WoW Performance Issues/Tweaks, Etc - Page 57

wsicks · 08/19/11, 12:34 AM

I have experienced this same thing after building a new system as well.

First system was I7 2600k with GTX 590, experienced FPS as low as 10 on seeds during Ragnaros.

Second system was the AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1100T Processor with 2 x 6950 CF.

I am very confused as to what is expected from these cards running DX11 at ultra settings, x16, x8, with shadows and sunshafts maxed as well.

I am in desperate search of answers!

Kisko · 08/19/11, 1:34 PM

No need to be desperate, there is nothing wrong with your hardware. You can easily check that by firing up any well-written game like FarCry2 and enjoying seamless gameplay and good visuals.

Now, back to WoW.
You have 25 man raid environment generating huge amount of data, especially during massive AoE like Rag seeds phase. That data have to be parsed by Blizzard's own combat log and by another 10 raid addons you have installed, which were written by bunch of Indian code monkeys. Since WoW is still pretty much single-threaded game, all that work has to be done by a single CPU core, meanwhile your $1000 GPU just idles there for 95% of time, waiting for CPU to send some data to render.

WoW during 25 man is a sewer with clogged pipes and amount of shit generated during some encounters is simply insurmountable even by such an amazing piece of equipment as Intel i7, much less by Phenom.

What you can do about it?

1. Disable every addon except those crucial to performing your role in raid (hint: Skada and Recount are NOT one of them).

2. Tune down CPU-intensive graphical settings: shadows, dynamic lights, etc. CPU should be freed up to chew on that combat data.

3. Turn off combat log window (every bit helps).

4. Upgrade/overclock your CPU. That i7 should go up to 4.8GHz. Raids in WoW are strictly CPU limited, while its graphics is anachronic enough so 3-year old GPU can max it.

5. Ensure that no heavy tasks are running while you raid (antivirus scanning, folding@home, etc).

Bullshot · 08/19/11, 1:52 PM

Turning down Shadows will be the single biggest thing you can do to increase performance after toning down on the Multisampling. I personally keep my Shadows setting turned all the way down even though the rest of the settings are on Ultra because the performance hit just isn't worth it. You should notice a considerable improvement if you turn it down as well.

Exemplar · 08/19/11, 2:01 PM

Originally Posted by Kisko

3. Turn off combat log window (every bit helps).

An important item many people don't realize is combat log filtering. Make sure your combat log is set to "Everything". Regardless of the setting your game receives every single combat log update. If it is set to something other than "Everything", once it receives the combat log info it then uses further CPU to decide whether or not to show it to you.

Even if you've hidden the combat log, it's still receiving and still filtering on the last setting you selected.

I've seen this setting alone be the difference between playable and WoW the Slide Show for some folks. It's not a miracle fix, but it's one of the many settings of which you should be cognizant.

fateswarm · 08/19/11, 11:47 PM

^ The theory is sound - and it has been mentioned before here - but in practice, plain text parsing of the low volume fed by wow is trivial for modern systems, unless programming is criminally inefficient. In contrast, 3D graphics involve lengthy and repeated calculations of large matrices that often are not done on GPUs.

In short, if one has UI/Graphics issues that often reduce performance, I'd firstly suspect inefficient programming (such as addons that do not throttle their global loop), and secondly plainly heavy graphics calculations such as high anti-aliasing or very detailed effects.

Kisko · 08/20/11, 3:14 AM

Theory? Hardly.

Remove Interface folder with addons, set every visual setting to low/off.

Now log on to Stormwind AH at 8pm. See that fps? Do you really think that your relatively modern GPU can't churn out more than 50 frames on a scene with couple textured boxes and few simple models?

Low fps in cities and raids have same basic cause and that cause is Blizzard code (being inefficent, if you want to call it that way) hitting CPU ceiling.

fateswarm · 08/26/11, 6:03 AM

My assertion was mainly weighting on text parsing. My limited experience in engine programming has taught me that tasks such as sporadic singe number calculation and throttled simple calculations are trivial in the grand scheme of the massive matrix calculations a modern game goes through. If limited sporadic text parsing is slowing down a modern computer it sounds it's not programmed well.

Exemplar · 08/26/11, 9:11 AM

Originally Posted by fateswarm

My assertion was mainly weighting on text parsing. My limited experience in engine programming has taught me that tasks such as sporadic singe number calculation and throttled simple calculations are trivial in the grand scheme of the massive matrix calculations a modern game goes through. If limited sporadic text parsing is slowing down a modern computer it sounds it's not programmed well.

