Cry Havoc

Boost WoW Performance Without Breaking The Bank

March 30th, 2011 by Romy

World of Warcraft is not, overall, one of the more hardcore games out there when it comes to system hardware requirements. After all, the game originally came out in 2004 and had to be playable on the hardware available at the time. While there have been three expansion packs over the years, the basic system requirements for the game really haven’t changed much.

The performance of most games tends to rely mostly on the video card’s GPU and your motherboard’s CPU, but WoW’s performance is also strongly tied to the amount of memory in your system and the speed of your hard drive. This means we have more options for improving performance.

Obviously the best way to improve performance is to get a new computer with state-of-the-art everything in it, but that option is out of range for many people. I have a few tips and tricks for improving game performance that should be within most budgets. Some of these will work on either Windows or Mac systems while others are only Windows.

New Video Card

This one is pretty obvious. If your current video card is more than 2 years old or so, chances are pretty good you would experience a significant boost in performance by upgrading. And you don’t have to spend $500 or $600 on the latest and greatest monster cards in order to see a big performance boost in WoW.

At around $150, I would personally recommend something like the GeForce 550 Ti. Most of the models at this price point include 1gb of on-board memory, which is probably at least 2-4 times as much as your old card, and full DirectX 11 compatibility. If that price is still a bit high, you might find GTS 450 models hovering around the $100 mark, also with 1gb onboard RAM.

The extra memory on the video card will allow WoW to download more texture data to the card, which means the game will not be accessing the hard drive quite as often, and also that main menory will be available for other data.

A disclaimer: I’ve used NVIDIA-based video cards almost exclusively for over a decade so I am not really all that familiar with ATI’s offerings. Also, I have done a variety of contract jobs for NVIDIA including working in-house on the GEFORCE.COM website. So, yah, I am definitely biased towards their products. However, there is no paid endorsement involved with respect to this article.

Bump Up Your RAM

This applies to all systems. If your computer has anything less than 4gb of RAM, the first thing you should do to improve performance is upgrade your memory. While WoW will work with 1gb or 2gb, there are significant performance improvements when you jump up to 4gb. WoW is constantly loading information from its data files on your hard drive. As you move around the world and see new terrain, new mobs, and new people, the information for things you haven’t seen lately is dropped to make room for the new information. Which, of course, means it has to reload it when you see those things again. The more memory you have, the more it’s able to keep that information loaded all the time instead.

If you’re running a 64-bit operating system, I would recommend you take your machine up to 6gb or 8gb if your budget will support it. This will give WoW all the memory it wants right now and leave some room for future expansion. It will also give you enough memory to keep a few other programs open in the background, like a web browser so you can jump out of the game to look up things on websites like WoW Head or WowWiki.

If you’re not running a 64-bit operating system, you really should consider an upgrade if your system can handle it. Most systems made in the last few years will have no problems running 64-bit. There’s really only one reason to stick with a 32-bit OS if your system supports 64-bit, and that would be the very rare situation where you have some piece of hardware for which there is no 64-bit driver available, and you can’t upgrade that hardware.

If you’re still running on an old 32-bit Windows XP system, it’s probably way past the point where you’d like to get a new system and most likely your budget just doesn’t allow it. While it’s hard to recommend making much of an investment in an old system like this, you may still find some improvement in performance by maxing out your memory at 4gb.

Throw Out Your Hard Drive!

Well, don’t REALLY throw it out. However, we’re going to show you a trick where you can improve performance on a desktop machine using a new Solid-State Drive (SSD) but without doing a complete hard drive swap.

As we mentioned earlier, as you move around in WoW, the game is constantly loading information from your hard drive. Actually you don’t need to move around… even if you’re just standing around doing nothing, in some areas you’ll still have a steady stream of new players coming into close proximity. Every time something or someone new comes into range, the game has to go out to the hard drive and load up the 3D model data and texture information required to show them on screen, not to mention other information like gear attributes and so forth. This means that WoW’s performance is at least somewhat dependent on how quickly that information can be retrieved from your storage device.

