Bouncing FPS in WoW

[wdcook]

Well I finally put together my PC and it runs great but when I play WoW. I play on Max setting x8 mult, everything enabled /disabled in game that will give me the best graphics.

But my problem is that my frame rates like to bounce around a lot. If I am standing in an open zone standing still my fps will go from 55-75 and sometimes drop to 38~ giving me a stutter affect. I've tried messing with all options ingame and AA on my graphics card and even a fresh game install.

Some things that I have thought of that i'm not quite sure about.

Windows XP 32 bit using 4 gigs of ram
My cpu might be over heating, I downloaded HWmonitor but i'm not quite sure what my heat should be.
An online friend said that a bad stick of ram can cause this, I will be testing it tomorrow.
My Motherboard drivers are slightly out of date. But i'm not quite sure how I should properly update them.


When I built my PC I stuck with the stock heatsink/fan to save some money until Christmas got here. The E8400 came with this thermal paste that was only three decent size strips. Don't know sense its not completely covered this could cause problems. I also ended up reusing my old XP home 32 bit OS to save some money, but now that christmas has come and gone I can afford to upgrade these things if need be.

If there is anything else that I can post. Maybe DxDiag, HWmonitor or CPU-Z Screen shots please let me know and I will have them up right away.

Also this is the link to my old thread so you can see exactly what I have. Also I ended up going with a combo deal on the CPU/MoBo and went for the E8400/Asus PQ5 Pro combo
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/258687-31-gaming-system-suggestions#t1874697

 

[wdcook]

Here is a Screenshot of my HW Monitor

 

[wdcook]

I forgot to add that the last pic was while I had the side panel open and a box fan blowing on it to test.

This image is after gaming for an hour with the side panel on and no box fans.

 

[jamesgoddard]

The CPU temp is fine

 

[wdcook]

The CPU temp is fine

Does that count for the second image too? If that rules out my heat theory I could post some CPU-Z stats and see if i'm getting some weird readings. i will get to that tomorrow, its just to late to post Screenshot and post things now.

 

[jamesgoddard]

Depending on the stepping the max temp is either 72.4 deg or 74.1 deg

http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLAPL http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLB9J

You are way below this...

 

[pr2thej]

Bah its fine, WoW causes stutter coz its big and a lot goes on locally = a lot to process / compute or whatever.

I still get horrble stutter when im cruising through somewhere like Dragonblight with max draw distance up. Try turning off the Ground Clutter option, that helps a lot and it doesnt ruin the gaming experience.

 

[Scynte]

There's nothing wrong with it, it's just in some areas (where there is more ppl ie dalaran/shatt) it cause's the frame rates to slow cause there is so much around to deal with aswell

 

[AtuBrian]

its a mmo many ppl in one place

 

[wdcook]

My problem is not in Dalaran or Shat, its anywhere in Northerend. Sense i'm only 74 sense I waited to build my new pc to play again I have only seen the Tundra and Dragonblight. I understand the framerates moving as I do, but should they really be spiking and causing the stuttering affect on me. I have changed all the options in my Catalyst controls the way WoW likes it. Have checked temps and messed with all the ingame settings that could be causing this.

The only things that I can think of now are my drivers being out of date. I used the ones that came with my MoBo. The only reason I have not upgraded them is because i'm not quite sure how I should do this correctly or what ones exactly I should be installing. I've also heard that a bad stick of ram can cause this, but seeing as i do not get this problem in any other game I am just taking for granted that this is not the problem.

 

[pr2thej]

What notch is your draw distance set on?
Just do a little test - Start at the Nelf camp in Western Dragonblight (just south of the 2 instances), and take a flight path to the fort in East Dragonblight. That path takes you over the middle of the zone, past the temple and the massive (really really massive!) view distances on display.

I predict it will stutter most the way if draw distance is maxed, and the problem will subside as you slide draw distance down.
Just see if that helps at all, and once you get an optimum where you can do that flight path with no stutter or bearable stutter, you got your max world setting. If it does work, make sure you up the distance for any Battlegrounds though...might save your digital life

If I'm wrong ill stop harping on about it being a software issue.

 

[Scynte]

Just outta curiousity, was this when the exp was first release? Cause the fjord and tundra would have been like dalaran at that stage lol. Just a thought =)

 

[wdcook]

Well last night I copied my WoW folder over to another hard drive and removed the Data, WTF and Interface folders so that I would have a new game. I dropped all the settings to bottom and then went out and tried doing questing a bit. My fps will sit at a constant 60 at the default 60 refresh rate instead of jumping from 55-75, but I still do get the 38~ sutters.

To be a little deeper. If I sat in one spot and jumped around moving my screen I would get the 38~ stutter effects every once and a while for about 30 seconds. Then they would go away until I moved into a new area, basically just running for 30 seconds until I had all new terrain, then the problem would start all over as I jumped around for another 30 seconds. But when you add that together running around and not sticking in the same spot for very long so my pc has to keep loading new terrain it adds up to the constant stutters I see.

Another thing I have had a problem with is that people seem to be lagging on my screen a lot latley. No matter where I am, no matter who I am looking at they will lag a little infront of me. They do not lag at the same time, but every lags if I look at them for long enough. I called my ISP and they were running some tests as I was playing. They kept saying that my connection looked good for about five minutes, then all of a sudden he says that he is starting to see problems. So I have a tech on their way to check that out now.

But why I am bringing this up is because I have no idea if it could be causing my overall problem. I sit at a 100-350 latency but it will spike inbetween those numbers while i'm playing at any point.

