I have noticed around 5-10 fps increase on latest beta build of Windows 7 - build 7000.

I'm having similar issues with low fps in WoW. I get about 20 fps in Dalaran with all settings set to minimum. I've got 2GB PC6400, E6600 Core 2 Duo and a 8800GTX running @ 1920x1200 (fps doesn't improve if I resize the window to smaller proportions). Shouldn't that kind of setup perform better than 20 fps?

I've heard that memory issues can have a pretty negative impact on fps, and when I ran 'Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool' it did indeed find some problems. Can't afford to replace the RAM at the moment, so I can't say for sure if that's my problem.

I can vouch for this. My FPS still isn't amazing, but I was having utterly dismal frame rates before I made this change. Changing any other settings made virtually no difference atall (including changing view distance from maximum to minimum. I think Blizzard have some significant problems with their shadow rendering. Anything other than the minimum setting destroys my fps.

I've been noticing the media player improvement too, basically when opening Media Player, I notice a 10 fps increase, I am however unsure if this improvement is permanent however, it seems to me that the fps drops towards it's normal value after some time. Anybody else noticed this, and potentially did some research on it?

Well it was easy to gather some relevant articles using google. This effect was seen with the 2.3 version of the client

First up, a wow insider article with links to threads on WOW boards.

Media Player boosts WoW performance - WoW Insider

A Blizzard started thread on performance issues with 3.xx clients with recent updates and some interesting suggestions for Vista users in regards to sound processing on page 2. Also note, a blizzard provided client configuration for lower end computers on page 2.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> _____User tips and tricks

link


Finally things might be looking up after the past month or 2 of hell.

Most of the obvious answers are already posted - namely drivers, memory, and settings.

However, I don't believe this has been mentioned but the size of your primary drive makes me wonder if you could be having a thrashing issue or just a free space swapping issue. Especially as you mentioned that you're running the combatlog for the guild (which would peak during bosses), and Windows Vista - which is really a hard drive predator.

GearKnight already mentioned that you should disable SuperFetching, and that it worked for him. Someone claimed in a reply that vista will compensate when stealing ram and hitting the wall by going to cached memory, which it will but, this might actually be dramatically exasperating your problem if your HDD space is low. Believe it or not, despite all the counter press - Windows Vista does indeed have some features that CAN slow down systems... and will slow down older ones. Its not a terrible OS, but it can fight you at times.
I'd kill Superfetching, drive indexing, and make sure you have no more than 75-85% of your drive being used. Which means if its reporting more than 50 Gigs used, you're going to have potential issues here. (HDD being too full is way more likely to be a problem than Superfetching or drive indexing tbh). If it were me, I'd also disable system restore and set the recylce bin to delete files immediately. You don't have a lot of space to work with, and Vista does seem to be happier with more space as much as it likes more ram.

All that being said, usually hdd slowdown is less fluid in nature. But I've also seen it lead to generic framerate loss with drives over 90% full. Especially when compounded with a lack of ram, or heavy ram usage.

Oh, and turn off Aero.

you may use foobar, or if you just like listening to streams while playing vlc worked good for me

foobar2000 has always been a favourite of the memory-conscious user.

I've been doing most of things mentioned in this thread since a long time now each time I encountered low fps (disabling addons like quest helper and auctioneer, turning off everything that I can running in background). Still will try running full screen mode however it wonders me a bit since when I started using windowed mode in TBC it kinda improved the performance. Also, I am considering turning off the sound.

I am wondering about one more thing tho. The thing that I find the most annoying about my game's performance is the random freezes I encounter when I crit or have some proc - I have been thinking it might be connected to my scrolling combat text addon (MSBT) ... however I am not so sure of that this is the main issue and because my dps is kinda proc based it will be rather hard to run without any proc notification. Therefor I would appreciate any comment on this issue and maybe some advise on some other addon of this type with better performance. Also, while reading this topic I got an idea that maybe it is combat log related rather than this particular addon.

Last thing I would like to mention is that during longer, heavy AoE raids I often need to restard my game to come back to normal performance. Would really prefer to avoid it since reloging on my server during raid time might end up in not coming back. Can it be something more than recount?

I installed them the day they came out, and they did not solve this issue for me.

Purely anecdotal data is anecdotal.