These days, the fastest hard drives are the new solid-state models which use flash memory instead of a spinning magnetic platter. These are usually called “SSD” instead of “HD”. Because there are no moving parts, an SSD is rugged and as fast as the electronics can be. They are also immune to issues like fragmentation that can cause slowdowns on old-style drives.

The big downside is that SSDs are quite expensive compared to traditional hard drives. While you can easily find a 2-terabyte HD for as little as $80, that same cash will only buy a 32 or 40 gigabyte SSD. Getting up to a 256gb SSD drive will cost you $450-$500.

These days, most modern desktop computers have a primary hard drive that is at least 320gb and many are larger. That means for most people, replacing their primary hard drive with an SSD would be fairly expensive. No doubt the price of SSD drives will come down eventually, but in the meantime doing a complete replacement is probably not an option for most people.

Fortunately, there’s another option. Two, actually. Either one starts with installing a new SSD into your system as an additional drive. I would recommend a 40gb SSD. My WoW folder currently is about 24.5 gb, so a smaller size might work, but a 40gb drive will give you room for future expansion.

If you don’t know how to install an additional drive in your system, find a more technically inclined friend to help you out.

Using Your New SSD For WoW: Option 1

Once you’ve got the new SSD installed, boot into Windows. You may see a message telling you that a new drive has been detected and asking if you want to initialize it. Here’s where you have a choice of two options.

First, you can initialize the drive and assign a drive letter, after which you can copy over your World Of Warcraft folder. You’ll have to reset any shortcuts on your desktop or in your start menu to point at the new location, but otherwise you should be good to go.

The potential downside to doing it this way is that the SSD will be very easily accessible for other purposes. This may not be a problem, but there is the possibility that you will use up the extra space on the drive, run out of room, and then have problems with WoW as a result.

Using Your New SSD For WoW: Option 2

The second option is more complicated to do, but it essentially assigns the SSD to the exclusive purpose of speeding up WoW. Note that this will only work if your primary drive uses the NTFS file system. This is probably the case if you’re on Windows Vista or Windows 7, but if you’re on Windows XP there is a greater possibility that you are using FAT32.

Make sure you read through these directions a couple of times before you actually start doing anything.

Say “no” when the system asks to initialize the new drive.

Once your system is finished booting, open up Windows Explorer (Not INTERNET Explorer) and browse to your program files directory. (Most likely this will be “C:\Program Files“. You may also have “C:\Program Files (x86)” but that’s for 64-bit programs and WoW is a 32-bit program.) Verify that this contains the existing World Of Warcraft program folder.

Create a new folder in the Program Files directory named WoW. Move over all the files inside the World Of Warcraft folder to the new WoW folder. Make sure this includes any hidden files. When you’re done, the original World Of Warcraft folder should be empty.

Locate the “My Computer” icon on your desktop, or the “Computer” item in your start-menu. Right-click and choose “Manage” from the popup menu. This will bring up the Computer Management console. Along the left side, locate the “Storage” item and expand it if needed to reveal the “Disk Management” option. Click that.

Note: Be VERY careful with what you click on in this window. This is one of those very, very rare situations where clicking the wrong thing quite literally COULD erase your hard drive. However, you’d have to click several wrong things in a row, so don’t worry too much. Once again, if you’re not comfortable doing this, find a technically inclined friend. We do have to say, however, that you should proceed at your own risk… the author is not responsible for any problems you may incur.

After clicking “Disk Management” the main part of the window will change to a split display that looks much like this:

Look for the drive that contains your “C:” partition and verify that it says “NTFS”. If it says “FAT32″ then you cannot proceed with this option.

Your system will probably show only two drives, your original primary drive and the new SSD. In the bottom section, look for the drive that is marked “uninitialized. It will probably be “Disk 1″ but not necessarily so also verify that the size shown matches the size of your SSD.

Right click and choose the “Initialize” option. Once it’s done initializing, the display should change to say “Unallocated”. Right-click this area and select “New Simple Volume” as shown below.

