Settings that Maximize Performance

Bag · 08/02/07, 10:02 AM

This is not related to addons. I'm talking about pure settings that you've found to be ideal for performance in your particular machine. For example, on my laptop, which is running an athlon 64 processor, and a basic 128 mb independent video card, I need to run WoW in full-screen mode to achieve the best performance. However, on my desktop, which is a somewhat older machine, I get much better performance in windowed mode maximized.

Also, some other things I was wondering about:

I have a 22" widescreen monitor, which is optimized for 1600x1050 res. That res is really intensive, though. Is there another resolution which I could run at without making it look terrible? Also, is multisampling a particularly important setting for performance?

Harem · 08/02/07, 11:11 AM

Running at anything other than native resolution on an LCD is going to look funny and weird. I would suggest running windowed at a lower resolution, or running full screen at a lower resolution and setting your LCD/graphics card to not scale the resolution, meaning black bars at the sides/top of your screen.

Opioid · 08/02/07, 12:46 PM

This article will give you a gauge of the per-setting by per-setting effects of each possibility:
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Hardware Performance Guide - Features at GameSpot

Though you may have a different video card, the proportions remain useful and correct analogues.

aleyro · 08/02/07, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by Bag

Also, is multisampling a particularly important setting for performance?

In my experience, multisampling can deliver a much "smoother" image, but it comes at a very high cost in terms of framerate. if your trying to optimize your performance, go with 1x.

Some general tips for improving your performance:

make sure your video card drivers are up to date. If you have an nvidia video card, then winXP is your best bet; the nvidia drivers for vista are less than outstanding. If you have ATI, then your basically fine with either XP or vista, with XP holding on to a slight advantage with driver maturity.

Set everything in the "video options" to the lowest possible setting, set your resolution to run at whatever is native to your monitor (yes, even if its something high), and go into your video card config and set everything to max performance there as well. Disable smooth shading, full screen glow, and death effect. turn on triple buffering, and that other option on the right hand side which i can't seem to remember the name of right now.

Also, most likely, your going to want to turn off "use hardware acceleration" in the sound properties (unless your 100% sure that you have a hardware accelerator- i.e., you installed it yourself or have seen it with your own eyes).

Finally, shut down all external applications, turn off all unused services, and defrag your hard drive at least once a month, and deftinately after every patch. if at all possible, put your wow installation on a seperate physical hard drive from the rest of your windows installation.

If you’re still not happy, consider adding some ram. More than 2 GB ram won't help you much; if you already have that much ram, and your frame rate is crap after doing all of the above, then it’s probably time to buy a new pc. If you have more than 2 GB ram, and a spanking new PC with a fast processor, and your performance is STILL crap, then the disk may be the culprit; wow reads from the disk quite a bit, and a slow disk can bring the whole show crashing down. Consider adding a new internal hard drive.

Bag · 08/02/07, 12:58 PM

Great tips, guys. Appreciate them all.

Malan · 08/02/07, 1:05 PM

I'm amazed that the gamespot article indicates that having the weather shader on or off makes almost no difference in performance.

Snowcrasher · 08/02/07, 1:17 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

I'm amazed that the gamespot article indicates that having the weather shader on or off makes almost no difference in performance.

Where they did the test (Hellfire) doesn't have weather changes though right?

Gasmask · 08/02/07, 1:38 PM

Usually when I think of maximizing performance, I don't think of feral druid. Is rerolling an option, Bag?

Bag · 08/02/07, 1:39 PM

Kaber · 08/02/07, 1:47 PM

Originally Posted by aleyro

in my experience, multisampling can deliver a much "smoother" image, but it comes at a very high cost in terms of framerate. if your trying to optimize your performance, go with 1x.

some general tips for improving your performance:

make sure your video card drivers are up to date. if you have an nvidia video card, then winXP is your best bet; the nvidia drivers for vista are less than outstanding. if you have ATI, then your basically fine with either XP or vista, with XP holding on to a slight advantage with driver maturity.

set everything in the "video options" to the lowest possible setting, set your resolution to run at whatever is native to your monitor (yes, even if its something high), and go into your video card config and set everything to max performance there as well. disable smooth shading, full screen glow, and death effect. turn on triple buffering, and that other option on the right hand side which i can't seem to remember the name of right now.

also, most likely, your going to want to turn off "use hardware acceleration" in the sound properties (unless your 100% sure that you have a hardware accelerator- i.e., you installed it yourself or have seen it with your own eyes).

finally, shut down all external applications, turn off all unused services, and defrag your hard drive at least once a month, and deftinately after every patch. if at all possible, put your wow installation on a seperate physical hard drive from the rest of your windows installation.

if your still not happy, consider adding some ram. more than 2gb ram won't help you much; if you already have that much ram, and your frame rate is crap after doing all of the above, then its probably time to buy a new pc. if you have more than 2gb ram, and a spanking new PC with a fast processor, and your performance is STILL crap, then the disk may be the culprit; wow reads from the disk quite a bit, and a slow disk can bring the whole show crashing down. consider adding a new internal hard drive.

