My 6yo computer can no longer run this 11yo game :(

[GutsTheWarrior]

Hey I have a similar problem, thought I'd post here before trying to make a new topic. My PC isn't old but I'm getting bad frame rate drops around multiple players; Warspear, Shat and Dal when timewalking vendors are up. Besides those situations my frame rate seems great.

My specs are - Win10 i5 4690 @ 3.5 8gb RAM gtx970
I have dual 1920x1080 monitors but only game on primary one, my temps are fine.

I've messed with a lot of settings and addons but I'm getting bogged to 45 fps at timewalking vendor. AA, shadows, vsync, nothing gave a big noticeable change.
Any suggestions for a specific setting or weak part of my PC? I think my CPU is weakest part, ram would be cheapest upgrade.

[Chemii]

Hey I have a similar problem, thought I'd post here before trying to make a new topic. My PC isn't old but I'm getting bad frame rate drops around multiple players; Warspear, Shat and Dal when timewalking vendors are up.

My specs are - Win10 i5 4690 @ 3.5 8gb RAM gtx970
I have dual 1920x1080 monitors but only game on primary one, my temps are fine.

I've messed with a lot of settings and addons but I'm getting bogged to 45 fps at timewalking vendor. Any suggestions for a specific setting or weak part of my PC? I think my CPU is weakest part, ram would be cheapest upgrade.

Turn your settings down?

The new draw distance and environmental detail add a lot of strain to most systems, you should be wary of these being on maximum.

Your PC is more than capable of playing WoW at a good standard of FPS on decent settings.

[GutsTheWarrior]

Turn your settings down?

The new draw distance and environmental detail add a lot of strain to most systems, you should be wary of these being on maximum.

Your PC is more than capable of playing WoW at a good standard of FPS on decent settings.

Hey thanks for the reply, they are View distance 8 and other two are 7 :/

[Chemii]

Hey thanks for the reply, they are View distance 8 and other two are 7 :/

Have you tried turning off every addon?

[GutsTheWarrior]

Have you tried turning off every addon?

Yeah it was definitely an improvement, went from 45 average to 49-55 but still seems like something about players being bunched up making my frame rate cry.

[Shirofune]

WoW is an odd one. My rig (i7 4790k, GTX 980, 16GB) seems to struggle to keep a nice 60fps at max settings, and since pre-patch it hits even 28fps in effect-heavy areas.
So I guess I need a goddamn Titan X?

No. You don't. It's the WoW engine that bottlenecks both CPU and GPU usage.

i7 6700k + Nvidia 1080 here. I struggle to get 144 FPS in raids, no way I can get above 80 in cities.

In the first pull of BRF I get 25 FPS drops

[Chemii]

No. You don't. It's the WoW engine that bottlenecks both CPU and GPU usage.

i7 6700k + Nvidia 1080 here. I struggle to get 144 FPS in raids, no way I can get above 80 in cities.

In the first pull of BRF I get 25 FPS drops

Not sure how this happens as I run at 4K with GTX1080 and it never drops below 60-70 fps but my processor is clocked at about 4.2ghz.

Only glitch I've noticed so far is huge lag spikes but these appear to be global.

[Caelia]

I feel like we definitely still live in a time where 1080p should be assumed by default unless otherwise stated, but you're right. Fair enough.

Yep resolution should always be noted when posting about performance =)
Personally I'll continue to run 1080p until 4k projectors are cheaper, after playing on a 110 inch screen for a couple of years there's no way I'm going back to a normal computer monitor just to get a higher resolution.

[Shirofune]

Not sure how this happens as I run at 4K with GTX1080 and it never drops below 60-70 fps but my processor is clocked at about 4.2ghz.

Only glitch I've noticed so far is huge lag spikes but these appear to be global.

Oh, that's no the problem. I'm sure I can run WoW at 4k no problem.

FPS lag spikes start to appear one you increase the visual distance and the clutter in the ground. Also shadows seem to give a heavy hit.

Then again, I checked usages with MSI Afterburner and the GPU was playing cards with the CPU at 15% usage while the CPU had 10% use in 5/8 cores, and 60% on the others. Chillin' in Warspear at 80~ FPS (144 Hz monitor)

About the FPS drops in BRF, there's literally nothing you can do about, is the engine. I refuse to believe a 1080 and a 6700k can't run WoW at 144 steady FPS.

