in 25 man encounters, and occasionally locking up in 10 mans for ~5 seconds. My ping isn't significantly higher than I remember it being, either.

We've been seeing a lot of this. So much so that our Main Tank is almost rendered useless in our raid environment, and last night we also had a Warlock and Rogue chain Disconnecting, among several others disconnecting every so often.

The rogue's disconnects seemed to stop when he switched from playing on Windows (Vista I believe?) to Linux. I'll check the blog and see if any of the fixes we haven't tired yet address the problem.

Just build a new rig. SSD, 4890, i7 920, 6gb RAM, Windows 7. Loads extremely fast...

But still gets single digit frame rates when riding around Dalaran (zero addons). Is the game simply built this poorly? Anyone else able to sustain a minimum of 30 FPS with max settings while moving in Dalaran?

Linux fixing the issue seems fishy to me as I'm running Mac OS X, and I'm seeing the same problems on my client and my wife's client (that's running on top of Vista). Wonder if he was experiencing different latency issues...

I get 30-40fps with a Core2Quad 2.83ghz and an 8800GT so something is definitely wrong there. Do you have shadows up too high? Anything past the second notch is bad for performance. Is your process affinity set properly?

If engine mechanics are anything near FPS games when it gets to FPS, I can safely say networking can be directly related to end-FPS. I'm quite confident that Quake-type game engines do see direct FPS decreases if there is networking congestion (it can even be directly simulated there by decreasing client vars such as /rate). If hypothetically graphics needs are covered by the client, it's probably clearly a networking capping side-effect. And I'm quite confident Blizzard may be in need of networking capping in certain servers.

To back up Goatbert's statement, I built a new machine earlier this year with an i7-920, nVidia GTX 260, and 6 GB of RAM running on 64-bit XP, which has plenty of its own problems. My load times are pretty quick (unless I'm trying to log into Dalaran while I have 10-15 tabs open in Firefox, including Pandora, and god knows what else running), but even with all the stuff I run in the background, I run WoW windowed and still get 30-40 fps moving around in Dalaran. I was lazy with my game settings and just set it to Ultra, and haven't played with anything since I haven't had any problems. If you're running a solid system like that and getting such low frame rates, something else is going on.

The guild of some friends of mine has been experiencing this issue for a week or two. It is not confined to individuals. The entire raid is being simultaneously disconnected in the middle of TOC-25. The issue is not confined to pulls, it could happen halfway through a fight. The only addons the entire raid uses are DBM and ORA. Given how widely DBM used the only plausible client-side culprit is ORA. The guild is mostly American but also has an Australian representative who experiences the same issues so it can't just be a Comcast issue.

I ran ToC 25 last night without addons on a fresh OS install and still experienced disconnects (just myself). I found that I didn't actually start disconnecting until 9:00 server which is prime time. It's worthwhile to note if your raid is disconnecting during peak hours and if possible try a raid on off-peak hours and see if you have the same problems.

Enabling HT produces more heat with no benefits for wow. WoW can use up to 3 real cores now, and will run tiny threads on others. Setting AA on low and shadows one notch from the top I get 60 fps in dalaran at 1680x1050 with a 4850. If you are not, you are doing something wrong.

I need you to run a test for me. I think my buddy had just figured this out. Does this happen to you in any zones where there's no phasing?

I had already tried the processor affinity setting (255 with HT on). At first it seemed to solve the problem completely. I couldn't get below 30 FPS in Dalaran. After installing addons and peripheral software (headset drivers, Logitech Setpoint, Curse), I'm back down to single digit FPS. 15 FPS if I stare at the wall. This is with reduced AA and shadows, window mode/maximized.

Trying to uninstall those programs/drivers did not improve performance. Its not restricted to Dalaran. My FPS is unusually low everywhere with this setup.

On top of all that, its loading even slower, and I have a ping of 290 wired when I had a ping under 200 on wireless before. Very disappointing.

what about non-wotlk zones? My 750 watt I had needed to be RMAd, so I'm back on my 550 and haven't noticed any crashes in no-phasing zones, or any pre-wotlk areas.

The problem in my case ended up being some of the new power settings/"going green" options on the chip as well as windows 7. Something was telling my system my CPU was idle so it dropped the multiplier, even while I was running WoW or benchmarks.

I'll end up sucking more juice by WoW is running completely smooth in Dalaran.

In Windows 7, its Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings (for whichever plan you have selected) -> Change Advanced Power Settings -> Processor Power Management. If you see a "Minimum" or a "Maximum", you have something enabled in your BIOS. You can try setting the minimum to 100% in Windows, but I found I have to disable the setting in the BIOS. (In my case this was C1E and EIST).

I noticed the same behaviour, but only when porting to Dalaran and walking right away.
I think it has to do with the amount of textures loaded (I play at Max-View Distance), cause my hard drive shows activity like crazy for about 30s.
When you approach Dalaran by flying mount, textures are loaded gradually, ergo no problem.

What fixes the freeze-problem:
a) turn down view distance
b) When porting to Dalaran, dont't move, watch your HDD light resume normal operation (occasional blinking) and move then. If you experience stutters, this means that the HDD can't load textures fast enough and at some point WoW might just give up loading them (some kind of timeout) and THEN the screen freezes. If it stutters and NPCs/chars are missing/invisible, just stop movement at once and let it load. Once you have everything loaded fine, moving around is perfectly smooth.

Edit: on a side note: Many 4870/4850 have problems with WoW, disabling HyperMemory with AtiTrayTool OR Reducing View Distance to slightly below half both solves the problem.

I'm out of ideas for the FPS, but have you done the Nagle Algorithm fix yet on your new PC? I was wondering why my latency on my new PC was so bad when I reactivated (120 ms vs. ~10-20ms back in May), then I remembered I hadn't done that fix yet. Bingo, latency back down to low double digits.

Only thing I can think of for FPS is for some reason your computer is keeping itself in power saving mode or some crap. Try turning the resolution way down but leave details how they are... if it's still low FPS odds are it's something processor related.

Try setting your power management plan to "High Performance" (Which on Windows 7 is hidden under "Show Additional Plans", not sure about on Vista) and see if it makes a difference.

I have been experiencing this in a major way, to the point that i can't even raid anymore as a result until it's fixed. which is a major bummer because my guild is just starting algalon and finishing up the few achievements we need for our ironbounds.

At first i suspected my ISP, due to them "flipping nodes in my area" per broadband reports.. but there are lots of times that my fiance stays online just fine and i mysteriously disconnect. Most often this happens during raids, but i hitch a lot in major cities too.

So far i've done all of the following:

* All tweaks suggested in this thread:
http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/cadfae...onnecting.html
* Turning off all addons except the ones i cannot live without for raiding (VuhDu / Healbot -tried switching beteteen the two... no improvement, Pallypower and DBM only)
* Update firmware on (older netgear) router
* Replace router w/ shiney new linksys router
* Replace wireless broadband with stronger PCI card

Nothing has improved my problem.

Reinstalling wow now, but if anyone else has any other suggestions i'd be eternally grateful. This problem just started after the most recent content (TOC) patch.