You should now see the “New Simple Volume Wizard” on screen. Click “Next” and you’ll be given the option to specify the volume size. We want to use the entire drive for the volume so leave the default alone and click “Next” again. The next step allows you to “Assign Drive Letter Or Path“. You need to select the option for Mount in the following empty NTFS folder: as shown below.

Click “Browse” and then locate the same program files directory as before and select the World Of Warcraft folder. Click “OK” to return to the wizard, then click “Next”.

If the OK button is disabled after you’ve selected the folder, it’s because the folder isn’t really empty… you must have missed something earlier. Go back and make sure you’ve moved everything over to the WoW folder.

The next step of the wizard will ask you to format the partition. Select the options shown below:

Click “Next” and then “Finish” on the next step. The system will take a moment or two to do everything, and then you should see the drive description change to something like this:

Now if you open up the Program Files directory in Windows Explorer, you should see a new World Of Warcraft folder. This is actually a link to the new partition on the SSD that we just created. Anything that tries to access C:\Program Files\World Of Warcraft will actually be redirected to the SSD.

There’s one last step before you’re ready to play. Move over the contents of the WoW folder (but not the folder itself) into the new World Of Warcraft folder. This will move everything for the game onto the SSD drive. Since you’re actually accessing two different drives this will take a few minutes. Once everything has finished copying over, you can delete the WoW folder.

Now you should be ready to play!

How Much Of A Performance Boost?

The SSD upgrade we’ve discussed may make a big difference in performance, or it may be more subtle. It all depends on how fast your regular hard drive was in the first place. It will definitely speed up your load times, but it’s hard to say how big a difference you’ll see while playing. If you were used to seeing lag spikes caused by the game loading new data from the hard drive, those should pretty much go away, or at least be greatly diminished.

Maintenance

Because you probably have less extra free space on the SSD than you did when the game was on the regular hard drive, there are a couple of things you may want to do occasionally.

Move the contents of your Screenshots folder somewhere else. This folder contains all the images saved when you hit the PRINT SCREEN button while in the game. If you take a lot of screenshots this could quickly use a lot of space. You should create a folder elsewhere and occasionally move things over.
Delete old patch files. These can sometimes take a few gigabytes and once your system has been patched they serve no purpose.

For Mac Users

Sorry, but most Mac users are going to be left out in the cold here. The biggest problem is that most Mac models do not allow the addition of a second internal hard drive and there is no eSATA port for connecting an external hard drive.

Yes, you can connect external drives via USB or Firewire, but neither interface is capable of the transfer rates necessary to really take advantage of an SSD’s speed. There are add-ons for connecting with eSATA drives through USB, but they won’t provide the speed of a native eSATA connection.

The new Thunderbolt interface available on the latest Mac computers will theoretically allow you to connect an SSD and use it at full-speed, but as of the time I’m writing this, we’re still waiting for peripherals using this interface. You’ll need either a complete pre-built external SSD, or a drive enclosure which allows you to drop in your own SSD. If you have a new Mac that includes this technology, your options will probably open up soon.

Mac-based WoW players with a Mac Pro can easily install additional drives including an SSD. This is pretty simple, so I really don’t want to spend a lot of time on a step-by-step description. Just open the case, mount the drive, and connect the cables. If you really do need it, here’s a link to an excellent step-by-step on the process. If you still don’t feel comfortable doing it, check with your local Apple store or Mac dealer and I’m sure they can help.

I would recommend at least a 40gb SSD. My current WoW game folder comes in at about 24.5 gb, but I would hate to run out of room the next time another expansion pack or patch comes along. A 40gb drive will give you a bit of breathing room for future expansion.

Once you have installed an SSD on your Mac, all you really have to do to take advantage of it is move over the World Of Warcraft game folder. You may have to update the Dock with the new location but otherwise you should be good to go.

Not Just For WoW

The SSD upgrade idea is more specifically aimed at improving WoW performance, but the other options will improve your system performance across the board. Obviously a new video card will make a difference in all games you play, not just WoW, and more RAM is pretty much always a good thing.

Happy Gaming!

32-bit Operating System, 64-bit Operating System, HD, Mac, RAM, SSD, Windows