Well, with all the bitching i have read on the forums about people losing fps since 5.04 and such i thought id post some things to help improve performance well generally keeping the game looking good( well as best as a game designed on the warcraft 3 engine can look lol)
Verticle sync and trible buffering: may help smooth out tearing and set ur fps to ur refresh rate of your monitor.
First off if your operating system and video card support it use the directx 11 renderer. it doesnt make the game look any better but it does alot better job at rendering shadows and a few other special effects. generally performance for some can increase 10-15% but mostly is just helps keep the frame rate more consistent.
To those of you running windows xp 64bit vista 64 or windows 7 64bit make sure you use the 64bit client. it should be on by default now if u have a 64bit operating system. this allows wow to use more then 4gb of ram which is a limitation ofa 32bit os. generally i have noticed loading to be faster and the game to appear smoother over all.
it should be noted that u can try running the directx 11 renderer with a directx 10 video card if u run vista or windows 7 but results may very.
Shadows and SSAO and sunshafts:
These 2 with the possible exception of multisampling past 4x are the 2 biggest kilers in the frame rate department. ifur having troubles with 5.04 is try lowering or disabling ssao first then maybe lower shadows a tier or 2. the more objects on screen at one time the more shadows that need to be calculated. it adds up quickly and can drop a framerate from being smooth to the low teens in a blink of an eye. World of warcrafts engine isnt really that optimized. it clugs and chugs in places it shouldnt.
With the release of 5.04 the minumum view distance has been increased in the game by default. I noticed this on my laptop when i noticed i was getting 5-10 less fps in certain zones. it may need to be adjusted.
Ram: your computer shouldnt have less then 4gb installed and in the proper slots insuring that dual channel or triple channel for you i7 users is enabled. this is a huge increase in bandwidth and wow likes bandwidth alot. For 64 bit operating systems a bare minimum of 8gb should be installed.
HDD: Faster the better. if u got older hdd, or a really large one it might be worth buying a SSD or a faster disc based hdd. i went from a 640gb seagate rated at 7200rpm (average for medium size hdd) to a 300gb 10000 rpm velicoraptor and loading times were cut down buy 30% if not more. and since wow streams alot of data constantly off the hdd i noticed a smoother experience transitioning thru zones. the bigger the HDD the slower it generally will be. alot of people upgrade to a faster smaller hdd and install the os and games on it and keep a larger hdd for movies and other files where speed and performance play a lessar role.
SSD: generally these are hell fast but also hell expensive. with a 128gb version costing almost double the amount of a avg hdd. these can make your computer feel a whole lot "snappier"
CPU: for about 3-4 years now WoW has been optimized for 3 threads. meaning if ur cpu has 3+ cores or hyperthreading or both it will run significantly better then it would run on a single core cpu and about 20% better then on a dual core. I personally wouldnt play inless i had a dual core cpu of at least 2ghz. the faster the better(inless ur running a pentium 4).
WoW in general has always run better on Intel cpus.
Video card: now for the touchy part. alot of laptops have intergrated low cost intel and nvidia/amd gpus. these are slow. so slow that video cards that came out 8 years ago will run the game better most of the time. There is an exception here. Amd's line of APU( cpu and gpu on a single die) generally perform well. where a intel cpu may be faster then an amd cpu the gpu's in the apu far outclass almost all other intergrated solutions. there are mobile and desktop variations. some run in hybrid crossfire (intergrated gpu and a stand alone gpu). most of these r the desktop versions though. The A6-A8 series offer budget performance and should at least be able to run om medium and possibly high settings. 512mb should be the min amount of v ram. 1gb would be preferable.
Nvidia generally outperforms amd on this game. There are alot of sub 100 video cards that would be a huge upgrade for people if a pciex16 slot is available and they previously used an intergrated solution. UPDATED DRIVERS!!! this alone can have a huge impact on performance. keep them up to date.
Budget: Radeon 6670 or a geforce 450 or 550. midrange: 6770/7770/6850/6870/7800 series or 460 gtx/560gtx/660ti. in order of price. 7870 or 660ti should max out most settings with ease. infact most of the midrange cards will.
Topend: 570gtx 580 gtx, 670 gtx and 680 gtx. should be noted that the radeon 7870 cards can sometimes match these in games. on the lower end of the spectrum. 7950 and 7970.
these cards are all over kill for wow. inless u play other games id save ur money.
my recommendations: for the cheap side id recoommend a 6670 over the other 2. as it requires the least amount of power. as for midrange... id say the 6850 or 6870 are the best bang for the buck. with the 660ti being the fastest and most futureproof and able to play most games on high. as for top end. ill leave that up to fanboyism.
Nvidia users: FXAA!!! a shader based AA available in the latest drivers. i use this with a custom profile in my nvidia control panel just for wow. i got ingame aa off and fxaa on. it is faster then the ingame aa by a decent bit and looks as good if not better. there are exceptions though and in some games this may make it look worse. try it out. if u need help catch me on vent for online. i should note that this works only on 8800gt and above. im not sure on thise since i have only tested it on 400 series and above.
Amd uses or those who wanna run FXAA thru an injector or SMAA thru an injector. these injectors only work with the 32bit client. i have limited experience with either of them but noticed the smaa one cut my fps by 10 on my laptops apu. the hit will be less on a decent card.
if anyone has anything to add or if i have missed something feel free to add to it.
oh one more thing. antivirus..... u should have only one running. more the one will drag ur entire computer down.
