WoW performance and cards

[FoghornDeadhorn]

OK, I'm putting together a smattering of long-overdue upgrades for my comp, basically been playing with the same shit since launch, and I'm considering whether or not to put a cheap soundcard in the lot, and possibly a new network card as well. As it is I just use onboard sound and whatever ethernet shit this HP came with. The only reason I would get either one though is to increase performance in WoW, and I'm wondering what people's experience has been with this.

For starters, I've been playing with the sound effects off in WoW for a few months, ever since we started working on Anub and I experienced locking up at the beginning of the encounter (as a tank, this means raid die.). Since turning my sounds off I've found my performance has been pretty damned steady. The question is whether or not the addition of a soundcard would eliminate this problem, for one, and whether it would increase performance noticably while actually having the sound on for another. If it does not, then I really don't care to buy one.

I have basically the same question regarding network cards, my understanding is that they are pretty low impact for the cost but I'd like to hear some other opinions. I'm not interested in buying anything expensive in either of these departments, if anything at all.

I suppose I could put this in General IE tech support but it's really a WoW-specific question from my perspective and I know I'm not the only one upgrading for the xpac.

[Broham]

Onboard shit usually taxes your CPU...so if you don't have a power-house chip it could cause issues. It's best to get away from that as soon as you can. You can get a NIC really cheap on eBay, that's not a big problem. Also, you could probably upgrade that onboard sound to a SB Live(4-5 years old now), just something to take the sound processing load off of the cpu.

I've had issues since the 2.0 patch, so I believe that an upgrade might be in order for a lot of us =(

[Vorph]

SB Live isn't worth the bother when you can get a X-Fi (XtremeGamer) for ~$65 now. I haven't bothered with a PCI NIC since they started putting them on motherboard chipsets. The overhead is negligible, and to me it's not worth having something else to disrupt airflow.

Edit: er, I guess scratch that on the XtremeGamer... it was $65 at newegg just before xmas but now it's going for $90ish. The Xtreme Audio card is just as bad as onboard sound as far as cpu overhead goes.

[Immy]

I've had the same SB Live 5.1 gamer since....probably 1999-2000. Plays the game just fine along with anything else.

[Lefazz]

I suggest a decent video card and plenty of RAM (at least a gig). I wouldn't waste money on a new audio or network card -- the performance "hit" is negligible at best.

If you're getting hard locks then that often suggests a hardware problem. But it still could be software related -- you may want to consider a complete wipe and reload and download the latest drivers for all the devices in the computer.

I know HPs come factory loaded with a pile of shit. If you can, do a fresh reload of XP off an OEM disc rather than the HP recovery. Your computer will feel a lot faster just from that.

[Sanchek]

Even on my years old 2.1 speaker setup, upgrading from motherboard sound to a real sound card always makes a huge difference in WoW's sound quality. I'm not sure about your crashes, but that alone is enough for me to always make sure I've got a mid-grade sound card of some kind for my systems.

[slitz]

The hard lock problem may or may not be related to a voice chat program such as Teamspeak or Ventrilo. I had the same problem until I switched to direct sound in the settings instead of the primary sound unit.

While the CPU hit from using onboard cards is negligible it often results in overheating and you get choppy sound or white noise interference.
I would rather buy a crap $20 soundcard then use the onboard one, but then again I've had really bad experience with it.

I'm running WoW on a AMD4200 Dual Core, 1gb ram and a Geforce 7600GT and I have ~40 fps in a raid environment with highest settings on. Hardly a power machine but for WoW it works splendid (just to give you some reference).
Tons of people have had problems with the Geforce 7600GS, so I would advice you to stay away from it even though it's a good card for a very nice price.

[mylek]

A new network or sound card is not going to increase your gaming performance noticeably. Your system configuration and video card/ motherboard/ memory play much much larger roles. I would save your money and put it towards your next upgrade to a more important component.


In regards to fixing your sound there are some wow settings that you can experiment with if you haven't already. If these settings aren't already in Warcraft\WTF\Config.wtf then you can add them to change them from the default:

SET SoundReverb "0"

Adding this I believe disables all echo effects in the game. I have this in for personal preference as the echo in Ironforge and some dungeons is otherwise unbearable.


SET SoundMaxHardwareChannels "128"
SET SoundSoftwareChannels "0"

These are my current settings for these but your mileage may vary. I believe the current default for both is 12. You could try 0 hardware and 128 or 12 software possibly. Setting both to 0 seems to result in no sound.


