so its been a while since 2.1 and several of my guildies have been complaining about low fps, my fps being low as usual, i didn't really notice, until a guildie of mine, Copper, decided to investigate why.

Standing on the same spot, in the same place, with 0 addons, using different characters, he got different fps?

http://img369.imageshack.us/img369/1322/twinklela9.jpg high fps
http://img471.imageshack.us/img471/5740/copperlm2.jpg low fps

i couldn't explain it, i explained to him about renaming wtf to wtf.backup and whatnot for testing, and wtf hes fps goes up? so he does some investigating and finds out that it seems to be directly related to the amount of macros he is using.

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/4201/fpswtfbb7.jpg

so i went through my macros doing a spring cleanup, i kept the vital ones and removed the silly ones and had the same fps increase, although it still sucks in SSC(minor 5fps increase), anyone else tried this?

I can't even begin to fathom how a stored macro could effect the number of frames your video card can draw.

Shouldn't matter, macros are basically really small addons even with the changes to add all of the new /castsequence and such they aren't doing anything that should be resource intensive.

Has he tried going to somewhere more deserted to make sure?

Different characters have different addon loading, *even if they have the same addons*, since per-character saved variables can be significantly different.

It really shouldn't have anything to do with macros.

neither had any addons loading, but the evidence is there

They shouldn't be doing anything at all, a macro should only be taking up storage space until it's actually called to execute at a keypress.

If the macros test conditions in an "OnUpdate" type handler, and do it inefficiently, then this is believable.

For example, I can see maybe someone asleep at the wheel updating the macro icons once per actionbutton per frame instead of once per frame or something like that.

Do a lot of your macros use #showtooltip?
Perhaps we're doing something silly like pulling up tooltip information every update.

Do your macros use static icons, or dynamic icons (ie. the big red "?") - this may be related.

*shrug*

Not exactly true, basic macros that send a chat message don't do anything, but things like macros with modifiers or /castsequence still have to register events so the icons will change, or so it knows when to reset the sequence. The only macro that uses OnUpdate is /castsequence for knowing when to reset the sequence, everything else uses events that fire when you hold a modifier key down, change stances and so on.

What about processes running in the background, not WoW related? Could he have coincidentally had a AntiVirus scan spring up, or something that would eat CPU resources?

he has had the fps issue ever since 2.1, and yet it was always fine on the mage(has no macros), i doubt every day he played it was a coincidence, also as i stated i tried it, and it worked for me also, and i had nothing running in the background.

Instead of wiping out all your macros, try removing any instances of:

#show
#showtooltip
/castsequence [timed reset]

And see if that affects performance. I would, but I'm supposedly working right now.

I added the reset time on castsequence, bc for each cast it starts an independent timer.

I've been experiencing terrible lag after 2.1 as well, coincidentally there's a post on the blizzard tech support forums about low end ATI cards experiencing problems in 2.1. I used to run 20-40 fps in raids, now I dip into single digits in the same places.

Back on topic...I don't use any macros, just the normal addons everyone has (xperl, swstats, ktm, etc) but who knows. I'm 90% sure it has something to do with the new art in 2.1, because most of the new areas added in 2.1 cause more lag than people are used to getting judging by the people I've talked to.

I've been having the same problems in 2.1 and the Blizzard tech support forums have been astonishingly unhelpful. I'm basically just re-learning to raid with 4-6 FPS during boss encounters, since I don't expect a fix...well, ever. I'm accustomed to 15+ FPS during those same encounters, which isn't great but is at least playable.

What about removing the [reset=x] from /castsequence?

I use a lot of macros (close to 30) on my main, none of which make use of /castsequence, and only a few use #show, but I've not noticed a loss in fps since 2.1

I also don't notice a large gain when I log on to my bank alts, who are mod/macro free.

Since you say you're not using show/showtooltip I bet it's the reset feature on /castsequence because it has to check if any external conditions satisfy the conditional reset.

I've encountered similar phenomena. Ati graphics card also. I used to be able to run 1920x1200 with antialiasing and stuff, recently I've started moving to 1400xsomething for raiding to keep my framerates at acceptable levels. I don't have serious problem outside of raids. Hydross for example if pure agony with 4-5 FPS and constant target changes / chaincasting and my performance is suffering greatly. :/

Sounds more like full screen / window mode slight fps difference to me

Video Options -> Character Shadows (turn this off and report)

Just because I remembered reading about macro problems on the official forums... this might help. Slouken mentions adding a semicolon at the end of your macro as a temporary workaround.

Thats related to a taint issue not a performance issue, even removing the timeout shouldn't be causing issues because you'd notice a performance decrease running any other mod that uses an OnUpdate.

I did test this a bit further.
Loaded up my level 16 warlock alt and disabled all addons.
Additionally before I moved all macros of all characters to their seperate "per character" section, so that the macro list for my warlock was completely empty.

I went to an empty house in Ironforge, faced against a wall and zoomed all the way into it, so that I didn't see my character at all.
Additionally I left all chat channels.

Standing there, with no macros, my fps was:
min: 254
max: 309
avg: 290

Note that these values can't be 100% accurate, because I was simply staring at the FPS counter whilest doing nothing. (Is there an FPS addon that will store the values over a given timeframe?)

Then I created 5 macros, content being only "/p hi" and moved them to my cast bar.
This didn't change anything on the framerate.

Next test was 5x
#showtooltip
/cast xxx (without an ending semicolon)

Again, no change.


My next test was 5x
#showtootlip
/castsequence [combat] Corruption(Rank 1) [nocombat] Curse of Agony(Rank 1)
With the icon being the red question mark.
(doesn't matter if the macro is useful, I just wanted to test the expressions)

And now I noticed a significant drop in FPS.
It went to
min: 153
max: 227
avg: 220

That's about 70 FPS difference (again, these are only "soft" numbers).

So now I had reprocuced the behaviour which funkydude observed.
Now I wanted to see which part is responsible for this.
I added one/two semicolon to the macro - no change.
I removed the #showtooltip part - no change, or a very minor if at all.
I replaced the red question mark with a static icon - no change.

Then I replaced /castsequence with /cast and the FPS did increase by around 20:
min: 177
max: 250
avg: 240


The last test was to remove the [combat] and [nocombat] parts, so that I only had this macro left, with a static icon (5 times, all in the action bar):
/cast Corruption(Rank 1);

Doing so, my FPS went almost to the rate at which it was without having any macros at all.
min: 250
max: 303
avg: 290


So the conclusion is:
- /castsequence reduces the framerate.
- [combat] and [nocombat] reduces it even more.
- Macros per se do not reduce framerate.


// Edit
Maybe someone can forward these test results to Slouken, I can't, being an EU subscriber.

No noticable change for me when reproducing this.

You must have one hell of a PC for getting such high FPS^^.

Hmm, incidentally I have had horrible fps problems since 2.1. I used to be at 60-70, and now rarely get above 20. Very annoying. However my problem doesn't appear to be macro or addon related.