Posts with tag radeon

A few people are experiencing slowdown issues with patch 3.1, and since our last bit of technical help went over so well, we figured we'd do a little troubleshooting for you on this one, too. If your computer is running slower since you updated into patch 3.1, the first thing to do is check your video options -- Blizzard has tweaked a few things in there, and chances are that by tweaking them again, you might be able to fix your problem (or at least make it a little better). Specifically keep an eye out for the new Video Mode Ultra setting -- that specifically is not designed to be used unless your computer is current and top-of-the-line. Shadows also are quite a drag on the video card and CPU, and turning them down won't affect gameplay that much.

If your options are already low, the next thing you might do is check your videocard's make and driver version (scroll down to the "manually" section there -- you don't need to run Intel's program). Nvidia, who makes the common GeForce series of video cards just updated their drivers to version 182.50 on April 2nd, so if you have an earlier version than that, running the update will probably help. If you have an ATI card, you can find the drivers over on their site.

And of course if all of your software is set up and you're still having issues, there's always the possibility of updating your hardware. That can be quite an ordeal, though, so if you're not so sure on how to install new RAM or can't recognize the difference between SATA and IDE, you might want to enlist a friendly techie for a little help. WoW is still very forgiving, but Blizzard has been slowly adding on the graphical goodness, so if you've been playing with the same PC since launch four years ago, it might just be time for an upgrade.

Short and sweet this week. Okay, maybe the space is more grotty than sweet, but I'll let submitter Charlie explain:

You guys seem to be featuring really neat and nice set-ups, so I thought I'd show you what most WoW player's desks look like! In order from left to right: Latest Newsweek, bottle of water, Bourne Supremacy, LOTR The Two Towers (Extended), a Hotpocket, an old Canon AE-1 (for when I do shoot film), Klipsch speakers (eh, they're ok, field is a little narrow), Apple 20" Cinema Display, iPod Mini (it's there, trust me), 90+ year old negatives from my grandmother that I need to take into work to restore (brown envelope), BC mouse pad, USB multi-card reader I ninja'd from work, RAZR, Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 with 2GB of RAM, ATi Radeon 9600 with 128MB of DDR (eh, need to upgrade), old Joystick from when I used to play flight sims all night long, and my Ventrilo headset.

Remember to send your submissions in to our Reader WoWspace address, along with a couple of good photos of your space.

For all you Radeon card users out there, it seems that the latest version of ATI's drivers, the just-released Catalyst 6.4, contain an issue that may affect WoW players. From the official notes:

"World of Warcraft: Enabling CrossFire may intermittently result in the character appearing off center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-22017"

So, for god's sake, people...turn off Crossfire - whatever it is - and keep yourself centered. The new drivers can be downloaded from ATI's site here.