Thanks for the responses guys
@Keninally my wow folder is actually on a seperate "games" drive all together which was brought across from my old machine (which was running XP).
Do you think that may have something to do with it?
Im more than happy to re-install if need be

Cheers

Am I right to assume that changing the SET M2Faster from the default "1" to "3" is useless on a Dual Core processor? At least that's what I have been reading until now in different posts and discussion, including this one. However, almost none of them seem to mention something specific about the ancient Dual Core processors like mine.

It's also worth noting that the second to worst shadow setting looks a LOT better than the worst setting, at a minimal FPS slowdown. It's after that setting (not the lowest), that the slowdown becomes visible.

I also run my WoW in it's own partition, and have had no problems with patching etc... However, I didn't install it on this machine, just copied it over from my old one so there's no registry for WoW to confuse the patcher. As Kevinally mentioned though, make sure you've admin rights to your game as well.

BTW, people have always just gone with hlid. My full nick looks too much like a faceroll for most folks. (Although it's legit, it's old Norse.)

Your problem is most likely the CPU. 6 GBs RAM is more than enough for WoW, especially since it won't use more than 2 GBs anyway (more than 2 is obviously still better since Windows etc still need RAM). You could test what's bottlenecking you by either turning graphics options way down and comparing FPS with Ultra settings and/or downloading something like MSI Afterburner (program that checks GPU load) to check if it's your GPU capping you.

But like I said, my guess is that it's the CPU. I have a slightly slower GPU (5750) and it usually doesn't get capped in raids. For reference, I got a CPU that's a bit better (Core i5 750 @2.66 GHz) but only 4 GBs RAM (DDR3 though) and I get around ~40-60 FPS in combat in 25 mans.

I was figuring as much, but because the i5 is not compatible with the P5B (Asus P5B Core 2 Duo Intel P965 Chipset), it means I need to get a new motherboard as well. I'll check out MSI Afterburner and use it during tonights' alt 25 raid.

The shadow setting slider selects between different shadow implementations and as you've noted the second from worst is a fairly decent quality one without sacrificing framerate on most video cards. Somewhere there's a blue post or an article that explains each setting and the quality / performance issues, IIRC part of the differences between settings are which types of in-game objects get shadows and the methods used to cast them on surfaces.

One more here for a new cpu/motherboard.

Earlier this year, I had been saving up to upgrade my video card (from an elderly Nvidia 7800GT), when my motherboard decided to go faulty. Being a socket 939 one (with overclocked X2 3800), it seemed stupid to get another one, so I dug deep and went for an i7/860+mobo. In hindsight, it did me a favour because, despite the ancient video card, my frame rate shot up. I run 1768x992 windowed, and idling around Dalaran pegs at 60fps when quiet, 50fps when busy. 25 man raids usually hover at 30-40fps. Yes, all the FX are turned down low but, after you have seen the pretty architecture, that doesn't matter. Running shadows on the 1st notch above the lowest really drops the frame rate though

Anyway, the moral of the story is, rubbish video card + good cpu >> great video card + ok cpu.

If you want to do the first option and find an upgrade compatible with your motherboard (LGA775 chipset), there are very few options. However, I have done the same type of upgrade myself for your chipset, and know the upgrades.

I upgraded to a Q6600 processor, and the other compatible option is the Q6700 (the difference is minimal and they cost about the same). I read processing benchmarks for the Quads and compared them to the Core 2 Duo processors, and the performance scores were so much higher, and even comparable to most things from the next generation. The MAJOR downside is that Intel stopped manufacturing these in 2008, so the only place you will get one is Ebay / Amazon etc. And make sure you get the version of the processor with G0 stepping.

Also worthy to note is that I have the same graphics card, and 4gb of the same ram you do. Running on Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, 25m raids run well over 30 FPS upwards to 55FPS, with max settings except for shadows and slightly lower spell cluster. Edit: Also, same resolution; 1900x1200.

Re: Upgrading Socket 775 CPUs, if you're just looking for WoW performance, you'll likely be better off with a fast dual core than a quad. Most of WoW's processing takes place in just two threads, and though there are other threads that will run on the other cores of quads, those cores will typically be underutilised. Better to get 2 cores that can run fast with something like the E8400, E8500 or E8600.

An E8500 has 3x the cache of your E6400 and is more than 1GHz faster at 3.16GHz to the E6400's 2.13GHz. These chips are easily capable of playing WoW at max settings.

With the Asus P5B though there are issues with older versions of the BIOS (1236 or lower) not being compatible with 45nm chips - make sure to upgrade to the latest one from support.asus.com.

The last quad cores for lga755 are the q8xxx serie if you're on a budget (I wouldn't buy them) and the q9xxx if you want more cache, better overclocking due to higher multipliers and VTx extensions.

Q6600s are worth buying used if you find a good stepping since they should sell for less than 90€ by now.

I'm running a q9550 at default settings (could raise it to 3,4ghz from 2,8ghz), if his motherboard support that processor it could be a cheaper alternative to a i5 750 since it would work without changing the ram and the motherboard, but it could be hard to find it and quite expensive, but still cheaper than the whole motherboard+cpu+ram package.
Performance wise a q9550 is roughly the same as a i5 750 when it comes to multithreaded programs (with wow it's such a case) and it's slower on single threaded applications thanks to turbo boost on the i5, in my experience it's an overabundant cpu for wow, but maybe my view is influenced by my slowish geforce 9600gt.


My cpu utilization is roughly even across the 4 cores with some applications on the background, duals are cool for benchmarks and overclocking records, but I prefer better real world performance so I don't get slowdowns if the antivirus decides that it's a good time to update itself during a raid or I'd like to record a raid using fraps.
I bet that cataclysm will use multicores even better than wotlk.


EDIT Another option is to overclock that e6600 since even a cheap air cooler (for example an arctic freezer 7 or a cooler master tx 3) should bring that cpu in the 3ghz region providing substantial speed gains.