Improve Your Gameplay
In my opinion, you can group your gameplay experience into 2 categories (and I’m talking about physical, not mental experience). The first is Frame Rate (FPS) and the second is Graphic Detail. Both of these are very important for lifelike gameplay. Frame Rate refers to the number of images you see every second the game is running. The human eye can see up to 30 frames per second. If you have an average of 30 FPS, you are likely happy with your frame rate. If you have dropped below this, you may want to read on. The graphic detail refers to things like draw distance, terrain detail, shadow and weather effects, and other things similar to these. Increasing your detail decreases your performance.
Often, decreasing the graphic detail in the video menu within the WoW interface will increase your frame rate. Move all the slider bars to the left side to decrease them. Try mousing over the check boxes to get additional information about them. Many of the check boxes will tell you whether to check or uncheck them to increase performance. You can also lower the resolution as well as the multisampling effect. Most modern machines will play WoW adequately if you set all the graphic effects on the minimum setting.
If this still does not fix the frame rate problem, or if you want to play with the graphics turned up, you may want to assess your software situation first. Macintosh is a very good operating system and there is little you can do to improve your performance with any version of Mac OSX. Windows on the other hand is very susceptible to performance degrade. Firstly, it is very important that you are using a good anti-virus program, a good anti-spyware program, and I highly recommend a firewall. You can only have 1 anti-virus program so it is important you do not install more than one. You may have as many anti-spyware programs as you like, however the more you chose to run the faster your system runs out of resources. I recommend no more than 2 anti-spyware programs at a time. Viruses and Spyware are very different so it is important that you have a program to deal with each, or a software suite that explicitly states that it will remove both viruses and spyware. Firewalls are like bouncers or guards for your computer. They are somewhat difficult to use because they require a lot of configuration, but they will manually allow and deny programs from entering your computer and/or accessing the internet from your computer. I highly recommend using the Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite because it has all three functionalities among others while running on a third of the system resources as other main stream suites like Symantec or Trend Micro. If you can not afford to purchase a good suite, I do have a few recommendations for freeware that will still be much better than using no security at all.
AVG – Free Antivirus
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-anti-virus/us/frt/0
Spybot Search and Destroy – Free Antispyware
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html
Zone Alarm – Free Basic Firewall
http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/catalog/products/sku_list_za.jsp?dc=12bms&ctry=US&lang=en
Make certain you update and run these programs frequently! They must update to be aware of all the new threats. A malware clean system will run much smoother than an infested system
The other thing you can do to improve performance through software is system maintenance. There are a few things in this category that will help you. I do NOT recommend downloading programs that claim to boost performance. Most of these do quite the opposite because they take up resources themselves. Some of them do work, but they are very aggressive and should only be used by very advanced users at penalty of damaging Windows beyond repair. The things you can safely do I will list below.
1) Removing unwanted programs. There is little you can do to damage windows beyond repair in the Add/Remove programs interface. Click StartControl PanelAdd or Remove Programs. Scroll through these programs and remove anything that you do not use. If you do not know what something is, do not be afraid to use the internet to find out. Go to www.google.com and try typing in, “What is *program name*.” This will free up storage space and it may remove programs that are running in the background. I also recommend against using file sharing programs like Limewire or Bit Torrents. These programs often damage computer functionality and often the files you are downloading from them are illegal (You may not download music, movies and software that you did not purchase. It is illegal and you can be fined and/or go to jail if you are caught. I personally know people who have been caught. They have been fined between $2,000 USD and $150,000 USD.)
2) Cleaning up temporary files. These don’t take up much space by themselves, but if you do not remove them regularly they can add up to a lot. Click StartAll ProgramsAccessoriesSystem ToolsDisk Cleanup. Follow through the prompts and remove anything the program finds. It’s perfectly safe.
3) Disc defragmentation. The best way to explain this is as follows. Day 1 you create a word file and type up 1 page. It saves to an arbitrary memory location we will call location 1. Day 2 you open up word again and create another essay. You save this one to memory location 2. Day 3 you open up the essay from Day 1 and you write a second page. You are forced to save this in memory location 3 because location 2 already has something in it. Your Day 1 essay file is now fragmented because its pieces are not contiguous on your hard drive. You can fix this by defragmenting. Click StartAll Programs Accessories System Tools Disc Defragmenter. Analyze and defragment. This takes a while and you probably should not be using the computer while the defragmenter is running. I recommend starting this phase of your system maintenance right before you go to sleep for the night. Depending on the machine, it may take hours.