[Deleted]

When the prepatch hit my FPS fell down to ~50, and went down to 25-30 in grassy areas (Nagrand). This was with "Optimal" settings from GeForce Experience. I run a GTX 970 and overclocked i5 4690 k (4.4 GHz) with 8 GB RAM. Before prepatch, game ran with at least 150 fps at most times.

Then I turned off 8x MSAA (actually, reduced it to 4x), and I instantly got 30-40 fps, making it above 60 fps at all times again. All other sliders and settings are max, and even the scale render is at 160%. Guess GTX 970 (and obviously everything better than it) will still handle WoW very well for at least a couple of next expansions, people just have to learn to disable the ridiculous settings that destroy performance with minimal visual impact.

[Ifeanychukwu]

I have a 4770k and a GTX 980 and can't manage to get a solid 60 fps with everything turned to the max. I'm in a weird spot right now though. I have almost everything on ultra except for some of the shadow effects and maybe the upscaling resolution thing and I usually sit anywhere from 80-200 fps but when I start messing with some of the "extra" settings I drop down to 60-150 but with dips into the 40s. I have most of the sliders like the distance ones etc. set to 7 and most everything else set to ultra except for shadows, sun rays or whatever and a couple of other niche things.

It's frustrating though. I'm either having awesome fps with almost max settings or frequently meh fps with max settings. Meanwhile Witcher 3 and other demanding games like it run flawlessly.

[Deleted]

See my post above. Just reduce the antialiasing to a reasonable number, you can run everything else on max.

[caervek]

Yeah it was definitely an improvement, went from 45 average to 49-55 but still seems like something about players being bunched up making my frame rate cry.

What is your antialiasing set to?

[Deleted]

4x MSAA with MFAA turned on in NVIDIA Control Panel. This basically lets you have the effect of 8x MSAA for the performance hit of 4x. Everything else max and the game runs minimum 60 fps at all times on 1080p.

[MuLLvaD3n]

Now with Legion pre-patch they did up the graphics of the game. You have longer view distances and better shadows amongst other things. The old "max settings" is therefore lower than the new "max settings". With that being said, the optimization of the game is a bit weird and I am struggling with frames myself in some areas. If you are having issues with frames, start with lowering Shadows from "ultra high" and put the viewing distance down a bit. That will do the trick for a lot of people.

[Wries]

I play on 4K resolution and with the pre-patch, some outdoor areas seem to be more demanding than ever before. Kept the setting on "7" (old ultra) but have had to turn down liquid quality, ambient occlusion and shadows in order to run the game at a similar frame rate as before. I would sacrifice AA settings but I already did that when going 4K, now using CMAA only.

Maybe they can optimize things some, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

[slavrix]

I do love it when over night the forum posts go from
WTB UPDATED GRAPHICS
to
OMG GRAPHICS ARE TO HEAVY FOR MY PC

Just because its an 11 year old game doesnt mean that the particle effects, shadowing, water dynamics, aliasing render, distances, foliage cover etc are still at the same level they were at 11 years ago.

Reduce your camera draw distance, and set your background fps limits might help you out the most

[hnlntm]

I would say hold on for a bit longer if you don't have the cash to upgrade, with the PC being 6 years old you might want to consider formatting it and doing a clean install, ensure Windows + drivers are up to date, give your GPU a dusting. Try the lowest settings and disable new character models. If all that Fails the game still faces a few months of patching once Legion launches so thing might still settle down.

Back when mop hit, I had massive frame drops and thought I needed to upgrade, after upgrading I still had frame drops until the game was patched.

[GutsTheWarrior]

What is your antialiasing set to?

it was fxaax2 to off to msaax2 now at msaax4, no noticeable difference between them in performance

[ttak82]

You can disable so much graphics details in the settings that even really old computers can run wow with playable framerates.

My current CPU/GPU are 5 years old and I get locked 60fps with settings at 7/10 (okay in raids it goes to the 30s sometimes).
And even on my 4,5 year old laptop with a 540M gpu I can squeeze out more than 100fps if I set it to 1/10.

So, while wow can be demanding at ultra, it's also always playable on older hardware.

Second the 100 fps comment for warlords; have not played Legion.
My bro and I also run wow on 540M laptops; I am unsubbed but my bro is currently playing legion. It is a bit choppy but still playable at 30+ fps. I think he is using low/medium settings so he can get some more fps if he turns some stuff off.