I keep running into issues where every time I attempt to set my Multi-Sample rates to 1x from 4x, it reverts back when I restart WoW. Is there some fix for that? My frame rates have been pretty bad on a lot of our raids lately, and it would be a huge help if the setting was not always reverting to 4x.

kycan · 08/02/07, 1:56 PM

Originally Posted by Kaber

I keep running into issues where every time I attempt to set my Multi-Sample rates to 1x from 4x, it reverts back when I restart WoW. Is there some fix for that? My frame rates have been pretty bad on a lot of our raids lately, and it would be a huge help if the setting was not always reverting to 4x.

Not to follow with just a "me too!" post, but I have also experienced this oddity. I'm guessing it may have to do with running the game in windowed mode, but that is an uneducated guess. I must say though, I don't think I measured a significant difference in frame rate, regardless of what I had it at. Go figure.

GokieKS · 08/02/07, 1:58 PM

Originally Posted by Kaber

I keep running into issues where every time I attempt to set my Multi-Sample rates to 1x from 4x, it reverts back when I restart WoW. Is there some fix for that? My frame rates have been pretty bad on a lot of our raids lately, and it would be a huge help if the setting was not always reverting to 4x.

Check to make sure your video card drivers are not forcing specific AA/AF settings on any applications, but letting the applications decide on what level AA/AF to use.

Bag · 08/02/07, 2:01 PM

Originally Posted by GokieKS

Check to make sure your video card drivers are not forcing specific AA/AF settings on any applications, but letting the applications decide on what level AA/AF to use.

Easiest way to check this?

Thiris · 08/02/07, 2:08 PM

Originally Posted by GokieKS

Check to make sure your video card drivers are not forcing specific AA/AF settings on any applications, but letting the applications decide on what level AA/AF to use.

Or you could force your video card to use lower settings and have it override game settings as well. I do that currently while I'm dual boxing so I can get decent framerates on both instances of WoW while I have any other programs/etc running.

aleyro · 08/02/07, 3:01 PM

Originally Posted by Kaber

I keep running into issues where every time I attempt to set my Multi-Sample rates to 1x from 4x, it reverts back when I restart WoW. ...

Originally Posted by kycan

...I have also experienced this oddity....

Originally Posted by GokieKS

Check to make sure your video card drivers are not forcing specific ...settings...

Originally Posted by Bag

Easiest way to check this?

The easiest way to check this differs slightly if your running winxp or vista, and differs greatly depending on what video card you have. Basically, your trying to get to your "display poperties" control panel, and click on the tab specific to your video card. In Vista, you go "personalize->display settings->advanced->(your video card)". Once you find your video card's control panel, basically turn everything down, or set it to "let the application decide", or whatever your card's vendor calls that option.

Originally Posted by kycan

... I don't think I measured a significant difference in frame rate, regardless of what I had [multisampling] at. Go figure.

This might be because it wasn't actually changing the multisampling rate,because your video card had it "clamped" down at a certain setting. What multisampling does is(warning: the following may be wildly innacurate, but its how it was explained to me... ) it blends previous frames into the current frame to dramatically increase the quality of anti-aliasing. If you use 1x antialiasing, it goes back 1 frame. if you use 4x, it goes back 4 frames. on my machine, 2x is half the framerate of 1x, 4x is half the framerate of 2x, etc.

(edited for grammar.)

Malan · 08/02/07, 4:00 PM

Are there any Mac users experience severe frame rate drops in raids? My average frame rate on a PowerMac G4 tower with 4 gigs RAM is hovering between 5-15 which is pretty horrible. In the world environment I'm stable at 40-50 though. I'm unsure what settings to really fiddle with for this - I'm on a 30" apple widescreen so I run at a slightly higher resolution, although not the highest widescreen resolution by any means. I've got most settings at mid or low and am still having issues.

