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Making Warcraft Run 110% Follow

#1 Oct 05 2007 at 8:14 AM Rating: Excellent
Edited by: Mathew "Berek" Anderson - July 31st, 2008

At least once a day or every other day someone asks whether Warcraft can run on their system. A lot of the time people ask what the deal is with their frame rates. A lot of these questions go unanswered in the game manual and on the company website. I am going to address a few key issues to get your game up and running 110%.

One thing you have to remember is that although war isn't so graphic intensive like say half life 2, it is however a very memory hungry game! It will use every single byte that you have extra. With this in mind maybe half the questions will get answered right here and you will just go and close a few programs and restart your game to see a frame boost.

Said before, there is a great difference in Network and System lag. Network lag makes of course your character do something a second later after you click. You will often see this problem when you are looting and the server is getting bogged down or your end is. However with network lag you should still have nice speed when going through your menus and such and the mouse pointer won't be slowed down. System lag on your end will cause everything to be slowed down and your mouse will move slow, menus will even be slightly slowed down etc.

One easy way to tell the difference between system and network lag is to download a network monitor addon for Warcraft that shows your "ping." This is the rate a packet of data takes to travel between your computer and the server. Ideal is below 100. Playable still is in the low 100's with the game getting "network" lag higher than that.


"I just bought this new computer.. so i should be able to run Warcraft right?"

Sure you should be able to run it.. One thing is new computers that you buy say at .. wal*mart or target or somewhere tend to include only the minimum requirements to play the latest games. If that. Most of these new mass produced systems only come with *gag* a gig of ram. The first thing you should do is to go buy another gig of ram to boost you to 2. You will notice at least 10fps (frames per second) difference in your game.

"I upgraded my ram and I still get lag, but it isn't network lag? What gives?"

If you upgraded your ram to 2 gigs and your still getting choppy gameplay then the next thing to look at is what is bottleneck your system. See if your system is using onboard video. Most new computers are, so go buy a new video card. The manufacturers cut corners by slapping a chip on the motherboard to handle video instead of using a premium addon card with it's own memory. On-board video shares the system ram so it is a big bottleneck.

I upgraded my video card from an onboard ati-220 or something to a geforce 8600. In games that are on the whole way more intensive than wow, like prey and halo, i went from 30fps before (and less) to 100fps in prey etc. A big boost. Usually they don't just "sell" you the computer to play games well. They sell them on their functionality. Video cards are cheap. You can go pick an ATI 4xxx series card for under 300$. Under 200$ if you want a budget card. This will improve all your games, vastly.

"I have a semi-recent video card.. but it says I have a Celeron 1.8ghz cpu on my box, will this be slowing me down?"

Another bottleneck to address is CPU viability. In my system I have a Celeron. It brings me down a lot because the Celeron is Intel's budget processor. Doesn't have the onboard cpu cache like the other chips they produce and this brings it down. If you have a celeron chip than maybe you should look for a replacement. However, if your CPU speed is above 2.0ghz and all you want to play is WoW then you should be fine!

"Everything is fine, processor above 2GHz, video card with its own memory
(256 megs of ddr3 or above), Windows XP (Vista is still in its infancy and this alone may cause some issues), 2gigs of ram, still not hitting sweet frames."


You have a more than capable system to run wow but still getting crappy frames.. Another thing to take into considerations is if you are a pack rat. If you like to have MSN, Allah's website, Itunes or media player, and a few other things going while you play then thats your problem right there. One way to see what you have loading when your computer boots is to click: Start button, run, type in the box: msconfig.exe go to the startup tab. If you have like itunes helper, msn, and a few other programs that are not needed starting when your computer starts uncheck them.

If your computer is new, I bet you my left kidney that packaged software is causing your slowdown! The only things needed to start with your computer are windows key components, printer stuff / video things you need, your Nvidia/Ati drivers, sound drivers and that's it. Weather report.com, bigfix.exe or any trash program doesn't need to start with Windows.

To get maximum performance Warcraft should be the only program running besides windows key components. Especially if you have a nice shiny new computer with lots of ram and a premium video card. This way you can turn all the settings up in the video menu and enjoy Warcraft with a high resolution and some anti-aliasing (smooths the jaggies on the in-game graphics).


::Added tips for making your computer run World of Warcraft smoothly::

*Defrag your hard drive.

Warcraft access the swap file like.. a gazillion times a minute (yes i used gazillion). Click on start, programs, accessories, system tools and then defrag. Select the hard drive with wow on it and click analyze. Then view the report even if it says "Your system does not need to be defragged at this time." A system even fragmented at 3% and over needs a good defrag. 4% is a lot. I don't know why they didn't fix this in the many XP patches over the years but anything over 3 and 4% fragmented is insane. After you defrag (if your system was like even 3% fragged ) you will notice a pleasant difference.

