WoW Performance Issues/Tweaks, Etc - Page 14

Flouyd · 06/03/09, 4:58 PM

Originally Posted by 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).

Try "/set farclip 777" that should help

• Goatbert · 06/03/09, 5:28 PM

Originally Posted by Flouyd

Try "/set farclip 777" that should help

That reminds me - with the new 'ultra' setting, are there still other config variables you can further increase to improve the look of wow? I remember there was a set of them people used to increase visual quality but I can't seem to find it at the moment. Guess I'll go poking through Console variables - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft or something.

gaerthe · 06/03/09, 5:55 PM

I have a question regarding WoW support for multi-core CPUs. Blizzard has been advertising support for multiple cores since I think 2.4, and more so in 3.1. I understand the use of the processAffinityMask cvar to allow WoW to run on any of the available cores.

However, none of the changes that I can find allow WoW to effectively use more that "one core" at a time and run threads in parallel. The game may be split over multiple cores, but WoW never exceeds 100% use of one core. On a dual core system, this means WoW will never use more than 50% CPU usage (as measured by Task Manager). Likewise, it's limited to 25% of a quad core system.

Have I missed setting a cvar that will enable WoW to run across more than one core simultaneously? Is this a limitation of the WoW core architecture?

Marthisdil · 06/03/09, 6:19 PM

Originally Posted by gaerthe

I have a question regarding WoW support for multi-core CPUs. Blizzard has been advertising support for multiple cores since I think 2.4, and more so in 3.1. I understand the use of the processAffinityMask cvar to allow WoW to run on any of the available cores.

However, none of the changes that I can find allow WoW to effectively use more that "one core" at a time and run threads in parallel. The game may be split over multiple cores, but WoW never exceeds 100% use of one core. On a dual core system, this means WoW will never use more than 50% CPU usage (as measured by Task Manager). Likewise, it's limited to 25% of a quad core system.

Have I missed setting a cvar that will enable WoW to run across more than one core simultaneously? Is this a limitation of the WoW core architecture?

I've noticed the same thing. As far as I can tell using Process Explorer, WoW really isn't multi-threaded. The ProcessAffinityMask seems to let WoW use cores further down the chain so they don't "get in the way" of Windows using cores 1-2.

I set the mask on my system to 15 so it can see all 4 cores, and WoW pretty much sits on core 4 now, letting windows do it's thing on 1-2. Doing this keeps the system from competing for core-space and resources.

Beyond that, we can only hope that developers start multi-threading their systems better.

chaud · 06/03/09, 9:18 PM

Originally Posted by gaerthe

Have I missed setting a cvar that will enable WoW to run across more than one core simultaneously? Is this a limitation of the WoW core architecture?

There is one main thread, and then a few smaller ones, so most of the work is still done on one core.

Xabora · 06/03/09, 11:04 PM

Originally Posted by Goatbert

That reminds me - with the new 'ultra' setting, are there still other config variables you can further increase to improve the look of wow? I remember there was a set of them people used to increase visual quality but I can't seem to find it at the moment. Guess I'll go poking through Console variables - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft or something.

This is the old list I created when I was in the WoTLK Beta.

Originally Posted by Ardhavara

Simple, but this should allow you to tweak your settings a bit easier.

Make sure you have "/console shadowlod 0" set for the 1st 3 macros.

HIGH:
/console farClipOverride 1
/console farclip 1600
/console horizonfarclip 6226
/console groundeffectdensity 256
/console groundeffectdist 140
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 3
/console characterAmbient
/console extshadowquality 4
/console environmentDetail 2

MED:
/console farClipOverride 1
/console farclip 1450
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console groundeffectdensity 128
/console groundeffectdist 140
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 2
/console characterAmbient
/console extshadowquality 3
/console environmentDetail 1.5

LOW:
/console farClipOverride 0
/console farclip 1277
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console groundeffectdensity 96
/console groundeffectdist 140
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 1
/console characterAmbient
/console extshadowquality 2
/console environmentDetail 1

NOTE - Make sure you type "/console shadowlod 1" for the following settings.

