WoW Performance Issues/Tweaks, Etc - Page 58

kubasniak · 12/13/11, 6:24 AM

Originally Posted by Szynszyla

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.

I have 4gb RAM, ATI Radeon GAINWARD 4670HD, AMD Athlon 5600+ 2x2,90GHz and Windows 7 32bit.
I have a question m8, Have I done it right?
ImageShack� - Online Photo and Video Hosting
I used macros and other points in your guide, I really see performance improvement.
From 10-14 fps on 25man raids it went to 19-25 fps.
I'm curious If I can get more than 19-25 fps on 25mans with that PC specifications or my PC is just a gaffer and I need to buy new one :>?

I didn't disabled system restore, If I will, will I get benefits in performance?
If I will install Windows 7 64bit then will I get benefits in performance?

Cheers.

Szynszyla · 12/15/11, 5:57 PM

First off you should install ANY 64bit system.
You are currently sitting on a system that does not let you use all your ram.

2nd - Disable swap file on C: , its "controled by system" meaning you did not cap it at all.

3rd - What you are looking FPS wise currently is max what you can get off on this spec. Weak CPU mostly holds you.

4th - system restore may couse some FPS spikes if it starts to backup data during gameplay and use HDD extensivly.

I have to say, going back to my wide test of CPU's few months ago in this thread ranging from E2160/E4300/E8400 I can add i3-2100 to the list on 1 certain encounter. HEROIC RAGNAROS

Intel i3-2100
8GB ram

Heroic Rag 25man with HD4830 O/Ced, 1900*1200, High.
- Avg FPS 35 FPS
- FPS SPIKE 18FPS (During seed spawn time ONLY) [Seriously, when will blizzard finnaly recap their combat engine]
- FPS SPIKE 21FPS (During seed detonation time ONLY)

Heroic Rag 25man with HD5850 O/Ced, 1900*1200, High.
- Avg FPS 35 FPS
- FPS SPIKE 18FPS (During seed spawn time ONLY)
- NO FPS SPIKE (During seed detonation)

Maybe with IVY bridge release I'll put my hands on a bit cheaper i5-2500k@4.5ghz and do some more testing

Question about wow folders -> CACHE folders. Both of them.
Is it possible to block those folders to not unpack the data on HDD, instead let CPU handle the data on the fly without using CACHE folders?
I understand that this may couse some issues for lower end PC/Dual cores, but there might be a gain on 4+ core CPUs to actually handle mpq files on the fly, and even save HDD space, especially on SSDs.

sp00n · 12/30/11, 7:28 AM

Not sure if that is common knowledge, but I noticed just recently (after what, 2 years?) that my graphics card (ATI HD5750 MSI Hawk) switches to 2D mode with reduced clock speeds if a YouTube movie is open in the browser. And it doesn't switch back to 3D mode until the tab is completely closed again. Finishing or stopping the movie isn't enough, you'll have to close the tab to make the GPU and memory clock speeds go back to your normal gaming speed.

This behaviour is caused by the hardware acceleration for Flash, and luckily you can disable that. To do so, right click on a YouTube video (or any other Flash element I assume), choose Settings, select the first tab and untick "Enable hardware acceleration" (see here). Now you can happily watch YouTube vidoes after your raid was wiped again, or can listen to youtuberepeat.com for the whole night! I know you do.

This is probably the case for other Flash sites as well, I just happened to notice it for YouTube.

Voxxel · 01/15/12, 4:13 PM

Hello!

In raid environment only (25 or 10 the same) my FPS is drastically drops into 1-3 probably because addons.

Spec: Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H mobo, AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+, Nvidia 9600 GT, 4GB dualchanneled RAM, Win7 x64
1TB WD Blue HDD + updated drivers/bios, Leatrix Latency Fix (Strunker Edit)

Tried to use minimal graphical settings, nothings changed, then I removed all of my addons. That solved most of the problem, FPS raised up to 10-14 in midfight (still on lowest grapic settings). My question is
1. Is that FPS number is acceptable to that computer spec and if so,
2. What should I change in it to let myself use addons, like Recount, DBM, Grid, Omen, Shadowed Unit Frame, Prat, and such? What should I replace to gain the most FPS increase? My vote is on the processor, but I can't change the motherboard right now. So if the processor is the weakest part of my machine,
3. What AM3 processor do you recommend? (most of them are supported by the AM2+ socket)
4. Is core amount revelant or irrevelant above 2 for playing WoW @ AMD?

