World of Warcraft AMD 7970

[jkhoward]

Hello,

I have purchased a 7970 for my system along with a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM. Basically, I built a whole new system. When playing World of Warcraft on Ultra setting 1920 x 1080 resolution with AA x8 and AMD CC settings to default I experience horrible frames per second. When lowing the AA to x1 or x2 the frames per second are around 60 - 100 depending on the environment. My system specs are at the link below. Any idea of what the issue may be?

http://12tronics.com/index.php?/topic/507-phantom-of-the-opera/

Thanks,
Joel Howard

 

[ibjeepr]

So what are you recommending? What is the difference between AA Filtering Bi linear, x2 x16... and Multi sampling? These damn articles are very confusing.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7970-benchmark-tahiti-gcn,3104-11.html

The card has a"boost" option that is enabled and I am overclocking on that setting. Should I overclock on the normal setting?

I'm recommending you run it without overclocking at all first and see where your FPS is. If it's still that low or lower then you may have a hardware issue. If everyone buying 7970's was getting FPS like that in WOW then your be hearing a lot more about it.

Edit: otherwise, like Iceclock said, the issue must be somewhere else. If you aren't having a problem in any other games it's hard to say.

That test is from over a year ago. The updated drivers are supposed to improve on that considerably.

 

[jkhoward]

I'm recommending you run it without overclocking at all first and see where your FPS is. If it's still that low or lower then you may have a hardware issue. If everyone buying 7970's was getting FPS like that in WOW then your be hearing a lot more about it.

Edit: otherwise, like Iceclock said, the issue must be somewhere else. If you aren't having a problem in any other games it's hard to say.

The only other games I play are SC2 and League of Legends. Do you think those games are fulling taking advantage of my card? How about Guilds Wars 2? I do have that. I get about 60 FPS on ultra settings.

EDIT: I am going to get the FPS for GW2 and post it here with the same settings I am using for WoW. I know that GW2 is harder on the GPU and the average FPS should be about 60FPS with ultra settings.

 

[Sunius]

Still waiting for answers to two out of three of my questions 😉.

 

[jkhoward]

Still waiting for answers to two out of three of my questions 😉.

I did reply to one of those questions good sir. I have to wait until I am home tonight to check the GPU usage during the uberlag. I did modify the CCC settings but while I did this I changed one setting at a time and monitored in-game performance and I am not running any addons, well one addon, but the isssue happens when the addon is disabled as well. NPCScan. :lol:

 

[Sunius]

What about the installation? Is it a fresh install of the game or did you copy your files from another PC?

 

[ibjeepr]

What about the installation? Is it a fresh install of the game or did you copy your files from another PC?

In a post farther up on the thread he said,
"I just re installed WoW about 2 weeks ago with the latest patches and files."
Sounds like a fresh install, would be my guess.

 

[iceclock]

try reverting ur card and cpu back to stock settings, that might help.

 

[Sunius]

If it's indeed a fresh install, it might still be downloading stuff (blizzard introduced this system an expansion ago I think). If you have never been to a zone, it will start downloading info about it on the fly and installing it. It could result in a VERY VERY bad performance. I'd suggest flying to somewhere you're lagging at and staying afk there for 1 hour with the game on. If that doesn't solve it, it's not that, but worth a try.

Secondly, I'd advice trying to delete Cache folder and rename Interface and WTF folders just to see whether they weren't corrupted.

 

[jkhoward]

What about the installation? Is it a fresh install of the game or did you copy your files from another PC?

I installed WoW 2 weeks ago with the latest patches. I had this issue since day one. Last night I transferred the files over to my SSD but this did not address the issue either. Latest patches, runs the same before and after the file transfer.

I am going to reset my system to factory defaults and attempt this again.

I am also running Windows 8, could this be an issue?

Thanks for all the help so far guys! Keep it coming! 😱

 

[ibjeepr]

I installed WoW 2 weeks ago with the latest patches. I had this issue since day one. Last night I transferred the files over to my SSD but this did not address the issue either. Latest patches, runs the same before and after the file transfer.