DEFAULT: - Default for WoTLK
/console farClipOverride 0
/console farclip 1277
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console groundeffectdensity 64
/console groundeffectdist 70
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 0
/console characterAmbient 0
/console extshadowquality 0
/console environmentDetail 1

LOWEST: - Equiv to Classic WoW / TBC
/console farClipOverride 0
/console farclip 777
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console groundeffectdensity 32
/console groundeffectdist 35
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 0
/console characterAmbient 0
/console extshadowquality 0
/console environmentDetail 0.5

Additional Tweaks:
-ENGINE-
m2Faster - Adds additional threads used in rendering models on screen (0 = no additional threads, 1 - 3 = adds additional threads to the WoW Client)
Note: If you have a Duel Core or Quad Core System (Multi-Processor too) this will show an increase in performance in situations with lots of models and players/npcs on screen.

-SHADERS-
ffx - Global Shader Control (0 disables all on screen effects, 1 enables them)
ffxRectangle - Renders effects on a rectangle based polygon (0 for Off, 1 for On)
ffxGlow - Bloom/Screen Glow and Underwater Wave effect (0 for Off, 1 for On)
ffxDeath - Death World Screen Glow, Greyish Blue (0 for Off, 1 for On)
ffxNetherworld - Mage Invis Spell Effect (0 for Off, 1 for On)
ffxSpecial - Borean Tundra or DK Starter Area Eye Haze (0 for Off, 1 for On)

fixedfunction - This forces the pixel shaders in the game to run on the SM 1.1 path. (1 for FF Shaders, 0 for Programable Shaders)
For some older machines they will receive a decent speed boost.

hwPCF - Enables a new type of terrain based shadow rendering method. (0 for Off, 1 for On)

Example usage is:
/console ffxNetherworld 0

/console CharacterAmbient
0 = Default basic ambient lighting on characters.
0.1 - 1.0 controls how bright this ambient lighting is.
1.0 is equiv to when you click a character and they fully highlight.
No Value disables all character model ambient lighting so when they do light up from an external light source it looks far better and not washed out.

-Fog Changes in 8905-
It seems like certain zones have a fog limit.
Where it'll draw the fog from this point on no matter what the setting is for Farclip, but will continue to draw terrain behind the fog to the point I have set.
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums ->

Recent CVAR additions:
componentCompress - Character component texture compression (Works well, however seems to have side-effects [0 to Disable Compression, 1 to Enable/Default])
componentThread - Multi thread character component processing (Works like m2Faster)
componentTextureLevel - Number of mip levels used for character component textures (8 is default, 9 is for 'High Resolution Textures')
textureCacheSize - Texture cache size in bytes. (Default: 33554432 Max: 536870912)

Originally Posted by Whitemane

It was my impression that the m2Faster thing was added at some point, then later removed. What is the exact status of it?

Still exists to my knowledge along with m2FasterDebug.

EDIT: Fixed OverrideFarClip to farClipOverride | Stupid Typos

Whitemane · 06/03/09, 11:09 PM

It was my impression that the m2Faster thing was added at some point, then later removed. What is the exact status of it?

gaerthe · 06/04/09, 1:02 AM

Originally Posted by Whitemane

It was my impression that the m2Faster thing was added at some point, then later removed. What is the exact status of it?

Using m2faster made a big difference in displaying players in Dalaran. It allows enough parallelism in threads that I saw WoW spike up to 50% of a quad core while loading in Dalaran.

SET M2Faster "3"

I don't see any other cvars that would affect thread count (or execution parallelism) in the post from Xabora.

-- Edit just saw componentThread. Need to test this out to see if it affects performance as well.

Thanks!

Caldum · 06/04/09, 7:29 AM

If you have problems with Unknow and numerious disconnects when trying to log in after a patch, try switching to a wired network if you are on a wireless. It solved my problems, having had these issues using a 3com router (even crashing it). I then log on with a couple of characters at different locations, and when I switch back to wireless I can log in without problems. I think it has to do with the wow caches being cleared after a patch, and that my router somehow can't cope with the number of packages being sent initially to rebuild the caches.

richard · 06/04/09, 9:31 AM

Originally Posted by Flouyd

Try "/set farclip 777" that should help

After some searching on the farclip setting, wouldn't 777 only further decrease the viewing distance?