The other problem is upon the system startup a question shows up everytime

SATA is found running at IDE MODE!

SETUP option is available to set SATA to ACHI mode Now is IDE mode, the system can not support hot plug. Would you change the mode Y/N? Do you want BIOS to enable this option for you?

Y: Yes, set SATA to AHCI mode for me
N: No, do not show this message again

5. I found a huge dose of recommendation over Google, but gotta ask here according spcifically to WoW which one should I pick?

Finally,
6. Does CFosSpeed v6.60 do any negativ impact on the game's performance?

Thanks for your time to answer those!

Szynszyla · 01/18/12, 8:42 AM

1. Generally speaking you tested it by yourself. Minimal settings and still low FPS = CPU.
2. Stop using recount, it is insane CPU hog compared to skada.
3. That your motherboard is AM2+ and AM3 cpus are most often supported on older chipset, you MIGHT have issues to run the CPU not becouse of software issues but hardware issues. Power section might be too weak to run AM3 CPU and not let you overclock AT ALL. You should check on overclocking forums how does your motherboard behave and how strong power section it has.
4. Yes, more than 2 cores are irrelevant (unless you gonna use Nvidia 4xx+ graphic card). However, beside 2 cores very relevant factor is CPU mhz. Stock CPUs are often NOT enough. Overclocking is often not an option, it is a must I'd say for competitive 25man.

Sata running in IDE mode is perfectly fine. You can change it to AHCI mode next time you do fresh install of your OS.
Changing IDE to AHCI will result in windows NOT BOOTING unless you start clean install after you applied the change.

Voxxel · 01/19/12, 12:33 PM

Thank you for the answers!

I'm going to buy one of those CPUs to fix my speed problem temporarily until I can change to Intel mobo.
Which CPU do you prefer over the other:

Athlon II X2 270
or
Phenom II X2 555

The Athlon one has higher core clock MHz and doubled L2 cache, but the Phenom one has 6MB shared L3 cache which I don't know if is important or not.

gymsta · 01/22/12, 3:18 AM

Originally Posted by Szynszyla

Sata running in IDE mode is perfectly fine. You can change it to AHCI mode next time you do fresh install of your OS.
Changing IDE to AHCI will result in windows NOT BOOTING unless you start clean install after you applied the change.

If you are running Windows 7, you can change IDE mode to AHCI without reinstalling.
Go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
and change "START" from "3" to "0"
Now you shut down/restart and change the BIOS setting.
Windows will install the AHCI drivers at next start.
After that go to Device Manager (windows+pause, device manager), IDE ATAPI Controller and look for something with AHCI.
If present you are running AHCI mode with all of his advantages.

Did this on Win7 64 Bit SP1, so i dont know if it works on other architecture.

fateswarm · 01/28/12, 2:21 PM

I'd like to report something simple, however very important in performance impact on the game:

The BrokerCPU addon is reported by many addon developers that builds upon an unreliable API, however, it does give with some relative certainty a general idea of the load an addon may inflict on the system.

This way I was able to identify some addons that inflicted CPU load high enough that FPS was reduced very noticeably, often in the amount of 10 to 40 FPS (out of 60). It was also found that their removal did increase FPS by a noticeable amount.

In my case I managed to identify two major contributors in the notorious Ultraxion 25man fight: Recount and aura addons with dynamic groups (that autoarrange). In certain cases some addons might have unexpected behavior due to bugs in themselves or the API. For example, I noticed an addon (for checking raid bufs and attributes) that was supposed to be offline during combat, kept going on with high CPU usage, only in some fights.

Another way to test it (apart from 25man raids) are 40man BGs when there is high concentration of spell use. Such situations multiply the issues apparently. e.g. hard to see major contributors in a 10man raid.

