Increase your FPS

[Luka]

I have an older laptop that I play WoW with and I needed to get some better FPS, especially with WoTLK expansion so, for a big jump in FPS, even after low settings in Video effects, try making 3 macros with:



GFX1

/console ffx 0

/console hwPCF 1

/console shadowlod 0

/console timingmethod 1

/console showshadow 0

/console showfootprints 0

/console showfootprintparticles 0

GFX2

 /console overridefarclip 0

/console farclip 177

/console horizonfarclip 1305

/console detailDoodadAlpha 0

/console groundeffectdensity 16

GFX3

/console groundeffectdist 1

/console smallcull 1

/console skycloudlod 1

/console characterAmbient 1

/console extshadowquality 0

/console environmentDetail 0.5

If you have a dual-core processor add this to the first macro.

/console m2Faster 1

Tri Core

/console m2Faster 2

Quad Core

/console m2Faster 3

Then click them in sequence. Hope it helps a little, it helped me. I jumped from 15-18 fps to 38-46 fps.



Another thing (not in game) is to open notepad.exe and type

@echo off

cd /d "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft"

start /high WoW.exe

Then save this file as WoW.bat and use it to start WoW, you can make a shortcut from this file and change it's icon if you want it to look like your original, but this will start WoW with a high priority on your CPU.



If you have Vista or Windows 7 type

@echo off

cd /d "C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft"

start /high WoW.exe

 

[Grunge]

kind of a noob with this stuff: i have a dell latitude running XP, which of those macros would i need?

 

[Neffi]

Then save this file as WoW.bat and use it to start WoW, you can make a shortcut from this file and change it's icon if you want it to look like your original, but this will start WoW with a high priority on your CPU.

That's mostly a synthetic benefit. It gives WoW higher CPU priority than normal tasks but if you aren't running multiple heavy tasks you won't get the benefit. When you actually need to run multiple heavy tasks, tabbing out and using other programs will be harsher because you've given WoW the right to hog your CPU.

 

[LULIMALION]

I can't log in to try this yet, but what exactly does it do?



Aaaand I think it should be universal (For Macs and PCs) because the game is, but am I wrong?

 

[Neffi]

All but the final .bat file will work on a Mac properly.

 

[Misterflix]

Gives me a 10 fps boost : D thx i play wow on my old laptop ² when i visit my gf xD



edit/



the .bat thing suckz because wow gets a 100% priority and other things like ts,vent will get no resources

 

[Neffi]

the .bat thing suckz because wow gets a 100% priority and other things like ts,vent will get no resources

That's not how it works at all. It only gets moderately higher priority than normal tasks. Ventrilo and music players and such are simple enough that the lower CPU share won't phase them.

 

[Luka]

Yeah unless your computer only has about 500mb of RAM then changing the priority to high won't harm any other processes, I simultaniously run WoW, FireFox, iTunes, Vent and Dawn of War 2 at the same time and switching WoW's priority to high only really effects DoW2

 

[Neffi]

Yeah unless your computer only has about 500mb of RAM then changing the priority to high won't harm any other processes, I simultaniously run WoW, FireFox, iTunes, Vent and Dawn of War 2 at the same time and switching WoW's priority to high only really effects DoW2

RAM has absolutely nothing to do with process priority. I'm amazed there are people out there that believe the amount of RAM you have is directly related to any sort of processing strength.

 

[Luka]

RAM is volatile memory, which holds tasks for the Processor. The processing speed/strength depends upon the processor, so the faster the processor the faster the tasks held in the RAM can be completed, therefore the more RAM the more tasks can be stored and completed so more can be done at once.

 

[Neffi]

RAM is volatile memory, which holds tasks for the Processor. The processing speed/strength depends upon the processor, so the faster the processor the faster the tasks held in the RAM can be completed, therefore the more RAM the more tasks can be stored and completed so more can be done at once.

Not really. You've got it off by a lot. I know RAM holds the volatile "random access" memory, but the amount you have isn't so tied to processing speed. The amount of RAM you have doesn't come into play when you change processing priority. What does is the amount of CPU cache.



The CPU doesn't generally run stuff directly from the RAM. In fact, I think it might never do so but I'm not sure. RAM can take hundreds of nanoseconds to address. The CPU cache is used to bring code into the CPU to execute. Within reasonable bounds it's the only computer memory where amount directly relates to processing power.



With RAM, you really just get caught up on tons of hard drive access as things are loaded and unloaded, and swapped, when you have small amounts. Small amounts of RAM won't actually slow the processor directly (just make some programs wait to be executed if they need data that's swapped). The entire code of WoW and several other games could fit well within 512 MB of RAM several times over. Code itself isn't very large.