What hardware increases FPS?

Apart from Graphics Card, ram and CPU, what else could lower / increase FPS in games drastically?

I recently upgraded my Aspire T180 with a Sapphire HD 4670 and 2x 1gb Ballistix Dual Channel PC8500 Ram.

My CPU is AMD Athlon 3800 x2, maybe this is the problem?

All drivers up to date, AA settings turned off etc, and still my FPS is just too low for what i could be getting with this hardware.

It isn't Resolution or a graphics problem, in high data areas my FPS drops regardless of Graphics settings or resolution. (I'm talking about World of Warcraft as an example, if there are many players present all performing actions, raid for example, my FPS shoots down to like 10..)

Well, for Wow your CPU is a big limiter, WoW likes all the cores it can get. Also Turn down shadows and other things, and you will get lots more FPS. Id say more ram would help also.

You got no where near the specs it takes to run WoW maxed, so turn down some settings til you get FPS you desire.

I get 90FPS on 25 man raids

i7 920 3.4
6G DDR3
ati 4870.

Daship, even on minimum graphics i'm getting the same FPS as i am with maximum graphics (minus shadows), i'm sure it has something to do with my CPU as it's the amount of data being streamed which seems to be lowering FPS, in an empty graphics intence area i would be on 50 - 60 FPS, in an area with alot of people regardless of where it is, it's pretty low. However looking on my g15 LCD, CPU usage is never above 70%, Ram usage never above 60% (I have 3.5gb ram all together, the maximum a 32 bit OS can have).

This makes me wonder if it is my CPU, since the other aspects of my computer should handle max graphics, i had a friend with a 9500gt and 2gb ram on 60 FPS maxed out in raids, 120 everywhere else, even shadows maxed, BUT he was running Quad core.

yeh i'll look into getting myself a quad core then mate , i think im gonna check out a 64 bit version of Windows 7 see how that is.

And don't worry about raid damage, it's immense on everyones meters

hehe, well now i need to look into a new core and PSU since my PSU is rather low wattage.

Any idea if a quad core will fit into this motherboard though? :
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/prod [...] -us0000310

yeh just lookin at the AM2 line,

"AMD Phenom X4 9650 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 2MB L3 Cache"

looks pretty bang for buck on what im looking to do, nothing top of the range but something which would overkill World of Warcraft?

the phenom ii 920 an 940 are am2+

Hmm this is difficult, it's either get a Dual Core which has the worry of the upgrade being too minor, or spend a bomb over budget on a Phenom 2 Quad core...

thanks for the heads up mate, but its a very difficult situation, the Phenom series 1 is around my budget, either that or spend double on a *** hot phenom II quad core, just looking for budget value atm.

On serious levels just how good is the Phenom I series.. ?