♦ Maniq · 08/02/07, 4:51 PM

Originally Posted by Gasmask

Usually when I think of maximizing performance, I don't think of feral druid. Is rerolling an option, Bag?

Originally Posted by Bag

Hate

You guys are funny.

aleyro · 08/02/07, 4:55 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

Are there any Mac users experience severe frame rate drops in raids? My average frame rate on a PowerMac G4 tower with 4 gigs RAM is hovering between 5-15 which is pretty horrible. In the world environment I'm stable at 40-50 though. I'm unsure what settings to really fiddle with for this - I'm on a 30" apple widescreen so I run at a slightly higher resolution, although not the highest widescreen resolution by any means. I've got most settings at mid or low and am still having issues.

It could be a problem with one or more of the mods your running? I had similar experiences back in my BWL days, and it turned out to be vastly increased CTRA/KTM traffic, which led to increased network, leading to increased CPU, which led to crappy framerates. What mods are you using?

Malan · 08/02/07, 5:03 PM

The usual suspects - KTM (with the KTMCPUmanager addon installed to cut it down), Pitbull, Bartender, Aperture, Recount, some Fubar stuff, etc. Maybe 30-40 addons total in my interface directory.

Khaleel · 08/02/07, 8:29 PM

Do you have any conditional macros?

This thread documents cases where macros were a major culprit in frame rate problems.

heckyeah · 08/02/07, 8:40 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

Are there any Mac users experience severe frame rate drops in raids? My average frame rate on a PowerMac G4 tower with 4 gigs RAM is hovering between 5-15 which is pretty horrible. In the world environment I'm stable at 40-50 though. I'm unsure what settings to really fiddle with for this - I'm on a 30" apple widescreen so I run at a slightly higher resolution, although not the highest widescreen resolution by any means. I've got most settings at mid or low and am still having issues.

What's the video card in that? All of the PowerPC machines are pretty limited by their stupid slow bus speeds, so any scene that's CPU-bound is going to suffer pretty bad. (I get the same performance on my G4 PowerBook with a 128MB ATI card.) The best advice I can give, believe it or not, is to head over to the Mac Tech Support forum on the official WoW boards. Tigerclaw (Mac dev) and some of the CS reps post there frequently, and the traffic is low enough that even the non-blue posters are actually helpful and decent.

I'm hoping that Apple's big announcement on Tuesday is about some sweet-ass new machines, because this PowerBook is definitely starting to show its age.

Malan · 08/02/07, 8:50 PM

Its a G5 sorry, and I pulled out the factory card and put in an Nvidea 6800 Ultra DDL awhile back. I tried the suggestion of setting my WoW screen res to the same as my desktop. I had been running at a much lower widescreen res, tonight I set it to 2560x1600, same as my desktop. I'm amazed that I'm getting the same frame rate levels, often better, than I was at the lower res.

The apple announcement on monday is most likely going to be a new iMac model.

Cryect · 08/03/07, 1:15 AM

Originally Posted by aleyro

What multisampling does is(warning: the following may be wildly innacurate, but its how it was explained to me... ) it blends previous frames into the current frame to dramatically increase the quality of anti-aliasing. If you use 1x antialiasing, it goes back 1 frame. if you use 4x, it goes back 4 frames. on my machine, 2x is half the framerate of 1x, 4x is half the framerate of 2x, etc.

Heh, sorry whoever told you that explained a motion blur technique I'm afraid not MSAA (motion blur is AA as well though but its temporal not spacial). MSAA basically samples multiple depth samples in the same pixel while only doing one texture sample for the entire pixel (supersampling on the other hand takes a sample for everything for ever how many times the AA is). With 2x MSAA these 2 depth samples then let you be able to average 2 values together for the final pixel. These samples might be the same (if its from the same polygon) or different if from different polygons. Its faster than SSAA since only 1 texture sampling but slower than no AA due to increased fillrate requirements (depending on the structure of the the buffers there might be potentially little added fillrate requirement except at edges). I'm afraid thats a confusing paragraph I just wrote but hopefully gives some idea.

Malan · 08/03/07, 9:03 AM

I still find it hard to believe that doubling the resolution WoW was at has actually increased my performance.

Nott · 08/04/07, 6:33 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

I still find it hard to believe that doubling the resolution WoW was at has actually increased my performance.

If you're using an LCD monitor, they have native resolutions, and if you use them at a different resolution, performance takes a hit. No clue if this is what caused it, and really my father told me this like 4 years ago, so I may be full of shit.