*Disable your anti-virus software.

Software like Norton Anti-Virus and McAffee or whatever use an awful lot of memory. Most of them have memory leaks which cause the program to just plain eat up your available memory over time. Don't worry about disabling it while you play because unless your looking at massive **** sites alt+tabbed while you play then it won't hurt you. Start it back up after your done. Usually this can be achieved by right clicking on the icon in the corner of your taskbar and simply closing the program. If it wont, then control +alt+ delete and enter the task manager and manually close it.

Doing this should add like another 5-10fps or even more depending on the scenario.

*Make sure you have at least a few hundred megs of free space on your hard disk.

A major thing that is often overlooked is people often don't have enough space for the windows swap file to move around on their hard disk. Even 200megs free will ultimately cause a whole lot of slow down in your games. Because even though you have a lot of memory its your hard disk that access and moves the information around first. This can slow a system at least 25%. If you even have like 500 megs free i would look to delete a few program that you don't need. Maybe burn some of those mp3's onto a DVD or 2 to save space. (Which is something I've been meaning to do but haven't lately!)

Everyone seems to address all the hardware related issues but often overlooks this key point! Free some space up and you will squeeze some more performance out of your game.

*What else could be making it slow?

You could in the end have a virus or large amounts of spyware. I suggest doing a system wide and memory scan with your chosen viral detection software. There are numerous freeware scanners out there but the best "free" software I use , used to use, is AVG. Even if you don't know it, by going on myspace or other often trafficked user websites you could be picking up stray code worming it's way into your browser. Weird "*.exe" files running in the background (control + alt + delete to view current running programs )could be spyware. Google the executable's name and you should find an answer.




Well good luck and i hope that someone got some use out of this. These are my tricks and tweaks. There are other ways to increase frames massively like overclocking your system or video card but that voids the warranty on both. If anyone has any other tweaks and tips please add to the thread for everyone to utilize. Thanks! -inf


Edited, Jul 31st 2008 10:55am by Berek

Edited, Apr 27th 2019 6:39am by Szabo Lock Thread:
#2 Oct 05 2007 at 8:16 AM Rating: Excellent
very nicely out together post.

Sticky it ~ rate up.
#3 Oct 05 2007 at 8:25 AM Rating: Decent
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386 posts
Great info!! My problem is an old computer. I have 2 GB RAM and a new budget videocard but my motherboard just sucks at 266 bus speed.
#4 Oct 05 2007 at 8:40 AM Rating: Decent
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Very informative and well written post. Hope this gets stickied. Rate up!
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#5 Oct 05 2007 at 8:42 AM Rating: Excellent
Now if someone could write a section on macs.. eheh I don't know enough about them to do it. Anyone got mac knowledge?
#6 Oct 05 2007 at 8:52 AM Rating: Excellent
nice bit o work.

few tools i will suggest to go along with the post.

1. Diskeeper This is the BEST defragmenting tool for Windows out there.

2. Adaware great tool when combined with the next i will be listing for getting rid of malware (spyware adware etc)

3. Spywareblaster this creates a black list of URLs that are known to host malware type software and prevents them from opening on your computer.

4. SpyBot S&D no longer one of the GREAT tools, but it has a very powerful black list much like spywareblaster, they call it immunization. use it.

5. the MS anti-spyware tool is also very good are preventing spyware from getting into your system.

Of those 5 tools ONLY diskeeper you have to pay for. It is cheap and 10x better then anything MS has ever put out for defraging a system.


so to shorting up this good post.

1. 2G ram min.
2. AGP or PCI-e video card, not onboard. 256M vram min.
3. CPU that is a pure Intel or AMD, not a duron or celeron, both of those CPUs just flat out suck major a$$ for anything other then grandma checking e-mail and browsing the web.
4. clean out your start menu via msconfig. remove EVERYTHING from the start menu that has nothing to do with your hardware and AV (anti virus) program.
5. under windows set up a SWAP (paging file system) 2x your system RAM. this is way over kill, but guess what windows will use it even though it is WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY.... slower then RAM. go figure, MS has OSs that are designed to use 2G of physical ram, yet still will default to accessing Paging (swap) over RAM... bad MS bad...
6. update your NIC, sound, and Video card drivers.

enjoy the game.
#7 Oct 05 2007 at 8:54 AM Rating: Good
inforce wrote:
Now if someone could write a section on macs.. eheh I don't know enough about them to do it. Anyone got mac knowledge?


there was a sticky for a while someplace on how to clean up the dashboard and get rid of the widgets that are taking up space. sadly i do not know how to do that.

under OSx a few things you can do.

