WoW FPS, thinking new video cardFollow

Sorry for the somewhat lengthy post to come, but I want to be as thorough as possible. I have been upgrading parts of my system to run WoW better. My goal is to be able to run with settings max (or close to it) at almost all times. If I have to lower them in Dal or in 25-man raids that's fine, but the rest of the time I would like solid FPS with max settings.

The problem I am currently having is my fps is usually in the 20's, and will regularly drop down below 10. For some reason my system seems to struggle when I turn quickly (view distance set at about half). I know WoW doesn't require top of the line equipment, and in my opinion my computer should be running it fine. My computer specs are as follows:

-Acer 22" flatpanel monitor, running in 1680 x 1050 wide
-Windows XP Pro version 2002 (no service packs)
-AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.21GHz processor
-Raidmax 630w power supply (SLI ready)
-Gigabyte GA-K8N motherboard http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=1883
-Western Digital Raptor 74Gb (44Gb free) SATA 1.5Gb/s 10,000 rpm
-Western Digital EIDE 160Gb (storage only, the raptor runs windows and wow)
-3Gb total RAM DDR400 PC3200
-Galaxy GeForce 9500GT 1GB 128bit DDR2 (2 running in SLI mode)

Things I have tried to improve performance with no acceptable improvements:
-no viruses, fresh installation of XP on the drive
-defragged
-both monitor and game running same resolution (1680 x 1050)
-all wow settings lowered
-latest drivers installed
-cleaned dust off all hardware inside the computer
-disabled all add ons


Since the 2 graphics cards are the most recent addition to my system I am thinking they might be the problem. They are budget cards and I thought they would run WoW fine. I am considering sending them back and dumping $2-300 into a single new card with better stats. The ones I recently bought: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162022

So I'm posting here before I go buying a new card in hopes I missed something. It seems to me my machine should have no problem running WoW at max settings even though it isn't top of the line. If the video cards are in fact my problem are there any recommendations for a new one in my price range? My computer skills are moderate so I'm definitely not an expert on video cards. Any suggestions of what else I could try would be appreciated also.


edit: I was shopping for new cards and thought this one looked good: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130429

Edited, Mar 23rd 2009 2:25pm by Iludiin

-Galaxy GeForce 9500GT 1GB 128bit DDR2 (2 running in SLI mode)

I'm trying to understand why anyone would intentionally do this, and frankly, it's a struggle. Were they free?

I'm writing this one off to hasty purchasing of budget cards without knowing what the hell I was doing. I thought they would suffice for WoW and not so much. I did mess around with the vertical sync settings on cards and wow; it help my fps standing still, but for fast turning it would lag out.

After looking into it a bit more, I went with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121291 . I know it's not a top of the line system, but looking to get by for a year or 2 on it.

Edited, Mar 24th 2009 1:09am by Iludiin

After looking into it a bit more, I went with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pr...16814121291 . I know it's not a top of the line system, but looking to get by for a year or 2 on it.

Interesting. I actually have a modified heavily overclocked Asus 4870, but the 512Mb sku. I think you should be set for playing WoW for a few years. I'm not sure the 1gb does you much good unless you play at extremely high resolutions, but it's certainly not a detriment.

Good luck.