Is WoW simply poorly coded?

Velvundrgnd

Distinguished
Jun 8, 2009
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18,510
I've become readdicted to wow and recently installed it on my newer machine, here are the specs:

2 9800GTX SLI
Q6600 @ 2.4ghz
6gb RAM
Ultimate 64 bit on one drive and 32 bit on another.

I've installed the game on both versions of windows (32 and 64) and it runs equally slow on both. If I'm somewhere like stormwind or Dalaran i get 15-25 fps, and that's even when there is no one else on screen. While questing I usually get 80+, but that even seems low to me. All my other games run fantastic, so I know it's not faulty hardware.... so all I can think is that WoW doesn't support quad-core cpu's? I've tried running it with and without SLI enabled too (because honestly, I shouldn't need SLI to max it out... a 6800 could do that) and it made no difference. I have plenty of RAM... so wth is the problem here?
 

simplyderp

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Apr 14, 2009
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18,630
I thought about this a few months ago and did some forum searching. I found some topics where people upgraded from, say, a 6800GTish card to an 8800GTish card and saw maybe a 1 fps increase in performance. When they raised the resolution and graphics settings, their FPS dropped only 2-3 FPS. I've noticed that most online games are much more CPU intensive than GPU intensive. I mean, how hard do you really think it is to render WoW? It's all in the CPU and Hard Drive. AFAIK, WoW is only optimized for two cores, so virtually, you're playing WoW with a phased-out 2.4Ghz dual core processor and a Dell XPS gaming computer 9600GT video card. Overclock your CPU and see if you get any FPS improvements in those player infested cities and zones. If you don't, then I fail.