Decrease in Performance

[l1nkown]

I just started WoW recently and the first time I logged in with my ati radeon 4850, I had amazing performance. No lag, with frames at 60-90 per second. Now a week later, I decided to go back to the place I was previously at when I first started and now I am only getting 30-50 fps. In addition to that, my game occasionally freezes for a couple of seconds, which never happened when I first started. Now the only explanation is the fact that during the week, my computer has been forcibly restarted because it overheated about 3 times. Nowadays I increase my fan speed or leave my case open and it hasn't happened. So did my graphics card get ruined permanently because of this?

 

[daedalus685]

Wow fps is determined by dozens of factors, including server population, and internet connection.

Two samples is not nearly enough to say that the performacne has gone down, You could have checked the fps on what ended up being a very low population day, only to see it lower when there are more people about.

Additionally, lag can be from mods and the like, as time goes on the interface addons will get bogged down more and more, depending on what you use. If you use several addons you need to clear their caches regularly.

Check to make sure extra things are not running in the background. Dependign on settings 30-50fps seems fine. The random stops you mention are more likely due to poorly managed addons, or background tasks eating up too much memory.