The problem is that the parsing occurs at the potential peak period. The combat log scrolls super fast in AOE situations - multiple targets to report, all being impacted by multiple multi-target attacks. Each of these attacks generally has spiffy animation effects (raining fire, ice, clouds and lightning, etc).

So you have overlapping heavy spell effects which should be routed to the GPU at the same time the network is intaking a lot of info, which is then being parsed out by the CPU - at least twice, if not more.

Network takes a lot of packets. These have to be examined and sorted - video effects, world locations, log info, GCD/CD sync with server, etc. This all goes through the CPU. Once sorted the log info then goes back through the CPU for another loop of filtering (unnecessary/undesired extra step). The video effects are then run through the CPU to determine if they should be sent to the GPU or not - basically is that WoW setting a Y or N. Oh, and if you haven't seen that effect lately, we need to access the HD to find the animation info. All of this going through one single thread.

In theory a lot of that should be negligible. But the program is around 7 years old. Every bit of code probably has special exceptions to call special functions. And those exceptions have exceptions. Every kludge and quick fix may work individually, but as a conglomerate it's plaque building up in the bloodstream ready to give some computers heart attacks. Clean and elegant code tends to go out the window when deadlines require immediate response.

All I know is that filters on the combat log have at least heavy/widespread anecdotal evidence to support claims it causes framerate loss. Still not a miracle cure, but it's something easy to toggle and frequently makes a (far bigger than it ought) noticeable difference.

Rouncer · 08/30/11, 2:15 PM

Originally Posted by Exemplar

An important item many people don't realize is combat log filtering. Make sure your combat log is set to "Everything". Regardless of the setting your game receives every single combat log update. If it is set to something other than "Everything", once it receives the combat log info it then uses further CPU to decide whether or not to show it to you.

Even if you've hidden the combat log, it's still receiving and still filtering on the last setting you selected.

I've seen this setting alone be the difference between playable and WoW the Slide Show for some folks. It's not a miracle fix, but it's one of the many settings of which you should be cognizant.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal but I had some lag on our domo kill this week so it seemed like an ideal opportunity to test out your theory that "everything" is better then "nothing". Staggered lag was noted during lust at the first scorpion phase. Realized I still had my combat log active although "behind" my chat log. Turning it from "self" to "nothing" brought me back up to acceptable fps. Then I remembered your post so started playing by swapping around between "nothing" and "everything" during the rest of the scorpion phases to see what effect each had on my fps. "Everything" averaged around 30 fps. "Nothing" averaged around 36 fps.

Bullshot · 09/13/11, 12:47 PM

I'm having a "constant lag and then disconnect" issue since the 10th of September and I'm hoping someone here may have an idea what might be wrong. I've already made a thread on the Blizzard Tech Support forum and there are a lot of other players who are experiencing the same issue, but none of the ideas posted in those threads has helped ("Lagging" forever - Forums - World of Warcraft and Constant Disconnections. - Forums - World of Warcraft).

What happens is that once I log in, I can stay without lag for around 5-10 seconds on most occasions and 60 seconds very rarely. After that, every other player starts "moonwalking" and patrolling NPCs stop dead in their tracks. My pet doesn't move with me and none of my actions register. After a while, I'll get disconnected. Sometimes this happens immediately upon logging in and everyone's name appears as "Unknown". I've gone through all the stickies on the Tech Support forum and the common solutions to the "Unknown Entities and Lag" problem, but nothing has helped.

Here's a list of the options I've explored to try and fix this:
- Remove WTF, Cache, Interface and Data\Cache folders and log in.
- Update all drivers, including network card, video card, audio card.
- Toggle the Optimize Network for Speed option in WoW.
- Run the Repair tool but that only checks 53MB of data and reports that there were no problems found. When I made a post about it on the Blizzard Tech Support forum, a Blizzard representative said that that's working as intended and the Repair tool only checks some critical data now and the Launcher has a repair-on-demand feature that fixes any data corruption. The Launcher didn't report any problems with the installation.
- Change the Network Card settings as per this article (Blizzard Support) and disable all Checksum Offloading, Priority & VLAN, Large Send Offload, Receive Side Scaling. Also disabled the Power Management options for the network card.
- Make sure all ports are forwarded in the router/modem and make sure that a static internal IP has been created.
- Check for malware using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, spyware with Windows Defender, virii with ESET NOD32.
- Reduce the MTU to 1400.
- Open Command Prompt in Administrator Mode and do the following changes:
1. Disable Receive Side Scaling State by typing netsh int tcp set global rss=disabled
2. Disable Compound TCP by typing netsh int tcp set global congestionprovider=none
3. Disable ECN by typing netsh int tcp set global ecncapability=disabled
- Re-download the entire client from scratch on a different drive.
- Format C:\ and re-install Windows.