What Xabora posted:
/console overridefarclip 1
/console farclip 1600

Seems more logical to me, but granted I don't have much knowledge on the subject. Am I thinking backwards or would 777 help more than 1600?

burghy · 06/04/09, 11:44 AM

I think the server has a max distance for sending you entity info and that's probably the problem with fights in large areas (like leviathan).

Xabora · 06/04/09, 1:59 PM

Originally Posted by richard

After some searching on the farclip setting, wouldn't 777 only further decrease the viewing distance?

What Xabora posted:
/console overridefarclip 1
/console farclip 1600

Seems more logical to me, but granted I don't have much knowledge on the subject. Am I thinking backwards or would 777 help more than 1600?

Its farClipOverride instead of OverrideFarclip.
Forgot to swap those around due to a change in the CVAR.

Some info about Farclip.
Classic WoW had it maxed at 777, but you could push it to 782. TBC was the same, up until 3.0 came out.
With 3.0/WoTLK you could push it to 1277.
By setting FarclipOverride to 1, you could then push it to 1600.

Uzziel · 06/04/09, 2:58 PM

I was Googling some awesome wow tweaks (and mostly trying to figure out what does what as far as CVars are concerned) and I came across this addon on wowinterface:

TweakWoW : WoWInterface Downloads : Miscellaneous

It appears to be an addon that can control most if not all of the variables that have been recently discussed in this thread. I will be installing it when I get home from work tonight and really mucking about with it to try and maximize my FPS since I play on a non-gaming laptop. The discussion thread for the addon also has some good information on the different CVars that are available for the console command. Does anyone else have experience with this addon?

EDIT: I installed TweakWoW and made all the changes that Xabora talked about in his macro thread (for the lower settings) and I noticed a large difference in Naxx25 that I ran last night. I did not get a chance to run any taxitests but I hope to soon. m2Faster seemed to make the largest difference in any player packed area (Dalaran, 25man Raids) Definitely worth the DL to dink around with console settings without all the pesky macros.

Irongaunt · 06/04/09, 3:59 PM

I have been having a fairly serious issue that I have tried to find a solution for in this thread, but it just isn't happening...

My problem occurs exclusively in Dalaran. Nowhere else has this ever occurred to me:

Dalaran loads very slowly normally. Not a big deal. I live with it. However, 80% of the time, Dalaran will load, everything will look fine, and then my graphics...completely freeze. I can still hear sounds and nothing else goes wrong, but nothing moves on my screen and my cursor completely disappears. When I move my cursor off of WoW (I play in windowed mode, and no, Full Screen mode has not helped the issue), I can see my default windows cursor, but moving back over wow causes it to disappear.

I can end the program and restart WoW and 9/10 times I will encounter the same problem. Clearing the Cache folder, as was reccomended to me, may or may not work...sometimes I get back in fine, sometimes I do not.

Periodically, this problems gets worse, and as I try to log in, the bar will reach the top and then WoW will crash, informing me it could not start 3d acceleration and forcing me to reboot and pray.

I am simply trying to figure out what I can do or what might be causing the problem. I am not much of a genius when it comes to this type of stuff. I can only assume this is an issue with my graphics card, which is an nVidia 7800GTX (I believe, will doublecheck and post correct information asap as I am at the office rather than my home right now). Has anyone encountered this/have an idea?

Ambika · 06/04/09, 4:24 PM

After having a NIGHTMARE of a time getting the following to work harmoniously:

Vista 64bit
Intel Quad Core
ATI 4850 in Cross fire

I found this post and followed it from the wowEurope forums:
1) disabled windows search in services.msc window (use run)
2) turnned off windows defender (will be reactivating shortly)
3) gone into my wow shortcut, ticked XP sp2 compatability, and disabled desktop composition.
4) gone to my wow folder moved my addons to desktop (temporarily)
5) deleted my wtf, interface and cache folders (i normally hate doing this)
6) logged back into wow, pressed Ctrl + R to see fps. With default settings (ugly mode) i was getting 45fps (or there abouts)
7) changed resolution to max (for me 1650x1280), this shaved off about 5fps, enabled all effects to max, however it seems shadow intensity seems to hit my card hard. I have left shadow on medium.
8) Copied back from my interface folder (on desktop) to wow addons,

Now I garuntee most of this could be tossed out as hooie, but for some unholy reason it worked.

