How do I fix my FPS?

[w1z4rd]

Im having major troubles at the moment, my fps drops to around 2 or 3 fps as soon as the fighting starts to get busy.

I think I have the hardware to run the game:

-15.4-inch (Diagonal) TruBrite TFT Widescreen Display at 1280 x 800 Native Resolution
- 2.0 GHz AMD Turion X2 Dual Core Mobile Processor RM-70 with 1 MB L2 Cache
- 3072 MB PC6400 DDR2 SDRAM, 200 GB (5400 RPM) Hard Drive (SATA)
- DVD SuperMulti (+/-R Double Layer) with Labelflash,
- Atheros 802.11 b/g Wireless LAN
- ATI Radeon 3100HD GPU (256mb dedicated 1000mb shared ram).

All my graphics are on the lowest possible setting they can go to. I mean everything.. I even tried dropping my resolution to 800x600.

It is running Windows Vista home edition *spit*.

Im thinking that its Vista using the hardware badly so I am going:

- Install Ubuntu and see if it uses my hardware better, if that fails I am going to:
- Install Windows 7 and see if it uses my hardware better, if that fails I am going to:
- Install Windows XP (though I am going to struggle to find the drivers for this laptop.

Even when I am in Icecrown farming minerals and I have gatherer enabled, it feels like I am playing under a strobe light.

While my latency does get worse in a 25 man raid, the average out of fight is 400ms... so I get the bad fps even on low latency.

Do I not have the hardware to play this game? Or whats up? Any advice?

 

[Odom]

You can play WoW on really old things. Just to confirm are you running a dual-monitor setup?

 

[Gtx Gaming]

ATI Radeon 3100HD GPU (256mb dedicated 1000mb shared ram) <--- problem

my onboard gfx on my board was just as that very low fps

wow needs bigger card for 25 man raids etc, i see loads of people using laptops and complaining about there fps, most laptops are not made play games(mostly for potability and business features) , if u want to play games on a laptop get a gaming laptop

so point of it all,you need a new laptop for better fps or desktop pc

 

[Skurm]

Terribad GPU.

It's not Vista. Vista actually runs games pretty good these days. Slightly faster than Win7. The problem is, Blizzard have upgraded their gfx engine over the years to cater for more fancy spell effects and whatnot (any oldschool warlock comparing life drain then to life drain now, for example) and shadows etc etc, so a el cheapo pc actually won't cut it anymore.

Unfortunately the only advice I can offer? Upgrade. Start with the GPU, then consider replacing the CPU, and finally 4gig+ ram is generally a good idea with any MS OS newer than XP.

 

[prod]

I gave up on trying to improve my fps and decided to upgrade completely.
WoW becomes a different game at end level content, I get about 60fps while leveling with alts etc, drops to an awesome 10fps in 25 mans. Cba really. New CPU and Mobo coming next week \o/

 

[Pitbull]

You can get away with that setup if you do the following:

Make sure Vertical sync is turned off and your combat log is deactivated.

With vertical sync on mine stays on 60 FPS. If I turn it off it goes up to around 101 fps some times

 

[Crowley]

I used to be quite happy on my 7800GTX with medium settings until I watched the graphics on one of my friends PC with his 4870 with just about everything on high. Playing WoW on a 5850 now and every time I logged in it is like eye candy nirvana.

Totally worth it in 25 mans with all the spells doing their thing.

 

[SnowWar]

4sure hey. I still remember playing on a 17" with 7600gt and then changing to 23" with 1920x1080 ress, all @ full detail (with HD4870)
Game looks damn good for something thats old plays even better