Vista hates me... and WoW

I recently built a decent rig. Here are the specs:

MSI P9N Diamond Mobo
Intel Q6700 Quad Core @ 2.66 (Not overclocked)
2x2048 Corsair Dual Channel DDR2 6400
WD 250GB Sata
nVidia 8500GT 512MB
Vista Ultimate x64 with SP1
on board audio - Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio

Overall the thing flies in most aspects. Rendering graphics in photoshop, and most software design suites (been using eclipse for small projects lately).

Where my system comes to its knees is when i try and play World of Warcraft. I get about 100fps for a random amount of time (as much as 20 minutes), and then it drops to an unplayable 3-10fps. I have updated to the latest Signed Drivers 175.16 by nvidia, I have tried the unsigned 175.75, I have updated my bios (which were causing a memory issue before), I have updated my sound drivers which i know... creative is not the best choice... but its onboard... I'm out of ideas...

I would appreciate any help. Also i have looked at the gaming patches thread, and all of them that i thought sounded like my problems, said that they did not apply to my system.

Thanks in advance,

Ryan

Sorry, but I'm trying to find the specs of your motherboard. Are you sure it is spelled correctly? I can't find any information on that board. MSI's website goes up to only P7N. As for the audio, are you saying that the onboard audio is the Sound Blaster, or are you using the onboard instead of the Sound Blaster?

sorry p6n... kind of dyslexic at times. and the onboard is a sound blaster

Have you tried tweaking your wow settings? Right click the wow icon and hit "Run as Administrator" it fixed my problems.

Not 100% sure but it could be something to do with the sound. Will try and look around and find a direct link as I do remember there being a problem for a lot of people.

Also have a look in the tech forums for WoW as a large amount of people are having a hard time with 8 series cards. Blizz cant pin the problem down atm as not every card is affected. Not sure which server your on but the posts are in the Euro forums.

i know if you have a laptop and you set the power settings to power saver instead of high performance, you get the same problem. Sometimes the machine screams, then it just slows down.