SET SoundOutputSystem "x"

change x to:
1 = Windows Multimedia (the one you should first try)
2 = Direct Sound
3 = Aureal3D
4 = Open Sound System
-1 = Auto select (default)

I haven't experimented with this setting personally but it could help your problem.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Somewhat related question for teh haxxorz out there:

I recently purchased a USB-based logitec headset (Logitec USB 350 to be precise). I don't tend to use vent so getting really comfortable with its setup has never been a big deal for me. Well now I'm using the hawt VOIP from google and I'm trying to make it as hassle-free as possible. There are a couple of issues with this:

A) The salesman told me that I could set it up to where sound output switched to the speakers without unplugging the device. There is no reference to this in the "manual" and I've seen nothing in my audio features to indicate how to do it.

B) It's annoying to have to take off and put on the headset every time I leave my seat. It seems above the clip/volume control the change in cord thickness would indicate that the wires are now down to regular speaker wires, and if one were so inclined one could install a detatching point, and being above the clip as it would be, the device would never be detected as removed, thus being fairly hassle-free. You'd probably want a clip on this item as your volume button would ideally be hanging free just past the disconnect point, to make afk trips as hassle-free as possible. Has anyone experimented with this?

C) Wireless would be awesome but there seems to be a shortage of not-ridiculously-expensive wireless headsets out there. Has anyone rigged one up? Would be difficult I reckon as you still have to power your speakers but I wouldn't be surprised at all if someone who had a little familiarity with electronics had done it for a lot less than the nearly $200 I'm seeing wireless headsets going for, and those are on bluetooth which I've heard has had some security issues.

[Cybsled]

WoW always ran fine for me until the new patch...now it lags alot more, especially in a raid. It's hard to peg down what might be causing it.

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by FoghornDeadhorn

A) The salesman told me that I could set it up to where sound output switched to the speakers without unplugging the device. There is no reference to this in the "manual" and I've seen nothing in my audio features to indicate how to do it.

I had this headset, and returned it for the same reason. The headset is treated as a soundcard. But, you can make the change you want.

Go to control panel - sounds. Click the Audio Tab. You should have your sound card, and the headset listed as choices in the drop down menu's. Change sound playback to your sound card. To expedite this process in the future, make as shortcut to the sounds icon in the control panel and place it on your desktop.

It was too much of a hassle for me, I ended up returning those and getting a behind the ears gamer headphones for $25 or so. I use a Y splitter for the headphone jack on the back of my soundcard, with one for the headphones, the other for my Logitech 2.1 speakers.

[Lenardo]

get a usb adapter and run the headset over usb.

i do it this way and have zero problems

speakers for game sounds
headphones for teamspeak/vent

also get the x-fi card, it's a bit expensive but the sound is REALLY different with it...as in

mobo sound- sounds decent

x-fi sound, wtf is this noise as i move....it's the chainmail rattling.

[Oloh]

This is a little off topic, but something that I have wanted to check into for a bit.

Anyone know of any tweaks or settings you can do to WoW to maybe up the clip plane further than what it allowed under the default UI or increase the radial objects? I have everything maxed out and I still see candles, grass, and other environmental doodads fade out a close enough distance that it is noticeable.

Any way to scale the graphics up would be a appreciated. Radial "flora" and clip plane are the most obvious, but I am open to other suggestions as well.

[Jubee]

Originally Posted by slitz

Tons of people have had problems with the Geforce 7600GS, so I would advice you to stay away from it even though it's a good card for a very nice price.

He speaks the troof. If I run 2 instances of WoW on the same PC, my video card causes blue screens about once per hour. It's blaming the driver, but I've tried like 4 different versions of the driver, turned down acceleration, and I still get blue screens like woah.

On the flip side, when I'm not PLing another alchemy alt, it generally runs very steady and it was cheap even when I got it over a year ago.

[Salizar]

If your video card is causing blue screens, I would suggest you get a nice thermal monitor and see if yoiu can't detect any issues with abnormal heat from the card. As over heating on the video card will cause blue screens just like over heating your CPU will.
There are several nice freeware apps that do a great job of this.
SpeedFan is one that I've used for a long time, It monitors everything under the sun, fom your cpu to your hard drives.

SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer