Hello everyone. I would like to discuss this topic in detail with you here, as on the official forums there are already posts with 300+ replies and the blues keep saying "download the latest drivers" etc.

Definition of the issue: people worldwide have been noticing a major fps drop, especially while in raids, ever since 2.1. This means that overnight, with no hardware/software/driver change, the night before 2.1 they had perfectly smooth raiding, and the day before completely non-smooth gameplay. If your wow had fps issues before 2.1 too, please do not post here as it would be out of topic.

My experience: I'm a 3d designer, hence i have a "quite" overpowered machine that i tested wow post 2.1 with. First, the configuration:

Software:
Windows XP SP2 installed on a formatted hdd
Windows VISTA ULTIMATE installed on a formatted hdd (added)
Latest whql nvidia drivers
Frest installation of wow and tbc

Hardware:
Dual Opteron Dual Core 275 (both at default and overclocked)
Tyan S2895 SLI Nforce 4 Motherboard
4 GB of ECC REGISTERED RAM (Kingston) (default and oc)
XFX NVIDIA 8800 ULTRA (default and oc)
2x 74 GB Western Digital Raptors 10000 rpm in Raid 0

A few notes:
1) playing with all graphic settings to max or to min doesnt make any difference
2) playing at 1280x1024 or 1920x1080 doesn't make any difference
3) using vsync i have 60 rock solid fps in the open world, shattrath included. removing it i have 130 fps. In raids it can go as low as 12 at illidan and 4-7 at teron. In general though, even if it displays 20 fps, they feel like a lot less, with non fluid global cooldown animation for example
4) No other DX9 or DX10 (lol) game i tried, including Unreal Tournament 2001, Doom3 and Crysis demo - Lost Planet demo shows any issue. (added)
5) Extensive tests not necessarely related to the wow issue have been conducted. Cinebench and 3dMark resulted in top world rankings, memtest86 ran endless hours without a single error etc. (added)
6) i'll probably add more

This is to say that a game like wow is not CPU, RAM or GPU bound on my configuration, in any way.

Please post your experience, ideas of what happened, and solutions eventually.

Addons disabled?

Try to disable erverything in your combatlog, especialy periodic damage.

Try to disable sound. Whats your Soundcard?

No addons, fresh installation of Windows and WoW.

My sound card is a sound blaster audigy z2, tried wow before reinstalling it's drivers, and after.

Imo this will only get cleared when blizzard listens to the hundreds of people reporting this issue, and will put up a 2.0 ptr.

Or maybe when a user will be able to host a test mini-raid on a private server.

I think what Onkl means is right clicking your WoW icon on the desktop, and adding -nosound in properties -> Shortcut -> Target.

In my case, changing "C:\Program Files (x86)World of Warcraft\Launcher.exe" to "C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\Launcher.exe" -nosound

This shuts off your WoW sound entirely and has helped for alot of people with the same problem as you have.

I admit that i haven't tried that, i will do it when i get back home tonight.

Is that a test that leads to a fix in case the problem disappears disabling the sound, or there is no known fix currently and you will have to play soundless?

Also, the problems for everyone that reports them started with 2.1, but 2.1 didn't change anything regarding the sound engine right?

Meanwhile lets keep sharing our experience with the issue.

I've certainly encountered similar issues. Mine usually culminates in a second of lock-up where I will continue running in the same direction/performing the same action and can imput commands that dont register in real time. The game then suddenly catches up and animates everything at lightning speed and then continues at normal rates.

I've tried numerous things to fix the problem, but none seem to work. Thankfully it really doesnt happen all that often, and so whilst it is extremely agitating, it's playable.

All issues commenced with the arival of the recent sound patch (2.2?). It's a shame really, as I'd had great performance for the two years prior..

I can't say I have the same extreme conditions as you do but FPS has been in a steady decline. If you want some comparison numbers, in Windowed Mode 1680X1050 the lowest I ever drop is 35-40, never under 55 fullscreen and thats usually Illidan/Hyjal on a E6600 with an 8800gtx.

The game generally bottlenecks at the CPU or Memory assuming that you have at least an Nvidia 6800GT/7600GT card or better/equivalent. People have been trying to pin down your bug for a long long time. It seems to happen on systems with no rhyme or reason.

The only things I've noticed that people tend to overlook are forgetting to disable CPU options like C1E or EIST/Intel Speedstep. Other then that, I have no idea. The issues seem to only occur in WoW and not other games which means it has to do with how WoW handles something.

Things I would try: Loosening Ram Timings, Non ECC memory, dropping to 2GB, reinstalling the operating system, double checking C1E/EIST and making sure they are disabled. Disabling sound/lowering acceleration. You can double check overheating, I doubt it is that. I've only had 1 in 17 recent cases of WoW issues caused by actual overheating. You can double check your video card settings and make sure AA/AF are set to application but you don't seem like the sort of person who is stumbling around without knowing stuff like that.

I wouldn't expect anything to help, but knowing where WoW bottlenecks I would be looking at that. If its not those, it is most likely beyond your control and Blizzard is screwing up something in the Dynamic Link Libraries or some sort of unexpected interference from an obscure piece of software.

For some freakish reason, my WoW stutters if I don't start Windows Messenger 4.7 on my computer first. I can quit messenger after it starts, yet if I don't run it at least once I stutter every time I use a skill. The only thing I can imagine is something relating to dual core processors or how WoW is handling a certain .dll being screwed up until Messenger happens to fix that specific instance.

Particle effects seem to be the big FPS hitter. It wouldn't surprise me if something was messed up in their Pixel Shader code too.

I hope you find what you are looking for, I feel really bad for everyone who has these problems because Blizzard has managed to screw up some bit of code and will not admit to it.

Quote!

By the way using -nosound made no difference.

I've also had this problem since 2.1 went live and none of the fixes suggested by Blizzard have had any effect.

My Graphics card is starting to show it's age with newer games, though WoW pre 2.1 was playable without having to sacrafice too much graphical detail in the settings. I've noticed the performance drops dramatically in places like SSC, and at fights like Solarian where everyone is bunched up and all the spells/abilities lighting up the screen are focused in 1 area.

I've never had any experiences with fighting Teron Gorefiend but it looks like quite a dramatic drop at that fight, if that fight is also quite graphical, then that suggests it's a problem on blizzards side rather then the players as a system like yours Tdurden should have no problems

My FPS sometimes drops to 1 and the game basically becomes unplayable at that point, it's probably not as bad as that for people running more up to date cards (mines a GeForce 5900 FX) but the point is, pre 2.1, it was bad but playable - getting 10 or 15 FPS, now it's just impossible to get double figures during fights with alot of action on screen.

It feels to me that some change has indeed been implemented in the code that handles graphics displaying, and it's crippled the graphics display/shading.

I'm currently building a new computer and I plan on running 2 series 7 cards with the SLI board I have if I can and i'm hoping this helps somewhat, if the main cause of the problem gets pinned down and fixed then I should be able to play at 100% again at least.

I had a though too, during most of the fights in SSC, theres steam coming from the objects in there and on fights like Leothras, they are far in the background and very shaded. It's fights with that kind of graphical display where the FPS takes a steep dive generally. Perhaps other people are having the same problems during similar graphical displays?

I thought there was some issue with 8800 series and the latest nvidia drivers. It sounds like a driver issue at least to me... I normally don't listen to blues and GM's with their usually worthless macros - but in this situation, if a format, clean windows/install won't do it - it is a hardware-software issue, and that usually means drivers need to be updated (or blizzard fixes it if its their end, but good luck on that).

It could be a driver issue, but then again it affects every nvidia graphics card i tested.

Anyone has an ati and smooth fps?

BOP: if i were you, i'd go for a 8800 card which costs less/consumes less/outperforms 2 7*00 cards and is DX10 too

Did you have this before 2.1 as well? What about raids?

I feel that there are 2000 possible causes/cases for fps drops, but the one i'm talking about is a very specific one not necessarely related to the other 1999.

I have a hard time believing you're fighting Illidan with no mods enabled as you claim, but even if you are, you should be testing this in other applications besides WoW. Your initial post that indicates you've overclocked 3 different components of your system means that you've potentially screwed up something badly at a very low level, and this may not be an issue with WoW at all. Run 3dmark and see if your score is where it should be for your level of hardware, and try some other Dx9 games. If you're not seeing any issues there it's decidedly a WoW issue but from what you're describing I would be really surprised to learn that it's something other than a misbehaving mod or a low-level hardware problem.

Pretty sure you're ignoring the 120+ page thread from people (including myself) that have had FPS issues since 2.1. No I don't overclock. No I didn't download new mods on the day of 2.1. Yes, I've turned them all off and get no difference. No I didn't download a magical program that lags my computer the same day 2.1 came out and neither did the people experiencing these issues. I used to get 30-50 FPS in SSC. Now I get as low as 5. Same with TK.

Please don't be like blizzard tech support. Acknowledge that something happened in 2.1 that causes FPS issues and stop blaming customer systems. Seriously, it's annoying on blizzard forums and I bet that's why he's come here for answers to get away from the "it's your system" answer.

Maybe a weird topic to come out of the woodwork and start posting here but i guess this was a good a thread as any to start.

The FPS drop is something i have noticed as well and i never was able to put my finger on it. I have always put it down to maybe graphical engine updates or addons messing up, but the reality is, my laptop performs a lot worse in todays 25 man raids than it ever did pre-TBC in 40 man raids.

Maybe the 25 man raids and charactermodels etc have a bit more polygons and particles going on then the pre-TBC instances, but to me it would seem that an actual 40 man raid in Naxxramas would provide the same kind of stress to the system a 25 man SSC or even Maghteridon would. In reality it doesn't and it makes my system perform crappy.

