◊ Juravieal

It has been quite some time since I originally started this topic, and I now need to revisit the issue. So much time has passed it seems it would be better to make a new reply, rather than edit the OP.

My brothers and I all run basically the exact same rigs.

gigabyte MA790X-DS4 motherboard
Phenom 9950 cpu
4gb corsair dominator ram
nVidia GTX 260 ( 1 normal, 1 core 216 superclocked, 1 maxcore)
Vista 32
All 3 systems get slightly over 10,000 GPU rating on 3D Mark Vantage, which is a bit higher than the same tests ran by toms hardware, so they are within range of normal.

They all run any game I have come across flawlessly. Far Cry 2,fully maxed, never drops below 60fps. No stutters, no issues.

WoW is a completely different story. Last night on Hodir 25 man I was sitting at a whole 9 fps. This is simply not acceptable with my hardware. They get virtually identical numbers. We have tried virtually everything. There is no recount, no combat logging mods, with mods, without mods, overclocking, not overclocking, nothing we do seems to help. All drivers fully updated, windows fully tweaked for performance. All un-needed services, etc shut down.

Its really getting annoying. Several of our raiders have far less system specs than we do, and run a consistan 40-50 fps with everything maxed, including shadows. Ive been told the 9950 "isnt good enough for maxxed, that only a Core i7 should be" yadda yadda, but frankly thats crap.

Ive tried reducing graphic settings, killing shadows, etc. Nothing seems to help much. Ive gotten to where I dont believe the claims of the lesser hardware raiders, so I had them take a series of screenshots throughout the fight. All showed perfectly normal dps.

Help! Ive frankly ran out of tweaks to try, and I dont know what else to do outside of fully rebuild a perfectly capable computer around an i7 and dual gtx 260s, which isnt an option with the current financial market.

System Info Text

 

KasumiRevy

I think what I see as a potential problem for you, is you're running Vista 32. Because it's 32, you're already at the ceiling for ram, with an OS that no matter how you slice it, does require more from the system then most before it.

 

Gogusrl

Everyone should really consider upgrading to Windows 7 since you get almost 1 year of free usage.
I had some pretty nasty problems as well with my WoW performance that were magically fixed by installing Windows 7 RC1.
My specs :
E8400 @ 4 ghz
4gb ram
gtx260 216 o/ced
2x640gb raid 0
With that computer I was raiding at 20-30 fps no matter what detail settings I had. Dalaran was ~30-35 fps as well. After installing RC1 my fps jumped in Dalaran from 30 to 50-75 (max details, 1 notch shadows) and I could raid 25 mans at ~30-40 fps with max view distance and 50-70 with half view distance and I`m talking mid fight with a lot happening on the screen.
I`m playing at 1680x1050 resolution and run a lot of addons (100+, ~30 mb memory).

Edit : something that might matter or not, but when I installed Windows 7 I did not download the drivers from nvidia`s website but used the Windows Update service and got them from there.

 

◊ Juravieal

I tried running Vista 64 previously, and had worse performance hits than I was experiencing now. I assume from problematic drivers.

For those curious, I did manage to find a solution. Apparently the newest nVidia drivers, build 185 I believe, dont play very nice with my system and wow. I rolled back to the previous build, 182, and Im having no issues whatsoever. Never drop below 50 fps, with everything full in maxed, on any fight so far up through the keepers.

 

jasonjklaus

So when you say to put in full screen not windowed + full screen, how do you do that exactly?

 

Gogusrl

What he means is that you shouldn`t have enabled Windowed Mode + Maximized and that for true full screen both options should be unchecked.

 

Faldrath

It might have something to do with nVidia's new "ambient occlusion" thingy. Check this thread.

 

Avantos

Just wanting to chime in and confirm this. Nvidia drivers 185.85 destroy my system down to 15 fps in shatt when looking into the forest from scyers. I reverted back to 182.50 and now I'm capped at 60 in the same spot. This is with all settings and options maxed except shadows(set to 2).

i7 920(OC'd to 3.6ghz)
6gb dd3 ram
gtx 285
Vista 64 home premium sp1

 

Gogusrl

Found a much easier option for the TcpAckFrequency tweak.
It`s called LeatrixLatencyFix and it`s a VBS script that disables the algorithm on all the network cards. If anyone hasn`t applied it yet, you really should, well unless you play with under 50ms latency.

 

KasumiRevy

It's not just Nvidia. Video Card drivers often change from version to version and you really need to do some work to find the best stable versions. I'm using an older (few versions back from current) Catalyst Control Center + Driver because it was more stable. It's a good idea to be wary of immediate video card driver updates and looking into how other people have been doing with the new release.

 

◊ Juravieal

Update - Drivers didnt fix it at all, it was just better in 10 man.

Currently sitting at 20fps on Mimiron 25 with settings as low as they will go.

 

Leaflock

I had this same problem on every single patch day for months, no matter how small the patch. I finally fixed the problem by disabling all "offloading", as suggested in Cadfael's blog post.

 

Monikan

Hello everyone. I have not seen this trick posted here yet so i hope you enjoy.

*Note* Only works if you have more than 2 cores!

processAffinityMask is a variable in your config.wtf file that controls how many and which cores WoW runs on. Changing how many cores WoW runs on (the default value is the first 2) can give you huge improvements in fps.

Even though WoW is only capable of utilizing 2 cores at a time, the default value of pAM locks it into the first 2 cores where you are probably running into other threads such as a web browser, music player, vent, and probably more. Increasing the value of pAM should allow your system to do a better job of load balancing on all your cores and run WoW a little smoother.

For a lot more information i suggest this posthttps://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/t...sid=1&pageNo=3
Googling processAffinityMask brings up a couple more on the subject

 

sag_ich_nicht

In addition to my original post, a new CVar was added with 3.1, " textureCacheSize". This variable controls the size of the WoW Texture Cache and has an upper bound of 536870912, which is equivalent to 512 MB. The default value is 33554432, which is equivalent to 32 MB. Increasing this value can decrease loading induced stutter, provided that one has enough system ram to support it.

To set this to the maximum value, type:

and restart WoW.

There have been reports of this actually massively lowering WoW memory usage. There is currently no information known to me as to why this is the case, but the setting has been shown to increase fps in situation where textures have to be loaded rapidly.

 

Lollersk8er

/console textureCacheSize 536870912
Does this affect graphic card ram or the normal one? With 512mb my WoW doesn't take up more ram, but the graphics seem to reset from time to time. Like if it's out of memory.

 

Baalzaman

No it definitely uses system RAM. I set it to 512 MB and watched the wow.exe memory usage grow from about 610 MB previously to about 1100 MB when running around in Dalaran. It certainly made a big difference to how smooth Dalaran is!

 

Zzmoke

There is a significant reduction in my latency when I disable the "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" I do this by opening task windows task manager, clicking the services tab, searching for BITS (should be in alphabetical order), right clicking and choosing the "stop service" option.

Can someone verify if this does the same for other computers/networks? It restarts frequently and I would like to know how to disable it permanently

 

yoshirawr

To disable the Background Intelligent Transfer Service you should be able to do that in msconfig on the services tab. If that doesnt work you can go into control panel > administrative tools > services > click on BITS and go to properties then set it to disabled in there.

 

trebs

You can just do “start” "run" and type services.msc (windows XP) or “Start” type services.msc in search field (Windows vista). Then arrange by alphabetical order (should be defaulted to this anyway) and find Background intelligent transfer double click it and under the drop down set it to disabled (bare in mind BITS is used for windows updates and they will not happen with BITS turned off, you will get an error message when trying to check for updates).

 

Sitar

Anyone found a workaround for massive FPS drops?

Tuesday I was sitting at 40 FPS while Fraps'ing, and yesterday I was getting huge drops down to 4 FPS while not fraps'ing. I've changed nothing on my system.

Any hints?

 

mhr_78

I can just assume that this might be due to ram going faulty, try to do a ram test.

 

Lollersk8er

I don't see a difference in memory used, but I can feel it ingame without a doubt.

 

Faldrath

Yes, Dalaran loaded pretty much instantly for me after the textureCacheSize change. However, disabling BITS, as suggested above, had no effect on my latency.

 

Lollersk8er

BITS is loaded on demand. It's pretty much not active most of the time.

 

richard

I have a pretty big problem with the Flame Leviathan fight regarding performance.

I have View Distance set to high, but still every object/person on the other side of the fighting area will totally despawn on my screen. This goes for Mimiron fires, players launched in the air when he overloads, Freya adds, other vehicles, etcetera. I've been fiddling with my settings for 3 weeks straight but no matter what I change, it's always the same problem.

I have no problem on any other fight and FPS is pretty steady throughout all Ulduar, just Flame Leviathan driving me nuts because I'm unable to do my job as a Chopper.

Anyone have any idea at all? I'm using a nVidia card, though no idea what model (or where to check this).