Hiya

I have a fairly new computer:

Windows XP
2.6ghz Intel Pentium 4
GeForce 6600GT (256mb)
1GB RAM
ADSL Connection

For the longest time my system played WoW really well. Maxed video settings, full on sound not a problem...but over the last month or so I have been having no end of problems. Watching the Task Manager whenever I have WoW up shows my CPU Utilization at 100%. Alt-tabbing out of it the utilization drops to about 25%. No other procceses are taking CPU time -- this is a very clean system. I've played with all the video settings putting everything in performance mode and this doesn't seem to help.

Please please how can I go about diagnosing this problem? I just want this game to run smoothly.

Thanks

Hi Advis,

If your CPU usage is hitting 100% and nothing else is using the CPU time, you may want to check to see if the processor is overheating. Pentiums can start inserting blank instructions in between actual "work" instructions in an attempt to cool off.

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Q u o t e:
AMD also? I have this issue too!

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AMD has a different type of behavior. Their thing is called Cool and Quiet. That will reduce your CPU speed to around 800MHz to cool off. You can try disabling it in your motherboard BIOS or use the latest AMD Athlon 64 drivers. If you're running a Turion chip, I think it starts at ~800MHz and then ramps up to full speed.

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Q u o t e:
i have xp pro sp2
3.2ghz p4 HT, 2gb ram and a 6600GT like you.

my proc has been pegged at 99% wow.exe for months and it is annoying.

i even loaded the game on an older machine, a p3 xeon 1gb ram and it uses 99% too.

blizz, can you load up the game on your desktop and tell us what your processor is doing? if 99% is normal, a bunch of us would like to hear that.

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My Pentium 4 box uses around 90%, not 99%. I just booted up in Windows XP and loaded the game and ran around for a bit. With my UI set (Perl Classic, Titanbar, Auctioneer, a few others), it hits around 90%.

Windowed mode: http://www.datasian.com/images/work/taskmgr_win.png
Full screen mode: http://www.datasian.com/images/work/taskmgr_full.JPG
More machine information is here:
http://www.datasian.com/images/work/dxdiag1.png
http://www.datasian.com/images/work/dxdiag2.png

My home machine uses around 45% for WoW but it is a dual core AMD system.

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Q u o t e:
I have an Athlon, I have recently updated the video drivers to the latest that AMD has on their website. It hasn't stopped the freezing.

We're all having this issue, what could it be? :( :( :( I wanna play! lol :)

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If it is completely freezing up you may have a different issue than what is on this thread. You may want to create a new thread with more specific information.