XFX Radeon HD 5970 problems running more than 25 fps in wow.

[schu65]

I recently built my computer and I have a Radeon HD 5970, amd phenom II 965, 4gb of ram and I have instances when I log in
WoW where if I'm in Dalaran, I can only run about 17 FPS or less. I have no idea what the problem is. At other times It'll will spike up and run in the 100s. I really don't understand what is going on and I really don't believe it should be running as low as it does with the amount of money I paid for everything. The card will be pushing 30 or so fps in town at times then out of nowhere it will drop down to under 20 for no apparent reason. Any suggestions on what this could be or what I could do to test this out?

I also have a problem while playing HoN. Everything will be running smoothly then out of nowhere everything will get real choppy and the frames will drop then it will pick back up and go back to normal.

Someone suggested wiping all drivers from the card then re installing them, but that doesn't sound like it would really be the problem.

 

[itakou]

Sounds to me like a power supply or a over heating issue.

 

[schu65]

its running at 57degress c and i have an 850 psupply

 

[dryernoke]

Something is not right, i have a Core2Duo E8400/ATI 5850 and i get 40-50fps in Dalaran all the time, on a high population server.

 

[schu65]

Lol thats what I'm saying

 

[schu65]

If I camp and log right back in it usually will pick it back up and go to 30+ but even still I shouldn't be having the problem in the first place and it should be higher than that

 

[jryan388]

Monitor CPU and GPU usage while that happens

 

[schu65]

Everyones been saying that it could be a power issue. I just remembered something odd when I was putting the system together. Off of the power supply there was only one 8 prong connector to use and then I had to use a split 4 and 4. I cannot remember if I used the split on the gpu or not. Could that be causing this issue?
When I have time later I will pull it apart and check and post.

 

[schu65]

Well that wasn't the problem, the connectors. So I'm still stuck.

 

[bystander]

Do you have Shadows maxed? And what resolution do you have?

If you put max shadows, MSAA at a 1920x1200 resolution, it can drop below 30's in Dalaran with enough people around. Shadows do hit the system hard.

Most people who post here talking about having max settings in WoW always forget to mention they don't use max settings after all. They use max settings with shadows turned down, or at a lower setting.

One more thing, do you play in Windowed mode, or fullscreen? In windowed mode, CF does not function, so you essentially are playing with a single 5870 at lower clock speeds.

 

[schu65]

I did have the shadows maxxed, I did just lower that and it did improve the fps somewhat. The problem is though that on occasion the fps will just drop for no reason at all. Even if there is no one around, if all addons are disabled. When I experience this drop it will go to under 20 fps and if I relog it will usually fix the problem. I also experience this with HoN a spike of low FPS where the movement looks very choppy then will subisde. In HoN it happens more frequently.

I play hon in fullscreen. I recently have been having a problem playing wow fullscreen. I reinstalled the drivers for the graphics card and when I did I started having about an inch of black space around the rim of the monitor. I had to adjust the overscan to make it fit the edges of the monitor. But when I put wow to fullscreen the black edge appears again, but it is not there if I play windowed maximized. I don't have the problem with hon fullscreened.

 

[PhantomWraith]

this sounds like a classic swap file issue in windows, basically Windows sets aside a amount of memory on your harddrive to store information if that file isn't big enough then when its swapping the file it will cause your system to slow down so I would check your swap file settings.

 

[bystander]

What PSU do you have? It's also possible you are running into power issues.

 

[schu65]

What PSU do you have? It's also possible you are running into power issues.

850 watt

 

[schu65]

this sounds like a classic swap file issue in windows, basically Windows sets aside a amount of memory on your harddrive to store information if that file isn't big enough then when its swapping the file it will cause your system to slow down so I would check your swap file settings.

ok how do I check this out and how do I know if the settings aren't what they should be at?

 

[eyefinity]

World of warcraft has an issue with shadows on some comps. Go into your settings and lower the shadows down a notch and see if that helps.

 

[nforce4max]

If it was swap file being full you would get an error message, trust me I sometimes log as many as 4 accounts at once. Using a SSD for this is worthwhile and it improves general performance across the board in most games and apps. Also this area in Wow you will always have lag. You can go dump $20k-30K usd on a cram of the crop high end build only to still have lag in this area.

 

[i_burley]

I found in CCC if you disable Catalyst AI under the 3D settings it helps