I had my WoW folder in a separate folder so I moved the folder to the x86 program files, tunred on that compatibility mode and the rest. Left Defender running saw no reason to disable that. I think this was the key to solving this problem. I don't think moving the folder mattered more likely it was the compat working.

The big step of wiping out all my old mods that I was using, finding new or updated ones and then spending the next several hours reconfiguring things helped. After 6months variables get changed, addons get memory leaky, and performances goes to crap.

Now after all this time I'm able to get a solid 50fps in dalaran with all mods blazing, on medium/high performance and in raid all the glory that is Ulduar is happening.

sarf · 06/08/09, 12:01 PM

Originally Posted by Irongaunt

I have been having a fairly serious issue that I have tried to find a solution for in this thread, but it just isn't happening...

My problem occurs exclusively in Dalaran. Nowhere else has this ever occurred to me:

Dalaran loads very slowly normally. Not a big deal. I live with it. However, 80% of the time, Dalaran will load, everything will look fine, and then my graphics...completely freeze. I can still hear sounds and nothing else goes wrong, but nothing moves on my screen and my cursor completely disappears. When I move my cursor off of WoW (I play in windowed mode, and no, Full Screen mode has not helped the issue), I can see my default windows cursor, but moving back over wow causes it to disappear.

I can end the program and restart WoW and 9/10 times I will encounter the same problem. Clearing the Cache folder, as was reccomended to me, may or may not work...sometimes I get back in fine, sometimes I do not.

Periodically, this problems gets worse, and as I try to log in, the bar will reach the top and then WoW will crash, informing me it could not start 3d acceleration and forcing me to reboot and pray.

I am simply trying to figure out what I can do or what might be causing the problem. I am not much of a genius when it comes to this type of stuff. I can only assume this is an issue with my graphics card, which is an nVidia 7800GTX (I believe, will doublecheck and post correct information asap as I am at the office rather than my home right now). Has anyone encountered this/have an idea?

It is quite possible that your graphics card is either overheating or dying. Check if your computer has excess dust in it, if so clean it (using all standard precautions with electronics i.e. no liquids, blow the dust out with a reversed vacuum or whatever). If all else fails, ask technically inclined friends for help and/or acquire a new card.

Pyros · 06/08/09, 12:49 PM

Originally Posted by sarf

It is quite possible that your graphics card is either overheating or dying. Check if your computer has excess dust in it, if so clean it (using all standard precautions with electronics i.e. no liquids, blow the dust out with a reversed vacuum or whatever). If all else fails, ask technically inclined friends for help and/or acquire a new card.

I actually have the same "issue" in dalaran with my new gfx card, if I run around too much, it'll eventually freeze the screen, however the game is still running(I can hear my footsteps and can press keybindings and hear the spell effects from them). I haven't found a fix to it, I just don't run around dalaran much. It's also coming with another bug, this time which is a real crashing bug, if I fly out of dalaran, I'll get random errors. The solution to that one was rather easy though, I just turn my View Distance to the minimum and no more crashing. Overall I've found these issues to be annoying but not gamebreaking, haven't had any problem while raiding, and only freeze in dalaran if I'm running around it because I'm bored and stuff, if I stay in one spot it works just fine.

Using an ATI 4870 though, so not the same card as the OP on this subject.

Twid · 06/08/09, 1:01 PM

While not quite a performance issue, for the last month or so, I've been finding WoW is not exiting gracefully about 50% of the time. Whether I hit Quit from the login screen, or Exit Game, it will freeze up the application. It's not a critical error, it just won't exit out. I have to force quit it, or if I happened to forget to switch to Windowed mode instead of Fullscreen, I end up having to reboot my computer to regain control.