1. 2G min. if not 4G of ram is better.
2. depending on your computer (i have 2x iMACs) upgrade to the better video card. on my older G5 there was no upgrade option for the video so it has a cr4ptastis ATI6200 in it and the performance is lacking. on the other hand my intel iMAC has the upgraded Nvidia 7900 and the performance is fantastic.

#8 Oct 05 2007 at 8:59 AM Rating: Excellent
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351 posts
a few extras:

Ensure your memory is the best available for your system: having, say, 1Gb of PC3200 and upgrading with 1Gb of PC2700 will actually slow your original 1Gb of fast RAM down to PC2700.

Turn off the Tellytubby look in XP:Control Panel - System/Advanced/Performance/Performance Settings - adjust for best performance.

Ensure your CPU is running at a decent temperature - blow the dust and gunk out of the heatsink/fan every month or so, and make sure there's a decent thermal paste (silver based) and decent heatsink fitted (a few bucks saves up to 20 degrees) so your CPU runs more efficiently.

DON'T have Norton on your PC at all, it's a complete resource hog and free software does a much better job.

Move your swapfile to a storage drive, if one is available:

While your C: is being accessed by various services, programs, etc., your swapfile has to wait it's turn - move it to an unused secondary drive if you have one. System Properties/Advanced/Performance Settings/Advanced/Virtual Memory - select spare drive and press Set - ONLY do this if your second drive is of comparable access speed and has plenty of free space.

Download SiSoft Sandra (freeware) - running the System check module will check and advise which services can be disabled to free up even more cpu/RAM.
#9 Oct 05 2007 at 9:01 AM Rating: Good
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196 posts
One correction - only the very first gen of the celeron chips lack on die cache - these were the old 300mhz slot based celerons. They performed so poorly that Intel revised it slightly and added a far smaller and slower cpu cache.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeron
#10 Oct 05 2007 at 9:01 AM Rating: Default
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152 posts
>> Warcraft access the swap file like..
>> a gabillion times a minute

President Bush, is that you? Lemme guess... Night Elf Hunter?
#11 Oct 05 2007 at 12:00 PM Rating: Decent
34 posts
inforce wrote:
"I upgraded my ram and I still get lag, but it isnt network lag? What gives?"


A: Try loosening the reins a bit -- a canter should really help your performance. Either that or it might be exhausted from being run too hard. In that case, a barrel of apples could really help.

(braces for the storm of rate downs...but it was just too good to pass up)
#12REDACTED, Posted: Oct 05 2007 at 12:44 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) HIGHJACKED!!!!!!!
#13 Oct 05 2007 at 1:45 PM Rating: Decent
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591 posts
Great post, helped me out A LOT!!!! Thank you, and I hope this gets stickeyed.
#14 Oct 05 2007 at 1:58 PM Rating: Default
I just checked my HD, 24% fragmented.
#15 Oct 05 2007 at 1:58 PM Rating: Decent
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190 posts
but there are also still some issues

1 amd athlon 2600+ running at 2.06Ghz
2 2 Gb memory
3 defragmented drive
4 90 gigabyte free on swapspace drive
5 gforce 7800gs

framerate in gruul's layer 10
framerate in air on mount 118

If you have amd athlon processor (32 bit) with agp and gforce 6800-7800gs card there seem to be some issues with certain tbc raids.

#16 Oct 05 2007 at 2:33 PM Rating: Decent
This is extremely nice information! I would rate up if I could :)I have to remember to defragment and turn off my anti-virus in the background...
#17 Oct 05 2007 at 2:37 PM Rating: Excellent
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#18 Oct 05 2007 at 2:52 PM Rating: Decent
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inforce wrote:
A system even fragmented at 3% and over needs a good defrag. 4% is a lot.


I'm not quite sure how to access this information. After analyzing and viewing the report, I found some percentages labelled:

Total fragmentation
File fragmentation
Fragmentation of free disk space


Note that the above is a direct translation from my language so the text may be different in a US version of Windows XP.

Anyway, I get the following percentages:

Windows (C:) - This is where Windows and various programs are installed, like Norton, Word, etc.

Total fragmentation: 16%
File fragmentation: 31%
Fragmentation of free disk space: 1%


Games (E:) - This is where I install all my games.

