Sandy Bridge and WoW

[lardacus]

Just a quick question about the upcoming release of Intel's 2nd gen i5/i7s on 1/9/11.

My current setup is an AMD Phenom II x4 945 3.0ghz with 8 gigs of 1366 ram paired with a GTX 460 on a 120gb Phoenix Pro SSD.

I don't think I have any major issues with framerates (about 70-100 in the world and 15-30 in crowded Org on all Ultra except for shadows). Haven't done any 25 mans yet this expansion but that was my weak point in WoTLK. I would have to turn literally every video setting down in game and in the Nvidia control panel.

My current motherboard only supports SATA 3gb/s so my SSD is really only performing at about half of its capability right? I'm just trying to figure out my major weak point and trying to find a justifiable reason to upgrade to the new 2500-k/2600-k with a USB 3.0 and SATA 6gb/s MB

 

[evilgenius134]

You really shouldn't be getting 15-30fps in Org with that setup.

I can assume you are playing on a high resoluton with possibly 4-8xAA. I would strongly advise turning AA off and seeing the results.

Also WoW does have fairly hard limits on performance in busy locations especially with interactions occuring. You can only get so much.

Nothing in your system is a weak point, and it is definately NOT your HD, since even they can rarely max out a SATA 3gbps link nevermind a 6gbps.

You should post a more detailed list of your graphic settings in WoW and in the Nvidia control panel. Also you framerates as minimum in both.

 

[LePhuronn]

There's something wrong with your setup.

I have a dedicated WoW box in the living room running Phenom II X4 550, 4GB DDR3 and a Radeon 5770 running at Ultra settings at 1080p and it never drops below 40fps in Orgrimmar and Dalaran even when it's busy.

I suggest installing all the latest drivers for your GTX460, check the temperature of your card and CPU when running under heavy loads and also check your power supply is healthy and can support the graphics card.

I'd also suggest running WoW in the experimental DX11 mode as well - gave my system a consistent 5-20fps boost.

 

[mihaitzateo]

Did you set the correct cpu affinity in your config file?
By default it comes with cpu affinity set for 2 cores.(or at least this was the case in the past)
If you did not:
go open your WOW installation folder,and there open the WTF folder where you have the file config.wtf .
Open the file config.wtf
See there how "Set ProcessAffinityMask=" is set.
If you want that WOW will use all 4 cores put Set ProcessAffinityMask=15
See that your WOW is not started when you will try to do this modification.
http://www.wowwiki.com/CVar_processAffinityMask

 

[BeefBravo]

You should be getting better frame rates than that. I play on an Asus G72 laptop with a core 2 duo and GeForce GTX 260M and with VSync off I can match your in zone performance and way surpass your stated performance in crowded cities. Something isn't right with your system. I'm also running with 8x multisampling and shadows on high. I never drop below 40FPS (I use the add-on "lagbar" to monitor my performance). I used to drop to 30-35FPS in Dal, but not since Cata went live.