Looking For Help (Optimizing Performance)

[phanbuey]

yeah man...! hopefully that works - best-case scenario, you will be able to OC that card to 600!

 

[ho0dzy]

P.S. even after Omega drivers, still not showing up with the card temps etc... haven't tested the memory OC'ing yet (hopefully it doesn't black screen me like last time)

Edit: still getting low FPS (20-30 avg) even with GPU and CPU OC'd and new drivers. Maybe I should look over the driver a bit and see if I can optimize performance.

 

[hat]

I wouldn't try overclocking a whole lot. Prebuilt computers generally have bad airflow.

 

[phanbuey]

the game still runs at 28 FPS after restarting and all??? wow... i mean that sounds like what ur x200 should be pulling... messed up (u did disable the x200 in the bios and removed it from device manager, yes?)

 

[ho0dzy]

x200 from bios and device manager...? I'm lost

Edit: and I've stress tested the CPU at 2200 MHz for several hours. I stay under 50*C the entirety of the time so I'm okay with it.

I'm not seeing anything else listed in my Display Drivers except my ATI RADEON X1650 Series and X1650 Secondary

 

[phanbuey]

i mean, the PC you linked had onboard video... did you disable Onboard from the bios (there is usually an option for that in case you get a new card). then when you go into windows, go into system settings (right click on my computer>properties or press "windows+break" keys) and go to device manager... where it says display adapters, the x200 should not be there.

EDIT... oh ok thats not it then...

 

[ho0dzy]

Aye, it's not listed in there. Which is why I was confused lol


Edit: yeah, I'm running out of idea's myself. These drivers didn't effect the FPS as I expected they would... *sigh* I think we're running out of hardware ideas and going to have to look at reinstalling windows =\

 

[phanbuey]

well... its not drivers, as new ones did nothing... its not bloatware with 40 second superpi... the onboard is disabled... That leaves one final conclusion... your card sucks horrible, horrible monkey nuts, maybe you have settings too high in catalyst control center (like 16X AA or somethins...) if not then im all out of ideas...

Except to take it back to walmart ASAP, say it doesnt work or something, say "it keeps crashing" haha...

 

[ho0dzy]

could it really be the card though? Here's a link to it again, I mean it's the same ATI Core as all the other GPU's so I'm kind of at a loss myself

 

[phanbuey]

like i said before, with that card, you should be maxing WoW, as its not that hardcore of a game at all... not that an x1650Pro is a stellar performer to begin with... but its definitely not 28 FPS @ 120*whatever... Oh one last thing...
is V-sync enabled??? - check inside the game and in the CCC panel... if it is, then disable it, i think we narrowed it down to:

Bad settings... AA, AF, V-sync... Try a different game if you got one...
Not enough Juice from PS(although unlikely with an X1650, what PS do you have???)
Bad Card.

 

[ho0dzy]

v-sync? should it be enabled or disabled? And where in CCC am I looking, I've looked over the 3D section a few times.

Turned VSync off in WoW and saw about a 10 FPS jump on average

 

[Graogrim]

A few things:

1. Don't run windowed. Go full screen instead. It will improve your framerate.
2. If you haven't messed with it already, reduce the maximum viewing distance slightly. A small change can actually produce a sizeable gain in performance without sacrificing your view of the game world.
3. Although WoW's framerates tend to be more CPU than GPU limited, you may see a better framerate by compromising a bit on your resolution--give 1024x768 a shot.
4. Don't use antialiasing.
5. Disabling vsync may gain you a small amount of framerate but personally I can't stand the tearing that results. The next best thing is to leave vsync enabled but turn on triple buffering instead.

I may have missed it but could you shed a little light on where in the game world you're measuring your framerates? I ask because there's a sizeable performance difference between old world areas and expansion areas. If you're standing in the middle of Shattrath while getting those framerates then you're actually not doing badly.

 

[phanbuey]

it should be disabled, both in the game and in CCC... i dont know exactly where it is in CCC, as i havent had an ATI card in a while and my laptop's x200 doesnt have CCC installed (too bloaty) it should be in the advanced settings look around for anything that says "vertical sync" or "vsync" and such...

edit: ^^^ what he said

 

[ho0dzy]

Testing FPS in mostly battle ground settings

Also, while running in full screen mode the game looks a lot more... pixelated...? Than Windowed or Windowed -> Maximized... any idea why this is?


Edit: I'm starting to see my FPS fluxuate more. It's going from about 29.9 FPS to 60 FPS YAY!

 

[Graogrim]

The default setting for vsync in CCC is off unless the application requests otherwise. It should not require adjustment when using games that have vsync controls of their own.

 

[Graogrim]

Also, while running in full screen mode the game looks a lot more... pixelated...? Than Windowed or Windowed -> Maximized... any idea why this is?

The most likely explanation that occurs to me is that you're using an LCD monitor, and whatever resolution you're running does not match your monitor's native resolution. Your monitor's own scaling engine will kick in at that point, and if it's not of high quality it can do a pretty good job of mangling the image.

In windowed mode, on the other hand, it's the video card doing the scaling. It will usually look better but it will also create an extra workload. Hence the slowdown.

 

[phanbuey]

go into in-game controls and crank the res to max!!

 

[ho0dzy]

Yeah, I turned my resolution up to 1280 x 1024 for full screen mode and the graphics sure enough were nice as they were when I was window mode at the same desktop resolution

 

[ho0dzy]

go into in-game controls and crank the res to max!!

lol I have to restart the game after this battleground to see how it looks maxed out, and how it runs FPS wise. Because I'm happy with my medium level settings if I'm getting 40-50 FPS on average. thanks SO much!

 

[phanbuey]

Sweeeeet.. that gives me a great excuse to grab a beer...

 

[ho0dzy]

I'll let you know how it runs immedietely after this BG finishes so I can restart WoW but all in all, thanks a lot for the help - I really thought all was lost.

 

[Graogrim]

You'll find that some settings have more of a performance cost associated with them than others. For instance, you'll likely be able to set your level of anisotropic filtering to maximum at very low impact, while enabling antialiasing at all can be quite draining. (WoW refers to antialiasing as multisampling. Choose 24 bit color, 24 bit depth, 1x multisampling.) I'd expect your video card to have no problems with texture resolution set to maximum, and it's likely that the only place maximum spell detail would cost you would be in a raiding environment. Your mileage may vary when it comes to the ground clutter options, but changing them doesn't require a restart so it's easy to experiment.

Make sure that level of detail is checked under the miscellaneous section as that's a performance enhancing option.

Edit: Oh, and one other thing. WoW's interface is highly customizable with addons, but some of them can impact performance quite dramatically. If you have many addons, it may pay you to examine their configuration. For instance, some unitframes have an adjustable update frequency. Once per second has a much lower cost than once each frame or even every 50 milliseconds. Some raid managing addons like CTRaid can be configured in such a way as to drag even a modern system to a crawl. The simplest way to check your addon performance impact is to just disable all of them and compare framerates.

 

[ho0dzy]

60 FPS orgrimmar, 30 FPS heart of Shattrath.... yeah, I think we did the job

 

[Graogrim]

Woot, congrats!