WoW Performance Issues/Tweaks, Etc - Page 21

Juravieal · 05/21/09, 6:43 PM

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 · 05/22/09, 2:25 AM

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 · 05/22/09, 2:53 AM

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 · 05/23/09, 10:06 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 05/23/09, 10:23 PM

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

Gogusrl · 05/24/09, 10:56 AM

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 · 05/24/09, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by Juravieal

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.

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

Avantos · 05/24/09, 1:09 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 05/24/09, 4:36 PM

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 · 05/24/09, 6:08 PM

Originally Posted by 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

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 · 05/25/09, 6:04 AM

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 · 05/25/09, 3:17 PM

Originally Posted by klüger

Each time there has been a patch (and some times very sporadically after a patch) my comp lags out when i try to log my main into dalaran. Its always the same, I log in, graphics load but everyone around me is "unknown the noble" etc. After logging in and getting disconnected (this takes from 10-100 secs) what seems like a set number of times (around 10-20), I can log in no problem.

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.

Next, go into your network settings in the system properties if you are playing under windows. Select the network card and select the "configure" button. You should get dialog box with some tabs on it. Select advanced. You will find several options. Ensure that specific features that might be called like "TCP offloading" is switched off. Also you might want to shut off powersafe functions (unless you are playing on a laptop they might not make much sense anyway). I can't give you specific names for the options to turn off, because the naming of those are driver dependant and thus change depending which hardware and driver you are using. In general, every option that sounds like the hardware is "accelerating" or "offloading" some functionality from the operating system into the hardware or driver should be switched off. These features have in the past proven to be more counter-productive than useful. Again a system reboot is necessary after changing something here.

Monikan · 05/25/09, 4:48 PM

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 · 05/27/09, 2:35 PM

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:

/console  textureCacheSize 536870912

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 · 05/28/09, 5:21 PM

/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.