Help needed, new graphics card not performing

[Focus25]

Hey all,

I ust upgraded my old Radeon x800gt to a HD4670, and I have not noticed any inprovement in my fps, regarding WoW. My system is as follows, and a dxdiag from last night is available.

Dell Dimension 8400 -Single core P4 3.4ghz processor, Win xp, 4gb RAM, and the Sapphire ATI HD4670 528mb ram, GDDR3.

I know the old school single core P4 could potentially be a bottleneck, but I would think I would notice a marked improvement, even with that rig. It was operating at pretty much exactly the same level as the old card. I even kept all the effects at or near minimum, and tried a number of modifications. Unactive areas would run around 50fps, which is fine, but would jump down to 25 or so, with little consistency.

Drivers are all updated from the website, old ones uninstalled, etc..and I'm not getting error messages or anything. I'm just at a loss as to where the trouble could be coming from at this point. Any and all suggestions are very welcome.

Thanks

 

[Focus25]

That's currently the only game I'm playing, which I suppose doesn't help. But especially with a game that's built to run on all manner of systems, I am confused as to why there is little to no consistent improvement.

I am also runing dual monitors. The main one is a 22" Dell LCD, second 17" LCD NEC. I'm not sure if it's able to process over 60mhz refresh though. It said max reported refresh rate of 75 but if I enable the "do not show refresh rates it can't run" the only one shown is 60.

 

[Vokofpolisiekar]

I'm with SS, test some other games as well.

What shader spec does WoW have? DX8/9?

 

[Vokofpolisiekar]

That's currently the only game I'm playing, which I suppose doesn't help. But especially with a gmae that's built to run on all manner of systems, I am confused as to why there is little to no consistent improvement.

I have some games that are quite old and even then as time goes past they don't get faster as my rigs change - it's the game engine that at that time supported a wide variety of hardware which has since been replaced with newer and "better" ones but not "recognized" by the game engine to utilize such technologies. Note, it's not ALWAYS the case.

 

[Focus25]

I have some games that are quite old and even then as time goes past they don't get faster as my rigs change - it's the game engine that at that time supported a wide variety of hardware which has since been replaced with newer and "better" ones but not "recognized" by the game engine to utilize such technologies. Note, it's not ALWAYS the case.

That's definitely understandable. But it seems like everyone I play with has constant 50+fps in known laggy areas and elsewhere, and no one can seem to understand why my setup is yielding such inconsisten fps, it makes me feel like something's very wrong with some part of my setup.

 

[Vokofpolisiekar]

WoW to me shouldn't be too intensive. Although I do note now that you have a single core CPU.

What resolution are you playing at?

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

My guess would be a single cpu, and a P4 at that allowing for the low end fps, also connect speeds etc also has an effect on the game as well.

 

[Focus25]

I did take the res into consideration. It's currently at 1600x1200, which I know takes power to run. I'm not sure if I would expect it to run better perhaps in windowed mode, smaller screen and res. But any res other than that on that monitor looks kinda funky. I guess I could try it on the 17", but that seems like a poor option since I have the other one.

My internet latency isn't typically bad, even though it's DSL. I think it's usually around 60ms. I'm trying to figure out what I can do, short of building a new rig, to get this operating better. I will try a demo of something else to see what it's like. However, since this is currently the only game I'm playing regularly, it would seem a bit drastic to invest in a new rig until this one dies, unless I could build one for fairly small amount <$500.