I've upgraded my graphics card and sound card drivers, and it's still continuing to be a problem. Has anyone else been seeing this issue and/or found a solution anywhere?

suffer · 06/08/09, 1:34 PM

Originally Posted by Twid

While not quite a performance issue, for the last month or so, I've been finding WoW is not exiting gracefully about 50% of the time. Whether I hit Quit from the login screen, or Exit Game, it will freeze up the application. It's not a critical error, it just won't exit out. I have to force quit it, or if I happened to forget to switch to Windowed mode instead of Fullscreen, I end up having to reboot my computer to regain control.

I've upgraded my graphics card and sound card drivers, and it's still continuing to be a problem. Has anyone else been seeing this issue and/or found a solution anywhere?

I've been having the same issue for a lot longer. Never found a fix, I just deal with it.

ildon · 06/09/09, 1:38 AM

I recently started having a similar issue where when I log out the game *appears* to freeze, but if I wait long enough it closes. I tracked it down to having not cleared my recount data (I track trash as well as bosses so it's a lot of data). If you have a similar mod that stores a ton of data like that it could be the culprit.

xska · 06/09/09, 6:51 AM

Originally Posted by Pyros

I actually have the same "issue" in dalaran with my new gfx card, if I run around too much, it'll eventually freeze the screen, however the game is still running(I can hear my footsteps and can press keybindings and hear the spell effects from them). I haven't found a fix to it, I just don't run around dalaran much. It's also coming with another bug, this time which is a real crashing bug, if I fly out of dalaran, I'll get random errors. The solution to that one was rather easy though, I just turn my View Distance to the minimum and no more crashing. Overall I've found these issues to be annoying but not gamebreaking, haven't had any problem while raiding, and only freeze in dalaran if I'm running around it because I'm bored and stuff, if I stay in one spot it works just fine.

Using an ATI 4870 though, so not the same card as the OP on this subject.

I had the same problem with ATI 4670 and fixed it by downgrading Catalyst to 8.12 version. I found this idea on ATI forums where there are lots of people having issues with 9.x drivers. As soon as I downgraded, I stopped crashing when flying out of Dalaran.

Talibb · 06/09/09, 11:18 AM

If you're having the problem where your video freezes, but the game continues to run (you can hear sound, etc) try turning your view distance down to the lowest setting. You can usually turn it up as soon as you leave Dalaran and it'll be fine.

Uzziel · 06/09/09, 11:21 AM

I play on a laptop with somewhat substandard specs for gaming and I have found that the single best increase to my FPS has been investing $15 in a "Lap Desk." I'm sure that having a cooling pad would work wonders as well, but even just having my laptop always on a flat, smooth surface has been incredible for temperatures and framerates. I've seen jumps of 10-15 FPS in Dalaran! That is a solid 20-30 FPS for me now there. Give it a shot for those of you that play on laptops that tend to actually be in your lap.

winkiller · 06/10/09, 10:48 AM

Originally Posted by xska

I had the same problem with ATI 4670 and fixed it by downgrading Catalyst to 8.12 version. I found this idea on ATI forums where there are lots of people having issues with 9.x drivers. As soon as I downgraded, I stopped crashing when flying out of Dalaran.

Got a similar issue on 2 pcs here, on my box (with 8800GTS it only happens once a week maybe) on the other one (with a GeForce, but don't ask me which one) it happens every 2nd day.

Only when leaving Dalaran flying via Krasus' Landing and sometimes it recovers after 20sec, sometimes you have to kill WoW.

Oh, and it's only been happening since 3.1 (or 3.1.2) - never before.

Sitar · 06/11/09, 4:14 AM

Does anyone still have issues with low FPS in 25 raids?

I run 60 FPS while in 10 man raids, 30 FPS when Dalaran is crowded but as soon as we pull a boss, I can get as low as 7 FPS. I didn't have the problem before the last patch, since I was fraps'ing easely our 25 man raids.

I tried removing some addons, upgrading video drivers, reducing some video options, running with the fan to full speed but it changes nothing. It is worse when the fight requires AOE and when druids cast hurricane.

Any hints would be greatly appreciated, I run a E6400 with 2GB RAM and a 8800GTS.