With my current video card and memory set up I cap out at 60 FPS. This also involves using only a few basic mods such as SCT, CTRaid (chief instigator of lag IMO), and perfect raid. While raiding it drops to between 25-30 FPS. I consider this pretty acceptable as the human eye can not percieve much difference beyond 30 FPS.

I bring this up because recently I tried out a UI package known as Photek ( can be found here: http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files...photekui-v6-1/ ). The newest version of this package is made using many ACE based mods. While I have always had good luck with ACE mods using this package literally squashed my raid FPS to 8-15 FPS. The casting and movement lag was unbearble and I had to disable all but a few mods. Given my decent set up (2 GB main memory, Radeon X1600 video, P4 3.0 processor) I am not really sure why this is. It could be my new 1600x1200 resolution but my tests come up inconclusive.

I bring this up because I have come to the conclusion that the computing power required to run the above package at a constant 50+ FPS must be god like. Having watched a few of Curse's PVE videos makes me jealous of the computer Fura must use. Anyone here with such high end performance want to share their set up or tweaks?

These are methods I've used that noticible help video performance:

1. Decreasing terrain load distance in the WoW video options. Its generally not needed to see players or mobs that are 200 yards away. By default often the game has this set very high.

2. Disable full screen glow and antistropic filtering in WoW video options. The games colors get a little darker with these setting off but the raid performance increase is worth it.

3. Playing the game with and without CTRaid makes a noticible difference in FPS. I have never personally used oRA, Vendetta, or RDX so I am not postive on their perfomance versus CTRaid.

SCT has an option called "Enable FPS independent mode" or something to that extent. Play around with that.

I run with 110 mods (90% ace2) and get 60 FPS solo, 20-40 FPS in naxx and AV. PC is a E6300 dual core OC'd to 2.5ghz, 2GB ram, and Nvidia 6800GT (1 year old, so 2-3 generations behind now). I recently upgraded from a PIV 3.2ghz single core machine, same video card, which got about 45 FPS solo and 15-25 in Naxx.

all my video settings are maxxed out, I run at 1600x1200 in windowed/maximized mode (dual view, 21" lcd as wow monitor and 21" side monitor for browsing web)

I moved from ctraid, discord, and other mods to ace2 a few months ago and got my FPS boosted a good 30-40%. Replacing things like Gatherer with Cartographer, DAB with Bartender3, etc has helped a lot.

I tried temporarily a friends 8800GTX video card and got over 120 FPS. wow is not heavy great cpu/graphics card, any decent machine will run it ok. I find RAM to be the best first upgrade.

Not that this is helpful or on topic, but I'm pretty sure the human eye can tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps pretty well.

I usually run at about 40, and drop to around 20 while dpsing in a raid.

The amount of calls per second your UI is making has a tremendous impact on your performance. Try something like Healing Range Alpha that makes a vast number of calls when in a raid and you can really see the difference. Blizzard's default UI might not be the best but it's damn fast. A surprisingly large number of heavily used mods really cut in to your framerate and most people never even realize it.

I have gone around and around on the mods I used to trade off FPS vs functionality. Even so I have an incredible number of mods installed (most are ACE2 now).

I have a 3.2Ghz, X1950GT video, 2GB RAM, using a 1600x1200 resolution screen, and I usually get 60 fps while solo, though it can dip to 40-45 at times. In raids I tend to be around 20-30fps though it can dip to 10-15 =(.

I have turned off the full screen effect (don't like it anyways) and anisotropic filtering (barely notice it). I pull in terrain and object distances a bit from the max (but I can't bear to bring them in farther since I like to actually see the world around me). I turn down the Spell and weather VFX a little bit from max also.

When I previously did some experimenting I found that bringing in the distances on terrain/objects, the full screen effect, anisotropic filtering and just plain screen resolution to be the biggest FPS hogs in the visual settings.