None of these options have helped and I'm at a loss to figure out what the problem might be. I normally use the Lowerping service as well and initially thought it might be related to that, but this problem occurs regardless of whether I connect to the game using Lowerping or not. I even uninstalled Lowerping from the system but that didn't help either. Any ideas about a possible solution, no matter how "out there" it might seem? This lag and disconnect only happens with WoW and since I've re-formatted and re-installed everything, I'm at a loss on what could be wrong.

EDIT: After all the options that I tried, today's server maintenance fixed this problem. So guess it was something on the server-side related to the communication between server and client.

Chult86 · 09/29/11, 2:16 PM

Originally Posted by Exemplar

The problem is that the parsing occurs at the potential peak period. The combat log scrolls super fast in AOE situations - multiple targets to report, all being impacted by multiple multi-target attacks. Each of these attacks generally has spiffy animation effects (raining fire, ice, clouds and lightning, etc).

So you have overlapping heavy spell effects which should be routed to the GPU at the same time the network is intaking a lot of info, which is then being parsed out by the CPU - at least twice, if not more.

Network takes a lot of packets. These have to be examined and sorted - video effects, world locations, log info, GCD/CD sync with server, etc. This all goes through the CPU. Once sorted the log info then goes back through the CPU for another loop of filtering (unnecessary/undesired extra step). The video effects are then run through the CPU to determine if they should be sent to the GPU or not - basically is that WoW setting a Y or N. Oh, and if you haven't seen that effect lately, we need to access the HD to find the animation info. All of this going through one single thread.

In theory a lot of that should be negligible. But the program is around 7 years old. Every bit of code probably has special exceptions to call special functions. And those exceptions have exceptions. Every kludge and quick fix may work individually, but as a conglomerate it's plaque building up in the bloodstream ready to give some computers heart attacks. Clean and elegant code tends to go out the window when deadlines require immediate response.

All I know is that filters on the combat log have at least heavy/widespread anecdotal evidence to support claims it causes framerate loss. Still not a miracle cure, but it's something easy to toggle and frequently makes a (far bigger than it ought) noticeable difference.

I've done everything I can to reduce any possible excess graphics/lag, such as turning off Combat log, default UI. However, on p2 of Rag and when Domo starts leaping a lot, I get the view of everyone running in place, and then watch the game in fast forward for a couple of seconds when it catches up. My ISP is 8Mb down, 1Mb up, usually around 60-70ms, and I have optimize Network for Speed turned off. Phase 2 of Rag is the killer though. Multiple disconnects, and I don't know what else I can do. I drop resolution to 1680x1050(Or whatever that exact # is), all graphics set to low, with Projected Textures enabled for Engulfing, and it's still lagging me out when the Seeds explode. Beyond frustrating.

i5 @ 3.3Ghz
GTX 570
8MB DDR3 Ram
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD

fateswarm · 10/01/11, 1:04 AM

Originally Posted by Chult86

Network for Speed turned off.

Have you tried it on?

S7rider · 10/06/11, 7:35 AM

I had disconnection issues with nef (adds) p2 raggy.

I used minimal addons (some unit frames and serenity) + a boss mod

It resolved when i turned my windows firewall off, i then opened all the "warcraft ports" (7-8 of them) and its done the trick.

Szynszyla · 10/11/11, 7:49 PM

Short question. Did anyone moved from Radeon 4830-4850 card to HD5830-5850 recently with some decent intel CPU?
If so, what performance gain I should look for?
Currently running i3-2100 & 4830@4850 chip, heroic rag min. 18FPS during seed spawn and avg 36FPS. I think that my card is holding me now. 1680*1050 + Ultra, shadows off and anizo 4x.
Tomorrow coming dell U2412 on IPS and native 1920*1200 and I think It is time to change GFX.

PS. AMD Bulldoger is coming, It doesn't look to good overall but I am looking forward to WoW tests.
FX with insane amount of L2 and L3 cache might pull ahead of anything we saw before comparing to i5/i7.

After some guild members getting freezes on Rag HC seeds I solved their problem once and forever.
Some of the people had freezes on 4.5ghz i5 2500k and GTX 570 with 16gb ram.
When people did this, we had nobody say they had any issues on seeds anymore as long they were not using crap CPU.