Total fragmentation: 44%
File fragmentation: 89%
Fragmentation of free disk space: 0%


Is that bad? Smiley: dubious
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#19 Oct 05 2007 at 3:12 PM Rating: Decent
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528 posts
i've tinkered around with my pc quite a bit to get as much out of it as i can but one thing that has held me back is ram. i have a farely new box. pre-packaged crap but decent specs. the unit came with 512mb ddr2 which i tried to upgrade to 2g but it would only register 1g. so i ended up with 2 512 cards. it runs pretty well but i'd love to bump it up to 1g.

is there any way to bully my pc into accepting 2gig?

it has a P4 HT dual at 3.0ghz if that helps. i have no clue what the mobo is. crap i'm sure. only 2 slots for ram cards.

btw, great tip for clearing start up programs ^^

Edited, Oct 5th 2007 9:24pm by Shrubbry
#20 Oct 05 2007 at 4:34 PM Rating: Decent
leonesongaruda wrote:
but there are also still some issues

1 amd athlon 2600+ running at 2.06Ghz
2 2 Gb memory
3 defragmented drive
4 90 gigabyte free on swapspace drive
5 gforce 7800gs

framerate in gruul's layer 10
framerate in air on mount 118

If you have amd athlon processor (32 bit) with agp and gforce 6800-7800gs card there seem to be some issues with certain tbc raids.



the athlon 2600+ is running properly if it is at 2.06. a few years ago AMD decided to change their listing to match that of Intel. The intel chips have ALWAYS been over rated were AMD in the past rated their chips properly.

so in the past a 1G intel was equal to an 800Mhz AMD. rough numbers not exact, just an example.

so when amd changed their listings they added the + to the end of the speed name so people would know the differance.

as for the FPS being so low sounds like you might have some other issues like bad drivers for your MB or a chipset conflict. also what driver vs are you running. have you installed the latest drivers for your MB for the AGP slot? also have you flahsed your BIOS on the MB?

so way to many things to tell what is going on with the low FPS. my older rig has better consistant performance then that.

P4 2G 800 Mhz FSB
2G pc 2100 ram (think that is the speed, have not used it in a long time)
Nvidia 7600 AGP 256M vid card.

that rig would run 30s - 60s FPS depending on if there was water around or not.
#21 Oct 05 2007 at 4:35 PM Rating: Decent
Lord Mazra wrote:
inforce wrote:
A system even fragmented at 3% and over needs a good defrag. 4% is a lot.


I'm not quite sure how to access this information. After analyzing and viewing the report, I found some percentages labelled:

Total fragmentation
File fragmentation
Fragmentation of free disk space


Note that the above is a direct translation from my language so the text may be different in a US version of Windows XP.

Anyway, I get the following percentages:

Windows (C:) - This is where Windows and various programs are installed, like Norton, Word, etc.

Total fragmentation: 16%
File fragmentation: 31%
Fragmentation of free disk space: 1%


Games (E:) - This is where I install all my games.

Total fragmentation: 44%
File fragmentation: 89%
Fragmentation of free disk space: 0%


Is that bad? Smiley: dubious



yes that is a mega problem. grab diskeeper and clean your system up. it may take 5 - 10 runs to clean that cr4p up.
#22 Oct 05 2007 at 4:37 PM Rating: Decent
Shrubbry wrote:
i've tinkered around with my pc quite a bit to get as much out of it as i can but one thing that has held me back is ram. i have a farely new box. pre-packaged crap but decent specs. the unit came with 512mb ddr2 which i tried to upgrade to 2g but it would only register 1g. so i ended up with 2 512 cards. it runs pretty well but i'd love to bump it up to 1g.

is there any way to bully my pc into accepting 2gig?

it has a P4 HT dual at 3.0ghz if that helps. i have no clue what the mobo is. crap i'm sure. only 2 slots for ram cards.

ntw, great tip for clearing start up programs ^^


your MB may not be able to handle more then 1G, but i doubt it unless it is just really old or supper cr4ppy like an e-machine or something cheap like that.

you also need to make sure you have the exact same kind of ram in the system and in the correct slots. most MBs will have either 2 or 4 slots for ram. you might just have to move things around until you can get the BIOS to detect the 2G worth of memory.

also it would be best to run 2x1G sticks instead of 4x512M
#23 Oct 05 2007 at 5:32 PM Rating: Decent
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528 posts
Quote:

your MB may not be able to handle more then 1G, but i doubt it unless it is just really old or supper cr4ppy like an e-machine or something cheap like that.

you also need to make sure you have the exact same kind of ram in the system and in the correct slots. most MBs will have either 2 or 4 slots for ram. you might just have to move things around until you can get the BIOS to detect the 2G worth of memory.

