# Terrible WoW Framerate Dropoffs



## Cabbage42II (Aug 5, 2003)

Hey guys, basically the only game I play on my machine is World of Warcraft. However, a lot of times, my framerate drops off horribly, sometimes all the way down to 5 or 8 FPS. I have no idea what is causing this, given my specs (below). 

I've tried it on very low game settings and still haven't had very good results.

Can anybody tell me what could be causing this or how to fix it? I don't know whether I should change game settings, ATI control panel settings, notebook hardware control settings, I'm completely lost.

If anybody can even tell me where I need to start, it would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance.


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## Mayor Quimby (Jul 7, 2004)

your video card isnt that good, and to make thing worst, your processor is slow. 

Solution would be to get a regular pc made for gaming or spend tons of money on laptop made for gaming. 

If you can force the game somehow to run it in direct x7 mode, it should greatly increase fps. 

My old pc is p4 1.8 ghz, ati radeon 9800 pro and 512 mb memory, and fps greatly increases when i run counter strike source in direct x 7 mode. I never played WOW so i wouldnt know how to run it in direct x7 mode or if is even possible.


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## Cabbage42II (Aug 5, 2003)

Well first of all, my processor is NOT slow. A PM 1.86 is as fast as a P4 3.00. Secondly, my video card is not a gaming card, but it should be fine to play WoW, as it is not exactly graphically demanding _especially_ on low settings. I've heard of plenty of people playing WoW on their laptop with the X600 so I'm pretty sure hardware is not the issue here.

I'll try to find out about using DX7, but I'm not sure what I'd have to do to try it.


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## tsunam (Sep 14, 2003)

cabbage, I'd recommend a couple of things. Make sure you have the latest drivers for your video card as a start. Also is there anything that leads up to the slowdown in framerates..a stutter perhaps or anything that gives warning.

As far as DX7 don't bother, I can tell you for a fact that wow won't run on it. While your at it make sure you have the latest directx installed.


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## Mayor Quimby (Jul 7, 2004)

Cabbage42II said:


> Well first of all, my processor is NOT slow. A PM 1.86 is as fast as a P4 3.00. Secondly, my video card is not a gaming card, but it should be fine to play WoW, as it is not exactly graphically demanding _especially_ on low settings. I've heard of plenty of people playing WoW on their laptop with the X600 so I'm pretty sure hardware is not the issue here.
> 
> I'll try to find out about using DX7, but I'm not sure what I'd have to do to try it.


ok, pm 1.86 is a laptop processor. even if its fast as p4, i am sure it doesnt have alot of the future that p4 processor has, thats why there are laptop with intel p4 processor are actually labeled as p4 processor.

Its just like intel p4 at 3 ghz vs intel celeron at 3 ghz. they both have same clock speed but when it comes to gaming, celeron will get smoked. OR another example would be amd sempron vs athlon.

Also, the memory, video card, and processor works together in order to acheive good amount of fps. When having a low end video card, processor needs to do more work which is not a good idea because processor needs is handling other task like the game physic, task running in background, etc..

I still stand with what i said earlier, and your not gonna get better fps by updating your drivers. WoW has been out for awhile and unless your drivers are ancient history, or your gotta a buggy driver, nothing is gonna happen.

Also, you can increase fps by turning off all the unnecessory program in background.


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## Cabbage42II (Aug 5, 2003)

I've been messing around with the game and here's what I'm seeing...

I can turn all of the settings all the way down, and I'll be cruising around at about 50-60 fps. But then in an instance or something we'll be fighting and it'll just drop off to 10-12 for a little while. This is with little to nothing running in the background.

It occured to me that perhaps an AddOn that I've downloaded could be effecting this. What do you guys think? Most of the AddOns I have are little, but I suppose that there could've been a coding flaw that is messing things up?


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## BannerGuy (Mar 30, 2005)

It depends... what addOn programs are you using? I use the full suite of CTMod and rarely see any slowness in big or small instances.

Are you playing wirelessly?

See if you can minimize your graphical settings for spell effects as well.

If nothing... download the newest version of your addOns, delete the WTF and WDB folders... and clean out the interface folders and start over from point A... install your recently downloaded addOns

BTW I use a P4 1.4, radeon 9700, and 1GB of RDRAM and rarely do I see any problems at low or medium settings, unless there are 100's of people in one area or my ping is very high.


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## Cabbage42II (Aug 5, 2003)

Well I tried it withoug any AddOns on and that didn't help. What exactly are the WTF and WDB folders anyway? I haven't tried deleting them yet.


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## BannerGuy (Mar 30, 2005)

Those folders are for files that are created during gameplay... if you delete them they recreate the next time you log on... no big deal, but some of the files in them have latent effects on game play...

You stated that you played the game with out any of the addOns Turned on... you mean you disabled them? 

Did you completely remove them and update them with the most recent versions of the addOns? What about your ingame graphics settings (spell animations) and what not. If all of these are truely minimized you shouldnt have too many issues. How are the drivers for your video card? Updated?


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## Cabbage42II (Aug 5, 2003)

Ya know, I tried deleteing the WDB and WTF folders and I think it has fixed it. I'm not sure I've tested it thoroughly or been in the right situations enough times to tell for sure.

I deleted all of my add ons and am putting them back in a couple at a time to try to pinpoint the problem if it happens again. I'll update when I find out more.


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