Seeing more people post here stating the same kind of issues as me actually makes me think there is something else going on though.

And yeah, 2.1 as date of starting the framedrop could be accurate in my case as well. My fps is no problem in Karazhan (and i hope it won't be in Z'A either) but it severely limits my hopes of ever reliably going beyond a 10 man instance again and being able to do an adequate job.

Well the Illidan and Teron fights i was talking about are figures pre formatting and all, so i had the old installation with mods etc.

I'm currently using a multi boot, and reload to the clean version of wow when it's not risky to do so (say trash leading to teron or whatever).

I've tried every other game i had access to, from Unreal Tournament 2001, passing between Doom 3, and ending with the Crysis demo on both XP and VISTA. Also Lost Planet demo which was included in the XFX 8800 Ultra GPU. All ran perfectly smooth, at the top fps in every circumstance.

I've done quite a lot of tests, not necessarely related to this wow issue, but to test stability, power consumption, errors and whatnot. 3dMark and Cinebench tests resulted in close to top world ranks, memtest86 ran endless hours to test the ram without any error, and every other test you could think, i probably did.

I can assure you that no hardware is faulty, and anyway having hundreds of people whose hardware broke overnight of patch 2.1 application is quite unlikely.

Caligula has 1-shotted the issue and the way i feel exactly.

I have tried the ptr, but honestly the 2.3 ptr is a joke, with 500 to 1k latency and a 10 man raid the figures and impressions i'd get there are completely meaningless.

I want a 2.0 ptr with conditions of latency and population extremely close to a live server, or a private server.

EDIT: nite, what you are saying is undeniable. I don't question you saying that most of the times it's the user's fault if they have fps issues or disconnections or whatever, but when hundreds of players report an issue that happened overnight with the release of a new patch, it's very arrogant by Blizzard to deny every accusation of responsability and pretend that this is nothing more than the usual unexperienced users complains.

EDIT2: nite, i haven't tested illidan without mods, but i have tested teron trash without mods and on the new installation, and the results were abysmall. With my configuration i used to have 60 rock solid fps in similar situations (i'll go as far as saying that i had 60 still fps at ssc trash pre 2.1, and even not less than 23ish when the colossus used to puke, do you remember what the first version of their puke used to do to the fps yeah? People with not so good hardware had the fps drop to a round 0 when they puked. They also optimized ssc reducing the sight distance, so the ssc of today should run even smoother than it did. But for some reason, ever since 2.1 i have 7-12 fps at ssc trash).

Sorry I'm not trying to flamebait, but I'm probably as frustrated as tdurden here and your response was so similar to the ones we've all been receiving since that patch that it is really like salt in the wound. It's one thing to offer suggestions that maybe someone hasn't tried, but it's another to say "oh well you haven't tested anything it's probably just that you overclocked" or "just turn off your sound". I work tech support for a software company, I know how it goes, but just from reading the original post you can tell he tried those things you suggested already.

Particle effects seem to destroy framerate in WoW, for whatever reason. When I was farming water on the elemental plateau, certain angles that passed through the waterfall clouds would cut my framerate from 50-60 down to 5-15. Haven't been up there with my new machine to see if the same problem occurs.

Let's see if we can find a pattern.

Do you have a AMD cpu?
Do you have a NVIDIA gpu?
Do you play on XP, VISTA, LINUX or MAC?
Do you use NVIDIA official whql drivers/official beta drivers/unofficial drivers?

Adding more as i think about them...

There's a vast difference between denying it and ensuring that people have done what they can to mitigate the issue. Every single time a new issue like this crops up you have to remove as many outside factors from influencing it as possible. If there was a new or updated spell effect that used a bit of graphics differently, if those hundreds of people are running a version of a video driver that has a bug in how that spell effect is utilized, that doesn't mean it's a game engine problem and giving the "update your drivers" answer is absolutely the correct answer.

At the same time, if troubleshooting determines that it is an issue the best they can do is recognize it and attempt to fix it in the next release. If there is indeed a problem with the engine handling massive amounts of events on certain hardware configurations there isn't anything to be done about it now. If you've tried Teron mod-less on a fresh installation with updated drivers and saw a sharp drop in FPS in WoW when other apps work fine then it's hard to place blame anywhere else but within the WoW engine.

At this point I'd really try and see if 2.3 fixes things, even if it is laggy. My guess is that there's something pretty deep down in the engine that got fouled up and there's not going to be any user fix for it.

There was zero mention of trying other dx9 applications until I asked. Assuming the user has checked something is a great way to spend time troubleshooting the wrong thing, and if you work in tech support you know this as well as I do.

That is a known issue acknowledged by blues, and for which a solution was applied or is been looked at, sorry that i can't be more accurate but since i don't see much water near 99% of my raids i discarded that known bug as the cause of my issue.