also it would be best to run 2x1G sticks instead of 4x512M


i'll try messing around a bit more. i only have 2 available slots and i believe there wasn't really more than one choice of card styles that would fit in the slot. ddr2 is ddr2 as far as i know. i could definitely be wrong. i am in a small town and we just have one Staples with a small selection. i bought 2x 1gig chips and slammed them in there and it only registered as 1gig on my system specs. i did make sure they were fully set in the slot but didn't try swapping them around or a different brand chip. i ended up having to exchange them for 2 512 chips to get my current 1gig total.

wish i had 4 slots so i could throw 4gig in there ^^

ty for the response. i may try messing with it again.
#24 Oct 05 2007 at 5:56 PM Rating: Decent
Shrubbry wrote:
Quote:

your MB may not be able to handle more then 1G, but i doubt it unless it is just really old or supper cr4ppy like an e-machine or something cheap like that.

you also need to make sure you have the exact same kind of ram in the system and in the correct slots. most MBs will have either 2 or 4 slots for ram. you might just have to move things around until you can get the BIOS to detect the 2G worth of memory.

also it would be best to run 2x1G sticks instead of 4x512M


i'll try messing around a bit more. i only have 2 available slots and i believe there wasn't really more than one choice of card styles that would fit in the slot. ddr2 is ddr2 as far as i know. i could definitely be wrong. i am in a small town and we just have one Staples with a small selection. i bought 2x 1gig chips and slammed them in there and it only registered as 1gig on my system specs. i did make sure they were fully set in the slot but didn't try swapping them around or a different brand chip. i ended up having to exchange them for 2 512 chips to get my current 1gig total.

wish i had 4 slots so i could throw 4gig in there ^^

ty for the response. i may try messing with it again.


winXP will not recognize 4G of ram unless you are using the 64bit vs. MS claims it can see and use 4G, but sadly that is only on a very few MB, chipset combos and unless you spent about $4 grand on your computer you will not get access to 4G of ram under windows. heck even Vista can not use more then 2G unless it is the higher end vs of the distro. Home Prem. and Ultimate, there is an other higher end business class Vista that can use 4G too, but i forget what one it is.

no ddr2 is not ddr2. you have specific speeds like PC2100, PC2700, PC3200 all are ddr2, but not the same.

you have to match both the ddr2 and the speed of the ram to the board. also double check you did not have ECC registered ram or that you need ECC. i doubt you will need ECC so avoid it.
#25 Oct 05 2007 at 6:34 PM Rating: Decent
inforce wrote:
"I just bought this new computer.. so i should be able to run warcraft right?"

I have a 3-year-old system, with 1 Gig of RAM. I run McAfee in the background, and generally have Mozilla/Firefox up at the same time. I have no problem running WoW at 60 FPS. The reason? A good Video card. That's it, nothing more. The most important upgrade for a WoW gamer is getting the best video card you can afford. Not RAM (although you'll have problems if you run less than 1 Gig), not CPU (as long as you meet the minimum).

The reason? Hardware processing of the video commands are faster with the better video cards, and WoW is extremely video intensive.
#26 Oct 05 2007 at 6:59 PM Rating: Good
Lord Mazra wrote:
inforce wrote:
A system even fragmented at 3% and over needs a good defrag. 4% is a lot.


I'm not quite sure how to access this information. After analyzing and viewing the report, I found some percentages labelled:

Total fragmentation
File fragmentation
Fragmentation of free disk space


Note that the above is a direct translation from my language so the text may be different in a US version of Windows XP.

Anyway, I get the following percentages:

Windows (C:) - This is where Windows and various programs are installed, like Norton, Word, etc.

Total fragmentation: 16%
File fragmentation: 31%
Fragmentation of free disk space: 1%


Games (E:) - This is where I install all my games.

Total fragmentation: 44%
File fragmentation: 89%
Fragmentation of free disk space: 0%


Is that bad? Smiley: dubious


Are you joking? Seriously. Your system needs to be defragged like bad.. you must get choppy in your games a lot. defrag, also not defragging can lead to bad sectors and data loss.. so keep on it every month or so. Total fragmentation of like 44% .. i have never seen a hard drive that bad.

Anyways im glad so many people posted!!! It's cool that we have a spot where we can post a few tricks and tips to get everyone running nicely. Thanks for the rate-ups and whoever rated me back down whatever =/ hehe I especially liked reading your mac tips. I'd like to buy a powerbook someday and this stuff helped me a whole lot.

Edited, Oct 5th 2007 9:03pm by inforce
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