Posting it here, so I hope more people will get a good use of it. Some of them are basics I know.
Especially swap file trick is a bit controversial, but it does pretty ok. Yes It won't be the best for other games, same as with disabling hyper-threading.
System restore used to be a virus camp in the win ME/XP era, nowadays it still does take a bit of system resources.

UPDATE DRIVERS
Update your BIOS - MOST IMPORTANT
Update your MOTHERBOARD drivers
Update your graphic card drivers
Update your windows to 64BIT

WINDOWS TWEAKS
Go to start -> Run -> fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 -> press enter [increase NTFS performance]
Go to start -> Run -> services.msc -> press enter -> Find window search -> Right click -> Advanced -> and stop/disable on system startup
Go to start -> Run -> powercfg -h off -> press enter [disable hibernation]

Go to start -> Run -> Msconfig -> press enter -> go to STARTUP tab
Untick (disable) anything that is a program YOU KNOW e.i:
Adobe
Java
Google
Office
Skype
AIM
Torrent clients etc.

FILE INDEXING [disables hidden process taking CPU load and HDD access]
Go to your computer, right click each partition -> properties -> AT THE BOTTOM DISABLE (UNTICK) "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" -> CLICK ACCEPT and ON WARNINGS IGNORE THEM ALL to do the changes for all folders and subfolders
Note: It will take some time to finish for each partition

SWAP FILE MANAGMENT
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced system settings -> (Advanced TAB) -> Click settings under Performance -> (Advanced TAB) -> Click change button
In that menu few things to be done
- UNTICK automatically manage paging file for all drives
- Click each drive, set NO PAGING FILE -> CLICK SET
- Choose 1 partition now, set CUSTOM and put 100 and 100 in the windows below (initial size and maximum size MB) - > CLICK SET
CLICK OK below

NOTE: IF YOU PLAN ON PLAYING OTHER NEW GAMES SET THE SIZE TO 1000-1000 AFTER YOU DONE WITH WOW and RESTART PC.
NOTE: 100-100 is RECOMMENDED FOR USERS WITH AT LEAST 4GB OF RAM

If you have at least 6GB of RAM, set swap file to 5-5. Create VIRTUAL swap file for 1-2GB of ram. This will use ram instead HDD to store swap file. Performance gain while reading/writing will be faster 1000%+ compared to HDD.
To do that, use google.

SYSTEM RESTORE
Control Panel -> System-> Advanced system settings -> System protection -> Disable system restore for all partitions (might need to click configure) -> Might -> accept to delete all previous system restore

GRAPHIC DRIVER OPTIMALIZATION
ATI users - go to CCC -> 3D settings -> standard settings -> SET OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE
NVIDIA users - go to Nvidia panel -> similar as above

CPU BIOS TWEAK
Check your CPU MODEL
Check if it does SUPPORT HYPER-THREADING TECHNOLOGY

If it does -> Go to BIOS -> Find option to disable hyper-threading -> Disable it -> Save and exit
If you cant find this option, click ctrl+f1 to unlock new options and search for it.

NOTE: IT WILL LOWER PERFORMANCE FOR OTHER GAMES utilizing HT (hyper-threading), SO ENABLE IT LATER.

IN GAME MACROS THAT CAN LOWER YOUR GRAPHICS BEYOND WHAT THE SLIDER ALLOWS

#1:
/console m2Faster 1
/console ffx 0
/console hwPCF 1
/console shadowlod 0
/console timingmethod 1
/console showshadow 0
/console showfootprints 0
/console showfootprintparticles 0

#2:
/console overridefarclip 0
/console farclip 177
/console horizonfarclip 1305
/console detailDoodadAlpha 0
/console groundeffectdensity 16

#3:
/console groundeffectdist 1
/console smallcull 1
/console skycloudlod 1
/console characterAmbient 1
/console extshadowquality 0
/console environmentDetail 0.5

Make those macros and use them.
If using any these macros cause issues for you, disable M2Faster by typing: /console M2Faster 0

fateswarm · 10/16/11, 2:56 PM

I noticed a fundamental issue involving latency in macros. Let me know if I miss something:

It appears that there is a delay of around 200ms, when a /castsequence is used. The number is a guess, it is noticeable but much lower than the GCD.

For example, a "/castsequence Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast" appears to produce a slight delay before each cast. This is clearly not there when AB is used on its own. I also saw the same on another spec and another spell.

PS. The example sequence has no real use but I first noticed it on a sequence that included Mirror Image. At first I suspected an issue with MI, but removing it did not alter the latency effect.

EDIT: I suspect it has a simple explanation: The cast buffer may not be taken into account at all hence, to produce latency equivalent to world latency.