I am going to reset my system to factory defaults and attempt this again.

I am also running Windows 8, could this be an issue?

Thanks for all the help so far guys! Keep it coming! 😱

I'm running windows 8 64bit as well. It's not an issue.

 

[iceclock]

from my knowledge windows 8 doesnt decrease performance, shouldnt be an issue there.

let us know after ur factory resets.

 

[jkhoward]

from my knowledge windows 8 doesnt decrease performance, shouldnt be an issue there.

let us know after ur factory resets.

Thanks for all of the help everyone. I have a nice list in front of me with things that I am going to try out. I will let you know as soon as possible!

 

[jkhoward]

I reset my computer options and reinstalled the AMD drivers. I set the WoW options to ultra and now get a stable 54 - 74 FPS in the new areas. My next question, is this about normal at 1080p? I tried lowering the settings to how I had them before and the FPS is actually lower then they were before being 80 - 90 on lower settings when before they were 90 - 100?

Thanks!

 

[jkhoward]

How would I go about over locking my system? Should I have hyper threading enabled? What bios option could of effected my FPS? Could it if been my GOU overclock?

 

[jkhoward]

UPDATE: I reset my system to the overclocked settings after I performed all of the following. The performance is still very good. I was messing around with the CCC settings and noticed that either AA Filter Edge-Detect or AA Mode Super AA are the cause of the problem.

Next question, when I am in the sky my average FPS is 40, when I am on the ground my average FPS is 60 around a pond. Is this normal for my system?

 

[Sunius]

If that 40 is in Orgrimmar valley of strength, I'd say it's perfectly normal. However, if you're middle of nowhere, it's pretty low.

What's the GPU usage?

 

[jkhoward]

If that 40 is in Orgrimmar valley of strength, I'd say it's perfectly normal. However, if you're middle of nowhere, it's pretty low.

What's the GPU usage?

MY GPU usage was at 100% on ultra. This was in the new areas with higher detail.

 

[Sunius]

Okay. You mentioned you've set something to high quality in Catalyst Control Center. Could you try to restore defaults?

 

[iceclock]

hmm, have u tried error scanning ur ssd, and doing a clean reinstall again?,

u never know might be ur windows that has a corrupted file, ive had similar issues with everything working fine hardware wise but my windows was running weird.

after a complete reinstall fixed any issues with games.

 

[Sunius]

Looks like a driver issue to me. No way it should be at 100% usage if it's something else.

 

[ibjeepr]

I've seen that 7970 has a pretty high return rate. Not sure if that implies your card is bad but you may want to bring up the issue to Sapphire customer service and see what they have to say.

 

[jkhoward]

I've seen that 7970 has a pretty high return rate. Not sure if that implies your card is bad but you may want to bring up the issue to Sapphire customer service and see what they have to say.

I reset my BIOS settings on my system and noticed a 20 FPS increase on ultra in a MoP area. I am not able to compare it to my old results because it is in a different area and the servers are acting up. I am going to try the 12.11 drivers and leave my system un overclocked from now on. I also removed my second low end 6540 GPU from the second PCI slot to possibly free up some bandwidth because I know my board is a lower end board. I will let you guys know whats going on with the new drivers and such. I do know that those drivers were crashing my system when playing SC2 and League of Legends and GW2.

 

[iceclock]

alright keep us updated :0

 

[jkhoward]

Just an update for Guild Wars 2 and Starcraft 2 while the World of Warcraft servers are down:

Guild Wars 2
Major City: 40 - 45 FPS on ULTRA
Other: 55 - 70 FPS on ULTRA

Starcraft 2:
Not Much Going On: 145 - 150 FPS
Some Madness: 100 - 115 FPS
Crazy Madness: 75 - 95 FPS

How do these numbers look?

 

[iceclock]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/guild-wars-2-performance-benchmark,3268-6.html

ur numbers seem alright if ur running in 1080p for guildwars and star craft 2:

starcraft 2 looks fine to me