Vista and Gaming

[Donuil]

Like many others I am having alot of trouble running games on vista. I have 2 user accounts created. One with all the neat extras enabled and a second with barebone "check here for best performance." The game I am having the most trouble with is World of Warcraft. I have the latest video driver and sound driver installed for my hardware.

The problem I have encounter is very alike with a problem when I first got my computer. The game runs fine standing still with frame rates hovering around 25 to 30 FPS(A little lower than on XP but playable). However once I start moving FPS drops from anywhere of 8 to 22. Playable unless Im near alot of other people. I had this same problem on xp when I had 512mb memory. I since upgraded to 1gb and had a huge improved.

My question is, will upgrading to 1.5bg or 2gb of ram make a big change in my performance? I think this may help my problem because of the increased amount of memory required by Vista comprared to XP, but I may be wrong.

My system:
2.6ghz Celeron
1bg DDR 3200 400mhz
GeForce 7300 GT 256mb
Vista Home Premium (Unkown whether 32 or 64bit)

[leroys1000]

Yeah,definatly won't hurt.
You might consider upgrading that celeron to a faster P4
with more cache,as vista is also a processor hog.
If you have a USB2 flash drive,you might want to plug it
in and set it so readyboost can use it.

[Optional]

Doesn't matter mate. I have a 3.6 ghz comp, 2 gig ram, and a geforce oc gtx 7900 card. And my wow on vista is running like absolute crap. Right now im running it at 20 - 30 fps, untill im around a lot of people / mobs and it goes down to around 9-15.

When i was on XP i was sitting at 60 FPS. CONSTANT. Even in Iron Forge with 23985723985732 people. Even when I was in Karazhan last week with all these spells going off. 60 fps.

T T

It's the drivers. Nvidia / ATI and the sound drivers NEED to hurry the **** up and release new ones. Or im switching back to xp.

[Donuil]

My FPS tends to improve as I stay in areas for longer amounts of time. For example, Ill hearth to if and fps drops to 12. After 3 to 5 minutes of running around between the bank and ah the fps is now 25 to 30 even with the number of people there. Because of that I was thinking it might be an issue with the game loading the enviroment and in turn slowing down fps.

And on the flash drive, what is readyboost?

[leroys1000]

Ready boost is is a vista sytem expansion the uses flash drives
as extended memory to improve system performance.
You can find it by plugging in a USB2 flash drive,right clicking
the drive in "my computer" and selecting properties.
It can also use a USB 2 external drive for extra cache,
but only on device at a time.

[Donuil]

Do you see a noticeable performance increase using it?

[leroys1000]

I haven't had a chance yet.
I just ordered a 2GB drive but I noticed it said it was available
for my external hard drive.

[sadgoat]

if you sign up for the free newsletter from www.ncix.com (the newsletter is basicly like a flyer where things are cheaper.). anyway every week they usually have a 2gb usb flash drive for sale for 18 bucks canadian. (14 bucks american or so i think)

[leroys1000]

Thanks,ordered a PQI 2gb on ebay for 12.99.

[Donuil]

I tried using the boost on my external HDD and a 1gb jump drive but both failed the test and could not be used. I know for certian they are 2.0 but maybe its another problem besides that.

When get yours in and it works can you post what brand and model it is?

[Optional]

We just need to wait for good drivers to be released.. don't go and spend money for no reason.

[MishY]

It's the poor nvidia drivers - drop the anistropic filtering and restart the game.

[Optional]

Eh? how do i drop that? Ingame or in some nvidia options?

[MishY]

In video options of wow.