4) Adjusting your startup. WARNING: DO THIS WITH CAUTION! This is the most aggressive suggestion I will give you, as I do not want you to ruin your system. Many programs are written to appear as though they start up faster than they actually do. They accomplish this by starting up pieces of the program when Windows loads. The problem with doing this is that you have a lot of programs running in your RAM that you are not planning on using. Your computer will perform better if they do not load at all until you tell them to. This is done through the Windows Startup console. Again I caution you, this can mess up your system if you do not do your homework. You can find out what everything means by once again Googling things, but you must put the time in or you will disable a system process and Windows won’t start up properly. Click StartRun and in the run field type ‘MSCONFIG’ to bring up a new window. At the top right, click on the Startup tab. This will list every process that is starting up with Windows starts up. Go to Google.com and one by one, type in the Startup Item exactly as it appears. Be warned, many people will call things viruses or spyware when they are in fact legitimate processes. Read the first few posts before deciding whether the process needs to be running. If you do believe the item is in fact a virus, disabling it in this fashion is not the way to handle it. Please use your protection software that I recommended earlier in this article to remove any malware on your system. Many common things that can be disabled from startup are the Microsoft Office programs, Adobe, Real Player and other media players, and applications you seldom use. Be careful not to turn your protection software off. When you have completed this process, click Apply. I warn you one last time that this last step, although it can vastly improve performance, it can also damage your system functionality if you do not do this carefully.
This is about as much as you can do to your software to improve your game performance. If your frame rate and graphics are still not up to your requirements, then I suggest assessing your hardware. If you have a laptop computer, any upgrades beyond RAM are exceedingly difficult and are probably not cost efficient. I will tailor this section to desktop computers for this reason. A good starting place for assessing your hardware situation is the direct x diagnostic tool. Click StartRun and in the run field type ‘DXDIAG’ to bring up a new window. This will give you some fairly reliable hardware specifications for your computer.
For a system to perform well, you must honor the hardware trinity.
1) Processor Speed
2) RAM Quantity and Speed
3) Graphics Card
For playing games, the graphics card is the most important of these 3 as it is the primary processing power for graphic related calculations. HOWEVER, if the processor or the ram is not sufficient your system will bottleneck and will not function properly. That said, we will start with the processor. If you have a single core processor, it should be at least 2GHz to run things really well. WoW does not require this, but it will improve your frame rate among other things. If you are substantially below this, I recommend getting a new computer. It is very expensive to upgrade to a new processor and often not worth it because the old technology of the motherboard will hold your computer back from its true potential. If you have a duel core processor of just about any speed, it should handle WoW just fine. Next is your ram. You should have a minimum of 1GB of system ram, but I recommend 2GB. The speed of your ram can matter as well. Many systems can use several speeds, and if this is the case you should use the highest speed possible. All of your ram must be the same speed or the faster ram will downclock and you will not receive the speed benefit. If you are using DDR2, you should have identical chips in size and manufacturer because it is duel channel.
Lastly, we will discuss video cards. These can be divided into 2 groups, dedicated and integrated. Integrated video chips are attached to your motherboard and generally share your system’s RAM. They are most often slower processors than those found on dedicated cards, and you will receive poor frame rate using them to game. These are commonly found in laptops that cost under $1,000 USD but are also found in some economy desktops as well. Dedicated cards on the other hand generally use faster processors and have their own graphic ram built into the card. These are much better for gaming and graphic rendering. If you are upgrading a desktop PC, you will want to purchase one of these.
Some things to consider when purchasing a new graphics card:
Is your power source strong enough to power the new card? Typical power source wattage is between 200W and 1000W. The PS can be found in the upper part of the computer where the power plug connects. It is a box of about 6”x4”x2” and you can find out the wattage by reading the stickers on it.
What processor do you want? The two main processor manufacturers are nVidia and ATI. nVidia manufacturers the GeForce series chips, and ATI owns Radeon. WoW was built on an nVidia platform, and you will see fewer graphic corruptions using an nVidia card. In my opinion, nVidia is a better processor anyway. Each processor has a series, a model name, and speed. You will need to do your research to figure out which processor will give you the performance you want. I recommend always going at least one step down from the best because you pay too much for the latest and greatest. In the computing world, the latest and greatest is old news within 6-12 months and is not worth the extra hundreds of dollars.
What RAM do you want? You can get different amounts of dedicated ram at different ram speeds. 256MBs is enough to run WoW nicely, adding more will improve performance but not substantially. Never buy a card with DDR ram. GDDR2 is decent but GDDR3 is the fastest ram you can currently purchase. I use a 256MB card with GDDR3 and it runs wow at 60fps.
Which Card Manufacturer do you want? nVidia and ATI only make processors. The cards and RAM are assembled by a third party. Common names are BFG, EVGA, PNY and many others. Even with the same processor model and series, the card can differ from manufacturer to manufacturer in ram quantity, speed, and some manufacturers even overclock the video processor itself. In my opinion, I believe there is a reason nVidia and ATI leave their processors at certain speeds. Overclocking processors can lead to graphic corruptions, game crashes, and system instability. I recommend against buying an overclocked card. If you want a faster chip, buy it from nVidia and not overclocked from the card manufacturer.
Lastly, what card type do you need? Don’t buy a PCI card, as it will be slower than the alternatives. Most current computers have a PCI-express slot and this is the best choice. Some computers use AGP. AGP is faster than PCI but much slower than PCI-express. You must be certain of which slot your motherboard supports before making your purchase.
Subject: Rivalen's Quick Guide To Better Game Performance 
Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:53 pm