I try to stay away from any mod that seems like it would be constantly polling the world for information instead of just parsing the information already coming in. As stated by a previous poster, any mod that does this can really hurt your FPS especially if it is trying to keep track of info about your friends in a raid. This is why of course things like CTRA can be such hogs in a large raid. If it is any consolation, it should get better with 25 man max sized raids....

Good tips. The above mention about mods constantly monitoring your surrounding environment being a damper makes sense. As much as I love PerfetRaid its constant range/curable debuff alpha does cause noticible lag during certain encounters.

I started looking for bottlenecks in my system but only came up with two: 1. I chose 533 Mhz memory over 800 Mhz for price reasons 2. While my video card (Radeon X1600 512 MB) is a decent card, even at the time of purchase it was only second or third best on the market. Only bare minimum proccesses running.

Anyone use notice a difference using a high end ATI card versus Nvidia's equivalent? I contemplated going for the dual Crossfire setup but its highly expensive and most applications don't seem to take advantage of it. Any noticible difference with dual core CPU?

In retrospect I should have just spent the extra $600 and gotten the best of everything. Damn 20/20 hindsight.

e6600 @ 3.5ghz, 2GB DDR-1000, Geforce 8800 GTS here, running at 1680x1050, 16x Aniso, 8x FSAA + SSAA. Everything cranked to the max, Terrain LOD turned off, average around 50-60 FPS (due to Vsync). I've got a handful (10-15) Ace mods at most. In comparison, my old rig (Athlon64 3000+ XP, 1.5 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 AiW Pro) ran at 1680x1050, terrain draw to 75%, 1x aniso, 1x FSAA at around 21-28 FPS with the same mod loadout.

If you're running into FPS problems, it's probably a good idea to lower your mod usage, or find alternatives that have less features but accomplish the same task. Photek, though, is a really light mod compilation, so I'm guessing you should probably do the usual routine (defrag, update drivers, turn off excess Windows processes) or just turn down the video settings in game.

Also, on a side note, WoW's Aniso implementation sucks, if you want to use proper Aniso, turn it on to any level in WoW then use your driver control panel to force it to whatever level you wish.

Thanks for clearing that up. I am more of a computer hobbyist than an expert. I could also be because I am not actively looking for difference.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frame...humans_see.htm

I actually had this argument a lot with my friends (first person shooters...), but I'll cut to the point.

The human eye doesn't work like a shutter, it works on a constant stream of light. The more fps, the less your eye perceives redraw rates. I like to think of it as our eyes are always reading information, but our brain can only process it at certain intervals.

Personally, I've found that higher than 80fps I can't tell any difference, but my friends claim they can tell the difference between 80 and 120. /shrug

Incorrect, the 30fps myth is not related to TV interlacing. Films 24fps, and TV shows 30fps are able to present the illusion of continuous motion because the individual frames are not recording an instant of time, they are recording 1/24 of a second in the case of film and 1/30 of a second in the case of a TV show. A computer on the other hand generates and renders an instant of time. The difference is noticeable if you compare a single frame of both. The film/TV frame will be slightly blurred in regards to anything moving, the computer frame will be sharp and well defined. Because of this computer games need a higher frame rate than a film or TV show, exactly how much more is debatable and depends on individual human perception.

Standard Definition TVs have a refresh rate of 60 and the image is interlaced, this means 60 times a second some part of the image is refreshed. Since the image is interlaced you get an effective 30 frames per second since the TV only updates the odd lines on one pass (1,3,5,7,etc.) and the even lines on another pass (2,4,6,8,etc). HDTV allows for progressive and interlaced frames, with progressive scan all lines are updated 60 times a second. Computer monitors are progressive scan.

Personally I don't like my frame rate in any game to drop below 30fps, average fps or max fps are nowhere near as important as the minimum fps. Below 30fps I find the game to be more like watching a slideshow and not enjoyable.

