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4870 512 and Wow

Soldato
Joined
12 Jul 2005
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3,913
Having gone from an 8800GTS 640 G80 to the aforementioned 4870, my FPS in wow in CERTAIN areas has dropped (at times) to bellow 18FPS. Its rediculous considering the crapiness of WoW's graphics. Im confused really considering im getting a healthy 14k in 3dMark06 etc.

Anyone else getting shocking FPS in WoW as a result? My old 8800GTS would not drop bellow 50FPS on the whole.

Annoyed now.
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Apr 2004
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Milton Keynes
Can't say I have. 4x AA, 1920x1200 and the lowest I see it drop maxed is late 30s in Zangarmarsh or Terrokar when looking into the distance with all the new shadowing etc on. Try cleaning off your drivers, reinstalling, and also perhaps wiping all the wow config files and starting again. What settings are you running ingame? Also if it's relevant Im now on Vista. If you're running very high settings it could theoretically be your CPU holding you back as WoW can be surprisingly CPU intensive, so perhaps try checking CPU usages also?
 
Associate
Joined
1 Dec 2002
Posts
1,884
WoW is serious business man!!!! dont make me break out serious cat on you!


TOO LATE ITS OUT THE BAG:

SeriousCat.jpg
 
Soldato
OP
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12 Jul 2005
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lol no - i did not buy a 4870 to play wow. Ill sort the drivers i think - im only running 1400X900 on a 19" flatscreen too. Somethings not right - i am running in wondowed mode though - perhaps thats the prob
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Oct 2002
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GREAT Britain
lol no - i did not buy a 4870 to play wow. Ill sort the drivers i think - im only running 1400X900 on a 19" flatscreen too. Somethings not right - i am running in wondowed mode though - perhaps thats the prob

ATI drivers have a bug where games in windows don't cause the GPU to speed up - it runs in its low power state. Got a few choices:

- Run in fullscreen mode
- Use RivaTuner to make the card run at performance clocks all the time (will use more power)
- Switch to NV

Oh actually one more option:

- Hope that ATI fix it
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Jan 2003
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Nottingham
ATI drivers have a bug where games in windows don't cause the GPU to speed up - it runs in its low power state. Got a few choices:

- Run in fullscreen mode
- Use RivaTuner to make the card run at performance clocks all the time (will use more power)
- Switch to NV

Oh actually one more option:

- Hope that ATI fix it

That isn't a bug, it's how powerplay used to run on ATI's older cards, it wouldn't run 3D clocks unless it was a full screen app/game. The 4800 series aren't affected by this because they changed powerplay to change clock speeds depending on GPU utilisation.
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
33,188
when exactly did you upgrade, since the latest patch and the new shadows/depth of field, though its not the most dramatic change ever the performance hit for maxed everything requires significantly more power now than before. So you could maybe just be comparing apples to oranges maybe?

That patch gave me fairly crappy performance with shadows up to max, its more than enough, 4870x2, 3 clients, all on max they only get 20-30fps each with drops, shadows on default, everything at a constant 60fps(v-sync) with never a drop.
 

Vir

Vir

Associate
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I bought a 4870 last saturday, went from a 8800GT and I am having the same kind of 'problem' you have. If I crank up the AF in WoW the framerate goes insane. I can run Farcry 2 all maxed out (apart from anti-aliasing higher than 2x) in 1920x1200 lol and it still feels smooth.

Anyway... I am gonna try and run it fullscreen tonight like someone proposed above... If you run windowed mode in Vista make sure you turn off Aero otherwise your performance will drop. You can configure it on the WoW.exe properties.
 
Associate
Joined
16 Jan 2003
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by my pc. :D
Got a 4870 1GB card, playing with everything maxed at 1920x1200. I have noticed a drop in frame rate at certain areas, and a lot of the time frames drop its accessing the disk - caching new/changed areas I guess.

I tend to leave screen sync on, so any frame drop is noticable. Normally its well over 60 fps anyway (but obviously capped at 60 when sync is on).

Don't think its all about GFX performance on wow though, as other factors can effect it - 'net speed, server load etc etc etc.
 

Vir

Vir

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Netherlands
yeah fizzy I agree, exact same thing here, maybe it has to do with area caching and the new patch's graphics settings... what I see a lot is low framerate the first time I go to some area, next time I come there it's all good, so I know it's not the GFX card that can't handle it properly. Well it would be strange if it couldn't as it runs Farcry 2 maxed out smoothly :p
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
25,666
Try turning the shadows down ATI cards have never been very good at them, reducing the draw distance may help a lot as well since it's been increased a lot, full spell detail can hurt performance a lot too.

Strange though that your 4870 is performing worse than an 8800GTS, guess it's one of those games ATI aren't too good at it's not like it's used in benchmarks or anything.
 
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