Frames Per Second acting up in WoW

[Ov3rlord Falc0r]

Its the weirdest thing ever. When I play WoW solo with all setting on Ultra I get 40-50 FPS. When I group (not too often if I can avoid it) my FPS drop to around 30 which is expected because I'm with more people now. I lower my setting to almost as low as possible (the next notch up) to get my FPS back up to the 40-50 because I really like it there, I can tell a difference if its lower. The thing is, when I lower it, my FPS actually drops!! I don't get it. I put the settings on almost as low as they can do and I only get 15-25. But as soon as I bump it back up to Ultra it goes right back up to 30ish and 40-50 if I start soloing again...

I don't understand this at all. Am I right to assume its not normal?

Here is my specs:

2.0GHz Core 2 Duo
2 GB DDR3 RAM
160 GB Hard Drive
Nvidia 9400m


PS. I usually play on my desktop PC but I don't always like to sit at the computer. My girlfriend likes to cuddle with me on the couch and watch me play sometimes, hence the reason I use my laptop sometimes. Its about 75:25 in favor of the desktop.

 

[Huntn]

You should experiment. Lower resolution does not always mean better fps. If WoW performance is less than what you want, see what happens when you play it in a window vs full screen, Command (Apple)-M toggles. On my elderly 1.8 dual G5, Windowed mode significantly ups the frames. Usually where I need to do this is on Northrend. Classic areas run great.

 

[darkcurse]

Strange, I usually got lower framerates playing in windowed mode.

 

[Randman]

After the patch, all the UI settings went to default so double check them. Tha includes sound.

The number of mods you have can have an impact. The combat log is also a memory hog but one of the biggest thing is buffs.

Say you have a warlock with imp blood pact. Multiple times a second, it's spamming info to each player and your computer is getting all of that. Next you have a warrior with imp commanding shout. That overwrites blood pact so you now have that info also being spammed to each player. All of that hidden data is going to have some impact on FPS.

 

[Ov3rlord Falc0r]

You should experiment. Lower resolution does not always mean better fps. If WoW performance is less than what you want, see what happens when you play it in a window vs full screen, Command (Apple)-M toggles. On my elderly 1.8 dual G5, Windowed mode significantly ups the frames. Usually where I need to do this is on Northrend. Classic areas run great.

I always play in windowed mode. I generally run iTunes while playing so I like to skip songs quick and easily. I've tried with iTunes off and it doesn't affect the game at all so I think I'm ok with that. I don't lower the resolution that stays the same, I just lower the texture qualities and stuff like that. All the slider bars, not the drop down resolution ones.

I've been experimenting with different settings. :/ Looks like I'll just have to suck it up and play with the 10 or so less FPS. Its not that big of a deal, I just wanted to see if y'all had any quick suggestions!

 

[Sayer]

I turned on "high-quality" textures on Wow 3.1 and an older iMac (Core Duo) w/10.5.6. Surprisingly framerates went up overall.

Try reducing "ground clutter" and particle effects, a lot of the F/X are CPU-bound not GPU bound.