You all make me sad.
I run at 10-15 FPS dropping to as low as 5 in raids with video settings turned just about as low as possible.
Athlon 64 2800+ (1.8GHz) 1.5 GB RAM, GeForce FX 5200 I figure it's my processor holding me back, but could be anything really.

I have a similar processor to you with less memory and a radeon 9600 SE. I'm getting 30 FPS riding through IF with max graphics settings and full addons. I recently cleared up space on my system disk which upped my fps by 25 in IF and 40 in the wild. So I don't think your processor is the one holding you back.

You neglect to mention which resolution you are running at, but I'll put 10$ on your graphics card being the culprit.

I get about the same performance. Same processor, 1GB of old PC2100 ram, and an ATI 9800pro.

I played around with video settings and found that I got the exact same performance at all resolutions so I run at 1600x1200. I've got 2gb of PC3200 in the mail, hopefully that helps.

Your problem is most definitely the utterly amazing FX 5200. It's as slow as a fast GF3-series card. Not kidding.

If you're strapped for cash, pick up a Ti4200 or 6600GT, if you're an nVidia fan, or a Radeon 9800 Pro/XT for _cheap_. If not, grab a newer card (midrange right now is GF 7900-series, Radeon X1900 series).

Main gaming PC: A64 3800, nVidia GF7900GT PCIe, 1GB RAM, 1600x1200x24bp, no AA/AF, nearly max settings - 55-60FPS normally, 25-35FPS in Naxx.

Second PC: P4 2.4C OCed to 3.0, nVidia 6600GT AGP, 1GB RAM, 1280x960x24 windowed (dual monitors, so I have it running windowed on second monitor so I can two-box), mostly medium/low settings - 15-25FPS normally, never raid on if I can at all help it.

Both computers use the same UI/mods, which is maybe 60 or 70, mostly Ace2 - memory usage is about 40MB after a GC.

276 just now

I'm a bargain PC gamer myself, so I never run anything close to state-of-the-art hardware.

I was running a setup a couple years old (to put it mildly):

AthlonXP-2100
1gb PC133 SDRAM
Radeon 8500 (128mb)

It served well through solo questing and 5-man runs. I had a few nice addons on it, but nothing major. Stuff like MazzleUI would totally overwhelm it, naturally. But damage meters and a custom UnitFrame were ok. That is, except for raiding. 20-man zones had very noticeable choppiness, especially when fighting mobs. Just walking around was decent. In 40-man zones, I basically had to zoom and turn the camera in such a way that my own toon was the only one visible.

I recently upgraded the video card to a Radeon X1600PRO (for less than $100). I immediately noticed a massive jump in solo FPS. I could run the game at 1600x1200x32, turn on 4xAA, and all that jazz with no slowdown. There was no difference in raid performance vs. my old video card. I then took the plunge and got a new motherboard, chip, and memory.

Athlon64-3200
1gb PC3200 DDR

All the performance problems went away completely. Raids are as smooth as glass. Funny thing is, I don't think it was the processor upgrade. 33% more AMD marketing-speak processor rating - but the performance increase is just too dramatic. I've decided that it was the change to much faster memory.

Oh, FPS is now 45-60 all the time, with all the detail settings maxed.

The speed of the processor may not have significantly increased your performance (although I'm sure it did increase it), but I'm sure the on-die memory controller has nothing to do with the increase in performance from new RAM. ;)

Currently running E6600, 2gb Patriot RAM, and an NVIDIA 7900GTX. Generally in IF around primetime im sitting at 60fps. I rarely drop below that.

The computer at my parent's house is an 800mhz 256 ram geforce 4000 series beast.
Believe it or not, it actually does run WoW quite well (compared to what you'd expect atleast). Out of cities and out of raids, I will get about 30-35 fps.
Can't really move around in cities, drops down to 5-10 fps... and long ago I tried doing MC with it, and while it was a lot faster than in a city, it still was too bothersome.
Doesn't take much at all to run wow.

Infact, if you look at the memory stamp of wow, I think it hovers around like 140megs.