CPU on it's way out?

vnderachiever

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May 19, 2008
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I have an intel e6600 at stock speeds that I got about a year and change ago. I've tried to Overclock and whatnot and I have an arctic cooler freezer pro 7 hsf. For the past month and change I have had really terrible frame rates, in simple games such as WoW. I run at 1600x 1080 and get around 20 fps, sometimes dipping under 10 fps. This does not change no matter what resolution I put it at.

I use 4gb of corsair ram, dual 8800 gts 320mb in sli, a gigabyte ga-n650sli-ds4 mobo, an antec truepower trio 550w psu

I should be wrecking WoW with this setup.

I don't like to overclock because I really can't get the hang of it, and I am impatient >.<

What CPU should I Get that I do not need to overclock and it will not bottleneck my graphics. I am upgrading my graphics to a gtx 260 factory overclocked.

From what i understand, my computer is showing all the signs of the cpu bottlenecking my system, because I cant increase the frames by lowering settings/resolution.
 
1. Upgrading that rig is pointless for playing WoW. That rig should be able to pwn WoW.

2. There is no point in upgrading to GTX260 unless doing SLI. Get a 4870.

3. Are you running the latest drivers? Are you also running background programs(ie AV, BitTorrent,etc)?

4. Are you sure that the FPS are being limited by the GPU an not by the network lagg?

==
Why don't you download some game demo (ie Crysis) and see how many FPS you get and tell us.
 
Good points, but network lag in WoW will not effect your FPS. Your online game play may be jumpy, but your FPS will remain unchanged.

Just for the hell of it, try pulling all extra PCI and PCI-E cards you have and just keep your video card in. I ran into almost the same scenario with WoW. I had a PCI-E soundcard installed in my system and in attempts to increase my FPS, I pulled it and it made a huge difference.
 
I'm at work atm...but I only have 2 Pci-e slots on my computer, and I cant really fit anything else in the pci slots because my 2 vid cards are so damn big. I've tried running one vid card and two, and I've disabled nearly all of my startup programs, nothing running in the background etc.
 
I would also try to download any miscellaneous drivers for your motherboard. Sometimes you will have a driver update for a random component that may change how things run, especially if you are updating your chipset driver.
 
As an Ex-WOW player i would recommend to delete WTF and WTB folders and disable all addons. Restart and test again.


If that doesn't work, pick up a sledgehammer and use Seal of The Crusader Rank 6.
 
You are having a software/driver/os problem not a hardware problem. Upgrading your hardware for WOW is just a flat out waste of money.

Play something else or use a gaming benchmark to see how the framerates are. If they are where they should be, do a clean install of wow. If not try to re-install/update drivers. If that still dont fix it then you probally have some issues with windows. Either figure out what is going in there or just do a clean install of the OS.

One thing for sure it is not your hardware/cpu(not unless you are having cooling/throttling problems)
 
Just to be on the safe side, go into your BIOS and set all your OC'ing options (timings, voltages, etc) back to default, in case anything go messed up in there somewhere.

If its only one instance of WoW, I'm really not sure what else the issue could be. I'm assuming heat isn't an issue...
 
To the person who said playing online doesn't effect your fps you are wrong. If there is lag involved and the server is not reliable and also has the fps set in the game. Then your fps gets affected to the point the game freezes untill the packets sync up, or you lose the connection. The lower the ping the better your gameplay. That is well none. Don't ever discount online quality not effecting your fps in game play. Or like most of the people here pulling all there hardware out and reinstalling oses when it could have been something as simple as a server lagging out because of traffic. When playing online, it's good to check your ping, because it does change by the minute when more people come o also. You could ping a 10ms ping 1 sec then 2 minutes down the road your pinging 1000 and your fps drop like a rock and then it corrects itself but you fps hasn't picked back up yet because it's still trying to sync.
just a little advice
 
We are talking within the parameters of WoW and vnderachier's computer configuration. You can be playing WoW with a 2000 lag and your computer will not change the FPS rendered at all. Neither server latency, network traffic, or a high ping are going to dictate in any way the FPS when playing WoW.
 


Wrong. The guy said ping doesn't affect fps "IN WOW" and he's right. When you lag out in WoW you can still look and run around at the same fps but then jump back to the original spot where your lag started.
 


TY for beating me to this explanation 😀. While lag does have the effect of slowing you down (as a result of everyone having to remain insync), it does not affect your PC's ability to render FPS.

Of course, 99% of all people get the two confused, so its understandable...
 
hahahahah @ you all thx for the help. Well... i'm actually installing a 64 bit vista home premium tonight,as i was running xp 32 bit, and not making use of my extra ram. soooo after I do that i will check my fps and I will post a 3dmark06 score.

oh... and my ping never gets higher than 100ms
 


STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!! STOP READING MY MIND!!!! :pt1cable:

Ok....yes, maybe throttling, but i doubt thats an issue with that setup. Its possible though. Again, i doubt its hardware, so im still leaning towards a messed up OC attempt.
 
nope...it shouldn't be throttling anymore... I was having issues with my processor shutting itself off...but that was due to a poor bond between the hsf and the processor. I bought a new HsF and used the stock grease that comes on the AC7 cooler. I havent had that problem since.

gamerk: up until I had attempted to OC I had my mobo settings at all default. I messed with the ram timings and saw no performance increase/crashes all over the place. so I reset to default. I'll Screenshot and post my cpu-z screens later tonight
 
Outside of GPU or graphic memory overheating (which would introduce artifacts rather than slow performance), the symptoms you describe are more attributable to operating system/driver issues as opposed to hardware issues. First, check to be sure that you aren't taxing your CPU while you are playing by running other software in the background (ie, antivirus, bittorrent, video rendering, etc.). If you are running CPU intensive or disk mix intensive tasks, then your frame rate could very well drop precipitously. If you are not running any program in particular that you know of, do an Alt-Tab-Delete and bring up your Task Manger to see what processes are running, and if any processes are taking up an inordinate amount of CPU percentage (if nothing else is running, then you Idle process should be taking up all the CPU allocation).

Another reason why I do not suspect hardware is that you say this is the same no matter what resolution. It sounds as if something is creating a bottleneck, and it doesn't sound like hardware. If your current configuration worked at one time, and then suddenly stopped working, this would only add to my suspicions. Try and nail down what sofware has changed on you OS that could cause this situation. Do you have Malware? Is this a virus? Has your machine been rooted so that someone else's commands take priority, not yours?
 
Ok. fixed the problem:

I went to micro center to buy a 64 bit vista and i was gonna do a new install. They were sold out of home premium and I wasnt gonna spend another 60 dollars for business. I then saw the wonderful display of the gtx 260 superclocked. Bought one of those. I re-did all my mods in game and I'm runnign 40fps in the most crowded areas and I'm pinned at 60 (vsync) everywhere else. Im running crysis at 35 fps constant running and gunning at 1680 x 1050 with all settings on high and 4x AA on.

:) Thanks for all the help!

Now if I could only figure out why my sound lags every so often. Time to buy a x-fi fatality titanium championship edition >< onboard sound apparently aint cutting it.