Bullshot · 02/02/12, 5:16 AM

With the 64-bit client, I'm able to run with Shadows on High and everything else on Ultra (only 1xMSAA though) at 2560x1440 with no perceivable performance drop. This was never possible with the 32-bit client. I do notice that the WoW process in the Task Manager is only using ~1.7GB of memory though. Can someone explain how I'm seeing such a big performance gain in terms of being able to use shadows with the 64-bit client even though the game process doesn't seem to be using a whole lot of RAM, certainly not over the 3-4GB cap that 32-bit programs have?

levk · 02/29/12, 1:37 PM

Originally Posted by Bullshot

With the 64-bit client, I'm able to run with Shadows on High and everything else on Ultra (only 1xMSAA though) at 2560x1440 with no perceivable performance drop. This was never possible with the 32-bit client. I do notice that the WoW process in the Task Manager is only using ~1.7GB of memory though. Can someone explain how I'm seeing such a big performance gain in terms of being able to use shadows with the 64-bit client even though the game process doesn't seem to be using a whole lot of RAM, certainly not over the 3-4GB cap that 32-bit programs have?

Not sure about Win7, but on XP maximum allowed memory per 32 bit process is 2GB. It's probably the same for Win7 though. Since this is close enough, it could be asking for larger chunks than there are available so the system has to do some page shuffling. Just my guess I'm not a Win back end expert by any means.

sp00n · 03/02/12, 4:37 AM

This may not be directly performance related, but it's similar enough I guess.

Patch 4.3.3 has brought some changes to the sound engine in WoW.
The most obvious is that sound replacements now have to be in OGG format exclusively, WAV files aren't considered as valid anymore [source]. This means that a lot of sound replacement addons might not work anymore out of the box.

The second, more subtle change is that the sound files now actually need a content. In the previous versions of my Muted Sounds Addon, I was using literally empty OGG files to replace the sound. They were valid OGG files (i.e. not zero-byte) but contained no sound whatsoever. This worked fine until the patch hit, but after that I had multiple sound dropouts (boss emotes, addon sounds, etc) that didn't happen before.
After some trial and error it turned out that I needed to insert 1ms of silence to make the sound files work again correctly.

To summarize:

You now need (only) valid OGG files to replace sounds.
.wav files simply renamed to .ogg will not work.
Neither will files with a length of 0 (empty dummy files, e.g. an empty .txt file renamed to .ogg).
These valid OGG files require an actual content. 1ms will do.

This may not be a problem when you only want to replace a few files, but at least for a large number of files (24,500 for my addon) it definitely is.

Also, if anyone could inform the poor blokes in the US forum about this, they haven't seem to found the answer yet, and I cannot post in the US forums.

vendettas · 03/12/12, 12:02 AM

Hey everyone. I played WoW for about a year a while back, and just got back into the game recently. After re-installing and all the boring stuff, I started playing and immediately my video card began acting up. I can't go more than 5 minutes without the screen locking up, going black, then coming back with the error message "your video driver has recovered from an error". I never had this problem before when I played.

I'm currently running:

HP Envy 17 with Win7 Premium
Intel Core i7 720
8 GB of DDR3 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850

I always play with graphics on their lowest settings. I've made sure that my drivers are updated, and have even tried to reformat without any luck. Any suggestions?

Szynszyla · 03/12/12, 9:35 AM

Quite few possibilities.

In general, it happens when card overheats on ATI cards.
Try to change Anti-aliasing and Anizo settings in CCC, sometimes helps.

Theoretically might be ram memory leak, GPU memory leak or in worst case dying GPU die.

vendettas · 03/12/12, 3:36 PM

Originally Posted by Szynszyla

Quite few possibilities.

In general, it happens when card overheats on ATI cards.
Try to change Anti-aliasing and Anizo settings in CCC, sometimes helps.

Theoretically might be ram memory leak, GPU memory leak or in worst case dying GPU die.

I've read up about the issue alot, and many people seem to think it's a RAM memory leak/overheat problem. I however do not know how to correct such a problem.

I've already tried playing around with the settings in CCC without any luck too.

• EasirokThunderpants · 03/13/12, 12:16 AM

I hope I am not being too presumptuous, but have you taken it apart and cleaned all of the vents and surfaces really well with compressed air? Also, have you verified that the fans are running properly?

ATI GPU chips tend to run hot, and tend to be very sensitive to air circulation issues.

You should be able to use a tool like HWiNFO64 (or HWiNFO32) to monitor your GPU temp and fan speed (use the "Sensors" feature) to see if high temperatures are really the source of your problems.