 

[wdcook]

Sorry for the double post but it would not let me edit my message and I forgot to reply to Scynte

I just built this PC the day after Christmas and have had these problems sense day one. I think that the latency issue has been here too but sense my old PC was so laggy I just don't think I could ever tell lol. But I do play on a Full Server. I'm waiting in an hour que right now

 

[Scynte]

Ahh ok... Guess for now wait and see what the tech says about things.

I'm glad the queues have finished... when wotlk first came out, if you logged on after 7pm on an aus server there was 1500+ q (2-3 hours)... Eventually, i just logged on early n afk'd til i could go on n play lol!

 

[kirvinb]

You also might want to get XP 64 or Vista 64....then ya system can use the whole 4 GBs of ram.>!! I hear XP 64 isnt the best...but at least you can give it a try...jus download it

Windows 7 is already better than both of XP and Vista..Pirated OS...is wrong believe me...but i cant justify spending 200 bucks on a OS they will be replaced by christmas.

 

[pr2thej]

Ahh ok... Guess for now wait and see what the tech says about things.

I'm glad the queues have finished... when wotlk first came out, if you logged on after 7pm on an aus server there was 1500+ q (2-3 hours)... Eventually, i just logged on early n afk'd til i could go on n play lol!

Was worse with TBC. Makes ya wonder considering the userbase is apparantly growing
XP 64 is great kirvinb, if you set it up right nd have the rig to run it.

 

[wdcook]

There is one other part of my system I can think of that might be causing problems. I reused my power supply from my old PC because the power was fine for this system. I just wanted to make sure that there is no problem with psu and my Asus 4850 possibly

http://www.ultraproducts.com/product_details.php?cPath=52&pPath=548&productID=554

It would be nice to upgrade to a 64 bit OS but with 3.25 gigs read now I just think that it wouldn't solve my problem, but I could be wrong. Like I have said, the stuttering does not reduce when I start dropping settings so I don't know why more ram would solve the issue.

There are very few ideas that they give you on the WoW forums but I have check all of them.
* Overheating processor can cause this. Make sure that it is running cool.
* Power management or thermal protection of the processor , such as AMD Cool and Quiet and Intel SpeedStep, can cause this. Check your system or motherboard manufacturer on how to disable it.
* If the FPS drops coincide with WoW's CPU usage dropping, your video card is overheating and has stopped receiving commands for a short amount of time so the game has to wait on it. Check your video card.

I posted the HWM and got replies saying my temps were fine. I also have already set my PC on "Always on" for the power. I was told to download Process Explorer to see if I was getting spikes from any of programs which I was not. I posted DxDiag on their forums too to see if maybe any of my drivers were out of date, I was told that my chipset drivers were out of date but have sense been updated.

I know I posted my pc in the first post and have been posting it the forum piece by piece anyway, so I figure I might as well just link the last two big parts (Mobo and Ram) and make sure nothing could be wrong with any of these thing working well together.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131299&nm_mc=TEMC-RMA-Approvel&cm_mmc=TEMC-RMA-Approvel-_-Content-_-text-_-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122&nm_mc=TEMC-RMA-Approvel&cm_mmc=TEMC-RMA-Approvel-_-Content-_-text-_-


To recap my ideas of what could be causing this:
Power Supply not good enough
Possibly drivers still out of date
A bad stick of ram(But wouldn't this be causing more than this issue?)
Bad latency that I can't see spikes going on with ingame latency bar that can cause FPS drops(Latency is a known issue)

So once again anymore info that can be posted that would help here, please let me know.

 

[Scynte]

pr2thej - i was lucky when tbc came out... me and a mate had just rerolled servers/factions so least we didn't have to deal with everyone moving to OL! was good in the pre-bc areas, was deserted =D. But still got q's


wdcook - That power supply should be more then enough for your system...

If the ram was playing up, I'm pretty sure you would get lag on anything that your comp does that actually requires some effort not just the game by itself... can someone clarify that for me? lol

I dunno if drivers affect something like that... maybe pr2thej might know?

 

[Guest]

Hey.

I have exactly the same bouncing problem.

My system:
Mobo: Asus P5Q SE2
Graffic: Asus ENGTS250 1G Dark Knight
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 2,5GHz
Power Suply: Blac Diamond 500 watt True Power
Ram: 2x2 OCZ reaper Heat pipe conduct DDR2

I would like to know if ur problems solved. Cause i been tryin and tryin and tryin some more. Both on vista and Windows 7, and it bounces on both. I used to run around 60 fps on me old comp wih vista, and it was steaddy. Now im around 30, and it keeps bouncing first down then up. Im thinkin maybe the Rams the problemo as described here earlier. But not sure.

 

[Guest]

Hey again.

I ended up reinstallin wow. That kinda resolved the problem. Still theres some peaks, where fps is downin for a sec. But runnin mostly steaddy at 60fps now. Alitle lower in dala etc.

Well i think im gonna let it be with this now. Me Modern warfare 2 runs really great so ye as u say, its wow, must be

Eanyways tnx. And if someone has eanyother sugestions to get a clean wow session pls post would be cool with no bounces at all if ever possible.

 

[brett1042002]

Running WoW Maxed out may be your issue. Does the stuttering still occur when you drop down the settings? Try going with 1x multi-sampling and lowering the texture and shadow effects too.

I think you are just running WoW at too high a settings for your rig. My old rig had a ATI 4850 as well, and I could not run WoW on max settings without game stutter and low FPS in certain areas. Lowering the settings was my only option to increase performance.

@fpsasm, WoW does not support SLI/Crossfire. Your buddies GTX 295 will only utilize one GPU for WoW.