Up until Castle Nathria my PC has been able to handle WoW raiding but now in Sanctum of Domination it’s like my rig has grinded to a halt.
Up until Nathria I could comfortablle play at max setting in open world and medium settings (5) in raid/BGs and gamplay was smooth, framerates in the 40-80 range depending on the intensity of what is going on.
Now in Sanctum gameplay will be at 60-80 FPS at range from bosses but can drop to as low as 11-15 FPS while in the thick of melee, Sylvannas is the worst offender. This is really bad for a Tank lol.
I know WoW is a poorly optimized game, but this tier has been insane.
Currently, it seams like the CPU is the main offender, GPU doesn’t break a sweat with WoW while CPU is taxed, I’ve overclocked the CPU to 4.4 Ghz and is completely stable, 4.5 and higher starts to lose stability but still, my FPS drops to 20-25 FPS at lowest settings, VSYNC off etc. etc. So maybe there are other optimizations unrelated to the CPU that can be done?
Before retiring the PC which has served me so well for years, any advice on;
-Potential troubleshooting/optimizations I may have not considered?
-Any individual component upgrades that would not necessitate replacing the entire PC?
-Potential Builds that are good value (best bang for buck) that will last for years as this one did, if it has to come to this
Thank you, If you have further questions feel free to ask.
How is your RAM configured? is it 3x8GB sticks or 2x8 and 2x4 or what? 24GB isn’t really the normal amount we see, and if the RAM is mismatched that could be an issue.
What resolution and what resolution scale are you running at?
And yes, the CPU is probably the issue - it’s almost 9 years old and has only 4 cores and 4 threads. You could build a Ryzen system and probably bring the 1060 into it since graphics cards are nuts these days.
It was originally built with 2x4GB Ram and has 4 slots, I have since added 2x8GB. Would removing the 2x4 and staying at 16GB potentially be a factor?
Resolution has always been 1920x1080p Resolution scale is at 100%, I have tried dropping it to 90% and saw little or no difference for a noticeable drop in pixels.
Your probably right, I’m looking to start saving up and keeping an eye out for deals. just wanted to make sure I had tried everything else first.
Update, Did LFR Sylv and was night and day, hovered around 50-60 FPS on medium settings, dipped to 35 for a brief moment in p1 on on pull.
If this continues into Mythic it may have been the issue all along, and it does make some sense since it was During CN i added the RAM because WoW + Chrome was capping out my memory.
That’s good to know. If you can find more RAM that matches the speed and specs of the 2x8, then maybe you could add that, but that’s often easier said than done with older MB and RAM.
Flashing BIOS is only really risky in the sense that if it gets corrupted the computer won’t boot. In 30 years of doing tech, I’ve only had 1 machine have a bios corrupt to the point it wouldn’t boot, and that wasn’t from a bios flash.
Here’s the directions from gigabyte, complete with many cautions.
I mean truthfully let’s put this into perspective for you. If you are CPU limited your frames during fights like this will be greatly impacted. Sylvanas was a poorly optimized fight in general because it rendered the entire encounter on pull. But, with you right in the midst of every ground effect and lets call it splash effect of every spell you will need to be rendering that. Being CPU limited is far worse than being GPU limited for a variety of reasons but, the major being anything else happening in your OS will be affecting your frame rate. For instance, if a web browser refreshes a tab while you are gaming, your FPS will be impacted. If defender does a scan, impacted. If update reaches out to MS to check for updates, impacted. If your drives index, impacted. The best you can do if you can’t update your processor is make sure to go and make wow high priority in your task manager. This will at least make windows try to make sure that nothing has a higher priority than WoW but other than that you are kinda of limited. Every new tier will be optimized for newer, and newer hardware. That processor is almost 9 years old. 4 cores, 4 threads. Unfortunately most games are optimized to utilize multiple cores now and your OS and other applications need processing power too while you are gaming.
I’ve recently upgraded from a 6600k to a 12900k and can confirm that your 4670k is the culprit. My 6600k was choking out the GTX 1070 I had before upgrading everything. I had my 6600k OC’d to 4.7 GHz as well and it did make a difference for sure but it just couldn’t cut it. I did run the 1070 alongside the 12900k to just to see how it performed and one can not explain how much of a difference there is until you experience it for yourself.
That 4670k you’ve got is 9 years old. It’s had it’s day in the sun. I’d go for an upgrade if you can.
Good news is that the new 12th gen stuff from intel is absolutely killer and has recently released. Even the i3 12100 is making headlines (but is not quite yet released). If you can afford to do so, I would upgrade. The 12100 and 12300 are rumored to be around $130-$150 and something like the MSI Pro z690-a DDR4 is only $210. You’ll have to pick up some ddr4 but the good news is that it can be found for relatively cheap whereas ddr5 is nowhere to be seen at the moment. My guess is that for around $500 you could have yourself a stellar upgrade that does everything yours currently can and more.
Careful on which modules you put the ramsticks in if going with 2. You will want to configure them for dual channel. I would look at your mobo’s manual to know which ones to use. For example mines ram modules for dual channel configuration is #2 & #4. I also never mix & match ram.
