Windows 7 annual FPS drop with MMO's how can I fix?

[tkddavis]

Recently I upgraded my computer from Windows Vista to Windows 7, obviously Windows 7 ran much sooner and distributed ram better. But soon I downloaded the games 'Aion' and 'World of Warcraft'. These games ran real smoothly couldn't ask for anything better but I noticed this FPS drop in the game to levels that it was still technically 'playable' but I had hardly any control. I assumed it was just my internet but if it was my internet ventrilo's ping would have sky rocketed. I started to notice I'd go from 8-9 minutes with the games running smoothly then have 2:30 - 3 minutes of the terrible FPS drop. So Ive been searching for days on the internet to see how I could fix the problem (noticed a lot of people have this problem), I looked it up tried all the steps people recommended to fix this... didn't work... things such as... update drivers, turn down settings in game etc. when I used vista it was real slow but I never got the FPS drops. My computer is a HP Desktop Nvidia Geforce 9550 Quad Core processor with 6GB of DDR2 ram. I've ruled out if it was the CPU overheating because as the FPS drop occurs my CPU stays @ 30-40%. I have a laptop also with windows 7 that doesn't happen to it at all and as it is a laptop it has lower spec's than my desktop. I'm real curios to figure out this issue, I've tried many ways none of which have worked. I'm not the technical with computers so if anyone has an answer please tell me in steps. Thank you so much I hope someone will know how to fix this!

-Aaron

 

[Scotteq]

Is your hard drive spinning when you get the FPS drops? Could be an I/O issue.

 

[tkddavis]

Is your hard drive spinning when you get the FPS drops? Could be an I/O issue.

Thanks for taking time to respond. As I said above, I'm not that computer Savvy, if you could please explain to me how or where I check to see if the hard drive is spinning?

Thanks,
Aaron

 

[Scotteq]

The Hard Drive light will flash, and often there is an audible sound.

 

[thephilly]

You can benchmark your Hard Drive with a utility like HD Tach to see if it is performing around where it should be based on device type.

Typically you can find some standard benchmarks on Google for you brand of drive to compare to.

Have you tried lowering settings outside the game? Windows 7 display features can be a hog on resources.

Right Click My Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced Tab > Performance: Settings > Visual Settings

Lower for performance or customize leaving out the more intense animations.

You can also use benchmarking software like 3dMark05 (free) to try and narrow down a bottleneck.